Keltoi - Terence Clay



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Terence grew up in Gumdale, a suburb on the edge of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.  His family lived on a five acre property, which Terence would enjoy getting lost in.  
     
     "There was a lot of time spent alone, thereby a lot of time to think.  I'd talk to anything there...animals, lizards, spiders and trees.  I would also create stories while I walked.  Things hiding in the trees, waiting for an unsuspecting child to walk past, or of heroes and villains and there battles.  But I think most of all I just talked to...whatever was listening, and it did seem like something was."

Fishing was another of Terence's favourite past times, as the family property was only a short walk from the river.
  
   "I always looked forward to going fishing.  It's a great past time that allows one to think.  I put together uncountable stories in my head...however, at the time, I never thought of writing them down.  Catching the fish was exciting, but the fight was the true contest.  Even if it gets away, the battle is kept in the memory.  Where I used to fish is called 'Horseshoe Bend'.  It's quite popular now, mostly amongst the locals, but when I was a boy, it was just a river at the end of the road.  It was where people would leave their wrecked cars and other rubbish.  I like to go back to that place, when I was young, it calms me.  Everybody needs a place they can go to escape for a while."

When he was fifteen, Terence moved to a little town 280 kms from Brisbane called Warwick and they looked after a Youth Hostel.

     "My mother managed it, and I was the gardener/maintenance man.  I was a sporty kid, and tried my hand at rugby, tennis (that was when I was younger still) and boxing.  My first fight, I knocked my opponent through the ropes for a TKO in the second round.  My second fight, I was out weighed, outmatched and out pointed....there wasn't a third."

When he was sixteen, Terence had his first taste of writing.

     "I wrote this story for our teacher.  I didn't really want to, but I was amazed at just how easy it came to me.  We only had to write two to three hundred words.  My story was five pages long.  It was about some guy that stopped in at a fuel station and how he observed the place.  With that...I was hooked.  I started writing my first story in one of my school books, I didn't use them for school much.  I was hardly there."

His mother found an old typewriter at the local market.  When she brought it home, Terence nicknamed it 'The Tank'.

     "This thing was big.  I think it must have built during the war, as it was the Sherman Tank of Typewriters.  I loved writing on it though.  I copied what I'd already written, then continued.  When I'd finished, the story was, I think, twenty four or five pages long.  To me of course, it was a novel.  I bought my own shortly after that, an Olivetti, but I'll always remember the Tank I wrote my first story on. 

Terence wrote off and on.  Sending some stories into contests and magazines, however he never found a home for his stories.  

     "I would spend months, or years, without writing.  I just never really took it seriously.  I sent some things off to magazines and book publishers, but I didn't expect anything out of it.  It was just what you were supposed to do if you were a writer.  Years later I found a publisher.  Unfortunately I was still very green and didn't realise who I'd signed a contract with.  It was only a short story, fifty something pages, and I thought they would add it to a book of short stories or sell it as a small book.  They sold it as a small book, but charged even more than the price of a novel.  I'm still in that contract for a few more years, and so the story will have to wait.  Because it's not selling at the price they want.  so be it."

His latest book, 'Keltoi', is self published.  Terence learned a lot from that first publisher...

     "I did actually send Keltoi to a publisher, but it wasn't what they wanted, that's ok.  Instead of continuing to send it off and risk getting another dodgy deal, I decided to publish it myself.  My Partner, Laura, and I designed the cover and I published it with Amazon, Smashwords and Createspace (paperback on Amazon).  It was surreal, holding the finished product that we'd created.  It's also on Kindle, but being of the older persuasion, I really enjoy holding a book, especially my own."

Terence has hinted of another book coming out in the near future, but he's keeping a tight lid on it.

   "All I can say is that I want to self publish the next one as well.  I really enjoyed the process.  It's like a carpenter building a table.   When it's finished he/she can be proud of the finished product, knowing the creation is theirs alone."




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