About the Author:
Born in England, C.M. Gray spent most of his youth growing up in the Essex countryside. A beautiful part of England, close to the Suffolk border, but he was born with the need to expand his horizons, so as soon as he could get a passport at the age of just seventeen he packed a backpack and went exploring!
A slightly risky decision, and one his parents were not too taken with, yet a number of years later he is still traveling…. but with a slightly larger bag. Over the years, C.M.Gray has been lucky enough to live and travel in many many parts of the world, met some incredible people and experienced some amazing places. In fact, he has now lived for more years outside of England than he ever spent living there – It is, after all, a very big and exciting world!
During his journey he worked and trained as a carpenter and a house restorer… picked more types of fruit over the years than he knew existed – from grapes in France to avocados in Israel. After living in Israel for a year, he was lucky enough to be invited to travel with the Bedouin in the Sanai desert for several months and then moved on travelled around India and then called a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayan Mountains home. A short while later he had changed tact, bought a suit and did a stint as a stock broker in the clamor of central Hong Kong.
To celebrate the millennium he traveled back to Europe, then found and restored an old farmhouse in deep rural Burgundy, France… but then looked to the open road and spent an number of years in Amsterdam… but the winters were cold so he went south again in search of the sun.
Always vowing to return and sink some roots back in English soil… he hasn’t quite got there yet, but maybe someday, it seems there are just too many interesting places out there to see first! He does, however, live a little closer to England now, just outside of Barcelona in Northern Spain, in the middle of the forest with his dogs and two wonderful children, he claims the Pyrenean mountains and forests of northern Spain are a great place to write and let his mind do the traveling.
As you will have noticed, his writing is mostly fantasy and he says that many of his experiences in Asia, India, Africa and the Middle East come to life in his writing. He has seen and done some pretty strange things on his travels, and bumped into some amazing characters, so writing fantasy is almost like writing fact for him… you just wouldn’t believe it if he presented it as fact – there are people and things out there in this world of ours that would simply amaze you!
His latest book is the mystery/thriller The Flight of the Griffin.
Learn more and buy the book here.
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To explore his life and writing more, please visit his webpage and blog at https://author-cmgray.blogspot.com
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British Author lost in Spain!
(Guest Post by the Author)
Sometimes when we wander through life we are offered different directions and choices that shape the person we become as adults. I know many people who haven’t strayed from the village of their birth and have grown up, married, had children of their own and are as happy and contented as can be, however, something really strange happened to me. I grew up in England, no not New England USA, but that tiny little island off the coast of Europe. I had, and still have, the most wonderful loving family who have supported and followed me through all my crazy travels, because that is what life has put in front of me, travels, interesting challenges and adventure! I wasn’t meant to have a calm, ordered life, but that’s okay because so far it’s been a blast!
I have lived all over the world, from Hong Kong and the Philippines, to rural France, then up to the Dutch city of Amsterdam. In between I’ve lived in India, Morocco and even spent time in your USA.
Right now I live in a nice house in the middle of the forest just outside Barcelona in Spain. I have no neighbours, apart from families of wild boar that crash through the trees at night sending my two dogs barking like demented wolves! I have two wonderful children who are growing up surrounded with nature and speak three languages fluently – English, Spanish and Catalan, which is amazing. It is for their stability that I travel so little now, I want them to grow up in one place.
So for the last five years or so, I’ve been filling my time by writing, which I now love and it’s far more rewarding than watching the television! Writing allows me to continue traveling, but this time it’s through the worlds of my imagination. I use places I’ve visited and crazy people I’ve met to base my stories upon. My latest series starts with the book, The Flight of the Griffin, it’s a complete flight of fantasy that the publishing world has seen fit to put into the ‘Young Adult’ genre, which is strange really because more than half of my readers appear to be adults – I even had a ‘Young Adult’ of seventy send me an email telling me how much she enjoyed the story. So why is it put into the YA genre? Because I don’t write steamy love scenes and although my characters enter conflict, I don’t write graphic scenes of violence, oh, and also I don’t see the need for my characters to use profanity… it’s pretty clean writing, which sounds a bit lame, but it isn’t! The Flight of the Griffin will take you on a magical journey, following the questing adventures of a crew of young people as they try to put clues together to stop the world from tipping into Chaos. There are moral messages that shine through and of course, good will overcome evil (But I’m sure you knew that would happen anyway!)
To get to know this author in Spain a little better, please come find me at my website http://author-cmgray.blogspot.com you can also read the opening chapters from all three of my books and meet the characters that run around inside them. Happy reading!
About the Book:
The Kingdom is dying…
The Darkness is coming… the balance between Order and Chaos is rapidly shifting and the world is falling towards evil and horror, and all misery that Chaos will bring.
But there is hope…
Pardigan’s had enough, he’s only 12, but he’s breaking into the home of one of Freya’s richest merchants… and he’s doing it tonight…
A burglary that will change their lives forever sets four friends upon a quest, a race against time, to locate three magical objects and complete an ancient and desperate spell.
Sailing their boat The Griffin, the crew are quickly pursued by The Hawk, an evil bounty hunter and master of dark sorcery, and Belial, King of Demons and champion of Chaos who seeks to rule the world of man… yet first he must capture the crew of The Griffin and end their quest…
Purchase your copy at AMAZON US or AMAZON UK
Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.
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