User Profile

I was born in London, England, on June 3rd, 1952, at exactly nine p.m. The gypsy screamed and threw up her hands in horror. There was a plague that year, and Farmer Tom's cow gave birth to a three-headed calf. Comets blazed through the summer night. There were other portents too, which I am too modest to mention.

Despite my English accent, I'm genetically 100% Italian. My father is a journalist, my mother was a multi-vocational eccentric. Books, love of history, good food, conversation and intellectual curiosity were common currency in our household.

I make my living as a decorative (aka 'faux', though the term is restrictive) painter. I've somehow managed to survive fourteen years in this brutal frontier land, following my compulsively purist nature and doing everything ye olde way -- by hand -- guided by dusty tomes and arcane recipes. I generally work in vast, palatial homes with manicured gardens and breathtaking views, and wish I lived in one.

I also write Science Fiction. Writing is hard, which begs the question, why do it? It's the same thing that drives my interest in colour, namely that I immensely enjoy a challenge. I need problems to solve and envelopes to push. I'm a very lazy person who's too driven to indulge his sloth.

I love to read, and very eclectically, at that. My first love has always been good SF. Roger Zelazny, C.J. Cherryh and Norman Spinrad are my main heroes. Outside SF, I revere Jorge Luis Borges, John LeCarre and Robert Graves. I have little patience with dull books or, for that matter, dull people--time is too precious.

A few personality notes...

I have a sense of humour. I like to read and travel. I love good food and strong coffee, and drink wine moderately at mealtimes. I like people to have depth and complexity, like wines. I think women are the superior life form, and that many of them approach sainthood without realizing it.

I work out and keep in shape. I tend to migraine and insomnia. I love the arts; and ballet, painting and literature most of all. I like rock & roll (particularly 1956-1964), rockabilly and doo-wop, and 50's-60's progressive jazz, and the Russian classical composers, and a lot of other music besides. I like to shoot guns, but only at innocent paper targets.

I detest politics and the way polarised thinking, along with the stranglehold of the media and the legal establishment, is poisoning society. I think of myself as a pragmatist who sees reality as too complex for simplistic solutions, and who considers issues on their own merits. I want a world free of television, sport and arachnids. I'm probably an agnostic of some kind; an aesthete and an elitist. A monarchist. I believe we should encourage individual responsibility rather than reward whining. I'm generally good-natured and kind to both people and cats. I love my friends and hate my enemies.

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