David John Griffin (Twitter | Facebook| Website)

Hello, I am an author of fiction books, writing under my full name of David John Griffin. I’m also a graphic designer and an occasional electronic music composer. Born and bred in Gravesend, Kent, UK, I live there with my wife Susan.

My novels, novellas and short stories cover a range of genres including gothic, literary, paranormal, mystery, science fiction, soft horror and urban fantasy. Some of my short stories have been published in at least eight anthologies and magazines, including The HG Wells Story 2012 anthology, Born of the Island and Other Stories anthology, Beyond Words magazine, Secret Attic anthology, The Reach magazine, and Stories for Homes book 2, amongst others.

I have a writing desk in my shed at the bottom of the garden – I love to write there during the summer, otherwise I tap away on a computer in my office. Many of my creative ideas just pop into my head but if not, I can be inspired by dreams, TV programmes, web browsing, paintings and photographs, or reading novels by other authors. I admire so many writers (too many to list) but a few to mention would be Philip K. Dick, Daphne Du Maurier, Angela Carter, Stephen King, Haruki Murakami, William Golding, Charles Dickens, J.G. Ballard, and Mervyn Peake.

My ongoing mission as an author is to produce absorbing, page-turning novels. When writing short stories, I aim for that surprising “twist in the tail” at the end of them. My interest in writing started when I was six-years-old; my primary school teacher inspired me and gave much encouragement. I started my first serious piece of fiction at the age of thirteen. It was a novella – 100 pages written in longhand – its genre science fiction, inspired by authors such as Isaac Asimov, J.G. Ballard and Robert Heinlein.

I started writing my first novel, ‘The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb’, while attending the Medway College of Art and Design in the early 1970s. After many revisions over the years, it was finally professionally published in 2015 – over 40 years later! Its genre is gothic and paranormal. Set in an English village called Muchmarsh, populated by quirky characters at the turn of the last century, this gothic tale is full of mystery, suspense and intrigue.

I wrote my second book, Infinite Rooms (literary and psychological), in 1984. It is quietly experimental in nature. The novel involves a young man called Donald Clement whose fragile mind is tortured by unrequited love, his thoughts related to a remembered psychiatrist called Dr. Leibkov. 

My third book is a novella with short stories called Two Dogs at the One Dog Inn and Other Stories. The novella is magical realism, science fiction and paranormal, based on extraordinary emails sent by a woman called Audrey Ackerman to her work colleague Stella Bridgeport at an animal rescue centre. The twelve short stories included are in genres such as science fiction, paranormal and literary, amongst others.

The fourth book that I published is a time travel adventure called Abbie and the Portal. It starts with a mysterious note that reads, “Please help”, found inside a 19th century book by a reporter called Terry Bridge. He takes up the challenge to save the writer of the note, a young woman called Abbie Concordia who is trapped in an asylum in Victorian England.

My novel called Turquoise Traveller is a strange and surreal urban fantasy involving dreams in reality. A young man wakes up on a bus, not knowing where he is going or where he has been… He comes to realise that reality has been overlaid with dream and nightmare elements by the evil agents of Tremelon Zandar.     

My latest novel, a psychological mystery called When The Lover Lies, is currently being represented by my literary agent who is chasing publishers for it. I’m now busy writing the manuscript of my seventh novel, a psychological thriller called Five Alive.

For me, creative writing is an all-absorbing passion, something I’ll endeavour to pursue for as long as I can.

“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse

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