Danny Singer

Why is it that we cannot get enough of lies about events that never happened and people who never existed? Why are we keen to be deceived, to suspend our disbelief and to become invested in the figments of an author’s imagination? The answer lies in the fundamental human need to understand the world. Involuntarily, we gatecrash our way, screaming, into this ridiculous party and one day we are certain to be brutally - and sometimes painfully - kicked out. We have no choice in the matter. 

All we can do is try to make some sort of sense of it all. This is what stories do.

I came to writing late in life. A life that has taken me through three countries, three different cultures and languages. An academic degree in Pure Mathematics, a five-year stint as an intelligence officer and a long career in hi-tech have provided a wide perspective on life. It was three decades ago, in the hills of Provence that I met a Sussex young lady called Lorraine. A gifted ceramicist (https://www.lorrainesingerceramics.com/), she proved potty enough to say yes to the oddball who stalked her around the ancient papal palace of Avignon. However, none of that could compare to the experience of being a father to two remarkable daughters and the realisation that one no longer is, and probably never was, the central protagonist in one’s own life.  

I write because I am trying to figure out what we might be supposed to do with these few decades that we were granted on this planet. I ask myself questions and the answers are stories. Why are humans so flawed and at the same time so wonderful? Who should be the arbiter of our morality? Stories tell us that good doesn’t always prevail. The hero doesn’t always get the girl. Life is not a romcom. It certainly isn’t romantasy, whatever that may be. My characters are flawed. And just like you and me, they are also loving and generous and full of self-doubt.