Check Me Out
My name is Stephen Arnott (aka S. J. Arnott) a UK writer living in East Anglia. In the past I've worked as a freelance feature writer and as a magazine editor, I've also had writing and editing jobs in both television and radio.
A change in career led to me taking a position that has a less formal focus on writing, so to scratch the itch I began to write fiction in my spare time.
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I've had a number of non-fiction books and humour titles that have been traditionally published, but I have also self-published under my own imprint - Ketingas Press. You can find out more about these works in the Books section.
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For more information check out the FAQ below.
FAQ
Why the two author names: ‘S. J. Arnott’ and ‘Stephen Arnott’?
It’s to differentiate between my different writing styles. S. J. Arnott is the name I use for my Leofric Dark Age fiction. Stephen Arnott is the name I used on my factual and humour titles, such as The Writers' Guide and Jack Bleacher. For more on these go to Books.
Are you self- or traditionally-published?
Both. My own imprint is called the Ketingas Press, but you can find information on my other books here.
Where did you get the ideas for your Leofric stories?
The first rule of fiction is to write something you’d enjoy reading yourself. I really like the work of historical fiction authors such as Robert Graves, Patrick O’Brian and Bernard Cornwell, and when I was looking around for a new project I decided to do a historical adventure novel set in Britain. I eventually settled on the Dark Ages (now usually called the Early Middle Ages) as a period to write about. Originally I was going to write about the early Saxon conquests of southern England, then became interested in the settlement of the Angles on the east coast (modern East Anglia). In the end I decided to take the story back over the sea to Angeln on the Jutland Peninsula. Very little is known of the Angles, and I don't know of anyone else who’s written about them. You can find out more about the Leofric books here.
Why did you write The Writers' Guide?
This was originally the idea of a teacher friend of mine. She thought that a 'how to' book that covered all types of writing would be popular. However when I tried selling the idea I discovered that a publisher would rather sell a prospective author a dozen writing titles, rather than one book that gave them a taste of everything. Originally The Writers' Guide was published as an ebook on Amazon, but I then decided to turn it into a website as this made it much easier to keep up to date. The Guide has moved around a few times since then, but this current site is expected to be its final home.
Are you secretly funded by a sinister multinational business consortium?
Why, yes. How did you find out?
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Um, perhaps I shouldn't have admitted that so quickly, but since you do know, you can find out more about my sponsors here.
Take me home