An
Interview with Jeffrey Peter Clarke
My main
working life has been occupied by graphic design and
photography. I set up my own business from home in 1982 with premises acquired
by 1985 in
Over several years I produced for the Royal British Legion their worldwide guide to battlefields and war graves. This also involved a certain amount of research and writing on historical and military subjects.
This prompted me to write a novel and so I began research and notes for a science fiction plot based upon the human colonies on Mars – The Devil in Eden. Meanwhile, feedback from bookshops – yes, there were still a few around in those days, convinced me to embark upon something with a strong erotic theme instead.
I submitted this first
completed novel to Virgin publishing under, as they suggested, a female
pseudonym. The book was accepted at once for their Nexus imprint and along came
an up-front payment followed by royalties. So I wrote a second, then a third, and
so-on. This resulted in my giving a talk on the subject at
By then I decided to concentrate more on the two mainstream subjects in which I’ve had a long-existing interest; science fiction and ancient history; opposite ends of the spectrum. For both subjects I hold comprehensive standing and regularly published references in my own library.
My intention is to keep on writing and never to retire since this has also become a hobby.
My latest book, entitled, Rogue Planet, was published in 2024. There has been considerable interest in the existence of once habitable worlds dragged from orbit about their parent star by the gravitational disruption of a large passing body, perhaps another star. Astronomers refer to these unfortunate worlds, adrift and lost in empty space, as Rogue Planets. In the novel, as the receding planet cooled, its inhabitants had taken refuge beneath the surface, sustained by heat from the core and sub-surface water circulation, but have evolved in very different directions over the vastness of ages. This our team from Earth find out when this seemingly desolate world drifts for a while past the very outermost reaches of our solar system.
A typical writing routine is for me elusive. It’s a matter of whenever I can, with weekends and public holidays included. Sometimes I’ll start before eight in the morning and on occasion not finish until after seven in the evening. Some days, with shopping and other jobs to be done, I’ll write nothing at all. Interruptions are my main enemy.
One of my favourite quotes comes from two of the intelligent, spider-like robots that accompany our team when down on the rogue planet: ‘They both stirred and rose up to knee-height, our knees, that is, and proceeded over the rubble with lights on and antennae twitching. “We’re still precious don’t forget,” came back Freddy’s voice. “Precious-precious,” agreed Ginger.’ The robots, normally in pairs, are often named after famous couples in the past.
A writing block is not something I suffer from often. If I reach a point where further progress becomes elusive I find when taking time off to make a cup of coffee or going for a pee, ideas drift out of the mists.
How I learned about Fiction4All was through Olympia Press.
What I want readers at home to take away from Rogue Planet is a feeling of their having been somewhere distant, bizarre and threatening but with real people and situations they might be able to identify with.
Engaging.
I received no advice when writing this book other than indirectly from the references I consulted. I have a reader on the other side of the country who checks copy, sent on line, mainly for grammatical errors.
The next book I’m working on deals with Heracles, (Hercules to the Romans), and his so-called twelve labours. Heracles represented the greatest of heroes in classical Greek and Roman times but existed, if at all, in the Mycenaean Greek Bronze age of around 1200 BCE. His various exploits, interpreted and diversified by ancient writers, are largely preposterous.
In this novel the goddess Athena materialised one night from my dreaming. Through a quirk in space-time, I was transported by her, grabbing my voice recorder on the way, to the Elysian Fields. There Heracles lives in eternal, sunny retirement and has agreed to relate to me, in his own words, what really happened. The tasks imposed upon him by Hera, vindictive wife of almighty Zeus, are challenging and almost insurmountable, yet he must in the end prevail. These adventures he relates over several days and, although fantastic, they resolve themselves as almost believable, as we might claim for the likes of a few modern superheroes.
This is a complicated plot and as far as I can discover, no one has attempted previously to do what I’m doing now – and perhaps I can’t blame them. I am, however, ironing the whole thing out to make Heracles and his onerous tasks a satisfying read. It also, in places, locks into two other novels I’ve written cocerning the same period.
After this I will probably go back to Mars.
As an afterthought, I feel book sales may be jeopardised by the poor print quality of the covers I design. These are often too dark.