Just another congenital liar

In his posthumously published book True at First Light, Ernest Hemingway wrote that “a writer of fiction is really a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.”

Aside from some dabbling in my early years, the “Hemingway trait” did not really express itself in me until later in life after moving from my native UK to Switzerland.

It was here that the trait started to blossom, when I invented bedtime “lies” for the kids, because English books were not so easy to come by in the village where we lived in those pre-internet years. After much revision, one of these will finally be published in 2025 under J. Edwin Skinner. 

At the same time, true to the instincts of the congenital liar, I also invented a pen name, A B Decker, under which I write mystery/thriller fiction – and anything else that comes into my head. The most recent of these, Flowers from the Black Sea, was published in March 2024.

I am currently working on a further set of “lies” set in Austria at the time of the annexation in 1938 and beyond.