The story itself has been approved, is currently being typeset and the (small but historic) cheque has long since been cashed. The book itself will be out in a few months, but today, my editor emailed me asking for a 100 word biography for the frontispiece.
Initially, I couldn’t really think of what to include. My name, of course. Great. Only 98 words to go. Beyond that, though, what? It’s not like I can do what many other writers do, and wax lyrical about their wife, three kids (mention them all by name, it all adds to the word count) and sounds-palatial-but-I’m-a-writer-so-it’s-rather-more-squalid-than-that house somewhere in the Home Counties. And as this will be my first fiction work, I can’t list any previous achievements in that field.
So I figured the best thing to do is to concentrate on what writing achievements I have made (establish my credentials), make a passing reference to the subject matter at hand (signifying that I do, in fact, know what I’m talking about) and end on a joke (so that it’s not completely dull).
So this is what I came up with:
Scott Matthewman is Assistant Editor of The Stage, the British newspaper covering all aspects of the performing arts. In 2004, his website covering gay issues was named Best Political Weblog by The Guardian, and he now contributes on a regular basis to TV Today, The Stage’s blog about British television. He specialises in coverage of Saturday night entertainment, even when it doesn’t involve a time-travelling police box — although he remains convinced that musical theatre reality shows are part of a devious plan for world domination by aliens with jazz hands.
Tell Me You Love Me is Scott’s first published fiction.
Fingers crossed that’ll do.
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