As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?It was always things involving the arts. I loved drawing and thought about going to art school, but I was also attracted to music, and I ended up working as a professional musician for decades. I loved writing and always thought that it might be the place where I would end up. So I’ve had two careers, writing and music, side-by-side, though these days, writing takes up most of my time (happily so). I think even as a child, I knew I would always be doing something creative.

 

Were you a voracious reader as a child?

I actually started reading a bit late, which happens to some children. I don’t think I could really read well before the age of six, but within a few years, I was into Narnia, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Sword of Shannara, and many other books. Then along came comic books, role-playing games, and anything else fantastical that I could get my hands on. At the same time, I started really loving early music and English history, and became especially interested in the medieval and Tudor periods.

 

What’s your writing process?

There isn’t any one way I go about it. I work as a writer-for-hire for book publishers and private clients, and usually, I have methods that I use in approaching writing those books. For anything business or scholarly related, or indeed for most for-hire works, I sit at my desk and work on a desktop computer. For my novels and more creative books, I like working on my laptop, and that might be done anywhere: couch, bed, chair, etc. I have daily goals for professional writing (to meet deadlines), and I try to for personal works, as well, but I don’t beat myself up about it if I don’t meet them.

 

What are some day jobs that you have held?

I’ve worked as a musician and writer for most of my adult life, so those have been my day jobs. A few of those writing jobs required my being on site in an office somewhere, which I’ve always thought is really counterproductive for a writer. Writing in a cubicle while being micro-managed is almost guaranteed to produce poor results and burnout. As far as teenage jobs, I worked in a movie theater, a CD store (remember CDs?) and in the mail room of an insurance company, which was about as exciting as it sounds, but the people there were actually really fun.

 

If you had the opportunity to live one year of your life over again, which year would you choose, and why?

Probably one of the years I spent living in Yorkshire. I’d take more time to see my surroundings and get out into the country. I did a fair amount of sight-seeing while I lived there, but there were so many things I wanted to see that I never got around to visiting. You always tell yourself there will be time to do it tomorrow, or next week, or next month, and then, the opportunity is gone. There’s a lesson for life in general there, I think.

 

We know what you like to write, but what do you like to do in your free time, and why?

I’ve loved traveling (especially to Britain and Europe), and hope that this will be more feasible again in the near future. I also really enjoy cooking and experimenting with recipes and ideas. I do almost all of the cooking at home, and it’s something I actually look forward to doing most days. I also enjoy good wines and pairing them with food. I’ve been known to enjoy a good single malt scotch, too. And of course, I love the many genre shows, movies, and history and travel documentaries available on the infinite number of streaming services we now have.

 

What are you working on now, and when can we expect it?

Various work-for-hire books, as always, and of course the fourth and final book in the Qwyrk series, which will be out in October. It’s the grand finale and brings the story to a dramatic, satisfying, ridiculous, and hopefully heartfelt conclusion!

Tim Rayborn has a new queer urban fantasy out (bi, lesbian), Qwyrk Tales book 3: Chantz.

Qwyrk can’t get a break. Spring is springing, but she’s stuck breaking up drunken faery fights as Beltane approaches. She really wants to take things to the next level with her possibly-probably-girlfriend Holly, but she keeps coming down with a chronic case of chickening out.

And now, her best human friend, Jilly Pleeth, has had a rather odd encounter. While attending a concert by her favorite band, the Mystic Wedding Weasels, Jilly was amazed by their enigmatic singer, Chantz. There’s something downright magical about her voice, something so magical that an evil force from outside this world wants her for nefarious reasons. But will Chantz succumb to its lure?

Chantz is the third in a series of four novels about the comic misadventures of a group of misfits at the edge of normal reality in modern northern England, a world of shadows, Nighttime Nasties, eldritch screaming horrors, appalling neo-Shakespearean sonnets, undead corvids, an abundance of verbal sparring, and… Qwyrk is not an elf, all right? They’re just silly!

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After a few minutes of meandering on campus, she found a rather expansive and tree-filled enclosure marked by a sign reading “Welcome to St. George’s Field.” Seeing as she could lose herself in its trees, this place would suffice. Wandering in, she found herself strolling through a historic cemetery, which appealed to her gothy aesthetic sensibilities. She sat herself down on a stone bench not far from some centuries-old headstones and tried to focus, to think, to something.

She closed her eyes, trying to recall the feeling of the power flowing through her.

“What are you?” she whispered.

For a time, she felt nothing. Sighing in frustration, she opened her eyes. The field was mercifully unpopulated today, so she decided to risk singing a little tune, an old Irish folk song. She couldn’t remember where she’d learned it. She couldn’t remember much of anything before the last couple of years, to be honest. But there it was, stuck in her head, so she called on it.

It was a simple melody with a short verse and a chorus. She didn’t even know all the words, but that didn’t matter. She just sang the bit she knew over and over. It was soothing, comforting, and connected her to something, as if stirring a memory. She closed her eyes again, allowing it to wash over her. For the first time in a while, she formed a genuine smile. Not a big smile, mind you, she did have her reputation to think of, after all.

As she neared the third repeat, something happened. She heard a voice in her head, one that contrasted with her own. It was more like a momentary flash of sound, in a language she didn’t recognize. It didn’t make her stop singing; in fact, she wanted to continue. After she sang another verse or two, and she heard it again, like a call across some great gap. But was it far away in the distance? Or maybe in time?

How does that even make any sense?

Intrigued, she kept singing, but lowered her voice so as not to attract any onlookers. It would be just like someone to come up in the middle of it and ruin the whole experience, with their chattiness and insipid curiosity.

As it turned out, she was indeed interrupted, but not by any passersby who should have been minding their own business. In her mind’s eye, she saw a face. The face of an old woman. She had long, disheveled grey-streaked hair, and her complexion was wan and weathered, with dark shadows under her eyes. There was almost something cool about her. The face was obscured, as if peering through a fog, and Moirin couldn’t gauge its intent. She wasn’t imagining it; her imagination was good, but not this good. The woman opened her mouth as if to say something, but no words emerged, and if she were the one speaking those foreign words, Moirin wouldn’t have understood her, anyway.

The old woman smiled, but it was an odd smile, and not really a happy one, more like sinister grin. She seemed to want something from Moirin. The smile grew bigger and stretched to unnatural proportions. Her eyes began to lighten, not just the pupils, but the whole of her eyes, greying at first and then fading into a milky white.

Moirin’s heart raced. She stopped singing and gasped. Whatever this thing was, she wanted nothing to do with it. She tried to open her eyes, but they were heavy, almost as if she’d been drugged. Her ears seemed to close up, and the world around her disappeared. She shook her head and tried to stand up, but just like her eyes, her legs no longer worked. She started to panic and opened her mouth again, not to sing but to scream, shout for help, something. But no sound escaped.

The face sneered at her, perhaps enjoying her helplessness. It became ever more twisted and grotesque and opened its mouth again, almost in mockery of Moirin’s inability to do so. A low-pitched wailing sounded from the old woman, a mournful call that seemed to portend something awful. It rose in pitch and volume to a full-on cry, a tuneless and wordless plaint that sounded like something out of an older time. It shook Moirin to the core, but the more she heard it, the more it seemed to invite her, to draw her in, even to tempt her. Whatever the ill intent of this creature invading her mind, and however frightening its call, Moirin felt oddly at home. She began to surrender to its lure, to its awful and seductive pull.

Tim Rayborn has written an astonishing number of books over the past several years. He lived in England for quite some time and has a PhD from the University of Leeds, which he likes to pretend means that he knows what he’s talking about. His generous output of written material covers topics such as music, the arts, history, the strange and bizarre, fantasy and sci-fi, and general knowledge.

He’s also an acclaimed musician. He plays dozens of unusual instruments that quite a few people of have never heard of and often can’t pronounce. He has appeared on over forty recordings, and his musical wanderings and tours have taken him across the US, all over Europe, to Canada and Australia, and to such romantic locations as Marrakech, Istanbul, Renaissance chateaux, medieval churches, and high school gymnasiums.

He currently lives in Washington state (where it rains a lot), surrounded by many books and instruments, as well as with a sometimes-demanding cat. He is rather enthusiastic about good wines, and cooking excellent food.

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