About

Hi! My name is Tony Stewart,I live in Brisbane, Australia, have just recently retired from the workforce and now I hope to spend a lot more time on my books … updating those that need it and writing what needs to be written. And then, with a little bit of luck, selling them on-line or at the markets.
I must admit to being an undisciplined writer, though I prefer to view it as a man of many thoughts, because I have this tendency to suddenly get an idea for a completely different story midway through writing a book and the second book usually wins my time … and the original story usually never gets finished because the story has gone from my head and rarely reappears.
But outside of that little difficulty, I love writing because my style of writing allows the entire story to develop inside my mind, as I write, and this means that I enjoy the surprise of the journey in much the same way that the reader will. I often think that some outside force guides me, or perhaps it dictates to me, in order for me to recreate its stories.
Actually this happened several times when I was writing poems. I began writing poems after I discovered that writing was a good therapy for me following my marriage breakdown, and poems were the medium I chose at the time. I had written around twenty or thirty poems when, one day, while watching the first few moments of The Nun’s Story (Audrey Hepburn) on the telly I suddenly got the idea for a poem from the opening credits when there is a scene of a writing desk with a pen on it in a room I assume to be either a home office or a private writing room in the family home. The original poem was meant to be either ‘An Unwritten Letter’ or ‘An Unfinished Letter. Whatever, it ended up hitting a raw nerve with me and left me in tears as I completed writing it. The name of the poem is now,’Some Long Forgotten Dream’ and I really have no idea whatsoever where it came from … and I have written several poems that have come to me in similar fashion. And when I moved on to books similar things happen. It doesn’t worry me. It happens for a reason and I just ride the wave. Actually, I will include this poem in my next blog and I hope you enjoy it.

One last thing before I go is to tell you that I love trivia, and I am going to share some with you. I call call my site Short Fat Stubby Finger Publications and one would naturally tend to think it is to do with my book writing. Well I do have short stubby fingers, but that is not why I called the site that name and nor has my writing anything to do with it. It goes right back to the late 1960s when I was playing bass in a band called The Trend. Leon (guitar), John (drums) and Graham (vocals) were the other members. They were all good blokes and we all got along fine, which was good because we shared a flat at Dutton Park and if you can live together without fighting and sharing the workload equally it makes for a good lifestyle. But I am diverting, as usual. I was a fair bass player; not what I would consider to be a great one, but equal to the task. Though I must admit I would never have been able to survive in the band if Leon had not been so generous with his time and patience. I was not able to read music, never mind recreating a song, note for note, after hearing it only a couple of times, but Leon could. And Leon not only reproduced the song perfectly … but he taught me the riffs for the bass. And for that I am forever in his debt.
I loved playing bass, I loved being in the band and often regret my inability to hook up with a band after I joined the R.A.A.F.,but my life took another path … children, two beautiful little girls, which I guess is a reasonably good exchange for a life in a band. However, I still had one burning musical desire and that was the ability to sing and play a standard guitar. Well, I knew I had no hope of being the new singer with the band or the top 40 star of the week, but I still carry hope about being able to play the guitar one day. The only thing that seems to stop me is the closeness of the strings on a guitar. The Bass guitar has wider spaces between each string and it is easy to move between them as you play, but the tight constraints of the strings and frets on a standard guitar only tend to constantly remind me that I have Short Fat Stubby Fingers …