D.E. McCluskey

I began writing in 2011, making up funny, rhyming stories, with a horror-based theme, mostly for my daughter who was only four years of age at the time, and loved a good scare (albeit a funny one). These stories became popular with my friends and family, so I started to write them down in a book.

That’s when the idea for a comic sprung into mind, and Interesting Tymes was created. An anthology of short horror stories, all written in rhyme, and child friendly.

I had enough tales written to make another, and Interesting Tymes X 2 continued where the first one left off, with Edward D’Ammage introducing another six-horror tales.

From then I began to expand on my tales, taking the original themes, and making them into longer narratives. I wrote, commissioned, and produced my first, short, horror comic, Wooden Heart, the year after.

I had the bug then, and The Few was written, followed by a more ambitious project. My first full length graphic novel. Doppelganger is over 100 pages long and is a dark psychological tale of a man descending into madness.

As I wrote almost exclusively in horror, I wanted to try something different, so I wrote and produced another full graphic novel, Olf. This is a children’s tale about Santa Claus and his reindeer. I wrote this trying to balance my brain between the darkness of Doppelganger and my desire to write something that my daughter could read.

After a number of other short and long horror stories, I wanted to do something else that would rekindle my love for Christmas, of old comics like The Beano. I partnered up with a fantastic artist, Joe Matthews, and we produced one of my proudest pieces of work. We undertook the mammoth job of re-writing Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, completely in rhyme. Joe did the artwork in his fantastic Beano-esque style. This has been my best seller to date.

After producing a number of other comics, I found writing them a long, laborious and expensive hobby. I have no talent for drawing, but I am able to see the panels in my head and I’m good at articulating them to the illustrators.

I decided to change the script I had written for a graphic novel called Thirteen into a novel. I changed the name of it to The Twelve and it is currently selling well on Amazon, and from me via my Facebook page.

Stirred on by the success of The Twelve, I teamed up with a local musical historian who I used to work with back in the days of playing in bands around Liverpool. We developed a historical tale about the old Liverpool music scene. Tony did the research into the swing music scene after the war, and my second novel came to life. In The mood… For Murder was released, to excellent reviews. There are big things in the pipeline for this book, least of all, a sequel.

In my spare time, I work as a computer engineer, I am a full-time father to my daughter Grace (who released her own children’s book in 2019, entitled The Hangry Hamster), I also do stand-up comedy around the north-west of England.