Roy Gill

Biography

Roy Gill is a thirty-three year old recovering academic, with a PhD from Stirling University, and masters degrees from Glasgow and Strathclyde.  He has taught English and Media at Strathclyde and Stirling, and worked front-of-house in a theatre.  After moving from coast to coast in Scotland, he came back to the city of his birth in 1999.  He now lives in Edinburgh with his partner, and an increasing number of book shelves.  He'd like to get a puppy too, but he's not sure where he'd put it.

He has always written, even when he'd really rather be drinking a cup of tea and listening to a record.  It's an itch you've got to scratch, you know?  So far he's been published in Critical Quarterly, Creeping Flesh, Media, Culture and Society and Fractured West.  After completing Glasgow University's Creative Writing MLitt, he was pleased to be shortlisted for the Sceptre Prize.  He's taking this New Writers' Award as further confirmation that someone somewhere thinks he's finally doing the right thing with his life. 

He is currently working on his first novel, The Resurrection Spell; a fantasy for Young Adults set in a dark and twisted version of Edinburgh.  

Excerpt from The Resurrection Spell

It was over coffee and biscuits that Grandma Ives calmly offered to return Cameron's father from the dead.

"It won't be easy," she said. "A resurrection spell is old magic, and quite unwieldy. I'd need a good amount of supplies, some of which are very hard to come by. You would need to be both strong and brave, and I'd have to speak to Mrs Ferguson, which is never pleasant. But I can do it. If you want me to."

The old lady looked at Cameron expectantly. She made her proposal just as casually as she now pushed a plate of biscuits toward him. 

Cameron's heart quickened. It was a strange thing to say, scary even, and the old lady had done nothing in the past few days to suggest she was mad, or in any way insincere. Feeling awkward and uncertain, he looked away, choosing to examine Grandma Ives' living room rather than reply.

The winter sun was poking over Blackford Hill, and light was flooding in the balcony window. It picked out the gold spines of the books on the low-slung shelves, and showed up dust swirls on the bulgy grey screen of the old television. In the corner alcove, a jazz LP spun on the record player. A warm fuzzy voice sung of love gone bad, and a man who done me wrong. 

"Well, young man?" said Grandma Ives. "What do you say?"

He took a biscuit, put it in his mouth, and crunched it.

"Very nice," he said, although it wasn't really. The biscuit tasted of dry paper, and the sort of marzipan he always picked off Christmas cakes. It was definitely real, though. Perhaps the offer could be too?

Comment

"I'm really, truly thrilled to get a New Writers' Award.  It will be of huge help to me as I work to finish my first novel."