darkliquid (Andrew Montgomery-Hurrell)

Not much to say, I'm just an average computer geek with many eccentricities and strange medical mysteries. I love coding, electronics hacking, reading, writing and music. I just mill around in Poole and Bournemouth in Dorset, living out my life as a professional Ruby on Rails developer and web designer.

As a amateur writer I always seem to have one or more stories on the go at some time or another, my mind is always a melting pot of ideas and I tend to bounce from one thing to the next, annoyingly leaving me with little stamina to actually finish something! I've NaNoWriMo-ed for 3 or so years now and consistently failed each time. Go me!

Like my music, my taste in books tends to be fairly eclectic at times, but the core area lies firmly in science fiction.

My favourite books of all time (in no particular order) have to be:

• Brass Man by Neal Asher
• The Skinner by Neal Asher
• Cowl by Neal Asher
• The 'A Requiem for Homosapiens' series by David Zindell
• The Bridge by Janine Ellen Young
• The 'Dune' series by Frank Herbert and later Brian Herbert
• Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Turing Option by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky
• Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
• The Dirk Gently books by Douglas Adams
• The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett

Writing, I try my hand at whatever pleases me. I write the occasional horror and thriller, but I stay mostly in the realms of sci-fi and blend it with another genre for fun. I'm also attempting a couple of fantasy novels, one of which may end up on here since I seem to have lost steam with it.

I enjoy themes of what it is to be human, of morality and moral ambiguity. I like elaborate, story-arcing jokes that most people don't understand or will even notice. I have an odd sense of humour which often comes out in my writing. Unfortunately, I'm really not a people person and I'm a bit of a misanthrope at times, which often comes out in my writing too and tends to make it suffer for it. I hope as I become more engrossed with the community here that I'll learn to overcome that.

Stories

When it comes to stories I post on here, nothing is sacrosanct. I'm always happy, eager even, to see someone take something I've written somewhere. That's something I really like about Protagonize - the collaborative atmosphere.

There are some stories I have posted that have come to mean a lot to me (not to say that all my work doesn't mean a lot!) and I'd really like to see them develop and grow. Foremost of these are:

• Axis Moon - a fantasy story in a strange land following a yound girl on a personal quest to save the world
• My Father's Key - A man is left a letter and a mysterious key in his father's will. What does it all mean?
• Her Ladyship's Wife - A fictional memoir of sorts of a butler for a royal lady outing herself as a lesbian. Meant for exploring some political and social themes.
• My Baby Beetle - a story about a family dealing with everyday life when the baby is a living miniature classic VW Beetle