After a spell in the SAS, Paul Samael worked undercover for the CIA on a mission to infiltrate a vicious gang of Colombian drug smugglers and drive a stake through the heart of their leader (who was a vampire), whilst simultaneously thwarting the plans of sinister men in the Pentagon to do sinister things with mind-controlling drugs (his recall of events from this point on is a little hazy). Anyway, on his release from hospital, he suddenly realised that what he had really wanted to do all his life was write literary fiction - so here he is on Smashwords.

Re-reading the above, it occurs to me that it may have been a mistake to write my web-bio shortly after receiving a bad review of the opening chapters of my novel (on a peer review site) from a self-described “action junkie”, who lamented the lack of car chases, explosions, scenes of torture etc (I should point out that I had categorised my work as 'literary fiction', which is not a genre widely recognised for its edge-of-the-seat action sequences).

The truth, as usual, is rather more mundane - I work in an office, am married with two children and have published two not terribly successful non-fiction books under my real name (Paul Samael is a pen name). At the moment, I am making steady (if glacial) progress towards producing an ebook edition of my novel - and in the meantime have been publishing some shorter pieces here on Smashwords.

I've also been trying to make time to review free fiction by other self-published authors on Smashwords (mainly under the "Literary" tag), my aim being to demonstrate that “free” and “self-published” don’t always deserve the stigma that’s sometimes attached to them.

Website: http://www.paulsamael.com
Facebook: Facebook profile
Blog: http://www.paulsamael.com/blog.php

bankers    banks    contemporary    financial crisis    flash fiction    grievance    injustice    kidnap    satire    short fiction    short story    terrorism   

judy b.
Latest book: Stories for Airports. Published on February 19, 2009.
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Matthew Asprey
Latest book: To Murder My Love Is A Crime!: Stories of Desperate Men. Published on December 19, 2011. (4.00 from 1 review)
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• Sonny's Guerrillas (a novella) on Feb. 08, 2012
  
  This novella about making an indie movie reminded me of a cross between “Hearts of Darkness” (a documentary about one or two, er, minor difficulties encountered by Francis Ford Coppola during the making of the film “Apocalypse Now”) and “The Beach” by Alex Garland (“Lord of the Flies” for the backpacker generation) - but with the action shifted from south-east Asia to Greece during the first throes of the financial crisis. It’s well written and sharply observed, with a very distinctive narrative voice. Although short (18,000 words), it’s just the length it needs to be (I am fed up with 400 page tomes that could have said what needed to be said in a quarter of that length – long live the novella!). For a longer review, see: http://www.paulsamael.com/blog/sonny-s-guerrillas-by-matthew-asprey
  
• Red Hills of Africa (a novella) on Feb. 08, 2012
  
  “Red Hills of Africa” is somewhat in the vein of Malcolm Bradbury/David Lodge satires on academic life - but with a lot more international travel involved. There was one particular passage about going through customs and immigration in Morocco which was so funny it nearly made me choke on my beer. I have committed the lines to memory in case I ever go there (although I don’t suppose I will have the nerve to actually say them to a Moroccan passport official….). It's well written and I enjoyed it, although overall, I preferred Matthew Asprey’s other novella, “Sonny’s Guerrillas” – for a longer review of that, see: http://www.paulsamael.com/blog/sonny-s-guerrillas-by-matthew-asprey
  
• To Murder My Love Is A Crime!: Stories of Desperate Men on Feb. 08, 2012
  
  I enjoyed these short stories – especially the first one, which is all about the wacky world of Hitchcock film memorabilia and has a great first person narrator. Matthew Asprey’s other ebooks – “Sonny’s Guerrillas” and “Red Hills of Africa” – are also well worth reading. For a longer of review of the former, see: http://www.paulsamael.com/blog/sonny-s-guerrillas-by-matthew-asprey