About the author

Welcome to the website of Ariel Argent, my pen name. I’ve loved writing ever since a child when I would disappear into my own little world by inventing characters and situations. I stapled pages of my stories together to make miniature books, also drawing and colouring in a cover picture on the title page. At school break times my friends would gather round in the playground to listen to the latest instalment.

At school —which happened to be at Charles Dickens’ last home near Rochester, Kent — I won a Brooke Bond writing competition. Before that, at primary school, the classes’ weekly story writing time often culminated in mine being picked for inclusion in a special book that hung on a string from the wall. To me this seemed somewhat unfair. When someone asked the class teacher why this was, she said I had imagination. I couldn’t help but wonder why no-one else possessed any which seemed to me to also be a trifle unfair.

Hoping not to make the same kind of educational mistakes myself, I trained as a class teacher as well as a musician. Meanwhile writing remained a continuous thread in the background. Truth was, despite enjoying stringing words together, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I filled a cabinet with pages of unfinished, dormant novels until I eventually threw them out when relocating.

It seemed that there was quite a bit more to all this novel writing thing, akin to how music works. I soon realised why my previous attempts had ground to a halt through a lack of story structure and planning. I studied the nuts and bolts of this which I found fascinating and discovered that such discipline actually gave me more freedom, not that I plan in great detail, preferring to just go with the flow.

During Covid I had quite a bit of time on my hands and there I was, suddenly appreciating trees, plants, birds and animals in ways I had never done before. Everything had taken on a new 3D perspective. Not least a fox who came to the garden every evening at the same time. He became the inspiration for a fantasy story which is morphing slowly into a trilogy. The fox gave me a wake-up call to write something new as he also does in the story itself, acting as both a herald and a guide at key moments.

Venturing down a parallel path, I enjoy writing vignettes about walks and little trips I do with friends from time to time. As with the fox and his companions there are aspects to places that are often overlooked. Things that sightseers and day trippers might not be aware of or have time to notice, even the otherworldly. I’ve decided to share these sketches as blog posts. I hope you will join me on my adventures.