Jacques Preiss

I was born in Cape Town, South Africa on a gray August morning while the City celebrated its Golden Jubilee. Volkswagen Beatles & Karmann Ghias were the height of driving fashion and Anti-Apartheid Activism was something that was only whispered about in the hallowed halls of the UCT.

I was an only-child until the age of seven, when my little sister arrived in the world, so my early childhood was calmer and quieter than most, I think. This afforded me a lot of time to read and reflect and though I don’t recall much of my early years, from the age of seven until I finished high school, I lived on a street which was devoid of boys, apart from two mean and much older bullies. Thus all my playmates were girls…were I the lucky one or what? I remember each of them with fondness.

Later my interests expanded to computers, guitars and cars, but my first love always remained; books. That was my father’s influence. He read to me every night. I remember sitting on his lap in his comfortable old La-Z-Boy, listening to bedtime stories read in my mother tongue from books such as the Afrikaanse Kinder Ensiklopedie. I remember spending my holidays reading picture novels from the local Book Exchange and him supplying me with a seemingly endless supply of 5 cent pieces, every time I needed a fresh batch and I remember him taking me to the library as a small boy, every Tuesday night complete in PJs and slippers.

During my teens I lived on Stephen King, Wilbur Smith, Piers Anthony, Alan Dean Foster and anything in the local library’s Science Fiction section I could lay my hands on.

Like any good reader, I also write and I have been doing it on and off probably since I could hold a pencil. I’ve had my fair share of interruptions, some good some not so good, but I’ve always picked up the pen again afterward. I have never viewed myself as a good writer; I view my creations more as expressions of my experiences, both real and unreal, an outflow of my subconscious psychosis and an ordering of my maladroit mind. Some of what have transpired thus, you can find in the pages of this website.

I see myself as a Downunder Darkling who plies my craft in the dead of night when most other earthlings sleep. I believe I am an Old Soul who committed some heinous crime in a previous life and is now doomed to dwell the New World in perpetual frustration, longing for the comfort of my old homes, my old lives, wherever and whatever they may have been, down the dim tracks of time. Five continents I’ve called home at some point or another, I am the eternal traveler and I know my journey will not end at a grave in this life.

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