Archonate.com

Spiral Labyrinth Majestrum Black Brillion Fools Errant Fool Me Twice A Little Learning Hespira
News Reviews Bio Bibliography

The name I answer to is Matt Hughes. I write fantasy and suspense fiction. To keep the two genres separate, I now use my full name, Matthew Hughes, for fantasy, and the shorter form for the crime stuff. I am not Dr. Matthew Hughes of the University of Salford who writes serious works of military history. Unfortunately, Amazon and other internet booksellers do not seem to be able to separate authors who have the same name.

I was born sixty years ago in Liverpool, England, but my family moved to Canada when I was five. I've made my living as a writer all of my adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and -- from 1979 until a few years back-- as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. I am a former director of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and I used to belong to Mensa Canada, but these days I'm conserving my energies to write fiction.

I'm a university drop-out from a working poor background. Before getting into newspapers, I worked in a factory that made school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was night janitor in a GM dealership, and did a short stint as an orderly in a private mental hospital. As a teenager, I served a year as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadians (something like VISTA in the US). I've been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and I have three grown sons.

I have of late taken up a secondary occupation -- that of an unpaid housesitter -- so that I can afford to keep on writing fiction yet still eat every day. These days, I'm in Washington State but any snail-mail address of mine must be considered temporary; my permanent e-mail address is himself(-at-)archonate.com. I'm always interested to hear from people who've read my work.