Ian Duncan Smith

Bewildering Stories biography

to Bewildering Stories bibliography

My background is in poetry. I’ve won many prizes for my poetry, and I’ve been published in many small press magazines. Read my collection, ‘What You Will See’ on www.catallus.freeserve.co.uk.

I hold an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmith’s, University of London.

I was born and brought up in Stockport, England. I trained as a builder, then I did Civil Engineering at Sheffield. I worked in Scotland before becoming a structural engineer in the northwest of England. Then I retrained in technical writing. I moved a lot. Cheltenham, London, Maidenhead, and finally Reading, in the Thames Valley where I now live. I worked for the big corporations: Oracle, ICL, Sema, Nortel, and Cellnet. I even worked in Slough, home of Werner Hogg and David Brent.

I have the same name as a British politician, Iain Duncan Smith, the ex-leader of the UK Conservative Party. He made a disastrous rousing speech just before being deposed: “The quiet man just turned up the volume...” and so on. It was a comic classic, and a great source of humour. That led me into political humour.

I liked the idea of the ‘quiet man’ writing a satirical novel. There’s a lack of political satire. I thought a novel with a politician anti-hero in the lead role would be cool. The novel took eight weeks to write with the man who thinks he’s Tony Blair as the main character. The plot, the story about a man plunged into a wilderness, was driving it. My first novel, Tony Blair: The Wilderness Years can be found at: BookSurge.com. Also check the web site Landsmith.com.

I present a weekly music, and poetry podcast called the Frictionfiction Show at Libsyn.com and MySpace.com.

My poetry collection “What You Will See” is available at Gatto Publishing.

I blog my novel Tony Blair: The Wilderness Years at Blogster.com.

I have had stories published in Eclectica, Surprising Stories, Prose Toad, Verbsap, and Transmission.

Finally, I’m a fan of Donna Gagnon, who edited a story of mine at Bewrite.