Jul 22

Jul 22 L.E. Fitzpatrick

Author L.E. Fitzpatrick

Biography

L E Fitzpatrick has always been fascinated with dark fiction. At an early age, living on the outskirts of Hull, East Yorkshire, she filled her bookshelves with Stephen King and James Herbert, swallowing up a myriad of horror and gore while other girls played with dolls and dress-up. Her imagination quickly found its way onto paper, exploring an underworld of sorcery and darkness in hundreds of notebooks stashed under her bed.

When she moved to west Wales her obsession with otherworldly ideas became inspired by the mysterious, magical country she would eventually make her adult home and she quickly expanded her library to include shelves of Celtic mythology as well as the occult. Handwritten notebooks evolved into computer files and before her teenage years were up she had written several full novels with many ideas for more.

But it wasn’t until she left school that L E Fitzpatrick began to think of her work as something she’d like to share with more than a select few. Now with an audience in mind, she evolved her writing style, drawing inspiration not only from authors like Neil Gaiman and Scott Lynch, but musicians and artists too. Wanting to make her writing affect her readers as much as her favourite books affected her, her focus moved away from fantastical worlds of mayhem and destruction and settled on a modern world that scared her more than any three-headed fire breathing demon could.

As a reluctant grown-up, the world around her tainted the fantasy world she had spent her childhood in, and her settings became grounded in themes that were relatable but troubling. Social injustice, political corruption, poverty became driving issues that shaped her plots and characters.

After the birth of her first child, L E Fitzpatrick wrote and self-published her first public work, Dark Waters. This gave her the confidence to work on a series she’d always wanted to write, incorporating all the dark fascination of her youth with her adult fears. The Reacher series, a twisted, unsettling prediction of Britain’s future was born.

In 2016, she celebrated signing the first book of the series, The Running Game, with Creativia and has since released book 2, Border Lines, as well as putting out three short stories accompanying the series. Drawing from the constant political, economic and environmental instability, the series explores humanity in all its ugliness with an explosive, dynamic plot. And as the world continues to turn uneasily, she expects more excitement to come.

L E Fitzpatrick continues to write the Reacher series and hopes to release the third book in the series this year. She also spends her remaining time editing for other authors and publishing companies and has worked on a number of books in her career, including other Creativia authors.