Aug 22

Aug 22 Richard Mosses

Author Richard Mosses

Biography

Richard grew up with the threat of mutually assured destruction, and public information films haunted by the robed Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water. His earliest reading included folk tales about plucky country folk fooling the Devil, alongside the heroes and creatures of Greek and Norse myth. In time he discovered the works of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and H.P. Lovecraft.

In his early teens Richard started storytelling, including scripting a zombie movie one summer in which the local kids all had parts. Much of his effort went into running roleplaying games, and eventually he started writing short stories too.

Going to university in Glasgow, he studied Laser Physics; a misguided attempt to enter the world of special effects. Richard joined a number of clubs and societies, running the Science Fiction and Roleplaying clubs, and eventually moving up to be President of Clubs and Societies, showing his natural gift for organising and planning. After his undergraduate degree completed, he chose to continue studying for a PhD, growing and characterising crystals; creating materials that had never previously existed. Continuing to write and roleplay, Richard joined the local branch of live action group The Camarilla in its early days, in time become the local storyteller. From there he helped grow the society throughout Scotland, and took on the role of Regional Storyteller.

After completing his PhD, he moved to Dublin, working for Guinness, the Ulster Bank and a software company where he wrote scripts for training environments teaching the user Word, Project and other Microsoft product. While in Ireland Richard started a new national Camarilla group, eventually passing this on and moving up to work on storytelling at an International level, working with countries across Europe, and the USA.

Returning to Scotland, Richard began working in a series of small technology SMEs, which led to redundancy every couple of years, but he went up through the ranks and became Managing Director of a medical device company, launching new products in the UK and abroad. Unfortunately, the economic crash also took the company with it. Leading to a return to the academic sector where Richard worked on behalf of all of Scotland’s Physics departments, encouraging business to take an interest in the varied research output.

During this time, Richard joined the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, having left The Camarilla and pursuing writing with a commercial aim, which matched the ethos of the GSFWC. With the support of the Circle he has completed a number of novels and had several short stories published in a range of magazines and anthologies.

Currently, Richard is working at the University of Glasgow, managing multi-million research projects and continues to write. He is married, with two cats.