Chip Tolson

Encouraged to write at school Chip Tolson went on to study architecture before national service in the army and thirty-five years in the shipowning industry working in Liverpool, Plymouth, London, Singapore, throughout the Far East and in Edinburgh. In the 1990s Chip and his wife, Clare, moved to a hill smallholding on Exmoor running Jacob sheep, chickens and planting trees. The change in work style was the opportunity to write fiction after years of reports and minutes.

Chip was long listed in the Fish 250 word story competition 2005, was runner-up in the Octagon Theatre Stage Play Prize 2006 and has twice won the Yeovil International Short story Competition in 2013 and 2015.

Chip published THE BATTLE OF SLOTTERHAM HALL, AD 1929 on Amazon Kindle in February 2015. In this fable of war the Pheasants resolve to challenge the Shoot.

Chip’s first novel REQUIEM FOR PRIVATE HUGHES was published in 2015. It is the tale of Archie Middlebrook, a young national serviceman, overwhelmed by the trauma of a terrorist ambush in the Malayan Emergency in which his friend, Geraint Hughes, was killed . Only years later, in his sixties, after he saves the life of a young woman in a crashed car can he confront the spectres from his past and succeed in his early promise as a painter to honour Geraint Hughes with a London exhibition of paintings.

In 2016 Chip published a collection of short stories, PEBBLES, in paperback available on Amazon

2017 saw the publication of Chip's second novel, BIRCHLAND HALL, available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book. In 1995, two cousins, strangers since an unfriendly childhood, inherit a rundown Victorian Mansion in Dewsfield, West Yorkshire, built by their great-great grandfather in the 1860s.

They face an unsought responsibility to bring life back to Birchland Hall. Over months, the cousins' lives entangle, searching for family connection.

www.chiptolson.com

Credentials

Chip Tolson in 60 seconds

When did you start writing?

1990 in the UK West Country.

What do you love about short stories?

Short stories are the essence of good writing and must take the reader on an adventure.at a single sitting.

Do you write in other forms?

Novels, plays and short screenplays.

What distracts you from writing?

Everyday happenings.

Outside of writing, what are your other passions?

The Natural World.

What is your favourite book?

The Shipping News.

Who are your favourite writers?

Annie Proux, Thomas Hardy and Alice Munroe.

Where is your dream location?

The Hebrides.

What one item would you put into Room 101?

Many politicians.

Do you have any advice for new writers?

Keep reading... and write every day.