About Me

Hi, I’m Malcolm Cowen, I’m a freelance software designer living in Manchester, UK.
I write in my spare time, books and scripts, mainly science fiction or fantasy, together with some poetry and translations from Welsh.

My paid job for most of the last 5 decades was writing software for everything from operating systems (GEOrge 3) to games (Colossal Cave for Dragon 32).  I currently do database backends for website designers. The designers make the webpage look pretty, I make it work, which clearly qualifies me as a 5-anorak nerd.

I started writing about 19 years ago and had some 30 or so stories published, mainly by a now defunct trade magazine, Freelance Informer.

Since then I’ve written short stores, published on Kindle and in various anthologies.  I’ve also written several poems and songs for Christian worship and done some translations from Welsh.

I also do story-telling, both for Levenshulme Players and elsewhere. My last one was at Sutton Hoo with Ealdfaeder and National Trust.

More recently I’ve had 2 novels, “Lady of Foxdale” and “Daughter of the King”, published on Kindle, several short stories published both on paper and electronically and a couple of scifi whodunit audio scripts which have been broadcast on local radio, see www.levenshulmeplayers.co.uk.

My preference is for hard sf with detailed alternative cultures. It matters to me to get the scientific details right, or at least to get them credible. Then the story should follow, and if it’s a good story, it should grow naturally out of the world and the culture it’s set in.

If it’s fantasy, then similar rules should apply. Build a consistent world, with a believable culture, and then tell a story of real people living in that world. That’s far more fun than space opera or yet another Dracula ripoff.

It’s almost more fun than should be legal.