#82 Tony James Slater
Greetings! My name is Tony James Slater.
I’m a writer of amusing travel memoirs and gritty (but also amusing) science fiction. Along with my rainbow-haired wife, Roo (who is my muse and inspiration), I’ve travelled all over the world, doing stupid things and then writing about them.
I first became an author to convey stories of my ridiculous antics to the masses – I could hardly believe what had happened to me whilst volunteering in an exotic wildlife refuge in Ecuador, and I felt that the world had to know! For over a year I tried to convince traditional publishers to take on ‘That Bear Ate My Pants!’. When they told me it would never sell, regardless of its content, because “Who wants to read the memoirs of a nobody?” – I decided to self-publish. As luck would have it, some people did want to read about my adventures… and apparently they told their friends! This book has now sold well over 35,000 copies, and when readers demanded to know what happened next I obliged them – ending up with five books following my adventures across the world, and a sixth which went back to the beginning of my story, covering my childhood and my (failed!) attempt to find fame as an actor.
The books are best read in the following order:
1. That Bear Ate My Pants!
2. Don’t need The Whole Dog
3. Kamikaze Kangaroos!
4. Can I Kiss Her Yet?
5. Shave My Spider!
6. Don’t You Know Who I Am?
They are also best read in private; side-effects of reading include loud snorting, the occasional guffaw, loss of bladder control and coffee coming out of the nose. (Which is particularly weird if you’re not drinking coffee at the time.)
I also moonlight (appropriately enough) as a science fiction author. This happened as a way of extending my catalogue (and thus my income), as after several years I had written about all my adventures to date and run out of material. My wife agreed to let me try my hand at fiction on the condition that I included a “smoking hot chick with rainbow hair, who kicks ass with swords!” Thus was born Kyra, my most popular and enduring character. She was part of an ensemble cast in my first sci-fi series, a fast-paced and gritty series called the Earth Warden Saga, which followed the adventures of a young man abducted from modern-day Earth and conscripted into the force that protects our planet from external threats. When I finished this series, it was only natural to give Kyra more of a central role, so I went back and wrote a series about her mysterious origins. All these books still contain elements of comedy because, well, I just can’t help myself.
The Earth Warden Chronicles need to be read in order:
1. Earth Warden
2. Warden’s Folly
3. Warden’s Fury
4. Warden’s Vengeance
5. Warden’s Fate
The origin series, ‘Kyra’s War’, should be read AFTER the Earth Warden series, in this order:
1. Spark of Resistance
2. Rebellion Burning
3. Revolution in Flames
Thanks for your interest! You can find me scattered all over the interwebs (still alive, but quite possibly drunk) by typing Tony James Slater into Google. I should know – I do it often enough…
Best wishes,
Tony James Slater
Find Tony James Slater’s stories here.