About
Gordon Gravley has been making up stories all his life. As a child, they would take the shape of rudimentary comic books, and Super-8 movies. As he was drawn to stage-acting in high school his stories became one-act plays, and then feature-length screenplays - none of which ever saw the light of the big screen.
It wasn't until his thirties that he finally decided to take the plunge, and like a real writer he made his stories into, well...stories. And just like a real writer, his efforts garnished multiple rejection letters. Twenty years later, those efforts would culminate into his first self-published novel, Gospel for the Damned.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Gordon moved around - California; Colorado; Alaska; Northern Arizona - before eventually settling in Seattle, Washington. Having called the Northwest his home since 1998, he doesn't expect to be moving elsewhere anytime soon. There, he continues to make up stories, write novels, and lives with his wife, Jenna, and their son, Zane.
The Usurper King (The Plantagenet Legacy Book 3)
Description
<p><span style="color:rgb(15,17,17);font-family:'Amazon Ember', Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">First, he led his own uprising. Then he captured a forsaken king. Henry had no intention of taking the crown for himself; it was given to him by popular acclaim. Alas, it didn't take long to realize that that having the kingship was much less rewarding than striving for it. Only three months after his coronation, Henry IV had to face a rebellion led by Richard's disgruntled favorites. Repressive measures led to more discontent. His own supporters turned against him, demanding more than he could give. The haughty Percies precipitated the Battle of Shrewsbury which nearly cost him the throne—and his life.</span><br style="color:rgb(15,17,17);font-family:'Amazon Ember', Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;" /><span style="color:rgb(15,17,17);font-family:'Amazon Ember', Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">To make matters worse, even after Richard II's funeral, the deposed monarch was rumored to be in Scotland, planning his return. The king just wouldn't stay down and malcontents wanted him back.</span></p>
Story Behind The Book
I finished writing my first novel, Gospel for the Damned - about a journalist who spends three days within the quarantined city of San Francisco - a little over two years ago. I had developed it from a short story I wrote in 1994, almost thirty years before!
The short story, A Little Reality Never Killed Anyone, is about a group of teens in some kind of dystopian world who play dangerous truth-or-dare games to conquer their fear of living day-to-day. It's not very good. I'm not just saying this to be humble or self-deprecating, it's really not good. (One magazine that rejected my submission wrote - and I'm paraphrasing, only slightly - "We're not interested in your story. We only publish good writing.") But, it was one of the first and few short stories I ever wrote, and I will always cherish it as one of the many, necessary steps I took in becoming a novelist.
For the rest of the story, see my blog post "My First Book" at ggwritinglife.blogspot.com
