Ray Else

Programmer and fiction writer, logic and worldly rewards versus imagination and spiritual blessings, this is my core dilemma. To which there is no resolution I have decided. The programming feeds me and my family, while travel and remarkable friends and family feed my fiction. This blog’s intent is to capture travel moments and moments with friends and family to assist my fiction. For those wondering of my writing achievements, I have written a few novels (Bathing with the Dead, Her Heart in Ruins, All that we touch) as well as short stories. My novella, My Father’s Lies, made the short list in one of the Paris Shakespeare & Company Contests. My short story, Surviving on Mexican Shade, was broadcast by the BBC World Service and published by the Sorbonne in the literary review Paris Transcontinental many years ago. More recently, in December 2015, Galley Beggar Press, located in the UK, e-published my short story First Kiss. As to my travels, I have traveled for work and play to many countries, and lived in three – America, Mexico and France. Countries I have visited include England, Scotland, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, India, Nepal, Pakistan, China, Russia, Finland, Thailand, Canada, Mexico, Colombia and Panama. I speak English, French and Spanish. I can drive on either side of the road (and sometimes both – but I try to avoid this). Why did I start planning these big trips in 2013, to Russia, to Thailand? Perhaps something to do with the large wiry floaters (mostly) in my right eye, launched when the ball of my eye slightly detached from the retina wall (blame my 60 years of life, 40 years of which I have spent looking at computer screens); these floaters twirl, whenever I look around, dancing across and marring whatever I see, like ghostly Russian ballerinas, or the dark play of Thai shadow puppets. I decided I’d best go see the world while I still can.