About Lyndon Stacey
“…Looking ahead, he saw for the first time the outlines of two figures against the darkening sky, carrying something bulky. The kayak. He almost had them.
It was only after he had travelled another twenty feet or so that the significance of just two figures impacted on his brain, and by then it was too late.
The third man stepped out from the shadow of the hedge swinging a branch with force at shoulder height and hit Daniel before he had a chance to brake or swerve.”
from Nothing But Lies
Unveiling the Creative Mind
Exploring the Depths of Imagination
Lyndon was born in Brighton, Sussex, UK, the youngest of three children. Her father was at that time an analytical chemist and her mother had given up working with horses to become a full-time housewife and mother.
Animals were a part of her life right from the start. There were always dogs, cats and various small furries around the house when she was growing up and her first experience of horses was a half hour’s ride at the age of 3 or 4, on holiday in the New Forest.
A couple of years later the family made the move to live in the New Forest, and when she was 7 the family was loaned a little bay roan mare called Popsi, a wonderful schoolmistress of a pony, who taught her and her brothers to ride.
A few months were enough for her to realise that a life of getting up at dawn, finishing work at dusk and riding under someone else’s direction was not what she wanted. She’s a bit of a free spirit, and has never enjoyed working for others.
A variety of jobs followed, mostly part-time, often temporary: market gardening, flower picking, strawberry harvesting (back-breaking but not without its rewards!), shop work and a self-employed animal portrait artist.
Many animals have come and, inevitably, gone, including Mischa – a wonderful black GSD X whose passing pretty much broke her heart, and Charlie, a purebred American Quarter Horse who was probably the most intelligent, sensitive and challenging horse she has ever met. He was with her for 20 years and they developed a relationship based on love, respect and a degree of telepathy which was a source of wonder to Lyndon but obviously as natural as breathing to him.
And what of writing? Well, that’s always been part of her life – running in an unbroken thread through her child and adulthood, fuelled by an overactive imagination and a passion for reading and heroes.
The stories she wrote were strongly linked to what fired her imagination at any given time, hence my first full-length novel – written in her early teens – was a western, its hero impossibly – some may say nauseatingly – heroic! After that she moved on (thankfully) to an epic sword and sorcery tale, set in 12th century England, around the time of the Crusades.
Lyndon was probably 18 or 19 when her mother gave her a Dick Francis novel for Christmas and whjat a life-changing gift that turned out to be! Somewhere in the course of reading through his backlist over the next couple of years, she realised that here was a way of combining her love of horses with the kind of action thriller that she enjoyed, and so – after a long and sometimes painful labour – Cut Throat was born; written longhand, in the first instance, at night and in quiet moments at work, when the boss wasn’t around.
Sadly, Cut Throat was accepted by an agent just a few days after her father was admitted to hospital and he was too unwell to understand when she tried to share the wonderful news with him. He died a couple of weeks later and never knew that she was eventually published. He never knew that after years of drifting from job to job, barely making enough to pay her keep, she had finally done something worthwhile. She likes to think he would have been very proud.
The New Forest was an idyllic place to grow up. Their house was a neglected Edwardian manor with two acres of garden, which her parents worked slavishly to turn into a lovely home and ran as a B&B for several years.
Throughout her childhood Lyndon’s family had various horses and ponies, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, donkeys, peacocks and bantams. At age 12 she was given the very first dog of her own, a Labrador X mongrel puppy called Moss, who became her constant companion and confidante through her teenage years, setting the seal on a lifelong passion for dogs.
Lyndon left school joyfully at the age of 16 with a burning desire to work with horses as her mother had done. Too young to take the Instructor’s certificate, she nevertheless took a place as a working pupil in a New Forest training and livery yard; an experience and setting that she drew on heavily for her first published novel, Cut Throat, many years later.
After living on the edge of the New Forest for most of her early life, Lyndon moved first to the Blackmore Vale in Dorset and then to a cottage on Salisbury Plain, near Stonehenge. Currently she has two German shepherds, Shia aged 12 and Valka aged 20 months, plus Twiglet, a small brindle person of mixed parentage, with sticky-up ears and a curly tail who is an impressive 17 years young.
When she’s not writing or painting she loves music and films, walking or working her dogs, Lyndon likes Ceroc dancing and researching her family history. She holds a motorcycle licence and a black belt in Karate, which comes in handy when writing fight scenes in my books.
©Copyright 2024 by Lyndon Stacey. All rights reserved.
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details in the privacy policy and accept the service to view the translations.