Author Spotlight - William J Gilbert
William Gilbert was brought up in a post-war newtown development, south of London, and went to sea in the merchant marine, initially on oil tankers on the Houston - Rotterdam run and then worldwide. After rehabilitating his curriculum vitae with a few trips as a third officer on ancient P and O steamships being used as cruise ships in the early nineties, and faced with the decline in opportunities for British officers, he switched to the booming, Mediterranean-based, superyacht industry.
He had been writing since infants school, with his first serious submissions being sent out from the age of sixteen. Having sold some articles to the maritime press, he then took advantage of Amazon’s self-publishing platform to publish the first autobiography of a merchant seaman in forty years. Seven thousand sales and some substantial publicity in the British Seamen’s Union paper later, he was embarking on a long series of non-fiction and fiction about this world.
Then, at the suggestion of his sister, he temporarily switched to crime fiction. The Garnet and Petunia series followed, featuring a cynical ex-merchant seaman and ex Metropolitan policeman now operating a detective agency dealing with Brits in Bangkok with his Thai ladyboy sidekick. This series had to be self-published. Literary publishers rejected it on the basis that it “exploited transsexuals” and crime publishers rejected it on the basis that it featured a transexual.
Exhausted due to running a superyacht all through the pandemic when the normally mind-bending Italian maritime paperwork was multiplied three-fold, William decided he needed to take a long break and was kindly granted temporary residence by the Mexican authorities and moved to Mérida.
Since then, he has moved his fictional detective over with him, leaving the Thai ladyboy assistant behind in fictional Bangkok, and given Garnet a new, handsome, upright, Mexican ex-policeman business partner, Sr. Trujillo (named after the Mexican consular official who gave William his immigrant visa and thus enjoys his undying gratitude). The pair of them have so far provided the material for three books: Garnet and Trujillo’s The Pink Flamingo, Atlantis, and The Mini with the Union Jack Roof. William tries his best to make sure that some at least of the action takes place in Mérida in each of his Garnet and Trujillo books.
William’s books Garnet and Trujillo The Pink Flamingo and Garnet and Trujillo Atlantis are for sale on the MEL Local Author shelves.
