Tom Gillespie Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Tom Gillepsie is a literary fiction author who has penned both long-form novels and short fiction works. The author grew up in the rural United Kingdom in a small town outside Glasgow. He went to Glasgow University where he got a master’s in English before he had a career as a singer/songwriter. For more than a decade, Gillespie had a musical career playing, touring, and recording across Europe and the United Kingdom with his band. As a very creative person, it was only a matter of time before he got into writing. Several of his stories have been featured in online collections and anthologies. Some of these anthologies include East of the Web and the Crooked CatBooks published Fear: An Anthology of Horror and Terror. Tom also writes for fridayflash.org on the regular. His writing has often been described as ambiguous, terse, hyper-realistic, and minimalist as they convey meaning using an economical and concise style. He currently makes his home in Bath alongside his wife, one child, and their hyper neurotic cat. He still works a day job as an English lecturer at the University.

As for how he became a writer, Tom Gillepsie has said that it all goes back to his childhood. As a child, he hated all the happy endings in the books he read and used to make alternative endings that were sometimes a shade or two darker than what was in the book. When his parents were reading to him at bedtime, he used to interrupt them with one of his bizarre endings, and they would laugh and praise his endings. At around ten years old, Tom won a local story competition, and it was from that time that he started thinking that maybe he was very good as a writer. However, the truth was that he did not have notable skills in anything else, and hence creativity and writing were the only means of escape from the grinder of life. Gillepsie also got some of his inspiration from his grandfather, who loved to read and had a very creative mind. Sometimes, he used to take the young Tom to museums and trains stations where he fed his mind with stories of daring, magic and adventure. He believes it was from his grandfather that he got his idiosyncratic perspectives about the world.

As for his literary genre, Tom Gillepsie has always asserted that his first love is gothic psychological thriller and literary fiction, even though he is no respecter of conventions and genres. He finds creative inspiration from many different writers, but his three favorites include Robert Louis Stevenson, Raymond Carver, and Alasdair Gray. He was 18 when he stumbled upon the latter, and his genius way of thinking changed the way he looked at everything forever. He would then find Carver, who opened his mind to the unconstrained joy of minimalist, terse, and sparse use of language. When it came to Robert Louis Stevenson, he was the master at teaching how to conjure immortal beings and worlds beyond and above place and time. He had been introduced to Stevenson as an eight-year-old and still loves to read Treasure Island whenever he can find the time. But despite all that, he also has a soft spot for pulp crime fiction and loves authors who can pump out amazing crime capers time and again.

In 2012, Tom Gillepsie published Painting by Numbers, a brilliant noir work that tells the story of Jacob Boyce. The latter is a university professor who cannot get enough of a nondescript painting in an art gallery in Glasgow. He believes he can see clues in the painting, and this has him spending hours in front of the painting. His obsession puts a strain on his marriage, and it is not long before he loses tenure at the university. Unexpectedly, he leaves to go search for the mysterious secrets of the painting. From that point on, readers are treated to a rollercoaster ride unlike anything you would ever find in a similar genre book.

In The Strange Book of Jacob Boyce, Tom Gillepsie has come up with what has been described as psychological sorcery art noir. While it is very similar to Painting by Numbers, this work introduces the aspect of his wife going missing. It all kicks off when Jacob Boyce, an earth scientist from Glasgow University, gets what he thinks is a brilliant idea. He believes that if he could determine the mathematical structure of a famous painting, he could find an algorithm that could come in handy in predicting earthquakes. He gets obsessed with the idea and soon sees tiny movements in the painting that make it seem like the characters in the painting are real people held captive by sorcery. With his marriage collapsing, his obsession goes to even greater heights, putting the union at even greater risk. He starts to believe in a surrealistic existence in which his wife is in danger. Searching for his wife, he goes to Scotland and then Spain, where he meets some very bizarre characters. As all this is happening, he is moving toward a very dark fate as he takes on the identity of an unnamed artist. It all culminates in a stunning ending that will shock just about anyone, no matter how good you think you are at spotting clues.

Next, Tom Gillepsie published the memoir Silent Tears in which he reflects on his childhood living in an orphanage from the age of five to ten. During a time when social welfare was not so ubiquitous, his mother, who was unable to feed them, took them to the orphanage where she was certain they would stay together. After his early years, he had many remarkable experiences. In 1952, he moved to Nashville and went to high school before moving on to Dallas, Texas, where he went to the University of Texas and found a job with Texas Instruments. He would then serve in Vietnam over two tours before having a 26-year career in law enforcement and then worked as a Justice Court Judge over twelve years. The work chronicles his formative years even as it offers insights into the many happenings that shaped his life, as it provides an overview of his journey from an orphanage to the many achievements he had.