Mortimus Clay is the most prolific author writing posthumously in the world today. Dead since 1885, Professor Clay’s first book was published in 2009.
While alive Mortimus Clay was a dismal failure as an author. Scorned by editors, laughed at by fellow writers, Mortimus spent his life trying to emulate his hero Charles Dickens, but instead ended up living like a character in a Dickens novel.
During the day he served as Professor of Arts and Letters at Her Majesty’s Knitting College for Wayward Girls, but his evenings were spent writing late into the night in his unheated Manchester flat.
After fifty years of teaching Beowulf and The Faerie Queene to unappreciative knitters, Professor Clay died in 1885, half-starved and grasping the shards of a poorly crafted poem entitled, “Ode to a Grecian Fern.”
It was the best thing to ever happen to the old boy at his writing took and immediate turn for the better.
Mortimus Clay has managed to create his own website (and it doesn’t even stink, which is amazing since it was created by a dead guy) and you can check it out HERE.
The Purloined Boy, by Mortimus Clay, is a work of fantasy literature for young adults. In parts dark and grotesque, in others luminous and inspiring; it could be described as R. L. Stine meets Plato. (No, not Pluto the dog; Plato the philosopher.) It begins with the question, Where do all those children on the milk cartons go? It provides the answer through the eyes of one of those children, a boy named Trevor Upjohn, the purloined boy. Trevor was stolen by a bogeyman as a toddler. But he can’t remember that. And he’s not the only one. Thousands of children, perhaps hundreds of thousands, just like him were stolen by bogeys and taken to Superbia, the worst place in the universe. There, the children are cared for by the Guardians, if the term care can be used so loosely. For what purpose you ask? A dark and sinister purpose: the most horrid one any could possibly imagine! Fortunately Trevor is not left to fend for himself. A conspiracy comes to his aid, a conspiracy made up of an old man with one good eye, a red-haired girl named Maggie, and a mysterious but very powerful mouse named Zephyr.
Mortimus Clay’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:
Tuesday, September 1st: Karin’s Book Nook
Tuesday, September 8th: The Brain Lair
Thursday, September 10th: Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
Wednesday, September 16th: Bart’s Bookshelf
Monday, September 21st: Books and Movies
Thursday, September 24th: Brimful Curiosities
Monday, September 28th: Book Nut
Tuesday, September 29th: Frenetic Reader
Wednesday, September 30th: Stephanie’s Confessions of a Book-a-holic