May J. Panayi

Interview for local Newsletter June 2012

 

We recently interviewed local author, May Panayi. 

When did you start writing? 

I have always been writing ever since I was a little kid. In fact I had my first poem published in the local Gazette at age five, back in 1967. It was a pretty simple little ditty called In a Rage, about a kid who had a tantrum because they didn't get what they wanted for tea, but apparently the paper thought it was good. 

Then throughout the school years, I wrote poems and short stories, and entered competitions for writing whenever I came across them. I even hand published a little magazine for the kids in my street for a few years. When I stopped doing that, a few of the parents asked me why I had stopped as they had enjoyed reading it. I suppose my readership was different from the target audience I had intended. 

In the eighties I published a few issues of a fanzine called Mad and Bloody. It interviewed local bands, and covered various political and underground issues. Underground zines were a really big movement back then, it was a lot of fun to do. 

After that I just kept plugging away at it for quite a lot of years. I entered poetry and short stories into competitions, winning or placing now and again. I was published in a few anthologies. I also wrote articles and fillers and sent around to various magazines. The best and highest paid one was a travel article I wrote on the Gambia, that was published with about eight of my photographs to illustrate it. 

So you are a photographer too? 

Yes, I got into photography a bit later than writing though. I got my first instant camera by saving up Bazooka Joe bubblegum cartoons, I think I needed about two hundred and fifty of the things. Later on I worked in a publishing house as a collator in the school summer holidays for six weeks and saved enough money to buy myself a proper Zenith camera. I never got involved in the developing side of things, although I did have an uncle who did all that. I entered some winter scenes into a competition run by the local library, and one of those won a prize. It has always been a rather casual hobby, but since the digital camera came along accompanied by all the home editing software, I have got into it a bit more. In fact one of my books is a collection of photographs of Woodvale cemetery throughout the different seasons of the year. People tell me it is a beautiful collection. 

Two of your books are about very different religious paths. How did that come about? 

I was a Pagan and a Witch from 1982 to 2008, which in itself is quite a long story that I won't go into now but have covered in some of my books. But I ran a teaching Coven here in Brighton for nearly ten years, some of the local kids might remember the frights they used to get at our house on Halloween when different Coven members would dress up and give them a shock when they flung open our front door. One year a member even brought a smoke machine along. 

Anyway, my first book was a summary of that experience; looking at what it meant to be a Witch, what sort of things we did, and some spells, pathworkings and so forth. It was called A 21st Century Coven. 

At the end of 2008, I had a health problem and a Road to Damascus type experience and it changed my life and I converted to Christianity. I'm now Greek Orthodox. Anyway another of my passions is cookery, and I combined the two to produce a cookery book called Christian Celebrations Cookery, which examines the different Christian festivals of the year and provides a selection of my favourite recipes to accompany them. 

You have written some other books too? 

Yes, I wrote a collection of poetry over the years, which is a journey in itself, called Pain, Poems, Prayer and Passion. I also wrote a collection of essays on all kinds of subjects from philosophy to comedy called Muses and Meanderings. Most recently I have produced a collection of short stories called Oddscapes and Quirkitudes. That's it for the collections now, I think. 

So what is coming next? 

I'm currently working on a novel. It's a psychological drama. I don't want to discuss the plot and give the game away, but there are definitely life experiences in it that everyone will be able to relate to, in some measure. It's called Four to Dawn and I hope to have it completed and ready for publication before September this year. 

 

Postscript: Four To Dawn was completed, and followed by Sun Sea and Secrets, a novel set in Greece- the first in the series 'Sun,' and it is selling very well on Kindle. I currently have six more books in the pipeline, but the one I am actually working on is a horror novel about a haunted block of flats. Others include two sequels to Sun, Sea and Secrets- to complete the 'Sun' series. Another is a novel about a rather strange girl. Another is a sci-fi comedy, and there is also a novel about climate disaster. Watch this page!