The back story of my alter ego, Mortimus Clay.

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 pooly crafted poem entitled, "Ode to a Grecian Fern."

It was the best thing to ever happen to the old boy as his writing took and immediate turn for the better.