Third Person
Mark Caldwell was born in the early 1970s. Some years later he studied Building Service and Environmental Engineering and then a Postgraduate Certificate of Software Technology at Liverpool University in the early 1990s. Mark’s first full time job saw him divide his time between travelling round Merseyside with the Internet Express, a project taking the Internet into libraries when no one knew what the World Wide Web was, and Virtual Reality projects. He moved onto supporting the delivery of Liverpool University website. After that he worked on the development of content management systems that underpined a variety of web-based projects alongside other varied duties. These days he works with CMS like WordPress and Umbraco (with occassional
He has written articles for Valkyrie Magazine and Ragnarok, also illustrating some of these articles. He used to help to organise the SFSFW’s annual show – Bifrost. He is looking to be published in a magazine without a name drawn from Norse legend. He has no objections to other mythological references.
Mark has had short stories appear in rather obscure US magazine. He admits his art really won’t be being hung in galleries anytime soon. He is still looking for an appealing anecdote for his biography. He is also really uncomfortable writing about himself in the Third Person like this.
First Person
Writing about myself always seems odd. The first time I made a website just for myself I stuck my CV up on it and hoped that would do for an About Me page. Unfortunately it also seemed to attract job offers I wasn’t looking for. These came mainly from strange companies in Texas, who sent long e-mails telling me about their company’s guard dog. This time I decided not to use my CV. I’d write something. I claim to be able to write. So how hard could writing about me be?
So I’m a forty something computer systems developer / programmer by day. I never really meant to spend my days wrangling code. Somehow it just happened. I set out to be an architect and wound up trained as an engineer instead. Finding myself at a loose end after my degree, during what they politely term a downturn in the building industry, I took a postgraduate computing course and found myself caught up in the Internet boom. That’s when I started getting strange e-mails from Texas.
By night and on weekends I find myself creating things. Sometimes it’s a picture. Sometimes it’s a story. Sometimes it’s a game. I’ve a hard drive, filling cabinets and backups littered with my unfinished works. Sometimes I actually complete something.
I’ve been published in Valkyrie (a magazine once produced by Partizan Press), Ragnarok (the journal of the SFSFW) and in some long forgotten ‘zines. Some of the articles can be found scattered around this site. A few years ago I decided it was time to try my hand at fiction. I’m currently working on finishing a novella, a novel and some short stories.
Most of my pictures are made using 3D computer graphics, although I do still dabble in more traditional methods of drawing and painting. My digital SLR photography. Some of my pictures have appeared in Valkyrie and Ragnarok alongside my articles. I’ve been exploring the possibilities of scripts that enhance the software I use and some of the more promising results of that work can be downloaded from this site.