At the moment it’s just me, Claire Jordan, but other authors may be acquired later, and any regulars will be added to this page. As to who I am, in purely practical terms, I’m a woman in her sixties with a degree in Biological Science from Edinburgh University, who managed to work units of astronomy, psychology, Elementary Gaelic and Scottish folk tradition into that degree; who lives in a rented maisonette in a village in the middle of a moor in the middle of central Scotland; and has been at various times a secretary on a major newspaper, a programmer and Information Analyst with the NHS, a shop-owner, a Tarot-reader, a carer, a professional designer of wargame figures and the Publicity Officer of a human rights charity. I currently do odd bits of freelance admin. and copy-editing (especially buffing up the English of non-native spreakers), Tarot-reading and candle-making, whilst coping with the vagaries of Long COVID.
I am the daughter of two strikingly original and characterful soldiers, Kathleen Jordan and Rory Langford Rae.
I am a pagan who considered converting to Judiasm, only to find out years later that I was half Jewish, and that my Catholic father had been born Jewish and much of his family had died in Auschwitz.
I am a pagan who performs the tasks my gods set me cheerfully and willingly – and those tasks frequently involve helping abuse survivors.
I am a psychic with a degree in hard science or, if you prefer, a scientist with psychic abilities. There’s a lot of it about – the most accurate clairvoyant I know has a PhD in cell-surface chemistry. I am ruthlessly, aggressively logical, which includes believing in the things I have done and witnessed – many of which are deeply bizarre-o.
I am a kind, motherly person who enjoys the rare opportunity to be as aggressive as I know I can be.
I am either lucky or unlucky in love, depending on how you look at it. All the men I’ve loved have been wonderful but they all died (liver disease; post-operative blood-clot; cancer).
Despite living in Scotland, by birth I’m both London Irish and a Maid of Kent. Through the adoption of my father I am a Rae of Keel House in County Kerry and the granddaughter of the Kazini Elisa Maria Dorgi Khangsarpa of Sikkim (who started out as Ethel Maud Shirran, a shorthand-typist in Edinburgh in the 1920s); the great-granddaughter of George Shirran who was RQMS Black Watch in WWI; the five-greats granddaughter of the folk poet John Shirran of Sandbrigs and the four-greats granddaughter of his son Jamie, who wrote the Bothy Ballad called The Buchan Turnpike.
I am a word child, and English is my bitch. Other languages, not so much.
I never knew my father – he had to go out to India on a job when I was a few weeks old, and died in a car crash there – but I’ve seen letters he wrote to the press and they are so like my writing style that it’s creepy. English was his bitch too. That aside, I am what my mother, my very peculiar secondary school (Heriot’s Wood/Bentley High in Stanmore) and the books of Nicholas Stuart Gray with their gentle, dreamy boys and tough, bold girls have made me.
Oh and I’m also a rodent-enthusiast; a life-long, loyal Ricardian who also has an embarrassingly soft spot for Henry Tudor; a long-term SF fan; one of the most dedicated canon nit-pickers in the Harry Potter fandom; the winner of two quite prestigious awards for poetry; and the go-to person on Quora for explaining evolution to Creationists.