Peter Mortimer – författare

In 2021 Peter Mortimer brought out the book, Planet Corona – the First One Hundred Columns, collecting together the opening century of articles for The Journal, Newcastle. These began with and were informed throughout by the Corona Virus and its effect on our world. Dismal though those times were, and bleak though the daily news tended to be, the author found an unlikely humour and satire in the nation’s plight and our ability, or non-ability, to deal with it. The writing was personal and non-technical; it was one author’s individual response to extraordinary times.

Now comes a second collection, Beyond Planet Corona. The virus has receded (temporarily say many experts) but its impact lingers on and Peter Mortimer continues to observe from the sidelines. The book is a satirical look at how we as a nation, and sometimes as a planet, are coping with the aftermath of the corona devastation.

Peter Mortimer’s new full-length play has its world premiere at The Exchange Theatre North Shields for the full week beginning Monday April 23rd 2018. Rainbird is based on the life of the North Shields artist Victor Noble Rainbird who before the First World War was seen as one of the most talented artists in the region and was the only northerner accepted for the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1911, where he won various awards and prizes.Rainbird’s war experiences badly marked him and he ended up alcoholic, selling his paintings for liquor in North Shields hostelries. He died in poverty and obscurity at the age of 48 and for 80 years was buried in a pauper’s grave in Preston Cemetery North Shields.Recent interest in his work raised more than £6,000 for a proper headstone and The Old Low Light, North Shields has staged two recent exhibitions of Rainbird’s work. This book contains the full tex, rehearsal photos, cast list and a foreword by the author. The play its produced by the North Tyneside based Cloud Nine Theatre Company and directed by Neil Armstrong.

The small Northeast costal village of Cullercoats has always attracted artists and became known as Little Bohemia. In recent years it has also become home to a growing number of writers (as well as the home of IRON Press) and we asked six authors living in the village to create poetry or fiction inspired by their special domicile. The result is a wide mix of styes and subject matters, factual, mythological or fantastical. tragic, or darkly humorous, an amalgam of styles as a sextet of creative imaginations get to work.

This unique book offers four new short stories in two separate forms. Firstly as written by Peter Mortimer and secondly as graphically interpreted by the artist Pete Shaw, thus enabling the reader a direct comparison on how one creative artist responds to the work of another. The supernatural, the surreal, and the dystopian combine in this quartet of distinctive stories

A collection of seventeen ghost tales, whittled down from a total of almost 200 submitted from writers both established and unknown, bring a selection both paying homage to the tradition of the ghost story and placing it firmly in the context of our own times.

Thus, ghosts appear on football terraces, from cancer wards, on the floor of TV shows, on the late night service bus, over a Sunday dinner and at a supermarket checkout. These terrifying tales pay homage to the traditions of the genre, but tackle peculiarly 21st Century topics.