About the Author

A graduate of Oxford University, Philip Brian Hall has been a diplomat, teacher and web designer. At various times he has rowed at Henley, sung bass and made a record with a choir, sung baritone solo in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, stood for parliament, ridden as an amateur steeplechase jockey and spoken for the UK in the United Nations, not necessarily in that order.  He also claims to have sailed around the Adriatic twice on windjammers; the truth is he was just a passenger, though he did manage to climb to the crow’s nest on each occasion.

After retiring from teaching, Philip decided he was unwilling to be a former anything and would rather work at something new instead.  Since he'd always wanted to be a writer, he decided to take his chance. His breakthrough came when AE The Canadian Science Fiction Review published his flash fiction piece Elementary Mechanics in 2013.The following year the same magazine published his first short story, a Hitchcock-in-space pastiche called Spatchcock.

2015 began even better. Philip's story The Old Man on the Green was published in T Gene Davis' Speculative Blog, The Man on the Church Street Omnibus found a place in the inaugural edition of The Sockdolager and The Waiting Room appeared in the Flame Tree Publishing anthology Chilling Ghost Short Stories.  In the last named piece Philip was delighted to find his story sandwiched between pieces by Nikolai Gogol and Washington Irving.

In 2016 Philip's Story Time's Winged Chariot appeared in the Third Flatiron anthology It's Come To Our Attention. This was followed by the publication in Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores of his Dark Ages Scottish myth The Wild Hunt of Sliabh Mannan. Gallery of curiosities podcast his work for the first time - the story being  Last of the Spice Schooners. Then in the second half of the year, he featured in AE for the third time with The Trial of M Lazare, while SciPhi Journal published The Ultimate Temporal Paradox, Stupefying Stories showcased All of the People All of the Time and Recompose included A Braw Song For Burns Night.

2017 began with the publication of The Hard Stuff in Unbound 2. After a relatively fallow period, The Ship of Theseus appeared in the August edition of Phantaxis. There followed three consecutive pro-paying anthologies, beginning with Iron Hail in All Hail Our Robot Conquerors, then The Black Horse in Strange Beasties and finally Heavy Weather in Flame Tree's Pirates & Ghosts anthology. Rounding off the year, Conspiracy Of Silence in More Alternative Truths was accompanied into print by Philip's first professional poem A Sonnet on Truth and at the end of December, The Waiting Room was reprinted in Third and Starlight.

In 2018 Philip was published in Gumshoe Review for the first time; the story was called The Eleventh Commandment. In August his story Devine Justice appeared in Alternative Theologies, the second time Philip's work has featured in the B-Cubed Alternative series of anthologies.

2019 began with Philip's third appearance in a Flame Tree anthology, this time Cosy Crime, and continued with a third B-Cubed tale, I Apparatchik  in Endgame and a second outing for the Victorian detective MacAndrew and Smithers in Flame Tree's Detective Mysteries.

 In 2020 Philip got his first story into Galaxy's Edge.  This was Cadmus P I, a tale about a hard-boiled Ancient Greek detective. The third MacAndrew and Smithers tale followed in Curiosities and the fourth in Flame Tree's Bodies in the Library.  2021 saw a further B-Cubed publication in Alternative War.

A regular entrant in the Writers of the Future competition, Philip was a Semi-Finalist, received two Silver  Honorable Mentions and eleven Honorable Mentions. That will be his final haul since he's no longer eligible for the competition.

Philip has also published a novel, The Prophets of Baal, which is available both in paperback and as an e-book. Set in rural England, on Jersey and at sea, the novel relates the story of a naive Private Eye who finds himself up to his neck in witchcraft and beautiful women, but for some reason doesn't really enjoy it!  A sequel was completed at the end of 2017 and subsequently published as The Family Demon.

Philip lives on a small farm in Sliabh Mannan, Scotland with his wife and assorted animals. This is a beautiful spot to indulge his enthusiasm for nature and photography. Several of the posts on his blog are illustrated with his own photographs.