Chas Griffin about his work

Hello…

My name's Chas Griffin and occasionally I write a book about something I think worth writing about. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I put my heart and soul into it, and as much humour as it think the theme can handle.. 

My first book told the tale of how my young family and I left the traditional leafy suburb, to try our hand at setting up and running an organic smallholding from scratch, up near Llandysul. It was titled 'Scenes from a Smallholding' and was received a lot of very nice comments from readers, all the way from 'surprisingly informative' and 'I laughed till I cried', to 'a sort of Bill Bryson down on the farm'. 

It eventually became a Waterstone's Paperback of the Year.

The sequel ('More Scenes..(!)') told the story of the ups and downs of the following dozen years on the farm.

Both books were leavened with humour. Chasing a piglet across a field full of heifers, in the rain; the unbelievably sticky mess you get into when bottling honey; starting a tractor in horizontal sleet….

I was then asked to write a book on organic gardening ('Scenes for a Vegetable Plot') suitable for keen but terrified beginners. Plenty of scope for humour there, especially as Ken Guy drew some more of his terrific cartoons, as he'd done for the other books.

My publisher wanted a string of follow-ups, but there was no more to write about, and I couldn't just make stuff up.

But meanwhile I'd become interested in why science didn't 'believe' in ghosts, when I knew at least four people who had seen one.

It took twenty-five years of research but I eventually cracked it, and wrote 'DarwinPlus!' to explain it to the world. It's very simple, but it takes longer than the space I have here to explain it satisfactorily. Just common sense and schoolboy logic, but the background work is vital if the logic is to be clear. In a nutshell: 'science has adopted a dogma (which it should never do) and this dogma has led to catastrophic results in just about every field of human endeavour, from philosophy to ecology and many forms of human misery'. Try reading 'DarwinPlus!'… if you can fault my logic I will be astonished. Nobody has managed so far.

I've written a couple of humorous novels. The first, 'Your Dog as Philosopher' is a Kindle ebook. Googling the title will take you there. Is it worth the five star rating it has received? Only you can decide.

My second novel, 'Mr Grooby and Me' is in print, available on my table or from my website (www.thirdleafbooks.co.uk), and is also on Kindle.

Both novels deal with themes that arose from my research for 'DarwinPlus!'

Will I write any more? Dunno. I'm not interested in the money, just in helping people to explore their sense of reality. Are you one of them? If so…. I look forward to meeting you, either in person, or via one of my books.

Meanwhile… have a wonderful day! It's a pretty remarkable universe!