Nick’s Biog up to 2012

Nick’s Biog

   Nick Armbrister (Nicholas Arthur Armbrister) is an English writer, born in Oldham, Lancashire, England on 26/7/71. He is best known for his poetry and short stories published since 1996 in the “small press,” his own self published collection of books, which include the poetry volumes “Fade into Focus, Focus into Fade” (2006), “Skeward Images” (2007) and “Her Name is Hope – Life Force” (2008). A collection of short stories “A Nation in Flames” (2007) brings his early work together. A collection of his aviation based poetry was released in 2009 on lulu, “Aeroplane Poems.” A new book brought Nick’s poems together in a large collection of fifteen years of poetry, 1996-2011.

   Nick moved into fiction writing, completing two novels in his “Juniper’s Daughter” series, these included “Juniper’s Daughter” and the follow up “Juniper’s Daughter – Frontier Town.” These were originally released under his new pen name of Anneke van Ginn as “The Final War” and “Here Comes the Devil Snails! Quick Run Like Hell! The Laser Beam Poodles are Coming!” Both are now discontinued.

   Nick began working with Written Exprssions in 2008 and released several online ebooks including a free read “English Goth” and romantic titles like “Sexy Independence 1” and erotica titles like “Ian Gets a Treat” amongst other ebook titles. He parted company with WE over editing issues in summer 2011. His WE era short stories were released in two volumes of short stories, an erotic one and a normal one.

Early Life 

   Born in a working class town Oldham, north of Manchester, Nick left school in 1987 and went into college and into several varied jobs ranging from motor vehicle repair, bakery work to fork lift truck driving. His early aspirations to join the Royal Air Force came to nothing. As a child Nick wanted to join the RAF due to his love of aviation and planes but he was put off by the strict discipline. For most of his life Nick lived in and around Oldham where he worked and started writing, his writing stemming from his love of music and reading. Growing up in the latter years of the Cold War shaped Nick and he gained a strong interest in aviation and military history, along with his love of music of that era, formed his journey into writing. For a few brief years Nick made plastic model aeroplane kits and drew aircraft drawings on his path to creativity that would eventually lead to his writing. He is an only child. 

Writing Career 

   He tried to join a band but couldn’t sing or play any instrument. He followed music like gothic bands of the 1980s like The Mission, All About Eve, The Cult, The Sisters of Mercy and Ghost Dance. He is also a fan of 80s pop like The Bangles and Berlin and some metal bands like Metallica and Guns n Roses. He got into gothic metal from Europe and Scandinavia in 2001 when a penpal sent him a tape of The Gathering and Lacuna Coil. Nick has tattoos of these two bands, some other band names and other tattoos. All of this inspires his writing and feature in some of his poems. He has seen many gigs live and this is also inspirational.

   Nick started writing poetry in April 1996 while listening to Goth and metal music at an old friend’s flat while getting drunk. Each Wednesday Nick went and drank beer, listened to music and created his very early work. He did up to eight short poems or a few longer ones and took a chance in sending them off to get them published. If he failed and none were accepted, he would have quit writing. But one was accepted in an early issue of an Alanis Morrissette fanzine called The Pill, Nick’s poem was called “Ode to Alanis”.

   Other poems were published in the “small press” (poetry scene) in a selection of magazines like pagan magazine Ace of Rods (his long poem in verse “The Dark Tower”). Nick had poetry included in a variety of poem anthology books featuring various poets. His first was called “Through my Eyes” in a Poetry Today book called “Rivers and Bridges” in 1997, more followed. Poetry of different topics appeared in collections by the Poetry Guild and in half a dozen books by the Select Publications of Tilbury, Essex. Nick appeared in these in the late 90s with up to two poems in a single book (e.g. “The Road” and “Mustiness”). From 2001 Nick was published in DJ Tyrer’s series of magazines (Atlantean Publishing), appearing in The Supplement, Awen, Bard, Garbag and Monomyth. Several dozen of his very varied poems have been published up to 2012. Also several short stories appeared in Monomyth, a short story magazine, edited by DJ Tyrer. Two examples of Nick’s stories are themed around the Cold War like “Red Empire” and “Final Flight”. 

   Nick’s only piece to be published in Oldham was called “Kahlia Akasha.” This was in a short story collection book about Oldham titled “Big Sky, New Light” and was published in 2004. Nick was in the local newspaper, The Advertiser. His story was about an aeroplane. 

   Nick moved from Oldham in December 2005 to the Essex/London area to further his writing career and to compile his writing anthologies, his first four volumes. This he did until his return to Oldham in late 2008 where Nick continuously writes. His first three self published books are with iuniverse of America. The first two are poetry collections “Fade into Focus, Focus into Fade” and “Skeward Images.” This was early poetry. A short story collection followed titled “A Nation in Flames”; this comprised his stories on war, planes, Goth, horror and more. Nick compiled a further third volume of poetry under the title of “Her Name is Hope – Lifeforce”. This contains the rest of his poetry from 1996-2008 that never made his first two poem books and is published by lulu.  

   Nick was invited to do spoken word performances and work with a guitarist/band on his poems performing in front of a live audience in The Abbey pub and also The Gardeners pub in Oldham in 2009/2010. Nick opened for a Manchester indie rock band Blouse at the Night and Day Cafe on 12/02/2010 before the band played; he read his “Spitfire Bride” poem. Other guest slots followed and he attends local writing groups and festivals in the Manchester area.

   Nick is working on a collection of poetry for late 2012 release. His other Juniper’s Daughter themed books were collections of poetry and short stories called “Juniper’s Daughter: War is Obsolete - Futility and Hope” (2010) and “Juniper’s Daughter: Fragmented Whole/Black Lense” (2012).