Antony N Britt – Author

Antony N Britt – A Brief History

Antony is Autistic, diagnosed in later life. This explained a lot, including fifty years of discrimination and confusion. Now he has the label, “The world makes more sense.”

As a child, he spent many hours writing and drawing comics (which his dad then threw away), keeping a fake diary (to take attention away from the hidden real one) and getting bad marks at school for written work which was not as requested because he could never do as he was told. Also struggling at school because of information overload which has now been explained by the diagnosis.

His love of writing was put on hold for fifteen years during a marriage which he now believes to have been a bad dream. The plus side to this partnership, though, was the addition of a further four Britts in the shape of his children. However, even though he adored all of them, parenting took its toll on the writing. There was one short foray back into the world of literature in the shape of an appalling first four chapters of a ghost story called 16 Harrington Street. This is probably still in existence on a floppy disc along with his old Amstrad CPC464, somewhere up the loft with all the other crap he keeps.

In 2004 he took up writing once more after a life-changing event; a complete depression breakdown. He wrote endless poems during a Prozac influenced 2005, much of which he thought appeared to be happening to somebody else.

In early 2006 Antony set up a blogging account on Myspace, posting views on life, more inane poetry and the occasional short story. The Empty Souls blog soon became popular within the Myspace community and increased tenfold with his weekly column, The Sunday Roast. The Roast ran every week for two years and then sporadically after 2010 when Myspace committed suicide by disregarding blogs and concentrating on music and trashy entertainment. People left in hordes, Antony N Britt (under the guise of Empty Souls) among them. The last Sunday Roast appeared 18 September 2011 but reappeared here in 2012, running a couple more years until Antony, well … became bored with it.

In 2011, he quit work to become the full-time carer for his heavily autistic son, combining the role with spending more time writing. The caring took up most of his life, but he found time to win competitions in Writing Magazine (twice, even though he doesn’t really do competitions) followed by publication of multiple short stories and poems, plus articles in various magazines.

In 2015, a first novel, Dead Girl Stalking (Shortlisted for Writing Magazine Book of the Year) was released followed by a collection of shorts (Ghost Stories: Tales from the Dead of Night) in 2017. A second novel, Finding Jessica, was released in 2020.

These days, Antony has deleted many things which make him unhappy: Football, religion, Christmas, gardening and housework among them. You see, life’s flying too fast to waste on things he doesn’t like. And as well as writing he enjoys amateur theatre, appearing in many shows where he can forget mental health issues and be somebody else. As well as several sketches for the stage, he has also written and directed two pantomimes of which Sleeping Beauty was performed in 2018 and Cinderella 2021, the latter earning him an award from the National Operatic and Dramatic Association (NODA).

Antony is also known for writing to newspapers or websites and getting his views published there. In the main, making a nuisance of himself with subversive acts of fighting a worthwhile cause, particularly surrounding inclusion and disability rights concerning autism. He still doesn’t do as he’s told but lives by the philosophy of rather being happy than right.

Antony has plans for further scripts (Oh, yes he does!), plus a series of novels where he hopes to delve darker than before. More than ever, he is comfortable with his autism.

“I always knew I was strange.

But now I know why I’m strange.

And that’s cool.”

February 2023