Stuart Thorogood

Stuart Thorogood (born 17th March 1978 in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire) is an author whose first book "Outcast" was published on March 25th 1999 by the now-defunct Gay Men's Press when he was just 19. It was very well received around the globe, and named Book of the Month in the magazine Gay Times. It was also used to advertise the cult London bookshop Gay's The Word who called it "realistic and ultimately positive". Gay Times also cited it as being "simply and starkly written, this is a moving modern day morality tale". Thorogood then followed this up with the sequel "Outside In" which, although had favourable sales, was panned by critics. Thorogood later admits that this was due to his over-inflated ego and "the folly of youth" as due to the exceptional sales of the first novel his focus had become split and "I thought I could do anything so just rushed to get anything down on paper, believing my name was more important than the actual work, so people would buy anything I wrote. I believed I was a literary genius. Wrong!"

After the media mauling of the second book, Thorogood "retired" from writing for a while, only picking up a pen when he was commissioned for a short story, "T@ngled", which featured in the Lambda nominated anthology "Bend Sinister: The Gay Times Book of Short Stories". Buoyed on by the success of this, he once again started to write a novel to be titled "Over and Out". This was to be the third part of the "Outcast" trilogy, but due to constraints with his then-publishers Gay Men's Press, which were in financial meltdown, this was never released and remains so to this day. Another novel was started, called "Trash", a satire of the media, but it was abandoned. No more writing followed until Thorogood was asked to contribute to the anthology "Serendipity: The Gay Times Book of New Stories". A semi-autobiographical piece was penned named "Stamp Out Your Cigarettes and Pull Down your Pants", and again it was nominated at the Lambda's. However, after this, no more writing ensued due to personal problems and drug/alcohol addiction troubles which resulted in hospitilasion several times.

As of 2008, Thorogood has signed with a new agency, Brandon and Associates Ltd, who are currently working on getting his latest novel "Drink Me: Chronicles of an Addictive Personality" published. Stuart Thorogood currently lives in Hendon, North West London.