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GEORGE F. WORTS - AUTHOR OF GILLIAN HAZELTINE ATTORNEY-SLEUTH
Soon a picture of Mr. Worts, plus book and magazine covers, stills from his movies of the 1930s...and more.
GEORGE F. WORTS FAN PAGE

Creator of Gillian Hazeltine attorney-sleuth, Singapore Sammie, South Seas adventurer, and the Peter the Brazen-Susan O'Gilive Oriental mysteries.
A SHORT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GEORGE F. WORTS



THE decision to become a writer of fiction was made for me by fate.  In 1914. in Panama, where I spent a week when I was a wireless operator on a little steamer that creaked up and down the Central American coast, I met an author who painted the joys of free-lancing so vividly that I could not resist the call.  We were drunk.  I was twenty.  Since then, I have been trying to catch up with all of those joys he mentioned.
     Starting to write stories in I914 and, four years later selling my first. one, marks up, I suppose, a very poor batting average.  But in those years I was getting experience, seeing the world, and acquiring knowledge.  I "punched brass" as a wireless operator all over the Pacific.  I entered Columbia University in I9I5, and one year later left because I didn't believe in higher learning.  I still don't believe in it.  I became a newspaper reporter, later a magazine editor.
     Then came the war, which I won practically single-handed by writing high-pressure publicity to induce patriotic Americans to send books to Washington for camp libraries for soldiers and gobs.  Books came by the carload, by the ton: McGuffy's readers, old almanacs, spellers, arithmetics, out-dated novels and just trash.  The soldiers and sailors who read those books soon hated the war so bitterly that they promptly got busy and ended it.  That's how I won the war.
     After the war, I wanted another look at China, and was sent to the Far East by Collier's to write articles on China, the Philipines, India and Malaya.
     The first story I sold was written while I was editing a motion picture trade paper.  It was bought by the Argosy, and it was about a wolf named Murg.  Don't ask me why.  In the intervening years I have written millions of words.  Perhaps it is Murg who sits so patiently at my door!
     I started writing fiction under the pen name of Loring Brent, because it would have annoyed the owner of the motion picture magazine to learn that I was writing fiction out of hours.  He thought I fell asleep at my desk because I was working so hard for him! When my income from fiction exceeded my Salary, I quit the job.  Since then I have been free-lancing exclusively, except for a two-year period when I lived in a Florida swamp town and added to my writing the duties of postmaster game warden and deputy sheriff.  Out of that experience came a long series of stories about a Florida town I called Vingo.
     I have enjoyed most writing stories about certain established characters.  Apparently the most popular of these have been the Peter the Brazen, the Vingo and the Gillian Hazeltine stories.  I stopped writing about Peter the Brazen (a swashbuckling wireless operator on ships in the China run) about ten years ago.  He was, incidentally, the subject of the only novel I have had published in America.  I am now starting a new series about him.
     When I am not traveling I live in Westport, Connecticut.  My interests are horses, sailing and flying.  I took up flying about a year ago to write some articles on bow it feels to learn to fly, and was badly bitten by the bug.  I can make a three-point landing about five times out of ten.
     I like New York, but would prefer to live in Honolulu.  I smoke sixty cigarettes a day.  I like murder trials.  I have never mastered the noble game of poker, although I once wrote a book about it.  In my spare time I study law and medicine.  I have two young sons and a still younger daughter; an able crew for my sailboat-except that there is usually mutiny aboard the lugger!

(From Argosy Magazine 2-25-30)
Soon a list of the Singapore Sammie stories!
A presentation of Deerstalker Classics - purveyors of rare mysteries in electronic form through PageTurner E-Books (six downloadable formats).

 

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