Mary Thomas Levycky was born in Surrey but grew up in Hong Kong where she also met her first husband, a Foreign Correspondent for Reuters. Consequently Mary has lived in many different countries, and says,
“I wrote my first book aged 11 on a P&O ship travelling from Hong Kong to Southampton. I can’t stop writing, particularly stories based where I’ve lived, especially HK, India and Africa. On our return to Hong Kong I wrote and presented a daily breakfast show for RTHK, the English language radio station, finished my stint at Hong Kong University, worked as a Schools Counsellor, during which time I also established the English language Samaritans in HK at the request of Chad Varah, its founder. And with two RTHK colleagues formed a fun little company training corporate CEO’s to present themselves properly on TV interviews, which they were remarkably bad at doing!”
“Back in London for 5 years I and my boss Colin Murison Small (of Small World) wrote the annual Travel Contacts Directory covering 140 countries’ offerings for corporate/business travellers. This also involved a lot of travelling! Sadly many we featured, such as Yemen, can no longer be safely visited.”
Currently she lives in Plymouth with her second husband Tony after her first husband died, and has been a long term member of PWG. Her stories have appeared in several different anthologies.
Mary has published a collection of stories about her life growing up in Hong Kong, called “Hong Kong: Memories, Stories and Anecdotes of My Colonial Childhood, 1955-1968.” which is mainly lighthearted and features her lively and loving family, available on Amazon.
She adds, “I love Science Fiction and my next book hopefully will be a collection of stories in that genre, but I’ve been asked to continue the Hong Kong saga by a number of people so I think I may have to do that too.
I’ve loved Sci-fi and Fantasy since I was a young girl in Hong Kong during the Vietnam War, when the American sailors came for R&R and gave their books to the hawkers on the streets, where I could buy them for a few coins. It was the heyday of the greats: Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury etc. Sci-fi’s been in my blood since I was 11 yrs old.
These short stories of fantasy and sci-fi are suitable for everyone, and perhaps young adults in particular. They’re not violent nor very scientific, but more about how humans react and interact in unexpected and alien situations.
The stories are varied and generally upbeat! Most of them demonstrate elements of resilience and truthfulness and, I like to think, kindness too. I’ve also aimed for most of these stories to be thought provoking, although not overtly so as they’re primarily written for entertainment.
Overall, this is a short book with relatively easy to read print. I hope you enjoy it.
You can also purchase it from Author House;
https://www.authorhouse.com/en-GB/bookstore/bookdetails/861947-sidirion
Published Works
This collection of stories about my life growing up in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s was initially instigated by my niece, Claire, asking me questions about my childhood. Writing to her brought it home to me, sadly, that my era was now long gone, just like so many of the protagonists in these stories; my mother and father and all their friends, my grandparents and many others – and I myself will surely follow suit in the not too distant future! I realised that if my life during these years remained unrecorded it would be as if it had never existed, and an entire world in which I and so many had flourished and developed could disappear just like dust in the wind.
Plymouth Writers' Group 