A HAWORTH author has published a series of romantic and dramatic tales set in Ireland.

William Forde, a former children's writer, has released eight volumes of short stories called Tales from Portlaw. These had initially been made available in e-book format.

Portlaw is in County Waterford, Ireland, where Mr Forde was born.

He said: "These tales are of a somewhat saucy, romantic and dramatic nature and each volume varies in length from 20,000 to 50,000 words.

"All eight volumes have now been published in hard copy, and are ideal for reading from cover to cover within a few hours of leisure time."

Eighteen months ago Mr Forde was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He has just completed a six-month course of chemotherapy, which he said would hopefully give him a temporary period of remission.

He has lived in Haworth since 2010 after moving from Mirfield, and has completed 61 published books and two musical plays.

The hard copy volumes of Tales from Portlaw can be bought from lulu.com or amazon.com. Visit smashwords.com for the e-book version.

Smashwords reports that William is the father of five children, and has written about 20 bucks for children aged seven to 11, with many others suitable for young people and adults.

Smashwords said: “William is unique in the field of contemporary children's authors through the challenging emotional issues and story themes he addresses, preferring to focus upon those emotions that children and adults find most difficult to appropriately express.

“Between 1990 and 2002 his books were publicly read in over 2,000 Yorkshire school assemblies by over 800 famous names and celebrities from the realms of royalty, film, stage, screen, politics, church and sport.

“The late Princess Diana used to read his earlier books to her then young children, William and Harry, and Nelson Mandela once telephoned him to praise an African story book he had written.”