This page gives a little background to each of my books along with a link to the detailed book page.
I remember it was close to Christmas 2010, I saw in the newspaper that the American physicist Sam Cohen had died. Mr. Cohen was known as the father of the Neutron bomb, the so called clean atomic bomb. As I was about to publish my novel The Doomsday Legacy on Amazon, this event was quite significant, as it was reading an interview with Sam Cohen a few years ago that started me on the trail of The Doomsday Legacy. Sam Cohen had talked about the existence of a substance called Red Mercury, which he believed would enable the construction of a nuclear weapon the size of a baseball, and in the hands of a terrorist – a nightmare. Many people have refuted this (the usual suspects), calling it just a scam thought up by the Russian Mafiya. Interestingly the same people who refuted the existence of this substance are now talking about a nuclear based terrorist event – and not about if, but when.
The title came from another newspaper article headline, ‘The Legacy of Doomsday’ talking about so called ‘Loose Nukes’, what had happened to all the nuclear weapon technology when the Soviet Union came to an end. That, along with Sam Cohen’s input seemed to me to be crying out for a story. It had always seemed to me that Mr. Cohen was far too intelligent a man to be taken in by a few scammers. So I got to thinking, what if. . .
If you love a good story. If you like a fast-paced thriller to keep you awake at night. If you want to be taken on a journey where the borderline between fact and fiction is hidden somewhere deep in the folds of an intricate, helter skelter plot – then The Doomsday Legacy should be on your bedside table.
For a long time I had an idea for a story running around in my head. I had the main thread of the story, the main characters, but I had a piece missing – Why?
What was it really all about? Then a few years ago, I was living in Greece and my wife and I were sitting in Athens airport, and it was snowing – and I mean snowing like crazy.
The airport was closed and the Greek’s were struggling to deal with this phenomenon called four feet of snow. I took a walk around and wandered into the book shop. They had about four books in English, one of them looked interesting. It was a non-fiction book called ‘The Demon in the Freezer’ by Richard Preston. This was a book about viruses, the fight against Smallpox. But it was also about bio-weapons and the history of bio-warfare. By the time the airport was open again and we were able to reach our destination I had finished it. I had been looking for what my story was all about, this didn’t give me the end point but it started me on the road, it turned out to be a very interesting journey.
I love the way that characters take shape and seem to take off on their own. When I started writing The Foo Sheng Key, it was about an ex-military man trying to find his estranged son, and the boy was a supporting character. By the time I had written the first fifty pages I knew without any doubt that the boy was the hero and his father the supporting character. I hope you agree. The Foo Sheng Key is my second published book.
The Simeon Scroll is my latest book. It is planned to be the first in a trilogy of books, each story complete in itself but providing the beginning, the middle and the end of a complete story, respecting each of the elements in the structure of the overall story. It explores my fascination with ‘Conspiracy Theories’, but maintains my story perspective which is always to be just one step away from reality, into the shadows of what might have been true. As someone once said – ‘There’s a little truth in everything’. See the dedicated page for a little more background on The Simeon Scroll.