I’ve always been a scribbler as far back as I can remember. The Doomsday Legacy was my first published novel but not the first I have written. In fact I have a number of half written attempts that have been pushed aside over the years as my ‘proper job’ demanded more and more of my time. I’m sure many writers (published and unpublished) will recognize that one.

 

I remember my first completed novel, ‘The Song of the Nightingale’. It was my attempt at the great spy novel, a sort of homage to ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ (still one of my all-time favourite books). It was a gritty spy story set in Berlin, amidst the chill of the cold war. Unfortunately, as I was typing the last pages, they were bulldozing down the Berlin wall, so that one melted pretty quickly and never saw the light of day.

 

Still, writing is what you are, not what you do. It’s never going to go away, so you just keep on trying.

 

As a young, Naval Radio Officer, then as a computer specialist for a multi-national company, I travelled the world and serviced many military, secret research, and laboratory installations. When I started out as a computer engineer, all the military and secret installations in the south of England were on my patch: Porton Down (the Government bio-warfare laboratories), AWRE (Atomic Weapons Research Establishment), and Marconi Space and Research Laboratories, just to name a few. Whilst living in Eastern Europe, I came in contact with the real life Russian Mafiya and shady characters dealing in dodgy ‘semi-precious metals’ – a euphemism for anything coming out the back door of former Soviet military installations. All of these things influenced and still influence the stories I write.

 

As both a writer and a reader, I’ve always believed that the best thriller stories have a large element of truth in them. In fact, all too often even the wildest of imaginations could not think up the true facts that life seems to throw at us every day. Therefore it is within real life that I look for the essence of stories. The search for The Doomsday Legacy took me on a research voyage that delved into the intricacies of nuclear fusion and miniature nuclear weapons technology, the shadowy world of the former Soviet secret cities, the U.S. Missile Defense Program, and finally into the depths of the scariest organization on the planet, the Russian Mafiya. All the technology in my book is either true or rumored to be true. Much of the technical dialogue is based upon actual quotes from academics in the scientific community. Most of the towns, streets, train journeys, hotels, and restaurants, actually exist. I’ve been there – I’d like to take readers there too.

 

But research only puts the authentic flavour into the story, and as every good chef knows, salt and pepper are best applied with a dash here and a dash there. The authenticity in a story is important, but it is really just backdrop and setting. Stories start and end with characters, people with lives, loves, hopes and fears. And, in all good thriller stories, our hero’s lives are threatened. Against all the odds, they have to find something within themselves in order to make it through. Their actions enact the plot, make the twists and turns as they struggle to survive. That’s what I love about finding stories, finding the characters, letting them lead me on the journey to find the story’s end.

 

The Foo Sheng Key is partly inspired by the 7 years I spent living in South East Asia, in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Hong Kong, and Singapore. My next book The Simeon Scroll draws on my experience living across Europe, and my fascination with conspiracy theories, it then grew into the Armageddon Trilogy, and the ongoing journey of my character, Joe Fagan. – see my Book Backgrounds page to find out more.

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