About me and 'Let Me Help'

As a child I would enjoy reading adventure stories and watching the big epic movies, marveling at the scope of the story and the intricacies weave through them. Whilst other children would watch childrens television and films, I would be watching Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu or reading about Biggles. Even now nothing catches me eye than knowing a historical epic film is coming out soon.

I would also be curious as to other peoples and cultures. As an 8 year old I remember writing to the Soviet Space Centre at Star City and being literally over the moon at the huge envelopes of literature and posters which I received. I was also switched on enough to know that my envelopes had been opened and tampered with due to the Cold War
situation but even then, I would never let little things like Nuclear War stop me from getting as big a picture as I could and not just accepting the predominant views that others did.

It was from watching these films and visiting Morocco as a child that my interest in non-European cultures came to the fore. After leaving school and college and forsaking the potentially much wealthier fields of Business or IT, I went to SOAS in London University. At this time when most of the rest of British universities were becoming ever more money orientated, SOAS still held onto the virtues of knowledge for knowledge sake and I studied African and Asian History and Politics to MA level. Here I met friends from every country on earth and enjoyed every minute, often being the only Anglo-Saxon in class.

Whilst at SOAS I would often make notes of the humerous or interesting anecdotes which I picked up and thinking that one day I would re-visit them. I also found how much I enjoyed writing and it got to the stage where I having spent 3 or 4 weeks solidly writing out essays that when confronted with a 2 day break I would then write magazine and newspaper articles, enter short story competitions or write off scripts and send them to Hollywood!

Having left university for the infinitely more bland and duller world of work and with no studying to do having so much time I didn't know what to do with myself I thought I would write a novel. Back then I didn't know exactly what I was letting myself in for and there were times when I would get so stuck that I just left the story for months on end whilst at others I would write a dozen pages in a day. I saw the writing as both giving me something to do and a way to use my knowledge but also to do something I was good at and possibly given the subject matter, what few others could.

I started writing in 1997 before the current state of terror supposedly circling the world. I knew I wanted to write a historical piece but I thought how much more fun and interesting if readers were to travel through this world through the eyes of someone from their own time. I was also well aware of the injustices in the world and the narrow and
xenophobic views that were and are prevalent in society. Pre-empting the events of I based the section of story in a modern world of Islamic terrorism and race hatred which gives the main character even more of an adventure than he would otherwise have.

One aspect of the story which was both fun and a challenge to write was how progression of writing someone from the present day adjust to challenges in the past and in a totally different culture. As it is a life-story, I was given the opportunity to work on a broad scale and give plenty of time for the themes of the story come through and the repercussions of actions, both good and bad.

In a related matter to viewing the past through modern eyes, I wanted to explore the different ways of viewing the same event through different perspectives. For instance when Ben's slave master is murdered in Iran, to Ben the murderer was simply suffering from a split personality whilst many of his companions blamed the incident on the man being possessed by a troublesome evil spirit which they disturbed when camping next to a cemetery.

This leads on to another interesting theme. I wanted to take full advantage of the setting of the story and introduce a slight spiritual theme to the book, hardly avoidable when your main character is murdered on the back cover! Ben is on a trial which forces him to live by certain morale guidelines, most of which are near impossible to comply with. To help him he has his GA, Harry who is an eccentric Welsh miner who gives Ben help and ideas whilst greatly adding to the humour of the situation.

Finally I just wanted to write a roller-coaster ride of an adventure that takes place in an already unbelievable world that few people know much about and share some of the fun I had writing it.