Who am I?
I write under the pseudonym S.D. Gripton, but my real name is Dennis Snape and all my books are copyright with my wonderful wife Sally Dillon-Snape. I write crime novels, real crime novels, war novels and humorous novels. I am Welsh, Sally is English and we live in the county of Norfolk in England. I am so old that I was around at the beginning of rock and roll, I am one of the war babies who broke out of the strictures of 1950's living and decided to have fun. Ergo, the 1960's, the greatest time ever for music and life.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I was born in North Wales, on a mountain, there are many of them in Wales, and because my father was killed during the Second World War and my mother needed to go to work, I was sent to main stream school at the age of 2. There were advantages and disadvantages to this; serious advantages were that I cannot remember a time when I couldn't read or write (by the time the normal school starters began at 5, I could earn a penny for writing 10 lines for them!). I could also speak the Welsh language in those days, but sadly no longer (when I use the language in my books, as I have done, I have to rely upon a translator programme, how sad is that?!). I grew up reading and have read literally thousands of books in my life and all of them, I think, have had some kind of affect on my life. Once I became older though, I got to love crime novels, especially the American crime novels of Elmore Leonard (who sadly died only yesterday) and Henry V. Higgins all the way back to Sam Spade novels and Marlow. I have read them voraciously and hope that one day I can write one half as good. A serious disadvantage of beginning school at 2 was that every afternoon I became tired and teachers used to let me sleep. It is a habit I have never been able to shake off!! And I have never been out of work.
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