I grew up outside the city of Durban, South Africa as a loner, spending most of my free time wandering about in the mountains and during holidays staying in my secret cave. At night, in the pitch dark I would watch the stars and wonder who was up there and if they would ever contact me. I started off by reading Cowboy books and then later graduated to Science Fiction, which hooked me for the rest of my life.

I first started writing short stories of Science Fiction when I was about 15 years old, but never attempted to have these stories published.

All my books now published in Smashwords,(the Crankie Williams series and the Oh Hell, Joe! books) simply came into my mind and when I started writing the stories just kept coming. I found I didn't have to think about it too much, it simply just kept coming. I decided to translate the Crankie Williams series into Afrikaans as the Gawie Botha series as well and they are also published with Smashwords. At present there are three Crankie Williams and Gawie Botha books published and I am halfway through the fourth. Oh Hell, Joe! will not be translated unless there is a demand.
Smashwords, through their brilliant guidance made it easy for me to publish all my books and it has been a pleasure to deal with them.

In writing my stories the greatest joy I experience is to follow the stories as they unfold. Generally, what I write surprises even me! I wont say it is a great joy when the work is completed, because then the editing starts and the reading and re-reading over and over becomes more like hard work and tedious.

To have fans enjoying my stories and the style with which I write is a great honour to me. It encourages me to produce more and more stories which I hope they will also find enjoyable.

I am working on the fourth Crankie Williams (Gawie Botha) book as well as four new stories which appear to be heading into the mystical/spiritual and fantasy direction, although none of my books will ever be 'hard-core' mind blowing science fiction.

There are so many favourite authors but to name a few I would say, in no particular order of preference they are H. G. Wells; E. E. 'Doc' Smith; Stephen King; Isaac Asimov; Louis L Amour (who got me started); Arthur C Clarke; Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan of course; Robert Silverberg; L Ron Hubbard and Rudyard Kipling.

I get out of bed each day (even now at my age) with a will to live, a will to do whatever my hands find to do and to exercise my mind by story telling and playing computer games.

I spend most of my time while not writing tending to my bee colonies and doing as much woodwork as I can.

The first story I ever wrote was about a space ship and a great war in space, which I vividly saw and remember. None of my friends took this seriously but my mother did!

When I sit down in front of the computer to write, there is no process. It just keeps coming.

The first book I ever read was a Cowboy book by Louis L Amour and this made me understand the power of descriptive writing.

My desk is always cluttered but in a 'tidy' sort of way. I always know where to find what I'm looking for. I'm always being described as a 'perfectionist' by my wife and friends.

I decided to publish my books as E Books after all the uphill and nonsense experienced from traditional publishing houses. There are a lot of false promises made and in the end it costs one a big bag of dough for no results.

I unwisely entered Crankie Williams Goes Ballistic into a contract with a traditional publisher to publish this work, after they made it sound very attractive to me. Unfortunately this has become a very unsatisfactory and money hungry situation but I have to wait until the contract expires (±1 year), before I can take my book back and immediately publish it as an E book.