My appreciation of a good story, originated from my beloved late Grandfather, Harry Osborne, who could exaggerate an uneventful walk beside the river into ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. A trait I seem to have inherited.

Years later, I became inspired by a reading of Charlotte’s Webb, by a teacher … and also finding, and reading, a copy of The Scarlatti Inheritance, by the late great Robert Ludlum.

My writing has always been influenced by music and who better than Beethoven. His genius created wonderful journeys of sound, rising and falling from peak to trough, growing higher with each false crescendo; the pace and tension ever increasing, as the music builds towards that all-encompassing, wiz-bang, knock-em-down, finale ... The classical boxer and the rough-as-guts fighter, slugging it out; each man’s fortunes ebbing and flowing, until the knockout in the final seconds of the last round. Now that’s a book I’d like to read.

Also Stephen King because I admire him and because his work isn’t just research, turned into prose. Almost everything he writes is pure imagination.

I have to include the late great Robert Ludlum, because I spent a lot of my youth under the covers of his incredible plot driven stories.

And, of course, Wilbur Smith, the unrivalled king of the historic action adventure genre. He could fill your head with Africa and at the same time, make you cheer and make you cry.

1. I love to aspire.
2. The hair from head is slowly migrating and populating other areas of my body.
3. My more difficult moments are just fertilizer for greater growth.
4. I am more at home hanging off the side of a mountain, than in a city.
5. I love beauty and try to see it in everything.
6. If my life isn’t an adventure, I know I’m not living it.
7. Prison for me is living unconsciously … Suburbia of the mind.
8. I love to cook ‘Ken food’ and I love to eat ‘Ken food’ … Life is an aromatic curry!
9. I think that God sent me red wine from heaven.
10. I think that, if I keep drinking red wine I’ll soon be in heaven.
11. I love to box, but I believe that violence is a lack of intelligence.
12. I enjoy all of the creatures of our world, especially people and birds.
13. I love the English language. Just consider the word ‘perilous’… Wow!
14. I am a writer, who entertains.
15. I love working in the disability field.
16. My home is where my dreams take me.
17. I treasure the spark within and every moment it burns.
18. I believe the duality of life is fertile soil.
19. I love the nature of all things.
20. I think, and with courage I experience, therefore I am.
21. I am addicted to wild places.
22. I am a traveller even at home.
23. A toilet is a reading room with a flush button.
24. I love friends and adore family.
25. I prefer to live in an environment where I don’t have to pay to pee.

Blood Prize has been developed around a unique story, with unique characters and employs a unique approach to writing. Yes … unique, unique, unique.

The story is written in third person narrative with eight, limited, omniscient viewpoint characters, who reveal their thoughts in the first person (written in italics).

Having eight major viewpoint characters in Blood Prize, differs from most novels, which have one or two viewpoint narrators at most. Blood Prize weaves these eight viewpoints through the story, with each character having their own short-sharp chapter, or chapter break, ending in a hook.

More importantly, there is almost no past tense in Blood Prize; meaning little to no usage of the words ‘had, would, were, or was’. This is a tool to keep the novel in the moment. Even past events, commonly known as back-fill, are written in the present tense.