Further Details About the Author

This is the bio that I tend to send to publishers. ‘Interesting’ is good, right?

I’ve been working as a writer and editor for more than 15 years, much of it freelance. In that time, I’ve had some 90+ works published, including genre fiction, illustrated non-fiction, popular culture and much more. I also have a rather broad base of personal experiences and interests, and have lived on four different continents. I’m now back in London, at least for a time.

My fiction has mostly been written under commission, and includes horror and action horror — mainly vampire, werewolf and ghost stories — along with urban fantasy, superheroes, traditional fantasy, and science fiction. My non-fiction broadly falls into puzzles and games, art, esoterica, humour, health, computing and self-help; works I’ve edited are naturally more varied.

Culturally speaking, I’m British, but also have Greek, Austrian and French blood, and I grew up splitting my time between southern England and the Greek islands. Since finishing university in London (Anthropology), I’ve also lived in Vancouver, Seattle, Glasgow, the Norfolk fens, Barcelona, Prague, Dubai, Koh Samui in Thailand and the Gold Cost of Australia. My studies also gave me a reasonable grasp of some African and Latin American cultures.

I have a similarly broad base on a personal level. My grandfather was the highest-ranking Venetian duke in Ionian Greece, a dubious honour I’d hold if the Greek revolution of the 70s hadn’t pretty much put an end to all that. My ancestors stretch back to the Merovingian kings of France and, if some theories are to be believed, to the bloodline of Christ himself. Fortunately, I didn’t know about any of this until I reached 18, so I grew up comparatively sane.

Having said that, I’ve been a member of a hacker group, a scientific paranormal research organisation, an international occult order, a medieval battle re-enactment society, and Mensa. The Mensans were definitely the most frightening. Over the years, I have also managed to get to blue belt in Shaolin Kick Boxing before arthritis got me, to start up a team which designed and traded with a stock-market predictor software system, to do well during basic training as a medium, to organise a large London games convention several years running, and to spend a chunk of my 30s as a live-in carer.