About Me

I was born in the mid-1950s (so a boomer I guess) the only child of George Richard and Rita Margaret Draper, and I was born indoors as was customary then, in our terraced row house in Northfleet. I had a pretty happy childhood, but there were a few things that helped shape me into the man I became.

My mother was manic depressive (now usually referred to as bi-polar) and this was a massively misunderstood condition in the 50's and 60's. As a result of prolonged periods of treatment and even hospitalizations, I spent a lot of time with my Grandparents who lived some 20 houses away in the same street. My Grandfather was a lighterman and barge captain, my Grandmother worked in a rebar factory (and had since the war) and my Dad was a shift working electrician, so I became fairly independent, quite quickly.

Dad encouraged this and as an avid "Do it your-selfer" he encouraged me to try my hand at many things, not to be afraid to fail at something, and to be willing to attempt a task until you got it right.  Obviously, there were no mobile phones, hell I remember when we got our first Bakelite rotary phone when I was 10 years old. 

I was actively encouraged to find and make friends and work out ways to keep myself amused. I became a cub scout, I joined youth clubs and I learned to keep myself occupied, often through reading. I was always at the library, getting new books.

Mostly I stayed out of trouble, graduated somehow from Gravesend Grammar School for Boys (but with only 1 A Level in English Lit.), and did a variety of jobs before doing a short military stint, which I enjoyed but which was cut short by a career-ending ankle injury.

I had, and still have, a voracious love of movies and of the cinema experience as a whole  My Grandfather took me to see Ben Hur at the Regal in Gravesend when I was just 4 years old, and I still remember the experience, the wonder of it all and that's one reason that I put the Regal into my book series "The King of Gravesend". It's also one reason I worked for EMI for a while managing the ABC 123 Cinema in that town. Sadly there's not a single movie theatre there now.

I ended up in the USA for a while, where I thought I would try skydiving, mainly to see how it differed from my 5 round jumps in the military. The answer was "A LOT" and I stayed in the industry for 25 years, as a Jumpmaster, Instructor, and Parachute Rigger.

I racked up over 7000 jumps including over 2000 as a tandem instructor, and jumped in the US and Canada, as well as managing a drop zone in Upstate New York for 9 Summer Seasons. 

This led to me being hired by the Qatar Military where I worked for their Special Forces, Airborne, for just over 10 years before retiring.  During this time I trained with many elite fighting forces from many countries, including the French Foreign Legion, and units from Turkey, France, Germany, Jordan and the USA amongst others.

I retired to The Philippines where I now live with my wife, Veronica.

As we arrived here just in time for Covid Lockdowns, I found myself with a lot of free time, and decided to use it writing.

I started with some short stories, they morphed into a novella and that became a trilogy of books. The tactical Sci-Fi series now called "The Timeliness Trilogy". Then I switched up genres and wrote an urban crime/adventure series, called "The King of Gravesend."

At the suggestion of a couple of friends, I was encouraged to continue writing about the continuing story of the King of Gravesend's widow (oops, hope that's not a spoiler), and that evolved into the Ro and Angel Trent series, the 5th book of which is set to be published November 29th 2024.