biography
Born and bred in the UK, Richard scrawled his first novel, 'César's Day', at the dingy end of Nottingham during the final year of a degree in Psychology and Philosophy. The following year, while studying Investigative (Forensic) Psychology, he gushed 'Who's Afraid of Hieronymous Bosch?' - a murky collection of short stories, vignettes and poetry.
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Soon after graduating, he was on the road, wandering around India and Southeast Asia on a succession of buses, planes, push bikes, trains, trucks and tuk tuks, cars and rickshaws, boats and dodgy scooters. It was in the foothills of Northern Thailand, amid all manner of chaos and a bout of typhoid, that he finished his second collection, 'The Reluctant Puppeteer'.
A few months later, Richard was fleeing Kuala Lumpur for the relative safety of Sydney. Sponsored to stay by his employer, he settled down and wrote 'Trumping the Token Jester', his third batch of shorts. Later on, he took a sabbatical to travel around Australia in 'Rocky', a 30 year old Volkswagen camper van. It was this journey that triggered Richard's second novel, 'Kombi', which was written in the back of the van.
After a month on a remote island in the Indian Ocean, Richard got back to his desk and re-jigged his most popular shorts and wrote two further novels. 'A Second Chance' is a thriller of sorts - one that Richard himself feels contains his best character development so far. The second, 'A is for Anorexia', is a psychological twister set in the porn industry - not everyone's cup of Tetley.
After a 9 year hiatus to focus on his other career, Richard returned to the writing scene with 'Of Carobs and Olives' - a multi-layered mystery that's widely considered his best work yet.