The Last Highlanders (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781530562077)

As a boy, I used to write reports of the local football matches in my home town in northern Scotland, my favourite stories to write at the time being adventure and war and how the human condition adapts to the pressures of fate and unpredictability. Fascinated by history, I used to consume books at a frantic rate, reading personal accounts and historical works across all ages and becoming frustrated upon perusing articles that would compromise fact for common belief or to embellish a tale. My parents had always encouraged me to follow my interest, and this continued with my father occasionally enquiring if I had written anything, something I regret I had not done at the time. Although the pressures of buying property, running a business and having a career allowed me to develop plots and devise potential ideas for books, tales, twists of fate, etc. this was usually accomplished whilst sitting at traffic lights, awaking from a dream, waiting in a bar or the bane of my life, rush hour traffic. I did not realise at the time I was continually formulating stories in my mind, it was just an entertaining pastime to prevent boredom with the initial extracts of imagination then added to over time and usually when passing the same place. On long journeys, I would mentally start out with a plot and character, allowing that to grow and flourish in my mind...quite a useful diversion on say an eight hour car journey...by the time I reached the destination, a whole set of characters and actions had been formulated, sometimes even with terrain and weather. I would then write these whims down, unaware my sub-conscious seemed to be storing the colourful adventure, the key being the location I was at or even emotional state. A couple of years ago, my father unfortunately passed away and it was on the train to assist in the arrangements for the funeral that I considered what my father had encouraged me to do, the things he had been proud of that I had perhaps let slip. All the plots and stories began to pour back as I sat staring out into the French countryside, the silly twists that life throws at us, comical endings to situations and the 'itch I could never scratch', understanding fate's choices and the luck in life. I determined at that point that I would finally achieve what I had always dreamed of and write. At the end of the journey with the train pulling into Bezier...I had completed the first chapter of the first book, Bloody Iced Bullet.