[...] I had always loved stories ever since I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped’ at the age of six. I had my first flirtation with writing aged 18 when I wrote and directed a school play based on Euripides ‘Bacchae’ about the European incursion into Japan in the l9th Century. I never lost that desire to write, but for many years another love, travel, got in the way. I had my first taste while I was still at school, when, in one of the vacations, I drove with two friends through Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In the gap year before going on to University, I was employed as an instructor more...
