Robert Collinson

Well, here I am. About the author. What can I *say? I am a writer, an author, but in reality, I could never think of myself as one.

I have written stuff, been published, and it meant nothing. So, I wrote more.

During the Covid-19 epidemic, I was shoe-boxed, sorry, housebound, confined to quarters, like all the rest of us that went through that *miserable time. I got the virus twice, one of them was *bad, but I made it.

Everything changed during that time, but you know that already.

So I sat my weary old ass down, and thought, “What the * am I going to do? I’m going *nuts!”

With only my old PC to safeguard my sanity, I remembered that I had started to write a book, way back in 1981. It was two paragraphs. I found it eventually, and opened it up.

From there, I expanded on what I had written, then kept going.

The resulting novel was a total of one point five million words. After much work and countless edits, it became a series of six books that I later released on Amazon, for tablets and computers.  If you want to read it on your phone, you’re much crazier than I am. I couldn’t edit it again, I was drowning in it, so I turned away to something else.

 

I wrote my first real novel, “Zhetybay”, in three weeks. It’s a true story, so it was easy, I remembered it all and typed.

The sequel “Zhanna” took a month longer, and were both published in the UK. The publisher told me how wonderful my work was, promised marketing, TV and radio interviews, book signings, posters, but none of it happened.

The advertising that they promised was a lie, and my faith in the publishing industry died.

Hey! Hang on! This is the digital age, people have Kindles, they can get my books and read them on their pads and tablets if they want to...

Being more stubborn than a stunned mule, I kept on going. There was something in there that changed me, to the point of obsession.

Sixteen hours a day wasn’t unusual, I sat and typed. I lost a lot of weight, and if you want to hear the truth, I’ll tell you the secret to weight loss. It’s easy, don’t eat. Drink water.

I also caused myself horrendous back pain from sitting too long, and my sleep pattern was totally *destroyed.

 

So, the result, is what I’ve got out there. I’m still writing, I live inside the fantasies that I create, day-by-day, still in the shoebox, and some episodes are taken from my own experiences.

I travelled abroad for work for most of my life, expenses paid, and I loved being a part of the oil industry. The work was the easy part for me, and as I recall the various stories, more memories come back and are included in the next chapter. I digress, but it all comes back to the same thing, the story.

I will tell you a story, and maybe you’ll like it. Maybe you won’t.

For me, it’s the *story that matters.

 

The * in this text means expletive deleted. You probably knew that too.