I'm constantly, looking for stories, looking for strange, shady, tales that are true, and more important from the story perspective, that could have been true. I'm always treading that fine line between what happened and what could have happened, between people who actually existed and who might have been. I believe it's somewhere in the shadows, in the nooks and crannies between these elements that the great stories are found.

I've always been a scribbler as far back as I can remember. The Doomsday Legacy was my first published novel but not the first I have written. In fact I have a number of half written attempts that have been pushed aside over the years as my 'proper job' demanded more and more of my time.

I remember my first completed novel, 'The Song of the Nightingale'. It was my attempt at the great spy novel, a sort of homage to the 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' (still one of my all-time favourite books). It was a gritty spy story set in Berlin, amidst the chill of the cold war. Unfortunately, as I was typing the last pages, they were bulldozing down the Berlin wall, so that one melted pretty quickly and never saw the light of day. Still, writing is what you are, not what you do. It's never going to go away, so you just keep on trying.

As a young, Naval Radio Officer, then as a computer specialist for a multi-national company, I travelled the world and serviced many military, secret research and laboratory installations. When I started out as a computer engineer, all the military and secret installations in the south of England were on my patch: Porton Down (the Government bio-warfare laboratories), AWRE (Atomic Weapons Research Establishment), and Marconi Space and Research Laboratories, just to name a few. Whilst living in Eastern Europe, I came in contact with the real life Russian Mafiya and shady characters dealing in dodgy 'semi-precious metals' - a euphemism for anything coming out the back door of former Soviet military installations.

With the increase of public surveillance from organizations like the NSA and GCHQ, I often wonder what would happen if they looked at my browsing and download history!!!

I'm still out there looking - secrets, people in the shadows, story gems. I'm constantly searching. If you're interested why not join me on that journey ( www.neilhowarth.com ).