Roger Barnes
Roger Barnes started writing short stories in his free evenings while working away from home. He spent some years in the Army, so that was a natural source of ideas and characters. He is now a taxi driver, so a fair amount of his day is spent sitting and waiting, so instead of doing nothing, he gets out his laptop and happily pecks away while his colleagues study Page 3 and read the ‘Racing Post’. As part of his job he meets interesting people and usually gets interesting answers to his interesting questions. He likes reading Frederick Forsyth, Stephen Leather and Chris Ryan, because of their fantastic story lines, their realistic characterisation and their thorough research.
As well as writing on the taxi rank, he also writes in a small bedroom at home which has been turned into a study. It overlooks the garden, his wife’s pride and joy. From where he sits, he can see and hear a waterfall feeding into a koi pond, giving the garden an air of tranquillity which is wonderfully helpful when he tries to write a complex or violent action sequence or the softer aspect of a story.
