Tghu Verd

Tell us a little bit about yourself, your hobbies and interests.

Well, I'm into computers and have made them the focus of my career, to the point that now I'm a strategist and technologist. I've a family that includes a slowly dementing cat and can no longer stand humidity the way I used to, so fortunately my African and Asian business trip days are over. I've read a lot of books of all genres, and I have a very smart uncle who is up to answering my questions about physics, which is good because that was one subject I failed miserably at uni.

When and why did you start writing books?

I've been reading science fiction since forever. E. E. Doc Smith, Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke...I would save up paper round money for the latest paperbacks and read them too quickly so that it was weeks and months until the next one came in. Those venerable authors set me up for hard sci-fi, packed with technology, generally optimistic, but often underpinned by conflict or war, and I have continued that theme reading the likes of Hamilton, Reynolds, Morgan and Banks. I've been dabbling with stories for a long time, but I had a character, and I had an idea, and the published work grew out of that. I like gritty, violent, hard science fiction where I get to pluck the eyes out of cutting-edge tech and wonder what it might be like, released into the wild some years or decades or centuries down the track. It is great fun, and the only frustration is so many ideas, so little time to write!

What made you decide to tackle writing as a career?

Being able to share the stories that were bubbling up is almost a compulsion. Even if nobody reads them, you need to express the ideas!

Which one of your books or characters is your favourite?

The irreverent, inventive, amoral Pirate is my favorite. He explodes onto the scene in 'Deceit', and I feel evolves the most as a character. Possibly because he's not human so has much to learn about socializing and playing nicely with others.

Which one of your books was the hardest to write and stretched you the most as a writer?

'Tyranny'. It's the second Guardian book and it has to bridge the origin and the conclusion of the protagonist's narrative arc, but there's two hundred years in between and a dark mystery to establish and solve, so it was tricky.

Who is your favourite author and book?

Morgan's 'Altered Carbon.' It's a classic and rightfully so.

What book are you reading right now?

I'd say I'm limping through Brandon Q. Morris' 'The Enceladus Mission' because I'm writing 'Defeat,' the concluding book of the Imperium War and it's stealing my focus. Plus, I bought it pre-covid and never got around to it, so now's the time.

Where do you get your inspiration for your books?

A lot of the tech is the extrapolation of concepts and research I find in science journals, especially the more out-there cosmological ideas. But the interpersonal aspects are taken from observations in the environment. There's a cafe scene early in 'Guardian' soon after Guardian meets Susan Pacific and that is lifted from me watching a couple in a cafe who had obviously had a fight, and the waitress was very skeptical of the guy.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Restaurants, comedy shows, pottering around the house.

Do you have any new books in the works?

Yes, three. An end of the world novel, 'Defeat' which will finish the Imperium War series, and a YA novel I'm collaborating on.