ROSS RICHDALE

Author of:
Affinity & Trust, Beyond Infinity, Nexus of Time, Mind Split, Astrid's Coast

After a career as a teacher and principal of mainly small rural schools, Ross Richdale lives in the small university city of Palmerston North in the North Island of New Zealand where he writes contemporary novels and sagas full time, while his wife, Kay, carries the burden of teaching children at a local primary (elementary) school. He is married with three children.

Ross has always had an interest in the written word and has been a constant reader of current events magazines and newspapers. As a youngster, he used to grab his elder sister's magazines that came from England and read about boarding schools with secret tunnels and mysterious headmistresses who invariably went missing and were replaced by a draconian assistant. He preferred these stories to those in the boys' magazines of the time that were mainly about sports or war. As a teenager, he'd slip into the local library and read overseas newspapers to pick up exotic stories or study the advertisements or television programs of far away cities. He preferred articles where his mind was pulled to distant places and adventures. Later, he wrote stories to stimulate the children he taught in his classes and ideas were expanded into full-length stories that disappeared into dusty files. He found writing fiction for children was not stimulating enough so he switched to writing adult novels and that continues to the present time.

In his suburban home, Ross pounds away on an ancient Macintosh to form the plots for his novels. After his wife and daughter go off to work every morning, he shares his workspace with a black and white cat, who demands to be fed at least six times a day, and a goldfish called Survivor. The name comes from the fish's ability to survive after having been dropped in a glass aquarium that was totally shattered and outlived her compatriots when poisoned water plants were inadvertently added to their bowl.

When he is not writing, Ross enjoys drawing, usually on the computer. Other interests include wandering in the countryside and, in the summer, swimming in mountain streams or bounding through the rapids in a large inner tube tire.

His interest in current events and international incidents serve as a backdrop for many of his novels. Ordinary people rather than the super rich super powerful or violent, are the main characters in his stories. Often a tiny article read is expanded into a full sized novel after research and the use of his vivid imagination. His plots also reflect his interest in the rural lifestyle as well as the cross section of personalities encountered during his years as a teacher.