I admit to living a somewhat eccentric life, which may account for my likewise eccentric writing. I was born in a small, quiet country town called Mackay, Queensland (don't blame me for the name), Australia. The Second World War had just barely finished and my father, a school teacher, was back from active duty manning an anti-aircraft gun in the northern tip of Australia. After 12 years of formal schooling I drifted into 20 years of a Sugar Chemistry position which entailed testing farmers' sugar cane for sugar content (they were paid on the sugar level and tonnage of their crop). This employment was seasonal due to the growing season and so, for the rest of the year I endeavored to dig for sapphires on the gem fields in western Queensland. It was very much like a Wild West frontier atmosphere in those days, full of interesting characters and amazing stories of chance fabulous finds and near misses. My gem finding days were curtailed when I was drafted into lecturing at the Sugar School where aspiring Sugar Chemists were trained and this occupied my time for the next 15 years or so. By then I'd become interested in herbal medicine and became a Naturopath and Homoeopath, completing a further handful of degrees over the next 20 years, including a university degree in Nutrition from a Californian University (the sole institution I could find who did a distant education degree in those days).From there I moved to pharmacy, where I spent the next 20 years as a Naturopath (everything seems to involve twenty year stretches), complementing the orthodox medical regime with herbs and nutritional advice. Then I discovered writing. I'd always had a love of reading, ever since I was a child, and would often read in the semi-darkness until I had a headache (which I ignored and kept on reading), and that love carried over into writing some 40 years later. As usual in my life, I couldn't even do this in a normal manner. Most authors, I believe, would have a storyline already in mind and would probably go so far as to map it all out beforehand on paper - Beginning, Middle and End - all neatly planned. But not me. I'd get up at four o'clock in the morning before work, make a cup of herbal tea (Tulsi, peppermint, chamomile and green tea all mixed together), sit in front of the computer and type away on the keyboard. Most times I wouldn't have the faintest idea what the next sentence was going to be, let alone the next chapter and I had absolutely no notion of how the book was going to end. Still, it made life interesting. I'd often wonder during the day what was going to happen next in the story and would eagerly await the next morning to discover a little more of the plot. I'm sure most people don't write like this, but it's worked for all of my novels so far. The stories ended up being love stories in essence, blended with a large helping of humor and a dash of sadness. I wanted people to laugh and cry; to tickle their inner emotions. Laughter defines us as human beings (although our pets are probably secretly laughing at us, but they don’t show it). As a Naturopath, I know that laughter has multiple health benefits and sadness puts our life into perspective by allowing us a quiet time to review where we’re going. This activity has curtailed my social life to some extent and I've become something of a hermit. Frankly, I prefer my own company to that of others these days and I've never married. In fact, I've become somewhat cynical of that particular institution, having seen my friends and family being divorced one by one, although I do believe in the soul mate principle, and have written about it in some of my stories. But, at the moment, there's just me and the geckoes (small, very loud, wall-climbing lizards), living together in harmony in a converted bus in a caravan park - weird to the very end.Steve ElliottRead more about this authorRead less about this author