A.P. Atkinson

A.P. Atkinson first arrived on this planet at London, England in the latter part of the twentieth century. It was a time when technology was about to bring the dawn of a new age, and when technology hadn’t yet been used to crush the spirit of humanity. It was the late seventies, a time of bad hair and great movies but it was about to give way to even worse hair and movies that would change the very fabric of reality.

He was a keen reader and one of those annoying kids who always got their story read out in class by the teacher; it annoyed him more than anyone else.

He grew up just as Star Wars was released on an unsuspecting public. That began a lifelong interest in all things science-fiction.

He comes from a family of motorcycle fanatics. When he was sixteen he bought a box of mixed parts and assembled a scooter out of it. That was the beginning of a fascination with trying to kill himself by riding too fast on poorly-maintained machines that he’d cobbled together himself. Surviving this far has been very much against the odds.

It was some time later that his closest friend challenged him to write a novel and then buggered off to Japan to work as an editor. He slowly discovered alcohol, caffeine and that he has several hilarious mental-health issues – mostly caffeine and alcohol-related.

He wrote all he could and was eventually published at the age of nineteen by a niche publisher in America that was later sued by the authors and then vanished one night under mysterious circumstances.

Finally he decided to leave England and try to kill himself on more interesting foreign roads in far-flung parts of the world. He toured Europe, the Middle East and Asia and eventually became an English teacher specialising in novel-analysis and not specialising in grammar.