Rhidian Brook

I started writing fiction in my mid-twenties. I was working as a copywriter in advertising when I was struck down with a post-viral condition. For two years I was unable to go back to work. I sat around, read a great deal and, when I had the energy, tried to write stories. A success in the 1991 Time Out short story competition gave me the confidence to write some more. Once well enough I returned to the day job but kept going with the stories and had a number published in various magazines including The New Statesman and Paris Review as well as broadcast on BBC Radio. During this time I started writing a novel that was eventually published as The Testimony Of Taliesin Jones. The novel won three prizes including the 1997 Somerset Maugham Award and, a couple of years later, was made into a film starring Jonathan Pryce. Buoyed by this I wrote a second novel, Jesus And The Adman, published in 1999, and began to have thoughts of giving up the day job to write fiction full time.

In 2002 I tried my hand at writing screenplays and in 2004 BBC Drama commissioned me to write a single film - Mr Harvey Lights A Candle - that was broadcast the following year and starred Timothy Spall. For the next two seasons I wrote for Silent Witness and was just settling down to the new day job when I was asked to write a book about the Aids pandemic for the Salvation Army. I agreed and ended up making a 9-month journey, with my wife and two children, to Africa, India and China. Whilst we travelled I did broadcasts for the BBC World Service and Radio 4's Thought For The Day - to which I had been a regular contributor since 2001. The book describing that journey - More Than Eyes Can See - was published in 2007. In 2009 I wrote a feature - Africa United - for Pathe which went on general release in October 2010.

A year later a story that was based on my grandfather's experiences in post war Germany was commissioned as a screenplay by Ridley Scott and BBC Film. I'd always wanted to write it as a novel so, whilst writing the screenplay, I started writing the book. After writing fifty pages I showed it to my agent and she managed to sell it to 23 publishers around the world. This was enough to allow me to write the rest of the novel: The Aftermath.

For more information on Rhidian Brook or The Aftermath, visit his website at www.rhidianbrook.com or like the Facebook fan-page - Rhidian Brook.