Bear Lawrence

Hi,

I'm Bear Lawrence and I’ve enjoyed an interesting life. I’ve worked as a delivery driver in Norway, a helicopter tour pilot in the Caribbean, and a flight instructor in Oregon. In the UK I’ve been a sales assistant, gardener, landlord, biomedical engineer and award-winning inventor. I’ve even been lucky enough to have raced motorbikes, karts and yachts.

Suffering from stress as an overloaded university lecturer, I caught a viral infection and was in bed for seven weeks. Afterwards, I found I was utterly fatigued all of the time, had mysterious pains in my muscles and joints, and found difficulty with my concentration and memory. Eventually, my GP diagnosed me with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or simply ME. ME is also inappropriately known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), or the hybrid term ME/CFS.

Struggling to articulate the illness to friends and family, I initially wrote an article to explain it and my struggles living with the condition. Buoyed by the success of the article, I started to write more articles to promote awareness of this and other similar diseases. Eventually I wrote a book titled 'Bear with ME' to promote awareness of chronic illnesses and hidden disabilities.

Whilst this book raised awareness and helped those touched by chronic illnesses, I wanted to do more to raise awareness amongst the general public. I realised that I could write a novel featuring a character who was chronically ill, so that the public may want to read the book anyway but also became aware of these debilitating illnesses.

So, I created the character, DCI Parrish. He was a renowned murder detective in the Metropolitan Police with a reputation for solving the most difficult murders. Unfortunately, he contracted a viral infection and was later diagnosed with ME/CFS. The debilitating symptoms of the illness, such as fatigue, pain and brain fog, forced him to retire.

Despite being retired, Parrish still gets involved in murder cases, usually by police forces desperate to solve heinous crimes. But sometimes the killers themselves contact him, taunting him and believing that they are smarter than he is.

It worth noting that I struggle to read books myself due to my various symptoms. My books are deliberately written to be more accessible to people like myself through the use of short chapters and paragraphs, spacing between paragraphs, font size, etc. This was against the advice of my editor and mentor, but has been vindicated by the positive comments of readers who immediately recognised the deliberate accessibility of the text.

I hope you enjoy my work to raise awareness.

Best wishes,

Bear