About the Author

Jeff Hopkins (1950) is a retired schoolteacher. He lives in Western Australia. As the drama master at a private boys' school he wrote eleven original musical plays and produced and directed them at the school. In 1992, he researched and wrote a family history, Life's Race Well Run, and after retiring in 2006 he has written thirteen novels, a memoir, and a 'faction' biography: - Artifice (2015) - Gnarl (2015) - The Spiv: The Robbie Sparrow Story (2015) - Impressment: Managers, Actors, and Impressed Boys (2015) - Benedict Lovelace and the Travelling Show (2016) - Reflections: A Story of Friendship (2016) - Rocking Horse Rider (2016) - The Hydrographer: The Clyde Steadman Story (2017) - Handsome Jack: A Whizz-kid's Story (2019) - Lord Gnarl: A Sequel to Gnarl (2019) - A Horse Called Signs: A Sequel to Handsome Jack (2020) - Alaric Pinder Boor: A Life Reimagined (2020) - Caliphs and Kings: Concluding the Gnarl Trilogy (2021) - The Gavin Johns' Story: A Belle Beamish Investigation (2021) - Creatively: A Memoir of Plays, Films, Musicals and Books (2021) Jeff previously maintained he wrote entirely for pleasure, and to fill in the long summer months between football seasons. Recently he has admitted that he set himself the task of writing in a number of different genres as part of a three-year programme to learn about creative writing and self-publishing. That three-year programme has now extended to five. He said it was like an undergraduate degree course for which there was a strict budget and work schedule. It has since become clear that the whole experiment was one of the most interesting and absorbing things he had done in his life. He continues to write.