Profile: NICHOLAS HALL

About This Author

I'm of half-Czech extraction (my father was a refugee from the Nazis), and currently spend half my time in West Cornwall, with my partner and her daughter, and half in the Midlands. I spend my free time kayaking in rivers and the sea, and sometimes get paid to teach or play a bit of guitar. I was teaching 'supply' for a while, but decided the stress levels were dangerous. Before that I spent a long time teaching psychology, general studies, African drumming, car maintenance, and sex-education. I also worked in 'pupil referral units', youth clubs, probation and the health promotion, and with disaffected boys and dyslexic university students. Before I was a school teacher I was married (and divorced), co-single-parented kids, and ran a small, but beautifully-formed, landscape gardening business. I grew up on a chopped down BSA A65. I've also been an itinerant fruit-picker, lived in a van and a 'bender'; hitch-hiked to Marrakesh; worked in an engineering factory, been a tractor driver; ridden with outlaw bikers; meditated with gurus; played in a professional African drumming band; played didgeridoo on the radio; run a market stall; taught horticulture, canoeing, tai chi and Filipino martial arts; practised as a psychotherapist; and once helped put up the largest circus 'big top' in Europe! My first novel was called "The Adventures of Redman Red" and was written (under the name of Nathaniel Haynes) at the prompting of several friends who came across 'scribblings' in my loft and wanted to know what happened next. It tells the story of a group of happy-go-lucky bikers trying to get by, with what dignity and integrity they can, in a world of fuel poverty and economic collapse, the remnants of which are being fought over by Corporation gangsters, Church inquisitors, artificial intelligences, and Faeries. "Just Johny in the Underground" is my latest novel aimed at teens to adults. It follows three teenagers living in the remains of London Underground after civil war and disease has left 'Topside' London mostly uninhabited.