Graham Hunter

When I was 13 I got a part time job in our local corner store, delivering customers' grocery orders on one of those bikes with a little wheel on the front and a wicker basket. I used to work for an hour after school on Thursdays and Fridays and all Saturday mornings. As the shop owners trusted me more and more, I was allowed to take payments and give change. Eventually I was allowed to serve in the shop and was often left on my own if the owners wanted to go out. It certainly taught me the value of being honest and trustworthy, traits I have always maintained throughout my life.

In my early teens Ian Flemming’s James Bond 007 series was very popular. I read the whole lot very quickly and often imagined myself in this role.

I originally trained as a Pathologist on a course that took 6 years to qualify. I often used to work 6 day and 3 night weeks most weeks when I was “On Call” which was very tiring and didn’t leave much time for my personal pursuits. I used to see Medical Reps and often thought how lucky they were to have a job that gave them a company car, a good salary and no night work. I was sure I could do that. I regularly scanned the job section of the newspapers and found one company who wanted someone with a medical background that they could train in Sales and Marketing. I got the job and worked for them for 6 months until they were bought out and I was made redundant. I quickly found another job with a Scientific Equipment company and now having been trained in Sales and Marketing, all they had to do was give me the product knowledge. This involved travelling to the different equipment manufacturers' headquarters in several different countries including Denmark, Finland, Germany and USA. Then came my big break. A UK company manufacturing a new range of Medical/Scientific Image Analysers wanted someone to develop their global export market and I got the job. This is when I really started travelling the world and from where all the stories in my book come from.

My wife played a major role in helping me to write. She allowed me to disappear into my study for hours every day and reviewed every chapter as I completed them. As a Training Manager she was used to writing training courses on Business Management and like me, had an eye for grammar and punctuation. My black labrador also liked to help by sitting at my feet and keeping me company in the study.

Yes very much so! It is a very personal and revealing account of that particular period of my life and I didn’t know whether I had “opened up” too much. Although they are all true stories, I did change a lot of characters’ names and even asked permission from some to mention them by name. When I started to get wonderful reviews published, my worries were quashed.

The first and most challenging was whether my memory could recall all the events and conversations necessary to write the stories accurately. Fortunately I used to keep detailed diaries which I had kept plus my huge collection of photographs. I started by compiling an Excel Spreadsheet so I could get all the events down in chronological order and make notes on what specific things I wanted to describe. Then, as I was writing, I would have the relevant photos in front of me which transported me back to that time. I got so engrossed with each story that it felt as if I was actually re-living them. I even sat in front of the computer crying when it came to the sad bits! I must have got the emotions right as many of my reviewers, including grown men, told me that they too had burst into tears. After a session of writing it took me some time to get my mindset back to the present.

Other than the experiences described in my book, my most memorable travel experience has to be a safari across the whole of Tanzania and witnessing the Great Wildebeest Migration from a hot air ballon over the Serengeti at dawn. From 2000 feet up all you could see was a column of animals stretching from horizon to horizon. There were over 2 million animals running in line, sending up huge clouds of dust that could be seen for miles. When we landed we were served a full breakfast with champagne, sitting in the middle of nowhere with an armed guard at either end of the table. It was surreal.

Immensely enjoyable and rewarding. I experienced so many different places and saw the world at someone else expense. Mind you I worked hard for it and spent at least 220 days per year away from home.

When I started writing I had no idea what I was going to call it. I found some software on a publishing site that enabled you to input a title and it would tell you the percentage chance of it becoming a Bestseller based on some algorhythms which had been tried and tested. Every time I thought of something I tried it out but kept getting very low scores. As my stories included a series of very personal relationships around the world and one particular love story, I wanted the title to reflect travel and unrequited love. Six months into writing, my wife and I had a holiday in India where we visited lots of temples, palaces and other tourist attractions. I kept hearing the guides talk about the King’s “concubines" and showing us where they lived in the palaces. I looked it up in a dictionary and Bingo - the perfect word. A concubine is defined as a woman with whom a man can have a physical relationship but cannot marry for several constraints, one of them being that they are the King and are already married.

It sounded better and more appropriate than “Mistress”. I commissioned a local art student to design a cover for me and she came up with a brilliant idea. She did three artists impressions of cityscapes, all relevant to the stories, and they were Moscow, Hong Kong and London. So we had Comrades in Moscow, Concubines in Hong Kong and Lovers in London. Perfect. As it happened, it got a very good score when I tested it. As well as getting great reviews for the stories I have also had a lot of complements on the cover.

I had a wonderful review on BBC Radio Wales and sold ten books the next day as a result.

If I could have done something differently it would have changed my future from that point onwards so perhaps I would not be here now, enjoying my retirement. I like where I am now so if I had to suffer some hardships to get here, it was worth it.

I think I have actually achieved it. I have written a book about my life which has sold internationally and given other people a lot of enjoyment. I have opened a lot of peoples eyes to world events that they were not aware of and quite shocked them when they read my accounts.

First of all decide if you are writing for the fun of it or writing to make a living out of it. If you are writing for a living, write what people want to buy - not what you want to write. Make sure you research your story line well and get the chronology correct.

I have been asked by several readers, including the BBC Radio presenter, if I am going to write a follow up. I do have plenty of material to work with but I think it is too early to consider this. Also my wife does not want to lose me in the study for another year!

Very helpful. Loved the weekly banners.