About the Author
Author or Charlatan
“Folks, look at me a middle aged man who is brown in colour, Indian by appearance but as a youth mistaken as a Hawaiian, Portuguese, even a Cuban.” I am living the moment as a retired scientist. “Life is made up of moments” said my friend from Texas, whose daughter had just married a nice Jewish boy from Toronto. My moment is now at this stage in time – 2007 and I want a second profession. My first as a Medical Microbiologist was totally absorbing but I left it to travel and as it was closing on that ‘retirement time’ at age 59. So I have chosen to become a writer or author or novelist – I decided to write books.
To date, I have written four novels or books on an eclectic range of topics but I need
reaffirmation. I want to know from you the reading public whether I am on the right tract
or whether because of some literacy I am just a dilettante.
“Write about what you know” said the late Canadian author/novelist Mordecai Richler.
I took him at his word and so wrote “Bacteria, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” Some
of the phraseology is awkward but the content is funny (sorry humorous), has more than
a degree of fact not “voodoo science” with real live anecdotes to break up the monotony
of reading a science book, which is really a book on hygiene designed for the lay public.
Mentioning “Voodoo” above, I chose that as the major topic of the next novel of short stories
entitled “Tales of Myths and Fantasy.” I have been a “sci fi” buff for most of my life and
have rarely missed a Star Trek or Star Wars television flick. I continue to watch them as
reruns and still enjoy them immensely. But the horror movies also grabbed my attention so
using the tales of my childhood, having been born in Trinidad, I developed and bastardized
some of the folk tales to bring on a “hair raising” “goose pimpled” reaction to a few of
the stories. I read some of them and still feel the hair at the back of head standing up
and I know the ending!
On retiring, I had a great deal of time accumulated from work and used it in a sabbatical leave before drawing on my pension package. For just under $22,000.00 dollars my wife and I went around planet Earth for five months. It was a time to write again so the third novel “Around The World on Three Underwear” became a reality. My daughter, who manned the home front and redistributed my e-mails of our daily occurrences to many colleagues and friends, along with our Swiss friends suggested that I write this book. Humor is our companion as is self education and self realization of our physical limitations.
Book number four just released under the title of “Six Decades to Wisdom … (maybe).” This is a “bare all” autobiography of a young lad of East Indian race, born in the island of Trinidad West Indies, travels to the UK in his early twenties and finally is retired after a great career in Canada. Humour (droll it may be, even satirical or subtle), is a prime factor in all the books written to date. I have just completed a series of short stories that are pure fiction, all from the “memories of my mind,” which will be available from this website as an electronic format.
Tell me! Am I on the right track? Forget the bad printing; the off colour covers etc just the facts, Man! on the writing.
Thanks - darryl gopaul.
