R. M. McLeod

About R.M. McLeod

 

As many readers will know, Cumbria is home to the English Lake District and along with its mountains, valleys and forests is an outstandingly beautiful county, attracting visitors from all over Britain, Europe and the far corners of the world. For R.M. McLeod, Cumbria is also a place of inspiration, a land where, he advises. 'Even on the darkest of winter days, my spirits can be lifted just by looking out of one of the windows of my Lakeland cottage.'

Now a full-time novelist and ghostwriter, R.M. McLeod was born in Cheshire, England and after studying engineering, worked for many years for an engineering insurance company, carrying out inspections on insured items subjected to high pressure and great stress. His work would take him to numerous interesting locations as diverse as nuclear power stations, North Sea gas rigs, prisons and even monasteries and convents. In the 1980's he came to and settled in Cumbria, there to work on the UK's nuclear submarine programme.

R.M. McLeod is married, has two children, four grandchildren, a Border collie named Pip and a loving, extremely vocal and highly mischievous Maine Coon cat who goes by the name of Penny. It was Penny who, in part, helped  inspire the character of Bucket, the always moaning and forever hungry goblin who has become such a firm favourite of the Charlie Braithwaite stories.

 

Always a  committed animal lover, this affection for the creatures with whom we share our small planet is brilliantly evidenced in the gripping children's supernatural adventure story The Ghosts of Badger Wood, coming soon and well worth a read.

By modern standards, R.M. McLeod's novels are not overly long. This is quite deliberate as his aim is to have young, reluctant readers, wish to start and then stay with a story; a goal he achieves with consummate skill. 'Every word counts,' he maintains, 'and therefore my motto is - do not waste a single one of them.' 

To ensure that he is 'on message' with his target readership, R.M. McLeod has ‘road tested' some of his his children's novels at a school in Northern England – the results were very pleasing.

Red Panda Press