Adrian Collins

Writing about who I am is a weird thing to do. It’s actually a pretty difficult thing to do without sounding like a bit of a spanner, to be honest. I'll just promise not to do it in the third person like most authors and we'll go from there.

So, who am I?

I’m a pretty average bloke living in Sydney, Australia. I love rugby, cricket, the surf, beers with the guys and am an utterly obsessive reader and writer. I work in the city with a great group of people in the world’s most interesting profession: tax.

A lot of people are lucky in sport, work, collecting football cards, walking down the road without tripping, picking out the good B grade movies from the abhorrent ones where you wish you could get that 2 hours of your life back but can’t, etc. I tend not to be. The one thing I can say for my luck, however, is that it really came to the party when my group of mates developed over the last 15 years. Without them and my awesome family I would not, and could not, be the person I am today.

Why do I write about what I write about?

I am an obsessive reader. Probably compulsive too. I was the kid in primary and high school going to sleep at his desk not because he was a bad-arse who hung out with the older kids all night trying his first cigarette or drinking from a goon sack while his parents sat at home worrying, but because he’d stayed up till 4:00am, completely engrossed in the Robinson Crusoe, or some other awesome novel. The same happened at uni, except I would just sleep straight through class in bed, instead of bothering to walk down the epic hill at SCU to get to class. Quite literally anything I could get my hands on, I read.

Anything where there are large scale battles and a chance for heroism and evil to knock heads, where there is a little side story of espionage or big side serving of betrayal, where there is a little magic to add spice to the flavour without overwhelming the meal; that is what you’ll find me reading and watching.

That is why you’ll find me writing dark, bloody adventure on an epic scale.

What got me started down this path?

Shield of Secunda had been written three or four times prior to one fateful day (being New Year’s Day 2011), when I woke up with an absolutely BELTING hangover from a long day and night of excess with but one thing on my mind; to get my work out there. To put my mind and spirit to the test and to actually finish something I cared about, for once.

I wiped 80,000 words I'd been working on since the age of 14 from existence, and started over. The storyline changed, the characters changed, and a year and a half down the track I had published through Phoenix Press.

One of the things I love about being alive is you never know where you are going to end up, who you are going to meet, and how any action or consequence will affect your life. I personally cannot wait to see where this journey takes me.