They say that we all have a book inside of us and perhaps that's true. We all have a life story but what is it that makes us get to work and actually write? The idea behind writing 'The Death of a Smoker' was something that happened to me whilst working in a small Cambridge Science Park company. I imported a chicken virus vaccine, unaware that it was a potential bioweapon and the company supplying it was based in a country classed as an unfriendly power. I was sent a copy of the ‘Rules and Regulations for the Prevention of Proliferation of Chemical and Biological Warfare’, anonymously with no cover letter. After that interesting things happened. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the company was headed up by a former spy and we did have a visiting Soviet scientist. It would, I felt, make an interesting novel, though I should point out there were no deaths and 'The Death of a Smoker' is a work of fiction. Later, whilst killing time on a business trip to London, a blue door in Tufton Street, next to an ecclesiastical supplier, caught may attention and my curiosity. What lay behind that blue door?
- tonyauffret