I started writing fiction in my mid-twenties. I was working as a copywriter in advertising when I was struck down with a post-viral condition. For two years I was unable to go back to work. I sat around, read a great deal and, when I had the energy, tried to write stories. A success in the 1991 Time Out short story competition gave me the confidence to write some more. Once well enough I returned to the day job but kept going with the stories and had a number published in various magazines including The New Statesman and Paris Review as well as broadcast on BBC Radio. During this time I started writing a novel that was eventually published as The Testimony Of Taliesin Jones. The novel won three prizes including the 1997 Somerset Maugham Award and, a couple of years later, was made into a film starring Jonathan Pryce. Buoyed by this I wrote a second novel, Jesus And The Adman, published in 1999, and began to have thoughts of giving up the day job to write fiction full time.
In 2002 I tried my hand at writing screenplays and in 2004 BBC Drama commissioned me to write a single film - Mr Harvey Lights A Candle - that was broadcast the following year and starred Timothy Spall. I wrote for two seasons of Silent Witness and was just settling down to the new day job when I was asked to write a book about the Aids pandemic for the Salvation Army. I agreed and ended up making a 9-month journey, with my wife and two children, to Africa, India and China. Whilst we travelled I did broadcasts for the BBC World Service and Radio 4's Thought For The Day - to which I had been a regular contributor since 2001. The book describing that journey - More Than Eyes Can See - was published in 2007. In 2009 I wrote a feature - Africa United - which went on general release in October 2010.
A year later I pitched a story that was based on my grandfather's experiences in post war Germany to Ridley Scott's film company and a script was commissioned. But I'd always wanted to write it as a novel so, whilst writing the screenplay, I started writing the book. I wrote fifty pages, showed them to my agent, and she got a publishing deal from Penguin. I spent the next 18 months writing the rest and The Aftermath was published in the UK this summer. It is, so far, being translated in 21 languages.
For more information on Rhidian Brook or The Aftermath, visit his website at www.rhidianbrook.com or like the Facebook fan-page - Rhidian Brook.