My name's John and I am a fantasy writer

Baron Samedi sends greetings from London
At least, I think Sarah said I was to be the blog’s Baron Samedi but it could have been boy Saturday.
Anyhow, my real name is John Lambshead and I will be blogging about writing on Saturdays for the Mad Genius Club. I’m middle-aged, married and have two delightful grown up daughters. I always wanted to be an author but was channelled into the sciences. The British educational system partitioned us into art or science at fourteen. I was educated at Newquay Grammar School, Newquay in Cornwall is Europe’s surf capital, and Brunel University of Technology in West London.
I worked for thirty five years as a research scientist in biodiversity for the British Museum of Natural History and had a research chair at Southampton University. My speciality was deep-sea worms – no kidding.
In this period, I maintained my hobby as a writer. I reviewed board-games and was editor of Games & Puzzles. I supplemented my salary by designing computer games in the eighties; I was best known for Frederick Forsyth’s Fourth Protocol. Jim Baen persuaded me to chance my arm at writing a novel and Lucy’s Blade was born (I wanted to call it Lucy in the Sea with Diamonds but saner people overruled me.
Jumping to the present, I retired last month after publishing my seventy-fifth research paper. It will take me a couple of years to completely disengage from my various grants, students and projects but I am no longer in the front line of strategic research and you know what? I am going to write and write and write.

John Lambshead (ex-geek)