1) I am an alien…apologies I am deep into writing my third and final book of my first Zein trilogy and you become so immersed in your writing that you become one with it! I am actually a Mancunian from sunny Manchester in the United Kingdom, some may say that my first statement is more accurate than placing 'sunny' in front of Manchester. I am married and have two children, Joe who is nearly 21 and Becky who is 17…though I had them when I was incredibly young so I am still very youthful.

Graham J Wood

Graham J Wood

2) I really do believe there are aliens. Just can't accept that we are the only life in the Universe. Sometimes I think Russel Brand is one but that is taking it too far, I think?

3) I had a slight speech impediment when I was really young and my younger sister always spoke for me until the frustration boiled over when I was six years old and I thumped my older brother…on the basis I could not hit a girl of course. Its ok, my brother forgave me, eventually. However, my parents acted and I had speech elocution lessons which cured my speech impediment but also created a love of fiction books from all the reading that I was encouraged to do. Not non-fiction you will note…too dry for me.

4) When I was 15 years old I wrote my first play called ' Taming of the Shoe' which was a take on Shakespeare's, Taming of the Shrew. The play took the characters from the Taming of the Shrew and gave them characters based on the different types of shoes you could buy at the time, each loosely tied (pardon the pun) with the character type. It was a humorous writing of course and I had to stand up in front of two hundred people at The Rotary Club, a public speaking association, and I came second. But the sight I enjoyed the most was the astonishment of my parents watching their previously shy and post speech impediment son spouting this incredibly insane adaption of a famous play.

5) The book I fell in love with was Lord of the Rings. For years I wanted it to become a film and you can guess my astonishment when it did eventually hit our screens. I may have been in my thirties but on that day I was just a kid at heart.

6) My first novel I wrote but didn't finish was a love story surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. I do have to point out that this was ten years before the actual event and was about a retired soldier who attempts to rescue his daughter who has disappeared in East Germany and is part of the non-violent struggle to bring down the Berlin Wall. However, she is pursued by the secret police and he decides to attempt to rescue her. Then life got in the way and before you know it the Berlin Wall had fallen - so inconvenient…that's when I decided the first book I have published is in the science-fiction genre. Surely there cannot be alien cities above us protected by extraordinary technology…or is there?

7) If a picture has been shown with this blog then I can confirm that once I did have hair! Recently at a wedding the happy couple had brought in a photo booth for people to dress up in and have a laugh at the mad photos produced. I found an Amy Winehouse wig…well it brought it all back and boy didn't I look different...

8) After years of procrastinating and not starting my book it was the bravery of my daughter that spurred me on. At the age of 14 we suddenly found out that her heart was not connected to her descending aorta and she had to have open heart surgery. It was in those long nights beside her bed as she recovered that, to take my mind off what she was going through, I pulled together my first novel, Zein: The Prophecy. When I put fingers to keyboard I could not hold back on my emotions and some of the writing captures the despair and fear that I felt at the time.

9) There will be three self-contained trilogies on Zein. The 2nd trilogy will be set in the future and will follow the exploits of the children of the heroes and villains of the 1st trilogy. The 3rd and final trilogy will be the prologue on how the aliens came to Earth in the first place.

10) My ultimate dream, apart from my family being blessed with long lives and happiness, is that my books become films and maybe, just maybe there will be a child out there who has read Zein: The Prophecy and hopes that one day he or she will see the story come to life in front of them on the big screen and spend the first 5 minutes pinching his or her skin to test they are not dreaming. Enjoy.