How would you feel walking out of a totally normal life into something closer to a Robert Ludlum thriller? Everything changes. Suddenly. Real becomes unreal. Normal, abnormal. True becomes false. Fact becomes fiction... You don't know where to turn or, more importantly, to whom.Well, that's what happened to me... I stumbled, the proverbial innocent abroad, from what was supposed to be a straightforward business deal into a lunatic world populated by characters unlike any others I'd ever met. Violent, unpredictable, devious, malevolent, treacherous and, ultimately, evanescent. And, because of this it was almost impossible to comprehend what exactly was actually happening to me - and around me. The worst of all was the waiting...for people...for phone calls...for outcomes...for instructions. Waiting, always, for tomorrow...For tomorrow, and the meeting with President Marcos in Malacanang Palace, a meeting which never eventuated. Waiting until days became weeks, and the weeks became months. Then, in quick succession, my so-called colleague defected to some attempted take-over merchants, and I was placed under House Arrest by President Marcos.... It's near-impossible to convey just how psychologically pulverising, physically debilitating, and how terrifying that waiting was for an ordinary bloke...The sense of isolation, of exposure, of powerlessness and of insignificance was enormously brutalising...My days were a dreadful, gut-cramping cocktail of anger, frustration, helplessness, at-times-uncontrollable terror, bewilderment and gross confusion, lost in a Rubix-cubed maze.
About the Author: UK born but a naturalised Australian. Apart from an ill-judged foray into property development and international finance which produced the true events that this novel describes, he was an English teacher and lecturer in teacher education in Zimbabwe and New Zealand; a producer and designer of curriculum resources and customised media services and facilities in Fiji, Australia and the UK. He retired several years ago as Sony Professor and Director of the Sony Media Centre at the University of Sunderland, UK. Now divides his time between the UK and South-West France, where he and partner, Sue, have over the last four years or so converted a dilapidated cow and tractor shed - "romantic barn conversion" in real estate parlance - into a rough-and-tumble holiday home where their combined families (five children and nine grandchildren) can spend happy holiday times. But he still calls Australia "home..".