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Where did I come from? Where did I go? Am I even called Joe?!? What does ‘cotton-eye’ even mean?!?
Answers to all these questions and more are available for the low, low ….
*Ahem* anyway… at the risk of repeating my About page schpiel (I promise I will talk about other stuff in future posts), my name is Rick Keys and I am a Chartered Engineer. I am a pipeline engineer from 9-5(ish) and this pays the bills.
I love fantasy, the bigger the world the better. Particular favourites are the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (and latterly Brandon Sanderson) and Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I do also enjoy stand alone fiction, thrillers, wartime memoirs, science fiction, classics and popular science; but I definitely spend most of my reading on fantasy.
I grew up in Northern Ireland doing the usual stuff, playing rugby, going to school and reading novels.
At the age of 18; bright eyed and bushy tailed, I moved to Edinburgh (Scotland) to start my degree in Mechanical Engineering. I graduated in 2012 and started as a consultant subsea and pipeline engineer and I have been doing this ever since.
I started working with authors in 2016 and I have enjoyed it immensely. Being able to not only help an author realise their ambition of writing a book, but being behind the scenes and helping to improve it along the way has been extremely rewarding.
This has led me to the conclusion that maybe I should have a proper go at this. That means setting up a business and a website, and here we are… (welcome, buy here!)
I am currently based in Aberdeen (Scotland) with my lovely and supportive wife and my trouble finding daughter. I still do my day job but I am going to give this whole writer coaching thing a proper shake. I spend my spare time playing guitar, coaching authors, doing DIY and of course, reading.
My love affair with reading began when I picked up Mr J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ at the tender age of 13 (LOTR was tackled a little later in life at 17). Since then I have been reading and loving series after series, with occasional forays into other genres. I am one of these people who wishes they read more factual material (and sometimes I succeed) but can’t help but find myself tumbling through someone else’s world. I love it.
Another love of mine is logical consistency. Well, perhaps I hate its absence rather than love its presence. Either way, I like helping authors add it to their work. I can spot it a mile off. I can sense a hint of it and start pulling on the thread. Sometimes you can talk me down. Sometimes it will result in rewriting sections of a chapter, but the result will be a robust manuscript.
Lastly (and perhaps most importantly) there’s the question of actually getting it done. Getting words from your brain to the screen. Overcoming the blank page.
A large part of engineering is project management (it’s one of five core competencies examined for achieving Chartership†). A large part of project management is managing contractor deliverables; on time and on budget, on behalf of a client. I propose to make you both the contractor and the client.
I will manage the contractor (you) to deliver the product (words on a page) in order to keep the client (you) happy with both the progress and product quality.
Once we start collaborating you really will be surprised by how much you can get done.
I hope that this blog post has come up on your google search and you decide to buy. I hope that this post has given you an idea of me and my personality, I hope this blog post has inspired you with confidence and you’re ready to go.
Until next time.
Rick
† - Chartership, for those of you that may be wondering, is a professional recognition of competency; in this case engineering competency. It is a measure of not only education but an examination by experienced engineers to say "okay, he's an engineer, he can join the club".
rick@bookonedone.com