ABOUT ME
I am a writer living in Birchington-on-Sea, in the South of England. Born in Ireland in 1940, I have spent a lot of my life living and working in foreign places such as South Africa, Australia, England and France.
My mother had always told me that I should write as my great Uncle was John Synge the Irish playwright who lived in Dublin around the end of the 19th Century. She said, rather illogically that I looked like him, so she was sure that I could write like him.
As a young man, I loved reading books written by Hammond Innes and Alistair Maclean. They were enthralling adventure and mystery novels. A feature of both these writers was that they didn’t use masses of murders and sex to embellish their stories.
I have tried to take on board both these writers approach to writing and tell my stories in a similar manner. If my heroes travel to some foreign place in the course of their adventure, I want to make it authentic for the reader, so I always go and visit the place and see for myself what actually goes on there. I want the reader to visualise the place and smell the smells of life there.
My first book, ‘The Smiles and Tears of Love’, is probably out of character for me. It is an historical romance based on my grandmother’s life. One day I was staying with my sister at her home in Ireland and she showed me letters she had come in possession of which had been sent by my grandfather from the World War One trenches to my grandmother. She had been living with her parents in Ireland at the time. I decided to write a fictional account of her life. During my period living in South Africa, I had picked up other details about her life when she was stationed with her husband in Pretoria, in 1912.
I then got onto the genre that I am most comfortable with and wrote The Diamond Chain. This is a Mystery/Crime/Adventure story introducing Major Vince Hamilton, a private investigator.
My next novel was totally different as I wanted to see how The Diamond Chain performed before I wrote a sequel. ‘War Brothers’ is an emotional tale about twin brothers born in 1917 which was the wrong time for a simple life. One twin is brought up by his mother in Germany and the other by his father in the north of England. You'll have to read the book to find out more about the difficulties that they face and how they meet by chance. It probably is my favourite book out of the ones I have written to date.
I have published three more books in the genre of The Diamond Chain which you can see on the Books page of this website. I have also published another book on the German navy in World War Two which is called The Terpitz Legacy.
I have had fun writing them, so I hope that you enjoy reading them.
I have published my autobiography over my own name, Ray Cantan. It is called WHY ME? There is also another publication over my own name which is called God is in Control. It is my Christian Testimony.