After a career as a teacher
and principal of mainly small rural schools, Ross Richdale
lives in the small university city of Palmerston North
in the North Island of New Zealand where he writes contemporary
novels and sagas full time, while his wife, Kay, carries
the burden of teaching children at a local primary (elementary)
school. He is married with three children.
Ross has always had an interest in the written word
and has been a constant reader of current events magazines
and newspapers. As a youngster, he used to grab his
elder sister's magazines that came from England and
read about boarding schools with secret tunnels and
mysterious headmistresses who invariably went missing
and were replaced by a draconian assistant. He preferred
these stories to those in the boys' magazines of the
time that were mainly about sports or war. As a teenager,
he'd slip into the local library and read overseas newspapers
to pick up exotic stories or study the advertisements
or television programs of far away cities. He preferred
articles where his mind was pulled to distant places
and adventures. Later, he wrote stories to stimulate
the children he taught in his classes and ideas were
expanded into full-length stories that disappeared into
dusty files. He found writing fiction for children was
not stimulating enough so he switched to writing adult
novels and that continues to the present time.
In his suburban home, Ross pounds away on an ancient
Macintosh to form the plots for his novels. After his
wife and daughter go off to work every morning, he shares
his workspace with a black and white cat, who demands
to be fed at least six times a day, and a goldfish called
Survivor. The name comes from the fish's ability to
survive after having been dropped in a glass aquarium
that was totally shattered and outlived her compatriots
when poisoned water plants were inadvertently added
to their bowl.
When he is not writing, Ross enjoys drawing, usually
on the computer. Other interests include wandering in
the countryside and, in the summer, swimming in mountain
streams or bounding through the rapids in a large inner
tube tire.
His interest in current events and international incidents
serve as a backdrop for many of his novels. Ordinary
people rather than the super rich super powerful or
violent, are the main characters in his stories. Often
a tiny article read is expanded into a full sized novel
after research and the use of his vivid imagination.
His plots also reflect his interest in the rural lifestyle
as well as the cross section of personalities encountered
during his years as a teacher.
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