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The Odd Patients was written as a short novel during a 7-day course of antibiotics required immediately prior to heart valve surgery, only being revisited to inject actual experiences during those first 48-hours post-op. Having been alerted to the prospect of a one-in-three chance of not surviving surgery I needed a positive focus to steer me through this prospect, with survival at its core. Alternatively, should I fail to survive, I needed to plot where I was with each of the books mentioned, The Way, Blind Ambition Has A Price, and Prejudice In Love, to help my family to complete them having spent some four years developing the ideas presented. Thankfully my surgery erred on the side of success allowing me to finish them myself. Each is a labour of love dealing with real social issues in today’s world. Having to come to terms with the reality that my career as a senior banker was to be essentially truncated at 57-years old because of health issues, writing books and my blog (www.univest.blog) based on my years of global experience helped to fill my downtime. Each time I thought I could return to my love of international project finance for developing economies I was quickly thwarted by another health issue, including cancer. I am a bear with a sore head when down so there are many people I could acknowledge for their support. Within all my books the primary characters are based on real people or an amalgam thereof, who I know, or have known over the years most of which are truly exceptional people, and a privilege to have met. There are cameo roles for people who had a profound effect on my life. And the events and encounters are all based on real experiences over the years. In this book Roz is based on a real ‘Roz’ I knew in the mid-1980’s. I had a dream just months before my surgery in which I met her, quite by chance, on the streets of London. Why I had this dream, I don’t know, but I remember those days with fondness, and hope she found the happiness she so deserves. Andrea is the amalgam of a magazine editor I know, and a woman who left her education at a private girl’s school confused about who she was, using self-arm as a statement of her frustration. It took her until she was 30-years old to find herself. Even the lovely Avanka was the wonderful head of catering for a previous hospital stay. And Siobhan was reined back using the name of Brunhilde (as in Wagner’s Die Walkure) when she over asserted her matronly ‘charm’.
