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Hi, I am Kevin Futers, the author of the Adventures of the Billy Goats Gruff.

I was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1968 and after a young childhood spent around the UK, my family settled down in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was here that I grew up and as a young lad with the strong feeling of being Scottish (and being reminded regularly of my accent). I never really noticed that I had become a Geordie until I went to (of all places, you might say!) Sunderland Polytechnic.

By that time I had already met my future wife and had fallen in love not just with her but with what I can only describe as my home; my city (Newcastle) and my county (Northumberland).

It is a strange path that took me took me from Environmental Studies at Sunderland to an MA in Anglo-Saxon Studies at Newcastle, but the route was always via writing and to a large part reading as well. My inspirations are largely in Fantasy and to a lesser extent Sci-Fi, but in my early twenties I gained a fascination for all things Arthurian in fiction, stemming from reading Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave. There came a point however when there were only so many retellings of the same material you could read and so I looked around and found that there was a body of other books set at around the same time but without the divisive and restrictive figure of Arthur. The most influential of these was Ragnarok by Anne Thackerey, a book that took me away from my cosy Celtic Twilight romanticism into the cold dawn of Anglo-Saxon expansion. I found that I was more at home there, for of course I was back full circle to The Hobbit, the first book that I can remember being read to me (thanks George!).

It became clear to me that this was something I needed to know more about. As someone who has always been a writer, it opened up new avenues. A book that I was anxious to write gained Anglo-Saxon elements before being dropped in favour of a new concept, which in time would become "The Adventures of the Billy Goats Gruff."

I still go for romanticism (but not necessarily romance) by the bucketload but I hope that I have picked up enough of a respect for my favoured period so that I do not ride rough-shod over period detail. I never cease to rail against depictions of peoples and events that are just the way that Hollywood sees history.

I am currently looking for a publisher for my latest work, which follows the life of a Welsh bard through success, failure and slavery to become an influential scop amongst the English. Once this has been completed, I have several ideas for new books awaiting their time to flourish.

The rest of the blurb on my book says that I live with my wife, four children and two lurchers, but that is only part of the story and those details themselves are already a little out of date. Let us say it is still close enough to represent the truth of the situation.

Hi, I am Kevin Futers, the author of the Adventures of the Billy Goats Gruff. I was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1968 and after a young childhood spent around the UK, my family settled down in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was here that I grew up and as a young lad with the strong feeling of being Scottish (and being reminded regularly of my accent). I never really noticed that I had become a Geordie u... More