What was it that gave you the idea to write this particular book? What was the inspiration behind it?
I wanted to demonstrate how significant personal change can be achieved by adhering to certain key cognitive components, particularly following a traumatic experience. Rather than write a non-fiction book, I wanted to show, as though through a real life story, how the process could be started. Of greater significance to me still, was to present the principal characters as people in whom most readers would find an echo.

What was the most difficult thing about writing the Book?
With a cognitive behavioural plan in mind, it was a challenge coping with the natural expectations of the characters to behave as they wished rather than comply with my plan. Most people do not live their lives to a plan. Yet experience has taught me, that wanting to and having a plan to achieve change or some accomplishment does pay huge dividends.

Of which facet of the Book are you the most proud?
I am passionate about the latent ability vested in each of us to shed behaviours and habits that can have inhibited us, even for decades. I am proud that I have been able to create a story which is readable but which enables the hero, Jonathan, to follow an acknowledged cognitive path to unlock parts of himself which have made him unhappy and unfulfilled.

Do you have a special place or system for writing?
Fortunately No! This gives me much further flexibility. I have written some of Squaring Circles on a train and even on a tube train. As to a writing system, I write the first three pages or so. Next I write the last three pages. Then I plan the journey the leading character makes in the book from the beginning to the end. Then I write it and finally I refine it.

Are you currently working on any other books?
Yes. This time I am writing a book through the eyes of a woman, trying to break free of constraining habits and behaviours while based at home.

Is there a particular central message you wanted to convey to the readers?
Yes. It is never too late to overcome mental and emotional gremlins that can have plagued us for years, and that it be achieved with the help of complete strangers.

If you were re-writing the book, is there anything you would do differently?
No. I find that at some point I have to sign off the book as done and I have done that. If I do not do that, for me it then remains umfinished and rankles with me!

Do you have any advice to pass on to aspiring authors?
Just write and write, first and foremost to please yourself and find and cement the desire in you to write and write. Then, and only then begin to hone your writing skills!

As an author, is there book you wish you had written yourelf?

Yes. “A Road Less Travelled” by Scott Peck.