Who Heck Richard?

Who am I? I'm a writer, journalist, and freelance producer of many other things involving words - some funny, some serious, some even correctly spelled. Apologies for the photo on the right. Accidentally left the lens cap off when taking it. Never claimed to be photogenic. Diet book's not coming out any time soon.

My day job is Features Editor on the UK computing magazine PC Plus, but I've done a pretty wide range of things, including fiction, speaking at events, some comics stuff, design, scripting, and on a few cases, even a little marketing copy.

I'd like to focus more on the creative side in the next few years, and find some projects I can really sink my teeth into. There'll be a book at some point, I'm sure. People who think I'm harsh on games and other products have no idea how much harder I am on my own stuff. That said, I'm always interested in hearing about new opportunities - if you'd like to hire my services for something fun, operators are standing by.

More generally, I'm a practicing skeptic, with a deep love of trivia and mythology, I watch a ridiculous amount of comedy and cartoons, and play one heck of a lot of games. I tend to gravitate towards the ones that focus on narrative; on story, character, and ideally come with a sense of humour. I also like travelling, except for the actual 'travelling' part, where planes and getting up at 4AM to catch a train get in the way of not being trapped in a metal coffin for ten hours.

I speak French reasonably well, and German exceptionally badly. In the event of an accidental rift in the space time continuum, I could also manage a little polite Latin, but not about anything useful. I have ten toes. I don't drink or smoke. No, really. Never developed a taste for alcohol, never felt tempted by cigarettes. Chips, they're a different story. Mmm, chips. With Coke. And lots of salt.

None of this matters, but there you go.

As Seen In...

And a fair few more I don't have pictures of right now, including a couple of short-story books, the Second Edition of Windows XP In A Nutshell, which I updated for Windows XP SP2, and a small stack of magazines and websites past and present.