How Hull man Andrew Groizard became a writer after health crisis
People become authors after all kinds of life experiences but the route described by Andrew Groizard is most unusual. Andrew, 59, spent his earliest years in London until his father got a job with what was British Aerospace in Hull.
After studying politics and philosophy at the University of Hull, Andrew went on to have his own building company and became a freelance project manager, he explains.
Now living in the Mount Pleasant area of the city, he says: “Eight years ago, at the height of my career, when I was building hotels, nursing homes, making a lot of money, I suddenly got diagnosed with cancer.”
It was Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, says Andrew, for which he received chemotherapy in a hospital down south.
The treatment rid him of cancer, he says, but “as they pulled the chemo line out my arm, it sent a blood clot to my brain”.
He says: “It destroyed all my frontal lobe and your frontal lobe is speech, creativity, personality, motivation, everything that makes you who you are, basically.”
Some months after he had car accident and began to have epileptic seizures, for which he now takes medication.
He says: “That went on for a whole year. I then, at the end of that year, could remember every single idea or concept or thing I've been exposed to for all of my life. All these memories came flooding back like a dump of information into my brain, and all these ideas manifested themselves into concepts for stories. So I've now drafted out book after book after novel after novel after novel of potential stories and characters. I'm now up to nearly 70 potential books.”
The theory, he says, is that “somehow, because of my high IQ, my brain knew it was dying, and it downloaded the front to the back. It's my caveman brain that is doing the work but that unlocked a hidden talent to write, and all these memories”.
Writing under the pen name Andrew Charles, his first book, Nature vs Nurture: Diary of a Serial Killer, came out in spring last year. It’s about a teenager who is “obsessed with death and doesn't know where this obsession comes from,” says Andrew, adding that it is full of twists and involves the main character’s aunt, who is a murder profiler for the police.
His second, Can You See What's Coming?, was published last month. Andrew says: “It’s a collection of short stories with twist endings that explore morality and real life scenarios we find ourselves in.
"One’s about about internet dating, one’s about revenge on a father, one’s about revenge on a boss, one's a romance, one's about how important animals are in our life...”
Andrew has released his works through Austin Macauley Publishers but his dream is to write for platforms such as film and television, to find a bigger audience.
“Whatever platform would allow me to get my work out there,” he says.
For more information, visit: www.austinmacauley.com/author/andrew-charles-3b9