Xander Richards

Canadian espionage writer Xander Richards was born sometime in the early sixties in an unremarkable town in western Europe to parents whose stories of their World War Two military experience enthralled him as a child and stoked the fires of his imagination. Inspired by Fleming’s James Bond books, Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels, Tom Clancy’s writings, Alistair MacLean’s stories and many other spy books and espionage thrillers, he started writing fiction at a very early age. After a couple of years in the armed forces Xander was first published—under a different name—in the late eighties. It was around this time that the idea for his first novel was conceived whilst on vacation with friends from the army. The writing was initially started as a film script but due to the pressures of work and family was never completed in that format. Nonetheless, the story stayed with Richards over the next two decades during which time he authored many factual articles, reviews and instructional pieces which were published both in magazines and online. In 2008 Xander decided to take the plunge and author his story as an espionage novel, inspired by J.K. Rowling’s rags-to-riches success story with the Harry Potter series of books. Compiling an enormous amount of espionage, military and geographical research, he wrote at every possible opportunity. A screenwriter friend reviewed the completed work leading to a number of beneficial changes and then Xander started looking into options for publication. Xander Richards describes himself as ‘an ordinary fella with regular interests and pastimes’. These include cars, photography, movies and garage sales. Xander lives in Saskatchewan, Canada with his wife Mindy. They have four adult children and four grandchildren.