Alexander Gordon Smith

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Alexander Gordon Smith was born in 1979 in Norwich, England, and always wanted to be a writer. After experimenting in the service and retail trades for a few years, Smith decided to go to University. He studied English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, and it was here that he first explored his love of publishing. Along with poet Luke Wright, he founded Egg Box Publishing, a ground breaking magazine and press that promotes talented new authors. He also started writing literally hundreds of articles, short stories and books ranging from Scooby Doo comic strips to world atlases, Midsomer Murders to X-Files. The endless research for these projects led to countless book ideas germinating in his head. His first book, The Inventors, written with his nine-year-old brother Jamie, was published in the U.K. in 2007. He's always been called Gordon, rather than Alexander, and lives in England.



Author's Comment: I often listen to action movie scores on my iPod when I'm out and about. There's something about having The Dark Knight blasting into your brain that makes you feel invincible. I walk at least twice as fast when I've got something like this on, and often have to stop myself breaking into a run and jumping over a moving car (this is where listening to music can be dangerous, as physically I am in no condition to run or jump over anything, I'd just bounce off and get splattered over the road). I listen to scores when I'm driving, too, which is equally dangerous because I feel like I'm in a chase scene and have to repress an almost irresistible urge to barge police cars off the road then floor it off the side of a bridge onto a passing boat. Music is amazing like that, it completely alters your view of yourself and the world. Listen to the right track and you feel as if you can wrestle a bear, or scale a mountain using just your teeth, anything. I's like having a soundtrack to your own life, a soundtrack that turns even the most ordinary activity into a Herculean victory worthy of the big screen. But more than that, it opens your eyes to things you might not have thought about, it widens your horizons, it makes you believe that anything is possible.

Nationality: British