In 2006 Brian was scuba diving off a small island near the coast of Phuket when his dive buddy frantically pointed at a small underwater rock formation that Brian was just passing. Brian turned to see a huge moray eel with a head the size of a football staring at him.

Brian started to back away slowly, but instead of attacking, the eel turned and wound its way into a crevice. That incident is not yet in one of Brian’s books, but one day it might well be. A lot of Brian’s real life adventures end up in his books, (in fictional disguise of course!) Whether it is an attack by a vicious swarm of wasps, being bullied at school, or skimming the surface of the ocean in a tiny seaplane, Brian loves to use real incidents as the basis for the stories in his books.

A recent face-to-face encounter with a deadly king cobra, a ride on an elephant with a mind of its own, and a long distance flight with a flatulent fellow passenger, are all lodged away somewhere waiting for the right moment to emerge in a story.

Even at school Brian knew that he wanted to be a writer. It took him thirty years to realise that dream with his first junior novel published in 2003.

He studied computers at university (college) but dropped out to pursue his love of writing. He trained as a journalist, and then worked as a reporter and an advertising copywriter, a radio announcer and an Internet developer before finally becoming an author.

Brian lives on the North Shore of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, with his wife and two children. They have two dogs. His hobbies are amateur theatre, photography, rugby (both union and league), cycling and travel.

Here are some more things you might not know about Brian Falkner:

• He was once a carry-over champion on Wheel of Fortune
• He speaks Cantonese
• He really sucks at poetry, so when he needed a poem for his book Super Freak, he ‘borrowed’ one from his daughter, Laura, (then 12 years old)
• He is an award winning website developer
• He built the ‘BATSE’ website for The Tomorrow Code
• The Story Wizard on his website is actually Brian in disguise
• He runs for an hour every night
• Both his hands just have a single line across the palm (sometimes known as the Simian Crease) a rare quirk that he shares with former British PM Tony Blair
• On stage he has played the wizard in the Wizard of Oz, the Fiddler in Fiddler on the Roof, and Santa Claus in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.
• His favourite movie is The Matrix.
• His favourite television show ever was a 1970’s British series called The Professionals

Here are some articles about Brian.

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Here is a photo of Brian that you can download

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