Rick Hoskin is a retired physiotherapist, brought up in Auckland, schooled in private boarding schools, who became blind at seventeen. He spent six years in London training and working in physiotherapy and, more than thirty-five years ago, arrived back in New Zealand to work his private practice in Glenfield on Auckland’s North Shore. At school, his strengths were in maths and science, and it is only in the last twenty years that Rick’s interest in writing has grown. More recently, for a decade he was involved with the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind as Chair of the Board. This was greatly fulfilling for Rick, giving back in one way or another for the excellent support and services that he has received throughout the years. The stories have been developed from bed-time tales which were told to his children in their earlier days. Being blind, Rick couldn’t read them the many traditional stories found in print, so he developed narratives that encompassed his children’s early lives, enmeshed with many of his own childhood memories. For Rick, it was easy to call on his early life experiences where there was always some adventure on the boil. The girls’ enthusiasm for the stories led Rick to jot down the storyline, and now, more than two decades later and with grandchildren growing up, he has been prompted to put pen to paper and publish. The advent of improved and specialized speech screen readers has allowed Rick to work in the Microsoft Windows and Word environment, and now the words can flow with a reasonable opportunity to write and edit.
