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Frank P. Ryan

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"I'm interested in many things other than writing. I'm a family man, with two children and two grandchildren. Family things occupy quite a lot of my free time. I also like sport and support my local football team, Sheffield Wednesday. I used to play the guitar but these days do more listening than playing. I ran an art gallery for nine years and like the company of artists. I'm heavily involved with science (evolutionary biology, including virology) as well as writing. I've written quite a few novels, including contemporary fiction (Taking Care of Harry), thrillers (Goodbye Baby Blue, Sweet Summer, Tiger Tiger), science fiction (The Doomsday Genie) and fantasy (The Snowmelt River). I'm currently writing the second of an exciting teenage/ ad...more "I'm interested in many things other than writing. I'm a family man, with two children and two grandchildren. Family things occupy quite a lot of my free time. I also like sport and support my local football team, Sheffield Wednesday. I used to play the guitar but these days do more listening than playing. I ran an art gallery for nine years and like the company of artists. I'm heavily involved with science (evolutionary biology, including virology) as well as writing. I've written quite a few novels, including contemporary fiction (Taking Care of Harry), thrillers (Goodbye Baby Blue, Sweet Summer, Tiger Tiger), science fiction (The Doomsday Genie) and fantasy (The Snowmelt River). I'm currently writing the second of an exciting teenage/ adult fantasy novel, with The Snowmelt River only recently published.

I've been working on my teenage/adult fantasy series for quite a while now. The Snowmelt River is beginning to gether some enthusiastic reviews. See the wonderful Glenda A Bixler review here on Authorsden. The first edition, of 8,000 copies, is almost sold out and I have just about completed the second in the series.

I've also been writing science books for two decades, with Virolution published recently, and I and have just completed an important new popular science book, The Mystery of Metamorphosis: A Scientific Detective Puzzle. This is now published - attracting one or two fine early reviews, including New Scientist. I'm currently writing a feature in New Scientist on the subject of the book. There's currently a lot of controversy about one of the personalities in the book, Don Williamson, and his hybridisation theory, but much of this is due to misunderstanding, which I am trying to explain.

People ask me how I can write both science and fiction. The answer, I guess, is that it comes naturally to me. I have always had a foot in both camps, the arts and the sciences. One tends to influence the other. For example, while researching the theme of metamorphosis over the last ten years I have been writing fantasy in which metamorphosis is a major theme. I think that science and the arts are not incompatible. We all have logical and creative sides to us. I know many scientists who have a major interest in music, or books, or sculpture -- and I often hear from people involved with the arts who ask me some searching questions about science.

You know you're at an exciting stage in writing a novel when the characters start to move around inside your head. It kind of got to that stage where the four main characters in the fantasy were just about popping out of my head and demanding attention. Characters in fiction are like that - a little like having real children - and they can also insist on doing their own thing, very much like real children. In the light of this I'd like to thank those visitors to my site on authorsden who have bought Snowmelt, particularly the Kindle e-book version, as well as any of my other books.

I was delighted when the corporation John West picked The Snowmelt River as their "Chosen Book for 2010". I helped them to set up the first teenage fantasy short story competition in Ireland -- and this has now attracted more than 5,000 entrants, a national record I believe.

I was thrilled to bits with Glenda A Bixler's review for AuthorsDen, which is available here. It is certainly having a positive impact on sales of The Snowmelt River, which can be bought from this site. I hope this will encourage other people to believe that AuthorsDen can really help them with their writing.

Finally, I am working with Swift Publishers and the highly reputable website www.fantasybookreview.co.uk, to offer a world-wide fantasy short story competition open to anybody who cares to have a go. There are brilliant prizes and no losers - since every entrant gets a free e-book copy of The Snowmelt River. It's intended to be fun, and I have written a free access bookl(less)

combine editions
Books by Frank P. Ryan

Average rating: 3.66 · 58 ratings · 10 reviews · 29 distinct works

	Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues 3.85 avg rating — 87 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Virolution 4.00 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2009	My rating:
	The Forgotten Plague: How the Battle Against Tuberculosis Was Won - And Lost 4.00 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1993 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Mystery of Metamorphosis: A Scientific Detective Story 3.54 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2011	My rating:
	Darwin's Blind Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection 3.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2002 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told: The Human Story Of The Search For The Cure For Tuberculosis And The New Global Threat 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	My rating:
	Virus X: Understanding The Real Threat Of The New Pandemic Plagues 3.33 avg rating — 3 ratings	My rating:
	The Sundered World 3.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1999 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Snowmelt River by Frank P. Ryan, Mark Salwowski (Illustrator) 2.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2010 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Gymnastics for girls 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1976 — 2 editions	My rating: