Welcome to my website

Perhaps I should begin by introducing myself. My name is Mike Rickett and I am the author of two novels, the first of which, The Poseidon Files, was published about a year ago on Amazon Kindle as an eBook and later as a paperback. The second novel, Kill Joy, was published in October 2021 and possibly through a traditional publisher. a bit later.

More recently in 2021, I have completed A Walk on the Wilder Side, which is partly autobiographical in that the central character is a journalist in 1970 St Helens in Lancashire, UK.

I am a new author in the sense that I only began writing fiction professionally a couple of years ago. Before that I was a daily newspaper journalist having worked for Reuters and the Daily Mail over the years but latterly the Liverpool Daily Post of fond memory.

A second important facet of my life is art. I have a studio in Waterloo on the outskirts of Liverpool and am the founder and leader of an art movement called The Liverpool School which aims to redefine urban art. We currently have 12 members based on Merseyside and the Midlands. I now divide my time between writing and art.

When I set out to write my first novel which ultimately became The Poseidon Files, I wanted to create two things; one was a strong female central character and the other a touch of the occult. Why the occult? Well, I have always enjoyed the spooky tales of M R James, especially at Christmas, and I wanted to find a way of combining the two. And then I remembered my grandparents, or Nain and Taid as they were both called in Welsh. I remember Nain as a lovely, kindly, white-haired old lady who had a way of looking at you as though she was reading your mind. I used to enjoy chatting to them and listening to their stories; how they emigrated to the US and lived in Racine, Wisconsin until the Great Depression; the hardships of returning to the UK and the shortages of food and work. My mother loved the US and never wanted to return to Britain.

I think my favourite story though was my grandmother telling me how she climbed out of her bedroom window to elope with my granddad in 1895. They lived in neighbouring villages in Wales; my granddad in what is now Lake Vyrnwy.

But the most intriguing thing about Nain was her psychic abilities. She would predict events and all manner of things by reading tea leaves but only to the family or people she knew well. And she was never wrong. I think because of that people were a little wary of her. I wasn’t. She was just my gran who used to give me hugs and sweets. I now know that I have some of her psychic abilities.

So, harking back to the central character of my first two novels, I decided that the central character would be a lady in her late 20s who is both an artist and a psychic; two things I know something about. And so, after a period of reflection, Naomi Richards was born.

The other decision I made before setting out on my literary journey followed my reading of the Cormoran Strike detective stories by Robert Galbraith, a nom-de-plume used by Joanne Rowling. I liked the way she brought the streets around London’s Leicester Square to life and I wanted to do the same to the streets of Liverpool. After that all I needed was a good conspiracy theory which I found in the form of HAARP in Alaska, an installation which many people suspected of meddling with the weather. And The Poseidon Files were created. 

That, in short, was my journey that led to the creation of Naomi. I do hope, dear reader, that you enjoy reading Naomi’s adventures as much as I did in creating her. If you would like to be notified about the publication dates for Poseidon or any other titles, please do not hesitate to email me at mikerickett007@yahoo.co.uk