A little about M.K.

I write. A lot.

Countless documents, reports, appraisals, recommendations, pitches, and the whole gamut of business communications. Scattered to all corners of the world, in dusty filing cabinets, in university libraries, archived on various server drives and, I ardently hope, influencing decisions which make the world a better place in some small way.

But that's my day job.

Then, from behind my nom de plume, M. K. South, I'm free to explore my passions. Whilst many and varied, the passion that drives my creative writing is how seemingly impossible relationships ignite and blossom, to survive... or fail.

I have no illusion that my past has all to do with this: being mixed race, the offspring of culturally disparate parents, and growing up in an unrestricted war, I witnessed the collapse of an empire, the birth of new nations, the evolution of enemies into friends as well as the other way round. Culture fascinates me. History fascinates me. But most of all, people fascinate me.

With such a foundation, it's hardly surprising that my life has taken unusual turns. Today I find myself living in Asia, but I'm equally at home in America, the UK or any of the former USSR nations. I have been fortunate to travel the world by train, ship, aeroplane and motorcycle. My partner is a Brit, a former enemy no less. But then, isn't love the greatest conqueror of all?

Although English is not my first language (and I have three to choose from), it's the language I think in, write in and engage in daily. I swap between American and UK English, as befits the characters in my stories. Each story is a journey into which I fully immerse myself, embracing the research as a learning opportunity, which adds to the satisfaction of completing the work.

As for genres… What about genres?

All right, so I don't like to be 'framed', and also have a tendency to defy authority. I hate caging myself within a particular genre, under the premise it would help my book to 'fit' on the shelf with a genre tag at a local bookshop. Life is not like that, so why should fiction? Life is wonderfully messy, heartwarming, complicated and sometimes brutal. I feel a story should reflect this reality and not patronize the reader with some prescriptive imitation.