Martin Booth is a retired Science and IT teacher who swapped writing work sheets and lesson plans for short story fiction. Born in Nottingham, he moved to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1973 to study at the University. A career as a microbiologist followed until redundancy caused a change in ideas, leading to a second career in teaching. Martin retrained as a Science teacher and spent 20 years creating havoc in the classroom, baffling senior staff and bemusing but inspiring pupils. While teaching Information Technology, many of the exercises could be explained using exemplar materials. Rather than use previously prepared ones, Martin would conjure up strange and wonderful worlds, characters and even his own political party, The Penguin Alliance (motto - Change, Reform and Fish). Later, his subversive writings were used to ease the pain of his school closing (which he assures us is nothing to do with him) and amuse the staff. Once retired, Martin became full time carer for his wife, Kate, who suffers from MS and started to write short story fiction, which has led to this book. Martin has three grown-up children and two cats, and lives a busy and somewhat chaotic life in a village in Northumberland.