“After writing 13 children’s books, I have decided to write adult books,” I told my friends a few years back. “No,” I said, “not that kind of adult.”

You may have heard the book critic’s famous put-down of an author: ‘This author has penned 6 children’s novels. Unintentionally.’ Well I wrote over a dozen children’s novels - intentionally. Then I decided to raise my sights. “From now on I’m going to write adults books,” I said to my friends, after penning multiple series of novels for young readers. “Ooh,” they said, their interest sharpening. “No, not that kind of ‘adult’," I said. "Egypt-based adult thrillers and archaeological adventures.” “Oh,” they said. They were thinking ‘50 Shades of Egypt'. I suppose many adult writers are born as children’s writers. I remember reading Enid Blyton’s ‘Famous Five’ novels – fascinated by the group of jolly-holiday children adventuring on England’s mystery moors as I sweated in a bush town in the heart of Central Africa. To create a suitable atmosphere for reading, I used to draw the curtains and darken my bedroom to make it feel more like misty England “I can do better than this,” I told Enid Blyton. I sat down and wrote my first novel in a school exercise book and after a page and half of scribbling, I decided I’d given Ms Blyton quite enough of a scare. Then I proceeded to throw successive frights into Rider Haggard (She, King Soloman's Mines) and much later Mika Waltari (The Egyptian), Ernest Hemingway (The Snows of Kilimanjaro, A Farewell to Arms), CS Forester (Hornblower), Ian Fleming (Dr No) and legions of others. Then, as an adult, I wrote my slew of children's novels. (One even won a Children's Book of the Year Award and amazingly some adults who read the books as children, still own the books and re-read them, according to Goodreads.) However there were hints that I should move on one day. My very first published short-story was an adult spy mystery in The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, New York - 'Give a Man Rope'. "We have a hunch that nothing will stop this young man from achieving his ambitions," the publisher kindly said in the introduction to my story, yet I was simply content to be published in the same issue alongside Ian Fleming and his short story 'The Property of a Lady...' And my adult novels today? I hope they’re not 'adult novels' in the sense my friends hoped. They are mostly archaeological mystery thrillers (Egyptology has always been my passion) but there are a few racy elements – in 'The Smiting Texts' and 'The Egyptian Mythology Murders' to name a few. I write my adult fiction under my full name of Roy Lester Pond I use “Roy Pond” to differentiate the children’s books. At least I hope it differentiates them. (Roy Lester Pond fiction is available on Amazon Kindle and Paperback, as well as children’s titles by ‘Roy Pond’)