ABOUT Norm Thomas
Norm Thomas is an Australian who is living in London with his wife and daughter. "We moved from Australia to London in 2005 on the back of a contract I signed with an Australian Construction company. They had just purchased a house builder in the Midlands and I was asked to integrate the technology of the two organisations. We were only expecting to stay for 12 months but here we are 15 years later and counting!"
Norm has since left the construction industry and is now spending more time writing, taking his daughter to and from school (he has been forced to learn that intricate and age old skill of 'plaiting hair') and carrying out some part time consulting.
Norm has been writing since the 80's but it was not until 2011 that he decided to attempt to self-publish. "I had made a few unsuccessful attempts at gaining the services of a literary agent and decided to change directions. When you have a full time career, it is hard enough trying to find time to write far less putting in the effort necessary to chase representation. So, in 2011 I made my first foray into self-publishing with book one in the Apprentice Angel series."
Since then Norm has gone on to self-publish 2 more books this time in the Pixie and Dixie series. "The history of the Pixie and Dixie series is pretty funny. My daughter has a history of struggling to get to sleep. To help her, she and I started creating some simple stories around 2 fictional fairies called Pixie and Dixie. From there around 9 stories were created and I have been slowly but surely converting them into a series of children's books."
In 2012 Norm engaged a lady by the name of Ida Jaanson to create the book covers for the Pixie and Dixie series. He had seen her work on the internet and was hoping that she would be able to create some covers that captured the spirit of the work.
"Not only did Ida create a great style of cover but in a really weird twist I started noticing (as the covers came through proofing) that the images of the child that Ida was using looking uncanilly like Madeleine, my daughter! It was one of those funny coincidences that occur time to time."
The Apprentice Angel story goes back around 15 years. Norm first came up with the concept whilst still working for IBM back in the late 1990's.
"I love the Apprentice Angel stories. For me, they represent many concepts and or idea's that had been bubbling around in my head for a long, long time. And whilst the main character, Mike Carpenter has changed and evolved (he was called Colin for a long time!) the basic theme has remained pretty constant. And that theme is based on the human tendency to write history based around the view of the victor."
In the Apprentice Angel series, Norm has suggested the possibility that the story of Demon's and the fallen angels might well be one that has been exaggerated to suit the ideals of those victorious Angels.
"I wanted to posit a very human angle on this ancient story which suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, the Fallen ones weren't quite as bad as history might have us believe. As Mike suggested (here he paraphrases) it seems a little too convenient that a group of Angels - Angels no less - went from being Angels one moment to becoming the most evil of beings the very next!"
Norm explores this idea in this fictional 3 book series.
"I hope you enjoy reading my books as much as I have enjoyed writing them."
