Tell us about Wonderment.
Wonderment’s storyline moves like a novel from the author’s childhood nightmares to the suspense of a brush with death in the neurology unit of a London hospital. Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, this is the first-person life history of a writer who was born with a love of adventure, travel, people, and the mystery of who we are and why – laced with the humour, romance, family lore and drama that anchors a life well lived. He masters the burden of ill health and gradually, to his surprise, discovers his own spirituality.

Here’s a one-sentence synopsis:

After spending most of his early years in World War II England, an asthmatic Lancashire boy arrives by chance in the middle of Utah, spends his first American years as a student and printer’s devil in a small Mormon town, develops his life goals in college, and flees to Bermuda and then home to England, starting a roller-coaster life in which he becomes a science writer and world traveller, a philosopher with a deep respect for American Indians, a top-secret-cleared government executive, and a twice-divorced father of three who, after surviving multiple near-death experiences, becomes a “citizen of the world” with residences in New Mexico and London, content, with most of his life goals realized.

What genre is it?
Autobiography, Memoir, Biography.

What kind of readers will it appeal to?
Tie me down and I have to say biographiles, journalists, science writers, travel buffs, expats,asthmatics, thoughtful folk, people interested in the future of humanity.

How long did it take to write?
As a regular diarist, all my life- sold my first piece of writing to the BBC at age 11!

What was the most challenging part of your creative process?
Controlling the flow of words so that you have a crisp, exciting enactment of a predetermined basic storyline and have invoked the reader’s interest in its characters, whose story you have determined and recorded beforehand.

Tell us a bit about yourself.
Career journalist, science writer, and author who maintains residences in New Mexico and London. I have written six books and many articles for many periodical publications, from the London Sunday Times to Smithsonian.

Where can we buy your book?
Troubador, Amazon, B&N, Waterstones, WHSmith and by order from bookshops. Amazon UK paperbacks.

Have you got a blog where readers can keep up with your work?
Yes, http://www.adobe-hacienda.blogspot.com/. More importantly a website at www.nigelhey.com

What’s next?
Two very different books are on the drawing boards. One is a memoir about New Mexico, where I now live, with emphasis on its American Indian and Hispanic people. Another is an update on my book about exploration of the solar system, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson but rights to which have been returned to me (except for the Netherlands!)

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Enjoyed this interview? Check out our conversation with A.F. Alexander.