Originally earmarked for the Methodist Mission Field, I soon discovered that ‘the missionary position’ didn’t suit me. A post-university career in telecommunications took me to the Middle East where I moonlighted as a journalist and socialized heavily with the ‘natives’ and with stewardesses from one of the local airlines, which came in handy when I started writing SHAIKH-DOWN, my (very) un-PC comedy-thriller about an 'Arab Spring' on the fictitious (ahem) island of Belaj in the Persian Gulf. SHAIKH-DOWN was published in paperback in 2009 (available from Amazon and bookstores) and as an e-book in 2011 (available from Smashwords).

In 2012 I published my second novel THE DROPOUT (available from Amazon and bookstores and as an e-book from the Kindle store etc). Set in my native Sussex, this is about  19-year-old Paul who leaves university and returns to his south-coast hometown. He is looking for a woman to love - and finds more than one - but he also has to cope with attracting a gay 'admirer'. The last time this happened, his admirer committed suicide. How will he deal with it this time?

My new novel THE BEXHILL MISSILE CRISIS - together with a screenplay version - is going the rounds of agents and editors (a situation you may be familiar with). In the fall of 1962, as Kennedy and Krushchev take the world to the nuclear precipice, a quartet  of middle-class misfits are taken to a brink of their own on the Sussex coast (again!) by a mysterious marauder on a motorcycle.

Extracts from four of my books are on www.davidgeebooks.com together with the story of how SHAIKH-DOWN came to be written.

I blog book and movie reviews at www.davidgeebooks.blogspot.com 

And I have Facebook pages as DAVIDGEEBOOKS and DAVID HELSDON (my real name)

My romantic status is, as we say on F/B, "in a relationship". I live a few miles outside Brighton in southeast England with greyhound George and lurcher Mildred, two rescue-centre dogs.