"Stuff just turns up like that."

" [...] when he was writing Thief of Time more than a decade ago he decided to call one of his characters Ronnie Soak. Soak is the fifth horseman of the apocalypse – the one who left before they got famous. His name was picked at random, so Pratchett was astonished when he noticed what it sounded like backwards. Suddenly, he knew of what this particular horseman would be a harbinger. 'I thought chaos – yes! Chaos, the oldest,' he says. 'Stuff just turns up like that.'
[...] A.S. Byatt [1990 Booker Prize winner for fiction: Possession: A Romance] said on the book's publication that it should have been nominated for the Booker prize. But it was a fantasy novel; it was funny; it was a bestseller. Unsurprisingly enough, it wasn't. And despite Pratchett's immense popularity (75 million copies sold of his 67 books), it took a while for the literary establishment to notice – apart from Byatt. She is, she says, still a fan today, calling him 'a great storyteller, and splendidly inventive with the English language – both as farce and as comedy and as (successful) dreadful jokes for teenagers. I also think he's wise and morally complicated. And grown up, although he appeals to the young.'
[...] Today, Professor Sir Terry Pratchett is sitting in his local pub, a half of Ferret in front of him, awaiting his bubble and squeak. He's happy to be talking about his books; ever since he announced to the world in late 2007 the "embuggerance" that is his early onset Alzheimer's – or posterior cortical atrophy – he has been swamped with media attention as he fights to raise awareness of the disease." — Alison Flood, Guardian

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Buy Terry Pratchett's books here...

SPECIAL NOTE:
Local writer David Beynon's novel The Platinum Ticket was shortlisted for The 2011 Terry Pratchett Prize.
Read more about David Beynon here...
And read his short story, "Symbiosis" in Evolve Two... you can buy Evolve Two here...