A policeman has become a best-selling author after the wild drunks he dealt with on the beat inspired him to write zombie apocalypse novels.
Richard Haywood, 47, was on £38,000 a year as a constable – he is now one of our most successful writers and earns up to £500,000 a year.
He writes under the name RR Haywood and has drawn on his experience of pub chucking-out time on the Isle of Wight to create scenes of zombie madness and terror in his hit The Undead series.
Richard said: “I remember one horrific night. It must have been a full moon.
"There seemed to be a fight in every pub spilling out on to the streets. There were three cops to deal with it.
“We were spraying CS gas everywhere, there were dogs biting people. It was like a 10-minute war, like something out of a movie.
“There were cops on the ground with bloody noses, people in leg restraints and people just standing at the sidelines, watching, smoking casually.”
Richard joined Hampshire Police in 1998 and was posted to the sleepy holiday destination of the Isle of Wight.
He would become the island’s highest arresting officer, with an average of 150 a year.
But his childhood dream was to become a writer and, while on patrol, he kept his hand in.
In 2017, after 19 years, he decided to retire from the force to follow his passion full-time.
Richard’s first book was released in 2012 and since then he has written more than 20 in The Undead series.
In addition, the prolific author has written another 15 in the sci-fi fantasy and horror genres, with two more currently being edited.
He has sold more than two million books, ebooks and audiobooks, making him one of the UK’s most successful and busy writers, earning half a million pounds a year.
And despite some less-than-glowing early reviews, he was determined to keep going.
He said: “They were brutal. The Undead was a self-published series and there was no quality control at the beginning.
“I went back and rewrote the first five books but, to start with, I was putting books out and people were posting messages telling me, ‘You don’t know how to write’.
"I would answer, ‘I don’t care’. If I had an ego I might have got upset and given up.
“But I was still in the police and was just pleased no one had thrown a brick at me that day.”
Despite his success, Richard shuns the limelight and lives an unassuming life with his German shepherds in a seaside town on the island.
His latest work – Delio. Phase One – has just come out and has been an immediate hit.
The new novel is centred on a dystopian near-future where artificial intelligence has left most of humanity in disarray. There is a small group trying to survive.
Richard added: “I’m fascinated by what happens when order breaks down.”
