An Autobiographical Note from the Author

I have been writing for some thirty years. Along the way I’ve received tremendous assistance from my wife, friends, editors and other writers. Most influential of these is professional Toronto editor and author, Val Gee. Dr. Phil Miller and Laurie Murray have also offered me much help in my writing endeavours.

I consider Stealing Flowers, How to Increase the Volume of the Sea without Water and Dancing in the Costa Rican Rain my three most thoughtful novels. These works are tied together by roughly the same time-period and have common themes of singular man opposed to society, the boundaries of religion and ideology, and the effect of the open society on the individual.

In Spiritual Apathy, I examine the current mythology of mental illness as opposed to self-managing our lives in the modern Western world inside a fast-paced tragedy.

Twelve years of intense writing went into The Circle Cluster, my proudest most labourious accomplishment.

I wrote Five Years After in six installments over two decades in between books and have been writing poetry for some forty years. I’ve been a student of philosophy since I was thirteen. I studied philosophy, psychology, literature, and history. I am well read in the classics of literature, I’m versed in ancient and modern history, the evolution of Western philosophy, in cognitive motivational psychology, science fiction-fantasy and religious anthropology.

In Book of Mirrors I applied modern Biblical myth to a crime story. Five Days of Eternity was a work where I confined my tale to five days and inculcated the tried and true theme of Jekyll and Hide and its resultant problems. Fog Walker is a fairly straight forward narrative of revenge and the consequence of vengeance outside of the law. Murder at Summerset was a utopian hard sci-fi yarn with a meandering murder mystery to carry the plot, while examining a libertarian society. Perfect Zen was developed from nine comedy scripts that I worked on as an escape away from the novel format but which of its own will evolved nonetheless into a novel. It was my first attempt to define true mature Aristotlean friendships in the modern world and do so with a sense of humour. Restrictions was an impulsive story, a kind of Reservoir Dogs, and yet, also a modern version of Cain and Able.

I co-wrote The Molecular Structures of Jade with song-writer and singer, Edward Oliver Zucca. It’s a story of the brightest, most short-lived scientist to have ever existed.

I have supported Amnesty International for some twenty-five years, writing letters, giving yearly financial assistance and soliciting acquaintances, friends and fellow employees to help this fine humanistic cause.

My wife, Julie St Amant, is an Instructor Therapist for Autistic Children at Surrey Place and we have two children. We live in Toronto, a city we love, and I have been lucky enough to be blessed with wonderful friends, relatives, and acquaintances, many who had given their time and talent selflessly to this project. Of these, not mentioned above, are Adam D’Alessandro, Marko Markoviniovic, Darryl Hogan, Robbie Morra and T R St Amant.

With regards,

Ted

(E A St Amant)

The author’s immediate family includes his late father, Richard St Amant, (whose own father, brothers and their sons created or still manage H. S. St. Amant & Sons Inc., in Penetanguishene, Midland and the Huronia area); mother, Frances St Amant, an ex-mayor of Penetanguishene and long time political activist, and his eight brothers and sisters, including, Ken St Amant and his wife Geisla Bauer; Shirley Dalrymple, (co-author of mathematical text books currently used in schools and recipient of the Descartes Medal in recognition of her work in raising the level of mathematical education in Ontario), and husband, Ian; Marian Dahmer and husband, Mark; Thomas Richard St Amant, (referred to in the book credits as T R St Amant), and his wife, Ruth Hanton-St Amant; Dan St Amant (D. J. St. Amant, author of Christmas Spirits, Stories and Poems), and wife, Patricia Easton and friend Cheryl Wiebe; John St Amant; Laurie Murray and husband Barry; and Greg St Amant.