All posts by Christopher Hepworth


  |  Conspiracies  |  ,   |   

So you want to live to one hundred in a state of contentment and good health? Then here’s a thriller writer’s lifestyle plan that does not cost you a cent in gym membership fees or dietary supplements. All you have to do to increase your ‘wellbeing index’ is sharpen up your DDRESS code!

So what’s my motivation for assisting humanity to achieve a state of achieve physical, mental and spiritual perfection if it’s not to make a quick buck? Simple. It’s to express my annoyance at the hordes of unqualified lifestyle gurus who are exploiting our vanity and gullibility to dip into our wallets. Their outrageous health benefit claims are usually backed up by junk science that would make an eleven year old schoolboy blush. Any attempt to debunk their nonsense is met with outrage and don’t even bother to try for a refund. My theory is that any person blessed with common sense can design an effective lifestyle plan, and I’m about to put that theory to the test.

For instant internet stardom a plan must have a catchy and marketable brand name. Welcome to the DDRESS Code. (A handy acronym for Determination, Diet, Relationships, Exercise, Sleep and Scruples.) These six pillars of wisdom will guide you through a long life of contentment, achievement and serenity like no other. Simply read on and get ready to cancel that Gym / Diet / Self-help / Funeral appointment.

Determination:  Let’s face it, no one is going to hand it to you on a plate. You get out of life what you put in. Determination is the ‘D’ at the start of the DDRESS Code acronym for a reason. It allows you to overcome the inevitable knock downs in life and come back even stronger for a second and third bite at the cherry. It also helps you keep on track with the other five pillars of wisdom.

Diet:  You are not going to live to one hundred if you are packing a few spare tyres around the mid-rift. Moderation and variation is the key to a healthy diet. Giving up whole food groups as a ‘silver bullet’ method of losing weight is an appalling idea and can only harm you in the long run.

A few pointers. Your body is pretty good at detoxing itself and does not need a three-day starvation ‘cleansing’ regime to help it along the way. Sugar is not a poison in any sense of the word. By all means give up refined sugar (soft drinks, lollies, cakes etc.) but do yourself a favour and keep eating fruit in sensible quantities for a long healthy life. Cavemen, pro fat, anti-fat and low carb diets are all pretty useless except that they provide motivation to cut down on excess calories which is the only proven method of shedding kilos. The fad diet industry’s only interest is in selling books and outrageously priced plastic foods.

Likewise, there is no such thing as a superfood except to the profits of the food retail industry. Gorging on blueberries or coconut extract will not make any difference to the average first world diet and neither will the myriad of dietary supplements available from your local chemist unless they have been prescribed by your doctor for a pre-existing condition.

A quick word on alcohol. The one thing that all centenarians have in common is their ability to celebrate with a modest tipple when they receive their telegram from the queen. Real ale and red wine in moderation are pleasurable and healthy. Frequent binge drinking will earn you pole position in the road race to an early grave.

Relationships:  A long, term loving relationship will help you live longer. So will the ability to treat your loved ones with respect and see things from their point of view. In fact, respect and tolerance of others will also help you at work and in your social life too. These attributes are the key to elevated levels of emotional intelligence which in turn will allow you to squeeze more contentment and enjoyment from a single unit of life than your gloomy, low EQ neighbour.

A word for the wise. Respect should be a two-way street so you should never allow yourself or your loved ones to be bullied and do not allow others to take advantage of your good nature.

Exercise:  Exercise will keep your heart pumping years after your mate’s indolent lifestyle has earned him a one way ticket to the morgue.  Exercise assists muscle and bone durability. Use it or lose it is the key message for this pillar of wisdom.

The simple formula for losing weight is that you must burn more calories moving your body than you consume in food and drink. The multi-billion dollar diet industry tells you that you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet, but that misses the point. You must do both. But like all things, don’t get carried away. Over doing it will promote injury and push you back to square one.

It is equally important to exercise your brain as your grey matter is a muscle like any other. Take up a hobby that stimulates the mind, read a good book like the Sleepwalker Legacy and limit yourself to a handful of TV shows per week to keep those neural pathways healthy.

Sleep:  There is a reason why we sleep. It is essential for muscle repair and memory reorganisation. Develop a regular and uninterrupted sleep pattern unless you are planning to audition for a part as a Rolling Stones body double. It will improve the quality of your waking life including your productivity, emotional balance, creativity and vitality. Sleep is life’s free kick so ensure you get your eight hours. No other activity delivers so many benefits for such little effort.

Scruples:  Also known as values or morals, it is important to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ to quote a particular specialist in this field. A person’s reputation is their most valuable asset and must be cultivated and nurtured. Generosity of spirit, trustworthiness and a sense of perspective will earn you respect.

The single-minded pursuit of cold, hard cash will hinder your journey towards a fulfilled life. While money is of itself neither good nor bad, it should be put in context. Humans need a challenge to reach their potential and should work hard and honestly to appreciate the finer things in life. But there must be a purpose to the acquisition of wealth. Most material possessions end up as worthless clutter destined for the skip. Far better to treat your loved ones to occasional and unexpected acts of selfless generosity than to take it with you to the grave.

So there you have it. You too can now live to one hundred in blissful contentment. But what, you may ask are my qualifications for promoting lifestyle and health advice? I’m treading a well-worn path in the self-help industry when I say ‘absolutely none’, but please feel free to turn me into an internet celebrity in any case!

And if you do not live to celebrate your hundredth birthday despite following the DDRESS Code, you are entitled to a full refund. To qualify, simply turn up in person and show documented proof of your demise. You may also be required to complete a statutory declaration stating that you did not have a sneaky ‘caveman / woman’ flirtation since you sharpened your DDRESS Code.

Your new life starts now!


  |  Historical Context  |   

About five years ago my brother discovered that there existed a ‘mirror image’ family on the other side of the world that was identical in almost every respect to my own.

My own family lives in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney in peace and prosperity. My wife Anne and I have three teenage boys and a younger daughter. I have high hopes and aspirations that they might all grow up to be bright, useful members of society with families of their own.

The father of this distant ‘mirror image’ family is called George and he was once a coal miner from the tough working class mining town of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. He has a wife called Alice and also has three teenage boys and a much younger daughter.

Their oldest son, also named George was born just three months before my nineteen-year-old son Thomas James. George’s second son, James was born a year before our eighteen-year-old son Patrick and their third son Arthur at seventeen is a similar age to my third son Michael George. To compound the similarities, both our daughters, Alice and Sarah respectively are the babies of the family born several years after the boys.

I have only met one member of my mirror image family Alice, not that she would have recalled this meeting which was many years ago.

My family surname is exceptionally rare and named after a small Yorkshire village in the Calder Valley (where the TV series ‘Happy Valley’ was filmed). Despite this rarity we share the same surname as our mirror image family. As it happens we also share twenty-five percent of our DNA, as we are directly related.

The similarities between our two families were a constant source of joy and wonder to me. However, over the course of the last five years my joy was tempered by the knowledge that this would be the year when their eldest son George would be savagely butchered in a hail of bullets. George would die of his wounds in a grimy hospital several days later. There was nothing I could do to stop it and nor could I warn the family of the looming tragedy that was about to befall them.

On the 3rd July the inevitable happened and George is now buried in a simple grave in a foreign field. He did not die alone. Twenty thousand of his fellow soldiers and countrymen died with him in a single day.

You see not only are our two families on opposite sides of the world, but we are separated by the dimension of time. Exactly one hundred years apart, in fact. My brother discovered the existence of this family by looking up our ancestral records in the UK census of 1911. George’s traumatised younger brother James was our grandfather and I can only imagine the grief that his family had to endure and how they must have lamented at the senseless waste of life that was the Battle of the Somme.

It would have been little comfort to them that the massive loss of life at the Somme on both sides ultimately led to the defeat of the German army as their war machine finally ran out of men and resources. No-one will ever know if my Great Uncle George died bravely or whether he was mown down in the first minutes of the attack. But one can be certain that his death would have had a massive impact on that ordinary working class family back in Barnsley.

I could not contemplate such a terrible thing happening to my children today and yet in every respect, George’s father had the same hopes and aspirations for his family as I have for mine one hundred years later. The twenty-year-old George was only one of a million such casualties that the British and Commonwealth forces suffered in World War One. He has become a source of pride to me just as countless other families are now honouring the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Our duty now is to instil in our children the values and aspirations that George would have brought back with him had he survived that fateful day in 1916.

 


  |  Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theory  |   

The time for laughing at the American buffoon with the ridiculous comb over is over. It turns out that ‘The Donald’ is having the last laugh. Despite it being April fool’s day, this is no joke. It is highly probable that Donald Trump will be moving into the White House in 2017.

For those who believe that this cannot happen, let me enlighten you. The advent of social media and instant communication has given new power to anti-establishment lunatics around the world. For instance no-one would have predicted that the UK Labour party would have elected someone as unsuitable for top office as the anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear, anti-business Jeremy Corbyn. But he’s now within touching distance of No.10 Downing Street. Crazy but true.

Donald Trump has set Republican voter turnout records for every state in the US except Vermont. He has shredded his political opponents with a ruthless efficiency not seen since Joseph Stalin. (Get ready Hilary Clinton, your secret email accounts are in his sights!) His political opponents have fired back but have failed to realise that he’s made of Teflon. And Trump is the absolute master of media manipulation. He sells papers and gains viewers with every outrageous statement that he makes.

In the face of such a threat, one would have imagined the Democratic Party rallying around Hilary Clinton, but in fact the opposite is true. Bernie Sanders is inflicting real damage on her voter base and credibility by accusing her of being in the pockets of Big Business and in particular Goldman Sachs.

So the free world is likely to be led by someone who will make George W Bush’s administration look like a golden era of social enlightenment and intellectual distinction.

Of course, those of us who are outside the American political process can afford to watch the whole US presidentialtrain wreck in the smug realisation that it could not happen here. But in 1933 our great grandfathers must have been just as sanctimonious when they watched theidiotic Austrian corporal sweep to power in Berlin. After all, what have such distant events got to do with Australia?

The answer is quite a lot. The next leader of the free world will face challenges ranging from terrorism, the rise of China, economic instability and environmental change all of which are global issues. On social matters, many Western nations take their guidance from the US. So how do we survive a Trump administration?To assist you to prepare,here is a handy six point guide to the next eight years of your life:

  1. Ignore him. After all, aren’t all US Presidents constrained by their own administrations and the obstructionist US congress? You only have to see how little of Obama’s manifesto made its way to the statute books to realise how impotentthe POTUS actually is.
  1. Grow a thicker skin. Trump has insulted just about every minority group he has encountered during his election campaign. Mexicans are rapists and drug runners, decorated war heroes are trashed for getting themselves captured, Women who oppose his views are obviously doing so at the wrong time of the month and Muslims are to be banned from the US. Welcome to the era of ‘telling it as it is’.
  1. Practice your Benito Mussolini pout. You know it makes sense. Jut out your chin and tilt your head to one side while looking down your nose at humanity. If you can frown like an unhappy emoticon, so much the better.
  1. Get ready for higher taxes. When Trump builds his Mexican wall, the bill is going to the Mexican government. Likewise, America’s allies are not paying their way for the privilege of American protection so we can expect the bill through the mail soon.
  1. Tighten your belt. Trump is strongly in favour of American economic protectionism. He opposes the Trans Pacific Partnership and has vowed to repatriate jobs back to America. All imports to America are to be taxed at 20%. A recipe for global growth it ain’t!
  1. Give it a go yourself. No I’m not talking about running for president, but Trump has proved you can always bluff your way to that dream job or seemingly unattainable role that you always craved for. It’s probable that not even Trump himself thought he would get this close to the White House. His likely motive in running for office was to prove to his business cronies that he could have made president had he put his mind to it. Ok we don’t have his media training, his inherited billions or his planet sized ego, but it just goes to show that anything is possible if you have the bravado.

I’ve always fancied that job as chairman of Microsoft, and if I have to threaten to punch the interviewer in the face to land the job then it just shows that my degree at Trump University was worth the paper it was written on after all.Welcome to the new reality!


  |  Conspiracy Theory  |  ,   |   

It’s true. The government, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, big banks and aliens really are out to get you!

As an author, I deal in conspiracy theories. The more far-fetched and imaginative the conspiracy, the more entertaining the novel. Conspiracies make compulsive reading and elicit a reader response of open mouthed incredulity, anger and disgust. Only occasionally will a few smart readers recognise that their credibility is being tested to the limit. Conspiracies sell books by the truck load. I am not sure I would stretch reader credibility so far as to write a novel that explored why thirty percent of all Utah residents believe they have been abducted by aliens or that twenty percent of those had been subject to anal probes! But most other conspiracy theories are fair game.

My first novel ‘The Sleepwalker Legacy’ suggested that the US government was strong-arming a failing pharmaceutical company into supplying a drug called Berserker to its armed forces. The soldiers who took the drug would become ferocious warriors who would fight to the death and believe they could be harmed by neither fire nor iron. In the novel, Berserker’s deadly side effects turned those soldiers into permanent killers with acute post-traumatic stress disorder. A bit too far-fetched? Maybe a tad implausible even for a conspiracy thriller?

Not so. Last week I stumbled on a press article entitled ‘the tiny pill making fighters in Syria feel like superhuman soldiers’. http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-tiny-pill-making-fighters-in-syrias-war-feel-like-superhuman-soldiers-20151119-gl3fs8.html It reported how fighters who used ‘Captagon’ felt they had a ‘power nobody else has’ and ‘there was no fear anymore’. Syria’s fighters would kill with a ‘numb, reckless abandon.’ One fighter was quoted as saying ‘if there were 10 people in front of you, you could catch and kill them’.  More worryingly ‘the drug produces dangerous side effects including psychosis and brain damage.’ The difference of course is that this is no western government would knowingly prescribe drugs to its armed forces that led to nightmares, depression, suicidal thoughts and paranoia. Or would they?

In fact the governments of the US, Canada, Britain and Australia have been prescribing the antimalarial drug Mefloquine for over two decades. Mefloquine has been reported to be the cause of many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. One Australian veteran said that the drug made his tour of duty feel “like living in a heavily armed lunatic asylum”. Mefloquine has been withdrawn from use by the US Special Forces since 2013. However it is still issued to about 2,500 military personnel every year in the UK and is subject to a Defence Select Committee enquiry. In Australia over 2,000 personnel have been prescribed the drug. http://www.smh.com.au/national/soldiers-fear-drug-program-has-scarred-them-with-depression-anxiety-nightmares-20151125-gl8350.html

My second novel ‘The Nocnista Agenda’ preyed on the fear that the information we freely divulge in our social media accounts will be used by unscrupulous characters to bring about our own downfall. In the novel, the sociopathic media tycoon Leo Wulff buys a social media data base and uses the information to go on a killing spree of those whose profiles runs counter to his own warped sense of moral values.

Earlier this year a group of hackers known as the Impact Team hacked into the dating site Ashley Maddison. Setting themselves up as self-styled moral guardians they released information on 36 million subscriber accounts including names, height, weight, gender, addresses, email addresses, email address, GPS co-ordinates, credit card transaction details and sexual preferences. Just as Leo Wulff felt morally justified in ordering his hits, the Impact Team justified their illegal activities by suggesting that victims should ‘learn your lessons and make amends”. One can almost imagine the pompous and Leo Wulff in the Nocnista Agenda smugly suggesting something similar to justify his murderous activities. http://www.bustle.com/articles/105183-what-is-the-impact-team-the-ashley-madison-hackers-delivered-on-their-promises

In my next book I will be exploring the so-called conspiracies within the energy industry to shock, anger and disgust my readers. The novel will hint that the global powers manipulate and strong-arm innocent middle-eastern nations to control their oil wealth. The plot will cast ‘big oil’ as villain crushing developing alternative energy industries to keep their profits flowing. I will create shadowy energy lobbyists who, with their money and influence control the voting intentions of US government members.

Pure fiction? Don’t you believe it! Behind every good conspiracy theory is a solid base of fact. Just think yourself lucky my next book is not about aliens and flying saucers. The next time you holiday on the back roads of Utah you really could be due for an anal probe!

 


  |  Conspiracy Theory  |   

What is it about the pharmaceutical industry that attracts so many ‘nutters’ armed with the latest conspiracy theory?

The good news for thriller writers is that the industry provides a rich vein of possibilities for buttock clenching plots, evil scientists and moral crusaders who save the world from annihilation. The Sleepwalker Legacy is based on the premise that a ‘big pharma’ company, under severe financial pressure, is willing to sell a drug to the American government knowing that it is so dangerous it could send humanity back to the dark ages. The concept seems ludicrous and yet the reader is left with the uneasy sense that somewhere on the planet this very situation could well be unfolding as we speak.

I had the pleasure of working in the pharmaceutical industry for a number of years and considered it an honour to be part of an organisation that eased the suffering of countless millions. I will never forget the day that a supplier who was giving a presentation to my procurement team broke down in tears as he delivered his pitch. He told us the story of how his eight year old son had a severe medical condition that made him so unruly he was unable to function at school and home life had become a battlefield for the entire family. After a short period of time on our company’s medication, the child had settled down at school and for the first time in years, the family could operate as a normal, loving unit. A few months later an elderly lady spoke at one of our team meetings out of gratitude for the effects one of our drugs had on her life. She had been bed-ridden for two years with severe osteoarthritis. After completing a course of one of the company’s drugs she was able to take short walks in the countryside. To her the drug was literally a life saver. She frankly admitted that she had contemplated suicide many times in the previous two years due to the severity of the pain she had previously experienced.

Yet all drugs have potential risks and side effects, of course, and doctors and patients must weigh those against a drug’s medical benefits. Controversy arises when litigators claim that the side effects have been under-estimated or insufficiently disclosed. In Chapter 5 of the Sleepwalker Legacy, Sam takes part in a debate on the track record of the pharmaceutical industry and the multi-billion dollar fines imposed by the regulatory bodies when the industry gets it wrong. I tried to emphasise the strict regulations imposed on the whole industry that would make another Thalidomide scandal impossible and yet conspiracy theories continue to abound.

I have read with interest how loving and responsible parents in affluent suburbs put whole communities at risk by conscientiously objecting to whooping cough, measles and other vaccinations for their infants. When the percentage of the population vaccinated against a particular disease drops below a critical level, then the concept of ‘herd immunity’ breaks down. Particularly vulnerable groups within society such as the elderly or those with weakened immune systems are impacted by the actions of the conscientious objectors. So what is it that drives seemingly rational people to take such decisions?

One reason is that ‘Big Pharma’ is part of the corporate sector and dependent upon large profits to continue its pipeline of new products each of which costs several billion to develop. Where there is profit, there is mistrust. In addition the industry exists in a market where brands must compete to survive. Doctors are subject to intense marketing campaigns and some pharmaceutical companies have been subject to eye watering, billion dollar fines for promoting the off label benefits of their drugs. And the impact of Thalidomide in the 1960s hangs over the industry like a black shadow. I remember how my own mother told me that she was prescribed Thalidomide in 1961 for her morning sickness. I remain grateful to this day that her mother’s instinct caused her to reject the prescription and several months later I was born as a healthy bouncing baby.

While my experience within the pharmaceutical industry leaves me reassured and well informed, Sam Jardine will continue to fight against world threatening corporate conspiracies from many different industries. I hope his battles will leave readers thrilled and with some insight into the shenanigans of each of those industries. If any reader has a particular insight into a modern day conspiracy, real or imagined I would love learn more on the pages of this blog.

 


  |  Office Politics  |   

I always thought that the key role of a CEO was self-evident; maximise revenue and minimise costs. Get that bit right and the rest of the job is easy – even enjoyable. With a solid platform of profitability in place, the captains of industry can throw money at staff engagement, corporate social responsibility, marketing, research and development and other critical business functions. Get it wrong and it’s all over – golden handshakes all round.

And yet we have experienced a procession of supposedly smart industry leaders at our CIPSA conferences throwing the gauntlet to their procurement audiences to “prove to me the value of your roles”. My immediate reaction is to question their competency for the top job. No-one questions the value of Legal or Finance but the sad truth is that there have been many recent examples of Australian CEO’s dismembering their entire Procurement functions to ‘save costs’.

The recent CIPSA conference in Melbourne got it absolutely right when it implored its delegates to ‘raise your voice; raise your game.’ As a profession dedicated to one half of the profitability equation, we need to shout this message from the roof tops to the top dogs in our company kennels.

The problem of course is brand. We are still seen by most executives as ‘back office’, ‘administration’ and ‘overhead’ to be dispensed with when times are tough. I have spent my entire thirty year career attempting to improve procurement’s brand. I have entered and won awards on behalf of my paymasters. I have held six highly successful supplier trivia nights raising a collective total of $100,000 to the charities favoured by members of my board of directors. I have held three ‘Supplier of the Year Award’ events attended by top executives that put the Oscars to shame. I have also organised Supplier Expos in each major office location to bring the fun of the Royal Easter show to the employee’s own conference rooms. All this while delivering a boost to the bottom line that put the sales team to shame.

But despite all this exciting brand promotion, I still see the C-Suite’s eyes glaze over when I suggest we catch up for a coffee to discuss how Procurement can work with them on an exciting new category strategy for 2016.

Well I have finally cracked the thorny issue of brand management and created a new Procurement hero. He’s the new James Bond and he has already saved the world… twice. Meet Sam Jardine, the Procurement Manager at the centre of my two novels ‘The Sleepwalker Legacy’ and ‘The Nocnista Agenda’. Move over John Grisham and Ian Fleming; you’re so twentieth century.

Sam uses his powers of negotiation to thwart the welter of global conspiracies and evil corporate villains that threaten the world while adding a touch of glamour to his chosen profession. Sam exists in an exciting new world where CEO’s that question the value of procurement usually meet with a gruesome but wholly deserved sticky end.

Procurement is about to get sexy.

If you have not read the books, please feel free to check them out on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Thriller-Nocnista-Agenda-Financial-ebook/dp/B015Y5PRAS/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015GYZNWE/ref=sr_1_1?Keywords=financial+thrillers

Both books are available from Amazon as a paperback or Kindle e-book version.


  |  Events  |  , , , , ,   |   

The Sleepwalker Legacy is now FREE on Amazon.com!

Grab your FREE Copy Today (Only Available 25th Oct – 27th Oct)

Download from Amazon US 

Download from Amazon UK

Download from Amazon AUS  

Sam Jardine is a negotiator working for the giant pharmaceutical firm Napier & Beckett. When he discovers that its 200 year old drug Berserker could change the nature of humanity forever, he sets out to destroy the drug from within. He becomes entangled in a dangerous battle of wits with the beautiful heiress, Rachael Beckett. As the net closes in, Sam realizes that his lover Cassie has inherited Berserker’s deadly side effect, the Sleepwalker Legacy and is increasingly unstable. Her condition holds the key, but Sam is in a race against time…

 

 


  |  Events  |   

Christopher Hepworth will be exhibiting his books at:

Book Expo Australia

Date: 17th and 18th October

Venue: The Exhibition Hall 5,
Sydney Showground, Sydney Olympic Park
Sydney Australia

This is a great opportunity to obtain an autographed copy of his book “The Sleepwalker Legacy”

Tickets are available from Book Expo Australia Website.

Christopher is also giving away a number of free tickets to some of his lucky fans.
To see whether you can obtain a free ticket,  please contact Christopher using the Contact Form.