I had the great pleasure of interviewing Richard Hains. His new book, and his first book, is Chameleon. This is a close look at the seedier side of high finance. It is an interesting view of the highs and lows of the financial world.

Chameleon is proof that you are a great writer, where did you learn these skills?

I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm toward Chameleon. My writing is simply a combination of experience mixed with a degree of enthusiasm. The skills were not actually learnt, but I took a great deal of care and time in getting the style and structure of the novel as right as I could.

During the '70s I lived in the Earls Court area of London, it was a haven for young Australians. It seemed that every one of them owned an older VW Camper and a need to see the world. Is that how you arrived in London?

You are so right, at that time Earl's Court, you will recall, was called Kangaroo Valley. I arrived in London having just completed an economics degree at Melbourne University with little more that youthful enthusiasm and a taste for some form of adventure. I intended to return to Melbourne after six months and that was 21 years ago.

My research shows that when not writing great novels you are a very successful figure in the financial world. How did you find time to write Chameleon?

My writing began as an interest, became a distraction and developed into an obsession. I think to do anything really well you need to have almost an obsessive interest in it. I found the time, but it was not without other sacrifices.

How long did the project take?

I wrote the screenplay first. This took four years and once completed, I realized that the only way to get the screenplay made into a film was to turn it into a best-selling novel. The final draft of the novel took another four years and I am currently in the process of trying to achieve that illustrious best-seller status. As your readers will appreciate, this was a difficult ambition, although I have great confidence and enthusiasm toward the novel and reviews such as yours, give me great heart.

There is obviously a little of Richard Hains in the main character Jon (only the good traits of course!) Are any of the other characters based on real people? I really like Delboy; somehow he just has to be real!

Your understanding of the novel and its characters are unusually good. Delboy is indeed a real character. A close friend and one of the great characters of the London Options Exchange of the late 1980s. The Andy character is also real. All others are very much a part of my imagination, although there are those quite close to me that see a great deal of me in the main character.