Stone & McLeish

Myself & Steve a.k.a. Brad Stone & Ewen McLeish
(on the right)
Whilst we were working in the Caribbean, Steve and I travelled to the Far East via Miami and LA. We visited the Farmer's Market in LA (failing to avoid keeping our wallets in our pockets when we went to the Apple store) and in the evening we carried out extensive market research in the bars around West Hollywood.
The visit to HK and mainland China was on business and it came after the real life events that led to me writing The Seventh Island.
Several chapters of TSI were written verbatim and reflected actual events, in particular the scene where Steve arrives back from the UK and realised that the stalker's story was all an act so he told me to ring NY and we found that the magazine she said she was working on had not heard of her.
Things got really scary after that episode...as you will see if you read the book.
Shortly afterwards I lost Steve as I sent him to look after business in the Far East, he based himself in Hong Kong and supervised the Chinese company we were in business with. he liked the Far east so much it was difficult to get him back to Trinidad.
Real People ....Character names
All the main characters in TSI were based on real people, Brad, Mac, karla, the stalker, Indira the secretary Derek the guy on ...(oops spoiler alert) another island.
The character names, christian & surname, contain at least three letters of the real names, eg. Steven Shields is Ewen Mcleish, Carlene Sharpe is Karla Shah and so on...I mention this just as a item of interest.