About
Rik was born in the small village of Dymchurch on the Romney Marshes in Kent, England. Dymchurch has three Martello Towers and a station on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway. This was Rik's world for the first 24 years of his life, except for six terms away at college - the North East Surrey College of Technology: Rik somehow managed to fail his final school exams and thus never made it to university.
When he is not daydreaming, Rik finds himself studying for that elusive degree with the Open University and writing the occasional screed of verse alongside working on his second novel. Rik used to work for Her Majesty's Civil Service which is, he says, a perfect training ground for people wanting to write novels based on alternate realities and fantasy.
Size Zero (Visage Book 1)
Description
<p style="margin:0px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><strong>"A somber, disturbing mystery fused with a scathing look at the fashion industry. </strong><strong>Mangin writes in a confident, razor-edged style."</strong><strong> - Kirkus Reviews</strong></p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><strong>Condom dresses and space helmets have debuted on fashion runways.</strong></p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">A dead body becomes the trend when a coat made of human skin saunters down fashion's biggest stage. The body is identified as Annabelle Leigh, the teenager who famously disappeared over a decade ago from her boyfriend's New York City mansion.</p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">This new evidence casts suspicion back on the former boyfriend, Cecil LeClaire. Now a monk, he is forced to return to his dark and absurd childhood home to clear his name. He teams up with Ava Germaine, a renegade ex-model. And together, they investigate the depraved and lawless modeling industry behind Cecil's family fortune.</p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">They find erotic canes, pet rats living in crystal castles, and dresses made of crushed butterfly wings. But Cecil finds more truth in the luxury goods than in the people themselves. Everyone he meets seems to be wearing a person-suit. Terrified of showing their true selves, the glitterati put on flamboyant public personas to make money and friends. Can Cecil find truth in a world built on lies?</p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 0px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><strong>In high fashion modeling, selling bodies is organized crime.</strong></p>
Story Behind The Book
I only live part-time on Earth; for the past three and a half decades much of my spare time has been spent in my constructed world, Kalieda. In this world, I have learned to be a benificent and bountiful God, populating the place with a paradise-worth of landscapes and lifeforms to go alongside the various civilisations and societies that have grown up there.
Since 1998 I have spent an unhealthy amount of time transferring Kalieda to the web. The Kalieda Encyclopaedia is the gateway for visitors to come and experience this world, with maps, descriptions, histories and languages peppered haphazardly across the site. The Encyclopaedia is a form of living book, subjected to regular review and improvement.
The Kalieda novels, starting with 'The Gods in the Jungle', are intended to be a second gateway into the Kalieda world, offering people glimpses of the world through stories based on the histories and mythologies of the people who live in that world. The Kalieda novels can be thought of as the 'bottom-up' complement to the Encyclopaedia's 'top-down' approach to displaying my world to the Real World; each (novel and website) is the equal to the other.
