Roy Thomas Bright was born 22nd October 1971, in Manchester and grew up in Burnley, East Lancashire. He received his secondary education at St Wilfrids C of E High School in Blackburn and upon leaving decided to join the Royal Navy as a gunner. The need to patrol some of the worlds ‘hotspots’ allowed him to travel the globe extensively, and he was very fortunate to see a vast number of exotic countries and different cultures. In 1998, Roy decided to leave the Royal Navy to pursue a career as a professional musician. Having been a musician since the age of six and able to play a plethora of instruments, Roy went on to experience many highs in his first band ‘deponeye’ until that ended in 2004. In 2005 Roy started his second band Exit State, which enjoyed great success touring all over the UK and parts of Europe, a No.1 video on Kerrang TV’s Most Requested show and sharing the stage with the likes of Michael Schenker, Blaze Bayley (Iron Maiden), Esoterica, Dave Evans (AC/DC), The Black Mollys, Forever Never, Black Spiders and Neil Buchanan’s Marseille. Following a successful tour with guitar legend Michael Schenker in 2012, Exit State were delighted to be invited to become Patron’s of the Children’s Hospice Arts charity chARTUK, an organization Roy is still a proud patron of, whose amazing work aims to enrich the lives of children and young people with severe disabilities and life-limiting conditions in hospices through the creative, performing and literary arts, enabling individual expression, creativity and communication. It was in late 2012 while enjoying touring downtime that Roy decided to pursue one of his other creative passions – writing. The idea for Judas had been sitting deeply within his psyche for some time and the amalgamation of the original idea fueled by the lyrics in the rock song What Have You Done by Within Temptation finally saw him put pen to paper. A massive and steep learning curve followed, but he was fortunate due to connections made from his time within the music sector to receive exceptional advice from a number of sources. An introduction by Exit State’s manager Mark Appleton to Stephen Clegg, the author of Maria’s Papers, proved to be an invaluable one as Stephen’s help and guidance was key in ensuring Judas was worthy of being published. In 2012, Roy published Judas via Whiteley Publishing. He then re-published a second edition of the novel via self-publishing in 2016 and hasn’t looked back since. Roy is thoroughly enjoying writing more and more, including screenplays with his screenwriting partner Mike Harris and has penned a number of original scripts, including the Judas stories. Roy has now begun work on a ‘Book Zero’, which details events happening in and around the same time-frame as the first Judas story. Roy has three children, Reece, Tyler and Lily.