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This is my personal website that is primarily concerned with my writing and making activities. If you are looking for information on the products that I design for MonkMakes then head over to this site.
My journey into writing started a few years ago when I decided to return to my hobby of electronics and bought myself an Arduino Diecimila – so called because 10,000 Arduinos had at that point been made. Now it’s millions. My attraction to this board was mainly that it was Mac friendly. I started to make some projects, and found myself taking a lot of notes as I learnt how to use the board.
I decided to edit my notes into a more coherent form and bash together a few sample chapters that I then sent to every publisher I could find an email address for. As luck would have it, Roger Stewart then of TAB (part of McGraw-Hill) liked what I had done but asked if I could refocus it into a book for their ‘Evil Genius’ series. That was fine with me it gave me a theme for the book and so my first book ‘30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius‘ was born.
The book sold well and so I followed up with some more books before I eventually left the software business I had and started writing full time.
As of June 2021 roughly 750,000 of my books have been sold as my titles have expanded to include new developments such as the Raspberry Pi and BBC micro:bit as well as a number of general books about electronics and electronics tools such as EAGLE and Fritzing.
In 2015, to compliment my books I started MonkMakes Ltd with my wife Linda. We manufacture kits and interface boards for the electronics hobbyist and maker. My role is to design new products and make sure everyone is well supplied with tea, while Linda runs the business.
In 2022 we decided to publish my book ‘Programming the Pico’ ourselves and MonkMakes Press was born. A few moe titles have been added and we sell them on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and MonkMakes network of over 40 retailers worldwide.