Unlike many who fear starting things, and avoid change, I find everything new exciting, and I love nothing better than change. In fact every door that has ever slammed in my face has left room for a new door to open โ how cool is that! So when it comes to writing, for me there is nothing better than a blank page, I love it. And the first blank page is the most exciting of all because I get to bring a whole new set of people alive.
At the moment I am writing the next book in my new series, and that means I get to see how Kiara is doing since her last adventure. Kiara Fox is my fraud investigator, and I am sorry to say I do put her in some rather difficult life changing situations.
I have worked in the insurance industry all my life, dealing with so many different risks. My work takes me (not necessarily physically) all over the world as I have clients in many countries, specifically African countries where I have one of my offices. So making my protagonist a fraud investigator means I can literally introduce her to loads of different industries, which I hope will make for an exciting series. In book one, The First Widow, we saw her working within the life insurance industry, dealing with suspicious life claims, where she became caught up in a scheme by a group of women insuring their husbands before killing them. Iโm still hoping my wife doesnโt see this as some kind of life manual!
My second book in the series, Black Gold, which is out today, is set in South Africa and is centred around the oil industry and climate change. The idea for this book came about when I was in Cape Town on a work trip. My office is actually in Johannesburg, but I insure companies all over Africa and one of them is based in the V&A Waterfront in Capetown. My client owns a large number of transport ships and we cover them for all kinds of things, including loss of cargo. On this particular trip they were talking to me about moving oil and diesel form Port to Port and whether we could cover them if they lose any. Having never done this before I had to do a little research and I was stunned to find out that Oil theft costs the industry over a Hundred Billion Dollars a year. Who knew!! Itโs never in the papers, itโs never in the news. Oil companies clearly are keeping it quiet to protect their reputations. So who is stealing this much oil, what are they doing with it and how on earth does it happen. I found it extremely hard during that meeting to stop myself going into full Kiara Fox mode.
Black Gold flew off the page as soon as I was on the plane back to the UK. To be honest I was quite worried about what Kiara found herself getting herself into this time! What started out as a relatively simple case of theft turned into Kiara being thrust into a plot by climate change terrorists trying to bring down the latest platform being built by the largest independent oil company. We see following the trail, taking her from Johannesburg to Capetown, into a terrifying chase through one of the largest townships in the country and eventually onto an Oil Platform in the middle of the ocean.
I do like a bit of an adventure myself, but Iโm glad that I get to leave these ones to Kiara.
Rob Starr owns and runs SEICO Insurance & Mortgages since 1991 and has offices in Brighton, London and South Africa. The First Widow, book one in the Kiara Fox series was published in August 2024. Rob was awarded an MBE on 31st December 2024 for his service to young people, general philanthropy and the work his charity, The Starr Trust, does.
In 2008, he lost his father to cancer and set up a charity in his honour. The Starr Trust offers grants to young people who simply need a chance to be the best that they can be and need someone to believe in them. So far, they have raised and given away over Two Million Pounds to over 6000 young people.
Away from insurance, charities and writing, Rob loves a challenge. In 2022 he completed the 52 Olympic Triathlons in 52 consecutive weeks. Rob is married to Sharon and has three children, Asher, Mia & Jesse.
