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Introduction : Danny de Hek : Rachael de Hek : Grant Shanks : Benjamin Hoyt : Paul Rush : Net24 Ltd
grant shanks
 Brought up in Southland as the eldest of three boys, Grant, like representative smallbore shooter, Danny de Hek, has an affinity with firearms. Taught to shoot by his father, an expert marksman and keen hunter. He was hunting rabbits alone from age 6."I graduated to the big stuff shortly afterwards and got my first pig solo when I was 11."
With the Fiordland wilderness, home of a huge deer population only a short drive away, it was only a matter of time before he turned his attention to larger game."I shot two deer on my first outing. I was 13 at the time."
Grant boarded at Otago Boys’ High School in Dunedin. A boxer, provincial representative athlete, rower and rugby player, he and his brothers spent their holidays hunting and fishing the famous Southland trout rivers between tractor work, hay baling, scrub cutting and stints with shearing gangs.
After high school Grant started work at a freezing works not far from the deer country."I made more money selling the venison I shot than I made at my job. A mate and I moved to Te Anau where we eventually teamed up with two guys who owned a Hughes 300. We then went after the big money. It was bloody risky at times. Quite often we’d end up standing on a deer and hanging onto the strop under the machine as we were lifted up out of the bush."
After two years doing this, a helicopter accident killed one of his good friends in the most horrible way imaginable."It shook us all pretty badly," he says."Then I had two near misses on choppers in a week, so I figured that someone, somewhere, was trying to tell me something."
 Shortly after that, Grant left the southern deer lands and moved north to Wellington."I tried working in an advertising agency and later a record company," he remembers."They were both so-called glamour jobs but the money was pitiful," he remembers,"especially after what I had been earning down south. So I ran away to sea."
Grant joined the merchant navy and the trip-on/trip-off nature of that work allowed him to continue meat shooting between stints onboard ship. He met his first wife during this period and moved to Christchurch, her hometown. A year later they married and flew off to the UK on the great OE.
In Europe, he worked as a roadie, and later as a body guard for a band management company, looking after the likes of Slade, Mott the Hoople, David Bowie and the infamous Who. He then joined a London-based security company and remained on contract with them until he left the UK several years later. He can’t elaborate further other than to say the company formed by several former SAS men did work that was ‘interesting’."Suffice it to say we did things that maybe weren’t terribly legal in normal terms. The company specialised in getting people out of sticky situations in other countries."
 Ongoing health problems involving a family member back in NZ caused the Grant and his wife Irene to quit the UK and undertake the traditional overland journey home. Fate however wasn’t finished with them yet. Grant came down with malaria (the result of an unplanned detour on a job for his former employer). The debilitating disease hit him in Afghanistan."We were forced to stay there much longer than planned. The up-side was it did give us time to get to know quite a few Afghanis and build up a real affection for them." he says.
Back in New Zealand Grant entered Radio as a creative writer and voice over guy, winning many of the world’s top awards for his work, including CLIO, Pater and the much-coveted Hollywood International Broadcasting Award. He had reconnected with some of his old hunting buddies and was often in the hills.
In the early 90’s Grant decided to write full-time and hunt and travel. "I established a scenario whereby I spent 50% of my working time on my own writing," he says,"the rest is devoted to other people’s projects."
The first book of Grant’s to be published was A Long Goodnight, a ghost written tale of New Zealand’s most famous case of euthanasia. A second ghosted book, We Just Want Our Daughter To live followed. For his fiction, Grant writes under the nom de plume, Andrew Grant. The first fictional title, Hawks was published in 1998 and the novel, based on the helicopter deer hunting years made it onto the NZ best-seller list.
 Two books of short (true) stories on the New Zealand supernatural, Where No Birds Sing and When The Wind Calls Your Name, were both written with former Ngai Tahu CEO and academic, Tahu Potiki. Tyler’s Gold, a tongue-in-cheek, rip-roaring boy’s-own nautical yarn of gold and modern day pirates was published in 1999.
The Neverness Factor, a multi-genré tale set in Alaska was published as an experimental e-book in 2002 and is undergoing re-editing for conventional publication.
Mesquite Smoke-Dance (2004), is a police thriller set in Texas and Mexico. It won the Richard Webster Popular Fiction Award and is currently being promoted to US movie studios.
 Death in the Kingdom (2007) was Grant’s first Daniel Swann thriller and the first of his stories set in Asia. This was followed by another Swann thriller, Singapore Sling Shot (2009). A third Swann adventure to be set in Malaysia is in the pipeline. Death in the Kingdom and Singapore Sling Shot will shortly be available in New Zealand.
Grant lives in Rangiora, near Christchurch with wife Carol. The pair enjoys a mutual love of travel and take-off around the country and overseas when funds and time allow. Grant still hunts. He is a competitive pistol shooter and a keen fisherman, photographer, gun collector and cook. He writes for several magazines, particularly hunting and shooting publications.
Grant met Danny de Hek earlier this year in response to an advertisement Danny placed in a North Canterbury paper."Rachael had gone on to new endeavours," Grant recalls,"Danny was looking for a creative writer to replace her.
Anyway, we clicked and here we are working together for New Zealand’s Information Network. I’m looking forward to getting to know all our clients. It’s great to be moving into a new field. While I’ve worked on various web sites for agency clients this is a whole new challenge."
Grant is available for all writing projects and can be contacted on grant@newzealandnz.co.nz
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