NEIL Daniels’ writing career is really rockin’.

The St Helens-born author has written acclaimed biographies of Judas Priest and Robert Plant and early this year his next two books will be published, featuring the early years of Judas with founder Al Atkins plus an A-Z encyclopaedia of Bon Jovi.

And before Neil’s keyboard gets time to cool, his fingers are now clattering away on another two projects already slotted in for late 2009/early 2010 publication.

Neil (27) who has a degree in Film Studies started writing for fanzines and ezines after university for a couple of years before launching into his writing career.

He told the Star: “I had an idea for a book on Judas Priest about the time they reformed because there had never been one on them for years and after months of talks with various publishers Omnibus Press agreed that there was a gap in the market for such a book. And ‘Defenders Of The Faith: The Story Of Judas Priest’ was released in hardback in 2007 to (mostly) excellent reviews.”

And the book is proving a worldwide winner with Bulgarian, Polish and German translations due later this year.

He continued: “I then wrote a book on the solo career of Robert Plant simply called ‘Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page & The Solo Years’ for Independent Music Press. It was released in January 2008.

“And I teamed up with original Judas Priest singer and founder Al Atkins to co-write his autobiography for Iron Pages. It will be the definitive account on the early years/formation on the Metal Gods hence the book’s title: ‘Dawn Of The Metal Gods.’ “It will be published in 2009 and will hopefully be a treasure trove for heavy metal archivists not only because of the nature of the story but also for the wealth of photos in the book such as a picture of the very first Judas Priest record, which has rarely been seen.

“Following that my fifth book is an A-Z history of Bon Jovi, who are a world away from Brummie rock singers. Surprisingly there really isn’t anything about Bon Jovi’s music in the shops and online apart from a bio of Jon which is more about him as a celebrity than a musician.

“This is a book about their music as well as the solo careers of each member and basically anything relating to the band and mainman JBJ. It will be published in May 2009 by Chrome Dreams.

Neil’s aim is to move between books that have the potential to sell well (Robert Plant/Bon Jovi) to more personal books (Judas Priest/Al Atkins) that he hopes will have some kind of historical significance in the world of rock writing.

“My next book will be another one on a Midlands ‘rock god’, but I can’t announce anything until the contracts are signed, so that will be four books on Midlands musicians!” he added.

Neil has also written a couple of obituaries of rock musicians for The Guardian and was interviewed for the 2008 DVD documentary on Led Zeppelin: ‘Physical Graffiti – Album Under Review.’ He regularly writes for Rock Sound and ocasionally for Record Collector plus monthly contibutions to the well-known fanzines Fireworks and Powerplay.

He reeled off some of the big names he has interviewd: like Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue, Sammy Hagar (formally of Van Halen,) Mick Jones of Foreigner, current Guns N’ Rose guitarist Bumblefoot (aka Ron Thal,) Biff Byford of Saxon and members of Thunder, The Wildhearts, Scorpions, KISS, Judas Priest, Slade, Toto, Stone Gods, Therapy?, Deep Purple, Journey, Hanoi Rocks and Anthrax,.

Signed copies of the Judas Priest and Robert Plant biographies are available to buy at Kaleidoscope Records in Westfield Street.