True Story - bad plot!
On how I grappled for a gun - but could never use it in a book ... Let me tell you a story, and before we get started, let’s break all...
There may be trouble ahead ...
As Alfred Hitchcock once said, people tend to be most frightened not when something happens, but when they are waiting for it to happen....
More Bio - Getting to "Whitebridge"
When he was sixteen, Alan applied for a scholarship at Atlantic College, the international sixth form boarding school in Wales, which, at...
Spain after General Franco
It is hard for most people to comprehend what a grip Francisco Franco had on Spain, but perhaps one story will illustrate it. Franco...
First Memories "Salton"
Alan (aka Sally Spencer, in case you didn't know) was born, a few years after the end of the Second World War, in Marston, a salt panning...
The Empress comes calling
Actually, the Shahbanou - Empress of Iran - comes calling. The school where we worked was on a new development at the edge of the desert,...
The Iranian Revolution – a worm’s eye view (1)
As you can see, Tehran is surrounded by mountains, making its airport one of the most dangerous in the world to land at. In 1976, when we...
Writing - and (just some) Readers!
My readers devote several hours of their valuable time to reading something I have written – so how could I not love them? But there are...
The Strange Business of Writing (1)
Somerset Maughan once said "there are only three rules to writing, but unfortunately nobody knows what they are". And he was dead right...
ebooks – why I like them
When I first started writing, books stayed in print for several years, but over time the publishing/book selling processes have...
