I've had two novels published and about eight plays produced by the BBC, The Traverse, at the Fringe, etc. If you want to see my writing CV, you can click here

I set up this webpage to help me get a literary agent in February 2005 and finally got an agent for a book I finished in August/September of 2006. The agent is that man of great taste and perspicacity, Mr James Bond. Basically, I sent out hundreds of emails, using the webpage Everyone Who Is Anyone ...

So the job of this webpage is really done, but I'll leave five novels on this page (which can be downloaded of course and stuck into ringbinders if you want a free novel), and a kind of novel/travel book as well as a play I wrote a couple of years ago. This hasn't been produced yet.

I will write notes along with this material which will give an idea of how it originated, whether I've tried to sell it before,etc.

I'm very happy for anyone who wants to look at this stuff to download it for free, but although the page gets hit about nine ten times a week, I have no idea if anyone is downloading stuff. So if you download something, it would be really nice if you'd click here and let me know.

I've been writing a blog about this page to detail any progress with this writing business. Since I've now got an agent, I'll be blogging mainly about being a vajrayana buddhist and my experience of bliss, ecstasy, etc., through meditation. So if you want to have a look at the blog, click here

I wanted to avoid working when I left university and started learning to write by writing this book about ...university. I did the last re-write when I was in my early thirties. I was too busy with other things to hustle it just then and thought I might take another look at it when I was in my forties, but never got round to it. I have sent it to one publisher about ten years ago. That's all.

It's about the last two years of a final honours degree course at Edinburgh University in the early 70s. It's got quite a bit of drugs and sex in it and could do well if called DRUG TESTS. It was written about 15 years before Trainspotting, but apart from the use of Scots, it's in the same ball park area. Except about students. But not, I suspect, quite as wonderful!

This book is 74,000 words long and lasts for 161 pages. Although not always working full time, it took about six years out of my writing life. The first draft was half a million words long!

If you want to have a look at the novel, click here

This is a kind of noir thriller about blowing up the government, taking tons of drugs and speaking to your dead girlfriend. It's got a very strong plotline.

I started work on this idea in 1980 when I was a doing a post-grad in librarianship at Strathclyde university. Then I adapted the plot for the stage and the book was done as a play at the Traverse Theatre in 1989. I also re-wrote it then, but didn't think it was quite ready. I re-wrote and updated it last summer.

The only agent I sent it to was Lindy King who is the agent for Ewan McGregor. The part was made for Ewan McGregor. I've sent the first chapter to one other agent recently, and that's it. This book should find a publisher and surely will some day.

It is 46,506 words long and lasts for 190 pages.

If you want to have a look at the novel, click here

The reason why I didn't get the novel of BOMBER ready when it was on at the theatre was because I went to Australia for a year. While there, I started this. It's really a sword and sandals epic about the middle east, oil, etc., except it's set in a fictionalised locale (some of which looks like West Australia!). It's an adventure story, a romance with a hero, hubris, the works.

I had no idea what to do with this when I'd finished it. I was just delighted it was finished as it took three years to complete. I think I sent it out to two or three publishers then forgot about it. Make a good movie!

Ancient Futures is 69,136 words long and lasts for 319 pages.

If you want to have a look at the novel, click here

I tried really hard to get this book published when I wrote it, and failed. Sent it to every publisher in Britain. I'd just had a book published by Mainstream Publishing which was due to be paperbacked by Fontana. I'd had that book adapted for Monday Night Theatre on Radio 4 and hoped for the same with this project. Monday Night Theatre took the adaptation alright, (it got the best review in the Scotsman I've ever seen for a radio play!) but I couldn't get anyone to go for the book when I wrote that later.

I wrote the radio play first and if you strip the dialogue from this novel, you've got the play almost intact! I wrote the book at a time when I was very happy and it's a favourite of mine.

Jacob Merryweather has been brought up in a colony of religious people in South America, but upon reaching maturity has to go back to the United States to have a personal encounter with God. Getting caught up in a rivalry between two brothers, Jacob ends up as a candidate for the Presidency. The book starts with an assassination attempt on Jacob, which he has planned. He's between life and death and talking to God at the beginning and the story is told in flashbacks from that point.

The Real McCoy is 35,970 words long and lasts for 161 pages.

If you want a look, click here

In 1997 I had a novel called ARE YOU BOYS CYCLISTS? published by Serpent's Tail. With the money I got from that, I decided to go on a Buddhist pilgrimage to Nepal and India. This resulted in The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, which is a difficult book to categorise ... a novel, travel book, and Buddhist primer. It's also supposed to be quite funny!

Element Books had agreed to publish this book, and I had done the first set of re-writes when the company went bust.

If you want to have a look at the novel, click here

When Element Books hit the buffers, I was left high and dry in full time gainful employment. Only now, four years later, have I managed to go half time.

Since I was working as a school librarian, I started trying to write kidbooks i.e. books for the kids I was stamping books out for anyway. I thought the trouble with books for this age group was the lack of really strong story lines.

If you want to see a synopsis of Light in the Dark click here.

When I finished this book, I was amazed that I couldn't get anyone in the business to look at it. Finally, I realised that sending books in the field straight to publishers is a waste of time, but I only ever got two or three agents to have a look at the two kidsbooks I wrote.

However, I did get plenty of kids to read this and the one I wrote afterwards (BUGTOWN). To make their reactions genuine, I told them that the books were written by Alison Main, a fictional writer. Some of the best experiences I've had in writing have been getting the folders and questionnaires back from kids with beaming, smiling faces.

At one point, everyone who came to my school and could manage a Harry Potter was offered either one or both of these books. They've been extensively roadtested and kids really like them!! I was amazed at how much some kids liked them!! When I couldn't get anywhere with Light in the Dark, I wrote another kidsbook, thinking if I'd written two (with my background of published stuff) then I'd surely get agents to look it. No way. What a business! I think over three years I managed to get two agents to look at Light in the Dark and maybe the same for BUGTOWN. So I gave up.

I wrote Light in the Dark as a bit of a labour of love. It is very strongly influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, which I'm very interested in. Light in the Dark is a book which was particularly liked by the dreaded group: twelve year old boys. I wanted BUGTOWN to be enjoyed by a wider sweep of kids so I wrote it with tons of humour and about the kinds of things that kids like and which were "in the air." This is the way Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was created and that swept the world. Of course, I couldn't get anywhere with this either though kids liked it even more than they liked Light in the Dark.

If you want to see a synopsis of BUGTOWN click here

If you want to have a look at the novel click here

I stopped trying to write radio drama about 1991 and only wrote one more play a couple of years later. I sent it to the Traverse and they (under a different artistic director from the one who commissioned me) didn't want it. So I sent it to a couple of regional theatres and when they didn't want it, that was the end of playwriting for me!

Jock Tamson's is a black comedy reminiscent of Orton and Beckett. I knew before I wrote this play that it probably wouldn't be performed, but I was dying to write it and I was very happy with the results. It's a cracking script.

It's a play about greed, anger, ignorance and exploitation.

If you want to read it click here

Thanks very much for bothering to look at this page. If anyone wants to contact me, click here