Gritstone

Lying on a lounger outside a flyblown café near Naples, Mike reflects on the last few months. He'd set off for the wedding of the charismatic Al, whose closed community is in the Calder Valley. Three months later, Mike's wearing a white robe, standing over an open grave.
Alan Newcombe vividly immerses us in the life of Gritstone House. There's no electricity or running water — or contact with the outside world. And Al pulls the strings in a house where there's fraud, secret burials, and clandestine murder.
Gothic, serious, yet brimming with wit and humour, Gritstone is an impressive debut.

Alan grew up in a post-war London where every adult had experienced the war – his father with the Canadian army in the carnage on Juno Beach followed by months of fighting. The stories of those years stay with Alan.

His childhood was unusual. He was brought up in a block of flats alongside grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins – each family on a different floor. He retains a fascination for community outside the nuclear family.

Living on the margins of the land fascinates Alan, and he's often fantasised about bitter power struggles in isolated seaside towns. These images eventually fed into The Glass Tower.

Alan only began writing concentratedly in his mid-sixties. Two novels are published and one is in a virtual drawer.

He plays saxophones with LUFT, who have released two albums and perform live regularly. The launch events for his Gritstone novel, saw his musician friends creating a unique 'musical action reading performance'. He is married and lives near Epping Forest. He continues to lose himself there.