My earliest memory is of my mother buying sweets for me in a shop. It must have been a local shop, because I knew the owner. He was friendly, bald and had a stump instead of a hand. The shop had a parrot and as soon as I got my sweets, I gave them one by one to the brightly coloured bird. The parrot unwrapped them with its beak and claws and ate them, all the time staring at me with a beady eye. The shop was in Saragossa, nowhere near where Count Jan Potocki found his manuscript. Don't know if that memory has any significance, but if it does, it is my love of the weird, the exotic and the strange. I have been many things in life. A traveller, living by turns in Spain, the UK,France, Mexico, New Zealand and Germany. I have written novels, a doctoral dissertation (on Mexican Comic Books), travel guides, short stories and academic articles. I have worked, studied, been unemployed and tried to make sense of the world. No luck as yet! I am in love with a wonderful girl! I speak a few languages and have taught Spanish at universities in the UK and New Zealand. I live in Germany now, but I wrote my first novel living in Leicester where I also participated in the setting up of two writers groups: the Speculators and the Phoenix Writers. Check them out!