|  W.A.Harbinson
was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1941. Leaving school
at fourteen years of age, he became, first, an apprentice fitter
in James Mackie & Sons, Belfast, then an apprentice Gas Fitter
with the Mersey Gas Group, Liverpool. At nineteen, he left England
to emigrate to Australia, where he joined the Royal Australian
Air Force (RAAF) as a trainee telegraphist, then switched to
the medical branch. As a medical clerk, he served in Melbourne,
Adelaide, Sydney, Thailand and Malaysia before receiving his
discharge and returning to England in 1967.
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W.A.Harbinson wrote his first novel, as
well as short stories and articles, while still serving in
the RAAF. Before leaving the RAAF, he wrote six 'minor' novels,
one of which, The Running Man (1966), was turned into
an Australian 'art house' movie, The City's Edge.
After
leaving Australia and settling in London, Harbinson worked as
a magazine editor while continuing to write a remarkably broad
range of novels, biographies, short stories, articles, film
adaptations, and some short works for radio.
W.A.Harbinson
now divides his time between West Cork, Ireland, and Paris,
France. For the past three years, he has been the regular film
columnist for the Paris-based English-language cross-cultural
magazine, The Eyes. He has also written successful SAS
thriller/adventure novels under the pen-name, SHAUN
CLARKE. For more details, click the button in the Navigation
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A
PERSONAL COMMENT ON “CHANGING DIRECTION” by W.A.HARBINSON
Back
in 1998, with the completion of Projekt Saucer, Book 5: Resurrection,
I decided to write no more science fiction or books, fictional
or factual, about man-made flying saucers. I did so because
I felt that I’d said all I had to say about the subject
and because, having started my writing career with ‘realistic’
novels, I felt an increasingly strong urge to return to that
kind of writing, with subjects more related to my personal life
and family history. This, I suspect, was in line with my advancing
years and the need to make some sense of my past by exploring
it in ‘realistic’ fictional terms.
My
gradual return to a more personal form of writing had already
begun, without my quite realising what I was doing, with the
writing of my autobiographical work, The Writing Game: Recollections
of an Occasional Bestselling Author, published in August
2005 as a POD (Print-on-Demand) book by www.booksurge.com. The urge
for a return to this kind of writing was also evident in another
non-fiction manuscript, All At Sea on the Ghost Ship,
which I wrote as a personal memoir based on a voyage I had made
in late 2001 as the sole passenger on a container ship sailing
with an all-Asian crew from Shanghai to Haifa. The writing of
both these manuscripts was a clear indication that I was, perhaps
helplessly, returning to a more reflective or introspective
form of expression than science fiction, science-fact, or contemporary
fantasy could offer me.
Thus,
for the past six years, I have been working without a contract
on an epic 2-volume novel, Lagan River, Black Mountain,
based on the Troubles in my hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Book 1: The Long Slide, was completed two years ago,
but was deliberately held on ice until the second book, Divide
and Rule, had also been completed. That draft came in at
885 pages. The completed work, is now in the hands of my London agent, Tanja Howarth.
W.A.
(Allen) Harbinson
May 12th, 2007
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