If you really want to know, then I'll tell you a little bit about myself, but there are more interesting pages on this site, believe me. And I support the school of thought that thinks what a writer writes is important, not who he is. That said, here goes...

Having spent most of my life doing the husband/father thing I now find myself with an empty nest and lots of precious time to indulge in my two loves of writing and computing.

Over the years I've written for the sake of it, with plenty of encouragement from friends and a little success in the form of non-commercial publication. In other words, there's been no money in it.

I had hoped to change that by springing my first two novels on the unsuspecting world of publishing. The major imprints would be fighting each other to offer me a contract, I was sure, once they had set eyes on my manuscripts. It took me a while to realise that the accountants had taken over the publishing houses, and unless I could become a celebrity overnight by sharing a bed with a member of parliament and a tabloid press cameraman then my chances of achieving instant literary fame were slightly less than those of that nice, softly-spoken Mister Paisley becoming Pope.

Undaunted, I carried on writing. Why? Because I like it. What better reason could there be for doing anything? There's a lot to be said for the creative process; getting the germ of an idea, sitting on it for a few weeks until you can't ignore its wriggling anymore, then stretching it out into a story-line and beating it into shape over the next year or two until it bears a vague resemblance to what might just pass for a poor relation to a novel in an illiterate tribesman's prize penny-dreadful collection -- and throwing it into the bottom drawer before starting on your real magnum opus. Hopefully one which isn't as long-winded as the previous sentence.

Both my finished novels are based loosely on my experiences in South Africa during the apartheid years. I stress 'loosely' because my heroes break too many laws and step on too many establishment toes for me to be able to return to South Africa if the authorities there got the notion that what I had written was purely autobiographical. And I would love to see the republic again, even if only on holiday; one day, perhaps.

I'm about halfway through my third novel. Going by the mundane working title of 'The IT Society', the story is set in Britain in the next generation and centres on a young man who is looking for something unusual, and regrets finding it in the form of some extraordinary technology. With luck it should be finished at the end of next year. I won't be posting any excerpts from 'The IT Society' until then because I'm the bashful sort who doesn't like an audience while I work. I can be so precious at times.

As you've probably gathered by now, the main point of this website is to promote my novels. I make no apology for that; it's what a writer's home page is all about. But I'd like to think that the site can also contribute to the general literary brew that is bubbling on the net. The World Wide Web is an exciting and forward-looking medium, not least for writers, who are at last freed from the restraints of the slush pile and can reach a constantly expanding market. And going beyond local writers's groups they can enjoy a worldwide fellowship of like-minded souls. So, brothers and sisters, drop in on my homepage any time you like. You're most welcome.

Frank Swales