about me

Larry Harrison started life as cowman and yak keeper for the Tibetan Buddhist community at Karma Kagyu Samye Ling, in Scotland. After working his way up to the post of assistant dairyman on a commercial Ayrshire herd, he left Scotland in the 1970s to work with disadvantaged children at London's Clapham Junction.

Larry became surprisingly good at persuading children not to stand on the railway tracks at Earlsfield Station. And he was able to talk them down from rooftops in Battersea, without them bombarding passers-by with slates. To this day, Larry is relieved that he was able to negotiate the release of everyone held hostage by Barry in the school unit. The Parks Department should not have left an axe unattended within sight of the building, and had Barry not been so amenable the outcome could have been a good deal worse. (Thanks, Baz. What fun we had! Sorry to hear you were done last year for kidnapping that Assistant Governor on D Wing.)

Larry's subsequent career, as a university researcher on alcohol and drug problems, culminated in being appointed Reader in Addiction Studies at Hull, long a centre of excellence in problem drinking. Larry has now retired to the peaceful East Yorkshire countryside, where he is an organic cider maker. He wrote 'Tobacco Battered' for BBC Radio 4, which featured on Pick of the Week, and is editor of 'Alcohol Problems in the Community' (Routledge, 1996), and author of over fifty academic books, book chapters and journal articles. This is his first venture into fiction.

Glimpses of a Floating World is a completed 80,000 word manuscript, of which the first eight chapters have been uploaded. Larry is no longer active on the site and is not chasing the ratings. He will, however, read and comment on your work if you have commented on Glimpses.

Larry is a member of the cutting-edge Year Zero collective, which has produced a sample of forthcoming work from its authors, called Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair. Download for free or read online at yearzerowriters.wordpress.com Glimpses of a Floating World is available in different ebook formats at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3275 and as a paperback at http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/glimpses-of-a-floating-world/931953

favourite books

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche - Half of a Yellow Sun
Hanif Kureishi - The Black Album
Alexander Trocchi - Cain's Book
Olivia Manning - Balkan Trilogy, Levant Trilogy
Zadie Smith - On Beauty
Graham Greene - Power & the Glory
Andrea Levy - Small Island
William Burroughs - Naked Lunch

my websites

http://www.woldsedge.org.uk/~larryharrison/Glimpse     http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3275