M. Allman

I was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family. My grandmother was a matriarch whom we all adored and she ran the world from her one-up and one-down house in the centre of the town. All the rest of my cousins stayed in Heckmondwike, but we moved about a lot because my father kept changing his job on account of he could never agree with his bosses. I had lived in nine different houses and attended four different schools before I grew up.

My brother was seriously ill as a young child and needed practically all my mother’s attention, so I was left pretty much to my own devices. Luckily, my mother had taught me to read at a very early age, so I had no difficulty entertaining myself. I was a solitary child, but I don’t ever remember being lonely. Armed with my library card, I read voraciously and without discrimination, with nobody censuring my reading material. Consequently, I am a fund of useless information, but also have some surprising gaps in my knowledge.

I left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working in various jobs, including bacon-packer and escapologist’s assistant, I returned to full-time education and did a BA in history at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford.

I stayed in Oxford working as a recruitment consultant for many years and it was there that I met and married my lovely husband, Vic.

In 2001 we retired and moved to Southern Spain where we live with our rather eccentric dog and cat. I write and Vic goes for long walks.

I started writing soon after I came here and had several short stories and articles printed in a local magazine, Streetwise, a glossy publication for ex-pats living in the Costa del Sol.

My first book, Take One At Bedtime, was published in April 2011 and the second, Domingo’s Angel, is due to be published in June 2011. My novella, Doppelganger, will be published later this year in the anthology Curious Hearts.