Posted on: February 18, 2009
Christmas Eve, 1976: a man dies, tied to his bed in a Victorian Mental Institution… Andrew saw what happened. Eddie saw what happened. But their severe learning disabilities prevent them from communicating what they have seen. There is an answer… but it can only be found in fragmented clues about the men’s pasts. Can these clues be put together before one of them becomes the next victim?
Tasting the Wind… Available NOW on Amazon or for
free delivery worldwide go to: Book Depository
Why I am giving my book away.
Posted on: January 7, 2011
Tasting the Wind took me ten years to write. I now want to give it away to you as a free e-book…
The paperback would cost you £8.99 on Amazon. Click HERE to see it and to read some excellent reviews.
So why am I giving it away?
There are 3 reasons:
1) We are living in difficult economic times. I want to give you a free read. If you want to check out what it’s about and if it’s any good, click on the link above.
2) Because we live in difficult economic times the powers that be will be looking to cut essential services. ‘Tasting the Wind’ is partly set in a 1980s institution for people with learning disabilities. I want to raise awareness of what life could be like for people with learning disabilities if funding cuts force them to return to institutional styles of living.
3) The profits from the paperback go to Derian House children’s Hospice. If you keep your copy of the e-book I would ask you to give a donation (as much or as little as you like) to Derian House. You are under no obligation, but if you wish to do so go to: http://www.derianhouse.co.uk/donate.html
To get your free copy click the following link which will take you to Smashwords, where you can download your book in one of several versions including Kindle:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/5061
And finally: although I do not wish to make money from this book, I do have an ego. Please message my blog, add reviews on Amazon, and join my Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=56190762166
Let me know what you think, and how far round the world this has travelled,
Thanks,
Allan Mayer
David Heffer
Posted on: September 12, 2010
If you were to ask me how my weekend was I wouldn’t know where to start. Moving? Funny? Sad? Inspirational? Well yes, all of those things and a lot more.
Let me start at the beginning.
Most people who know me, or have read my blog, my novel or FaceBook page, will know that back in the mid eighties I worked with a very talented and gifted human being called David Heffer. He worked passionately and tirelessly in helping people with learning disabilities move from institutions to a better life.
In the early 90’s he was killed by the IRA when they bombed a pub in Covent Garden. He was only 30.
David was one of those special individuals who you are fortunate enough to come across once or twice in your life who are so true to themselves that the tune they dance to gets inside your head and stays there.
When I started to write ‘Tasting the Wind,’ which is set against a background of movement from institution to community, it was obvious that David’s spirit would loom large. I dedicated the book to him, and included him as a character.
A couple of months ago I started to receive messages through every conceivable web-based route: there was a message in my e-mail, on FaceBook, and in my blog comments. It said: I am David Heffer’s mum. Can we meet.
So this weekend we were host to David’s Dad, Brian, his Mum, Lesley, and her husband, Ivor.
We spent the most amazing evening just talking and looking at photographs. There were photographs of David from all corners of the globe. There was a photo of him in a programme from his beloved Arsenal, passionately cheering his team on. In fact everything he did he did with passion.
In addition I discovered what a good writer David was. He kept a fascinating and humorous journal of his travels around South America. It includes accounts of his journeys through scenes of great natural beauty, of being threatened by gun-toting locals, and eating fried guinea-pig.
Although I knew that David had been asthmatic, I found out how he had been so bad that he spent two years of his childhood in a sanatorium (where the diverse curriculum included shoplifting.) He survived the Asthma. He also survived a serious motorbike accident when he was living in Australia. It took a coward with a bomb to end this amazing life.
We laughed a lot at things that David had written- his accounts of his travels would not look out of place in a Sunday Travel Supplement. Our meeting was of course tinged with sorrow, but we were prevented from becoming too serious by the antics of our dog, Barney, who seemed to have developed a lustful obsession for David’s Dad, Brian. Life isn’t like a novel- it doesn’t come in a single genre.
So how do I feel? Happy to have found out more about David Heffer and to have made new friends with his wonderful family. Angry that a series of random events led to him being the only person to die in that bombing. Inspired by his unique energy and ability to pack so much into his life. But sad that last night our main guest, the one who had brought us together, could not be with us.
Amazon Review
Posted on: August 19, 2010
I try not to blow my own trumpet- I know where it’s been!
Thanks to Simon Jarrett for doing it for me in my latest review on Amazon:
Tasting the Wind by Allan Mayer.
I read this book after hearing Allan Mayer read some extracts from it at a conference – and I’m so glad that I did. Anyone who was around during the ‘big resttlement’ of the 1980s will cringe as they recognise many of the absurdities and contradictions of the time. These are beautifully captured by Mayer in the debates about language and ‘real choice’, the early experiments at social integration ending in tragi-comic farcical outcomes in pubs and shops and his hilarious minutes of residential home staff meetings. He also gives a riveting portrayal of the utterly, bizarre, other-planetary world of the long-stay hospital: that asylum where people were anything but safe, the hospital were people weren’t ill and didn’t get treated, the NHS facility where most of the staff were more institutionalised than the patients. If you weren’t around at that time then this book will give you a searingly honest portrayal of what it was like, including the mistakes and the new absurdities perpetrated by some of the well-meaning but at times over-zealous ‘liberators’ who supported people out of the hospitals. However the book is much more than this. At different times it had me shaking with laughter, welling up with tears and consumed by rage – sometimes within the space of one or two pages. He is a gifted comic writer, but never at the expense of the people of he is writing about and has created a world of believable, rounded people, including the people with severe learning disabilities who are the stars of the novel. Although very, very funny at times this is not a comic novel – it has very serious themes and an underlying poignancy. To have created a thriller in which the stars are two people with severe learning disabilities, one of whom can’t talk and the other seems to chant nonsense, is some achievement and gives an identity to people which no amount of worthy ‘values’ training could ever achieve. Allan Mayer captures something very important about the post-hospital experience of people with learning disabilities and the people who work with them. However progressive and ‘person centred’ the thinking, we seem to find ever more ingenious ways of not listening to what people with learning disabilities are trying to tell us, even the most progressive amongst us. Some would say especially the most progressive amongst us. I share other reviewers experience of the at times bizarre layout of this novel, with strange gaps and rogue paragraphs floating up or down to where they shouldn’t be. I believe it arises from this being printed to order rather than in bulk. However for me it somehow reflected the world it was written about – it’s the sort of book layout you’d expect to come out of the strange world of the mental handicap hospital.
Thanks Simon, Much appreciated.
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