The domain of this site is alanbrayne.com, but I have chosen to call my homepage Digging For Water because this is the title of a book of poems, stories and essays that I self-published in June 2024. I will say more about me and my writing in the section About Me.

But first let me talk you briefly through the rest of the site, which I launched on 21 July 2024. The category that I update on a regular basis is LATEST. Every Sunday I write a new essay or blog and put it on the sub-category Sunday Update. There are also three other sub-categories under the main menu of LATEST: Poem of the Month, Fiction of the Month, and Essay of the Month. The content in them changes on the first day of each new month.

Then there are two categories, POEMS and FICTION, which feature the poems, novels and stories I have already written. POEMS has three drop-down menus – Digging for Water, New Poems, and Old Poems – where you can find some sample poems from Digging for Water or some of my latest work. FICTION has five drop-down menus – Jakarta Shadows, Kuta Bubbles, Lombok Flames, Short Stories, and Flash Fiction – where you can read the first chapters of my novels by linking to my publisher’s site or that of Amazon, and buy my work in e-book form or even in paperback if you’re feeling flush.

In the next category, ESSAYS, there is a drop-down menu listing these subjects – Art, literature & music, Film Noir, I Ching – plus another titled Book Reviews. There is also a section for blogs which are more than one year old.

One of my aims in setting up this website is to increase the number of people who read my work (I’m a pensioner, so I have no need to go heavy on the marketing in an attempt to build a future career). But mostly this website is something to keep me busy in my dotage, to rescue the grey cells from atrophy, and to give me the chance to write and talk about four subjects – writing, art, film noir, the I Ching – that are some of my passions and pleasures in life.

Finally, there is an ARCHIVE section where I will archive my weekly updates and any other stuff which doesn’t fit anywhere else.

I really hope you enjoy your time here.