AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Alan Greenhalgh

Question: Why did you write The Glass Half Full ?

Answer: After completing my first book, (Gathers No Moss) I was looking for a suitable subject for the second and particularly wanted to preserve one of the many amazing life stories of ordinary human beings who lived through the horrors of the Second World War. It is a tragedy when such powerful messages as those conveyed through history are lost when people die without recording their lives for posterity. If we don’t preserve the mistakes of the past in books such as these we are destined to repeat those mistakes over and over.

Question: Who is your intended readership for The Glass Half Full?

Answer: Mike’s life story makes compelling reading for any age group. However, the book is more than just a good yarn providing entertainment and we hope the readership will be worldwide and the book will reach people from all ages and walks of life. Whether readers choose to believe Mike’s claims his predictions for imminent global catastrophe follow closely on Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth and people need to really get the message about looking after this planet and each other. For instance, they need to know that through the simple act of daily meditation and concentration on loving thoughts they can lessen the horrors that we all face.

Question: Tell us about The Glass Half Full. It appears to be book that might challenge the reader’s belief systems.

Answer: As I mentioned before, I met Mike purely by accident when he and his wife visited a coffee and craft shop I was running with my wife. Mike will say there is no such thing as coincidence and that he and I were meant to meet. He was a man with a story he wanted told and I was someone with a passion for writing who had at that time decided I wanted to write the life story of an ordinary person who had survived the horrors of concentration camps and the Second World War. Amazingly, within mere days of making this decision he appeared kin my life. I admit his claims as to his true origins, his professed clairvoyant and healing abilities and his predictions for the planet challenged the cynical former policeman in me. Initially I was tempted to have nothing to do with him but he possesses an innate goodness, decency and in all other aspects is intelligent and lucid. Because his life story was so amazing I made the decision to write The Glass Half Full and leave the readers to decide what or how much they want to believe. No matter how you view his story, it is exciting and compelling.

Question: Did you do anything to ensure the veracity of Mike’s claims?

Answer: All the information he gave me about his childhood, his migration with his family to Western Australia and his life fitted with my research into events of those times. I have no doubt what he says happened and the various careers he followed are true. I tested him on his claim about the ability to weld without a mask and he performed this feat skilfully without mishap for a protracted time span. It should have ruined his eyesight but didn’t, so that in itself must say something about the man. As to his other claims, well……… I am a cynic but I have experienced enough of my own small share of inexplicable events to keep a little chink open in the window belief.

Question: When did you realise that you wanted to become a writer?

Answer: I can think back to my schooldays when I was required to write essays or poetry as part of the school curriculum. While others found it an onerous chore, I rejoiced in any excuse to put pen to paper. At the age of 16 when I was living a lonely, loveless existence in a Sydney boarding house after the dissolution of my parent’s hopelessly dysfunctional marriage I scrimped to purchase a second-hand portable typewriter on which I produced reams of pathetic short stories in the pathetic hope that I might produce something worth reading. I harboured the dream of becoming a successful author throughout my adult years until the itch just had to be scratched.

Question: What surprised you about the process of writing your books?

Answer: I think the thing that struck me the most was the amount of sheer hard work coupled with the decision as to what to exclude as there were so many incidents during my police career that would form the basis for novels. The Glass Half Full entailed considerable research into the former Yugoslavia, The Second World War and the murderous propensity of the Nazis and the Ustase.

Question: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Answer: Spend quality time with my family and any of my nine grandchildren. I am a passionate environmentalist with grave concerns for the future of our planet and all life on it. I scuba dive and my wife Chris and I love kayaking which we do at anyone of a hundred spots along Perth’s magnificent Swan River.

Question: Are you writing another book?

Answer: I have just completed and published Climate Change; Your Liferaft to Prosperity and Survival after extensive research into global warming and climate change.

Question: Why did you write a book about that topic?

Answer: I am terribly concerned for the future of my grandchildren because events surrounding climate change are unfolding so quickly. The "so called" experts really do not know whether we have time to turn around the anthropogenic causes on global warming and world leaders as usual, are taking so long to take meaningful action.

Everyone worries about the economic impacts of mitigating the effects of global warming but they miss the point entirely. If there are no people and no living creatures left on the planet there will be no economies. People come first every time.

Question:   What do you think you can do personally as one small voice in the wilderness?

Answer:   Money motivates nearly everyone. If I can show people that by investing in the fabulous emerging technologies associated with climate change they will become wealthy, I just might create a more "Earth Friendly" environment and movement.

What is really needed is a massive and collective shift in human mindset so that we turn away from the God of Consumerism that we all worship to a lifestyle of sustainability and concern for each other and all creatures that make up the huge living breathing organism that we call planet Earth. Most people see themselves as separate from nature. The human race must grasp the fact that it is only one cell in the entity the ancient Greeks called Gaia.

Question: Where can they buy your books?

Answer: The best place would be through www.lulu.com/alangreenhalgh but they can also get them from my website: http://www.thegoodnewsonclimatechange.com

Interviewer: I wish you luck.

Answer: Thank you.