Hello. How are you doing? We never hang out any more. I miss you. I miss us. Everyone’s just so busy, that’s the problem. But we have to make the time. Soon. We should get the whole gang together. We can drink Bloody Marys like we used to and talk about the old times. Do you ever think about the old times?

Do you remember how it used to be when we were together?

Once, we drank Bloody Marys together, just the two of us, just the once.

My name is AlanAlan Trotter. I’m twenty-nine years old and I live in LondonBrixton, South London and work near Bethnal Green in North London. My address if you want to send me thingsnice things is:

7 Temple Yard,
London
E2 6QD

I write (I once won the Sceptre prize – £1,500 given by the publisher for a novel-in-progress – and I’ve written for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency) and I work am a freelancer working in publishing.

I write copy, make videos and do other things too. Maybe I could do something for you? I probably could. I’m pretty handy to have around. Why not email me? It’s alantrotter@gmail.com. We could have coffee. I probably won’t have coffee. I might have tea. We can go dutch. Let’s iron out these details later.

I’ve written blurbs for Penguin, Hodder and Granta., and for authors like Italo Calvino, William Burroughs, Vladimir Nabokov..., John Steinbeck, John le Carré and Yukio Mishima. I’ve also written interactive stories for kids, and worked on advertising campaigns and digital marketing. Other bits and pieces too.

(A long time ago I worked as a freelance journalist, mainly for the NME and the Guardian.)

The book I’m proudest of, that I’m happiest to have been involved with, I worked on while I was a copywriter at Penguin. It was an anniversarya sixtieth anniversary edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

It was designed by the pretty much incomparable gray318. Getting to use the iconic language of Orwell’s classic like that, and to dispense with having the title and author on the front, or any kind of blurb, and to end up with something so brilliantly executed... it was a treat.

Here’s a clip from a BBC Four documentary that discusses the cover:

I’ll try to post some of the videos on this website.

For most of them I do all the filming and editing. I’m pretty happy with the way the Mini Modern Classics series has been going.

This is part 1:

And this is part 2:

And here’s a video I made a while ago about Coralie Bickford-Smithgreat book designer and touch of class Coralie Bickford-Smith:

For some of them I’ve got to work with other, talented people, like Yum Yum London, who did the animation for a video this video with John Lanchester.

Here are some things I’ve been doing:

• Follow me on Twitter
• RSS feed, email subscribe
• alantrotter@gmail.com