Just another day in Hollywood.

There are a few things amazing about living here – too many to write about; sometimes it's like being in a movie. All the things we have seen over the years we kind of see: yellow cabs, short muscular Irish cops and men with guns.

Today I met my wife for lunch and we went to the Sunset Grill on Sunset Boulevard – yes that Sunset Grill in the famous song; before they re-modelled the building they had the disc on the wall by Joe Walsh.

So today after my chicken quasadilles (not as good as the ones in the late lamented Last America Hamburger) I leave Margaret and head north on Gardner; Gardner, as locals will know, crosses Hollywood Boulevard and when I reached the traffic lights there the traffic along Hollywood Boulevard was being controlled by a man with a rifle.

His car was parked in the middle of the Boulevard and he was not exactly dressed as a cop – or even a gangster.

He was wearing a greenish colour baseball type of cap and was not looking for a game of baseball.

After a few minutes he called the Boulevard traffic on and left me stuck at the lights with a few cars behind me. As far as I knew the third world war could have been happening down there as there was a fat tree blocking my view; the traffic going east was non existent but as he was calling west bound traffic on I figured that whatever had happened there had happened!

After what seemed like an eternity the lights changed to green and we could cross; looking left, as I crossed Hollywood Boulevard, I could see many other men with guns, loads of cars with their lights on and . . . nothing else!

I came home and put the news on, checked Twitter and nothing.

So I sent a tweet on Twitter and as one of the people I follow is West Hollywood Daily I sent it to him. He has just replied saying Man Armed with a Rifle at Hollywood and Gardner wearing camouflage was an ATF agent serving a warrant – wow some warrant!

I don't know anywhere in Britain where you would see such an incident – it looked like a SWAT incident!!

Going on I have decided to change the title of my novel; there are just too many novels called The Storyteller. Alan Sillitoe died the other day and even he wrote one with that title – together with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; a great writer and I am proud to say I was in one of the films adapted from one of his novels The Ragman's Daughter.

I'll leave this blog as the same title though.

My novel is for sale in quite a few places including Smashwords and Kindle in electronic books; Smashwords was easy to change, I am working on Kindle but I think it will take a bit of arranging with Amazon.com.

The new title My Friend Alfredo Hunter. I was thinking of My Friend Alfredo Hunter; genius but I have opted for the former; however nothing is final so if you have a preference let me know.

The paper back hasn't been selling too much but it sells on Kindle and Smashwords – mainly to American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.