Passing Place , Authors notes ,and Playlist

Authors notes.

This is a novel about many things, but more than anything else it is a novel about stories. The ones we tell, the ones we here and the ones we all know. How they influence our lives and our perceptions of the world around us. How they teach us about ourselves.

I have begged, borrowed and stolen ideas from other tellers of tales, because that’s what writers do, we are all thieves of the rich history of tales which permeates human culture. The good ones, of which I can only hope I am, add to that which they steal and make it their own. The truly great ones, which I can only aspire to be, do this so well that they become the source of the tales they tell for a new generation.

In this tradition, the tradition of literary thievery, I have plundered here and there a few tales, true and imaginary. I won’t be telling which is which, but if you want to know more about anything within these pages the internet is at your disposal.

I am at heart, an honourable thief of stories, however, if I steal from the real world I try to stay true to the source. If I steal from other tale-tellers, I try not to twist their visions round too many corners. The eagle-eyed reader will spot some of the references to my plunder. Many are hidden in plain sight after all.

Moorcock, Gaiman, King, Pratchett, Verne, Wells, Orwell, Gemmell, Adams, Bradbury, Eddings, Gibson, Holt, Rankin and many more have been subjects of my thievery. My thanks then to them, tale tellers all. Without which none of this would be possible.

Beyond artists of a literary kind, there are others who tell tales. The ones who set them to music and sing the words, weaving their tales with sound walls of passion and grace. Without them this novel more than most would be a poorer tale.

It was written over the course of five years, somewhere in the middle of writing it, I wrote Cider Lane, my first novel, a tale which had much to do with silence and silences.

Passing Place, on the other hand, is a tale which has much to do with music. As such it comes with a playlist of songs, one for each chapter, from those other tale-tellers who influenced this tale…..

Playlist by chapter