For reasons I’m unable to go into at this point I found myself recently in the odd situation of having a bunch of completed, fully edited, fully proofread stories which were about to become orphans. Each of these stories, ecliptic mix though they are, are stories that fall within a certain paradigm. Stories that could be told in Esqwith’s Passing Place, my fictional bar on the edge of reality. This is to say they were all a certain kind of story, stories with hidden messages or some deep emotive questions within them.

In fairness, this could describe most any story I’ve written, but while the definition is a shifting thing, as real as sunlight through gossamer spider webs and just as hard to grasp in your hand. I could not give you a definitive answer as to what make a tale a Passing Place tale. Though mostly they are first person narrative’s, a story being told to a listener by the one to whom the events happened. The listener is of course by proxy the reader. While the stories are those that could be told by a stranger in a bar to whomever is there to listen.

For those who have never read my 2016 (my god has it been that long) novel Passing Place, some explanation may be needed as to why this is important. Passing Place is a long narrative novel about loss, guilt, grief and the bitterness of lost love. It tells the story of a Piano Player searching for the answer to that most hateful of questions, why? His why, being wrapped up in the death of his wife by her own hand. In the novel he ends up in a strange bar, and people tell him stories. Passing Place stories… The kind of stories I found myself unexpectedly awash with a week ago, and decided I really wanted to do something with them. As they were not stories that should remain orphans, they were stories I loved, stories I was proud of, stories I feel needed to remain told.

So I decided to make them a new home.

As books go its a small one, just 160 pages, containing nine short stories.

Tales of Sanctimonious cults, another of a strange tower that do not want to be seen. A story of madness and elder gods returning in the Tees valley, a tale of a magician appointed to the court of Victoria Sax-Coberg. The strange statement of a life repeating in waves of twenty-seven, a tale of a wyrd in the western deserts cira 1850, a story with Sigmond Freud in a rowing boat and finally Hannibal Smyth, who is his as reliably honest as ever, while carrying and aspidistra.

But we’ll begin with a story of the inhabitants of the bar itself, a tale called The Strange and The Wonderful… Hence the title of the collection, as the name seemed right. I am also ridiculously pleased with the cover and the little bits of internal art. In the hardback edition in particular, it is a very pretty, and very pleasing little book.

It also has one more thing between its covers, a single poem by way of a dedication, to the best man I have ever known. I have never published a poem I have written before, and more than likely never will again, but I think my father would have been pleased to be associated with this little book, I hope so anyway.