‘Why is Endless Winter not in the playlist?’ ~ A reader of Passing Place

This is a fairly straight forward question but one that may need a little explanation for those who have not read Passing Place. Which is the best novel I have ever written and quite possibly ever will, in my opinion. The first thing you may be asking yourself though is why would a novel have a play list? The simple answer to that is, because I made one. The more complicated answer is because music plays a large part in the make up of the novel, the main characters phycology, inspired much of it including the opening chapters, and it seem ridiculous at the time not to include a playlist.

So I did.

For those who may be wondering this is the complete playlist as compiled on what I laughingly call my You tube channel, that I put together a couple of years later.

As for the readers question, ‘Why is Endless Winter not in the playlist?’ the reason is actually quite simple. Unlike the other songs occasionally quote, mentioned in passing or which I associate with the novel, ‘Endless Winter’ is a song that doesn’t exist.

The original version of the Novel did not even feature Endless Winter, a fictional song from a fictional 1970’s prog rock opera based on HG Wells Time Machine. The song that was quoted and used in the original version of Passing Place was ‘Forever Autumn’ from a real 19070’s prog rock opera based on HG Wells War of the Worlds, which I used with some naivety and arguable quoted beyond the scope of reasonable fair usage.

This is why the wife of Richard, the main protagonist in Passing Place, was found dead in a bath tub with the song Endless Winter playing on a loop. Also why he answers a job advert he sees in a bus station window in a desert hick town in middle America several months later. An advert looking for a Piano Player, for Esqwiths Piano Bar and Grill, one who must know how to play ‘Endless Winter’ his dead wife’s favorite song.

Admittedly the cat also tells him to do so…

For reasons that should be obvious the lyrics to ‘Endless Winter’, which I had to write in full even though they are just quoted in part, feature heavily in the book , as the lyrics for the original song did originally. In fact that is the only change that has ever been made to the book.

It is mildly gratifying to my skills as a lyricist, that I occasionally get asked why the song that is so central as a theme within a novel in which music plays an important part is not in the playlist. Though that I took the original song and basically fiddled with the lyrics to create the new one, I am not entirely sure I deserve any plaudits here.

All that said perhaps one day I’ll ask one of my more musical friends to record it.

Passing Place remains the book of which I am most proud. I love all my novels but this one is the one with the most blood in the ink, the most slivers of my soul between its pages. Its a tale of loss and love, of hope and grief , and of choices, the choice we all have….

Also, there really is a forest in the cellar. As well as a Dryad waiting tables when she is not in the back garden with her tree. A gunslinger with a tale of the mythology in the old west. An Inuit whose spear is dropping blood on the bar and speak of tears like diamonds. The wisest doorman in all the universe who will teach you many things, including how to drink brandy the right way. A girl in the corridor with eyes in her hands. A literal devil called Lyal. A grey man form a grey world marveling at the colour in the swirl of his mop water. A chef who understand how to may causality sandwiches.

And a cat, did I mention the cat?

It is also, as well as my own favorite, my more critically acclaimed novel, as everyone who reads it, almost with out exception, loves it. When I go back to events it is the one people want to know if I have written a sequel for. Which I have not as it doesn’t need one and never did… And of course because of all that it is also my least successful novel in terms of sales… But I love it anyway.