I’m gearing up now towards my book launch for The View from Endless Street published by Wido Publishing and Mercy & other stories published by Tartarus Press, on the 4th July at Foyles in Bristol.
I know which story I’m going to read, but I’m trying to think how best to describe my two collections published this year. The View From Endless Street is a collection of 20 stories and is published by WiDo Publishing. The second collection, containing 16 stories is called Mercy and other Stories and has been made by Tartarus Press into a very beautiful hardback book with a silk ribbon bookmark. It’s possible that the stories in Mercy are darker than those in the other collection, it’s certainly true that all of the Mercy stories have creepiness woven into them, and only one of them is based on something that happened in real life.
The stories in The View from Endless Street tend to be ones that were inspired by odd events, strange people observed, peculiar situations or conversations that I became aware of, and so for me, those stories have more stake in ‘real’ life, although I hesitate to use the word real too emphatically. These two books represent a good part of the bulk of my writing work over the last decade, except that in the meanwhile, I’ve written a few novels and a couple of other collections that I’m keen to see published as well. But all in all, to see these stories, each of which is precious to me, published together in these books by these two excellent publishing houses, makes me feel contented and made stronger for the writing that is ahead of me.
