the story

Tricky one this. I want to give a flavour of the story but since it is, in essence, a mystery I don’t want to give too much away either.

It is the story of a man, John Mann, haunted by his past, struggling with the present and searching for his future. He has a gift/curse that marks him out as different and makes him a fugitive.

It is set in a near future, post-apocalyptic England that is as recognisable as the one we live in now, but altered of course by events and circumstance. So Mann’s world is no burned out wasteland, at least no physically.

I’ve very much enjoyed working with the language and the landscape as I imagine they would be, again, similar but sufficiently altered. How would such a world look? How would people adapt? How would society function? How would it be governed?

The tone is by necessity dark and at times violent but there is companionship, compassion, humour too, and hope because I can’t imagine people would survive for very long without these touchstones.