AS THE SKY WITH STARS
Tales from the North

What makes a story Northern? Writers seem to have no trouble setting their works in London or the Home Counties, and don’t end up being described by critics as Southern Writers yet anybody north of the line between The Wash and the Bristol Channel, who dares to  have the temerity to put pen to paper, stands a chance of being described as ‘provincial.’ To quote the late and great Hilda Baker, I resemble that remark.

These stories are set in the North of England but have universal themes: loss; the immutable past; the part luck plays in all our lives and how oftentimes, those on the margins of our lives are thought of as dispensable. 

The stories do, of course, have a northern burr about them. Although I am a mongrel of Irish/English descent, and a huge part of me always feels at home in Ireland, I was born and grew up in Lancashire, most importantly Manchester, the birthplace of The Industrial Revolution where the streets reek to the high and low heavens with stories. The stones and cobbles of that city were my first playground, and my second was the Pennines, where I spent most of my early rambling days and where I now live, (as a missionary) in Yorkshire so, no matter what I write or what I say, the North will run through it like Blackpool runs through rock.

Available to order now from the Online Store

 

As The Sky With Stars is the second in a collection of six books of tales, each with a separate theme.
The first 250 copies of each will be available as a signed, limited edition.
Exclusively available from this website in the ONLINE STORE

 

On Specky Four Eyes:

‘The child’s voices, convincingly sustained, take us to and through some dark but familiar places. Abracadabra especially is a tour de force. It’s a Dubliners for our times – and sadly too little has changed in a century.’

Julia Deakin 

Editor, Pennine Platform magazine.