During the course of any writer's descent into obscurity, many submissions are made to publishers and competitions. Usually these get rejected or ignored and are consigned to the scrap heap. With the number of writers seemingly exceeding the number of readers and the explosion of 'blogs' on the net that nobody has time to read, items such as these will never see the light of day, until they are published posthumously and the publishing public realise that:a: the writer was a geniusb: they can publish his work and not have to pay royalties.c: people are fed up reading inconsequential drivel on their handhelds.Hence, why not put all these together in a collection, and include some already-published short stories? After all, why spend your hard-earned on a single piece when you can have the whole set for very little more?And then the out-takes. A novel in the making can take many different directions, with some parts becoming irrelevant to the evolving story. These chunks of text are as good as any of the others, but are removed to maintain word count or the flow of the story. Some are included here, with explanations as to where they fit in the back catalogue. Maybe nobody will ever buy this set, but the stories are now recorded in the annals of time (and the British Library).However, in the words of the late lamented Terry Pratchett's immortal Granny Weatherwax, "I ain't dead (yet)," so please feel free to read and hopefully enjoy.
