This is my second novel. I wrote it during the first four or five months of 2014, when I was unemployed. I say ‘unemployed’, but by that I mean I wasn’t getting paid to go to work in a bank or an insurance company. I was pretty busy, actually, writing this book.

For a while, the work went by the title Stories From a Faraway Place, but I never felt comfortable with that title. I’m much happier with Via Bridlington. For a start, it’s shorter.

Despite what the original title suggests, the place in question isn’t actually all that far away, really. But it can seem like it, and did for our hero for a long time in his life. It probably didn’t help that he went via Bridlington, but it’s not as if he had any choice. Still, never mind, because he’s there now, and his next job is to find how he fits in. It might not be in the way he expects.

The novel was directly spawned by my short story The Ferry, which was, in turn, inspired by something I saw on a boat (not a ferry, actually, but a rib) while on holiday in Portugal in 2013. I still find it incredible how a split-second experience like that can lead to a 300+ page novel, and I see it as confirmation of my creative damburst, after years of backing it up and flooding the valley behind it. Once I’d got to the last chapter of High Barnet, there was no stopping me. I’m finding quantity easy to come by – real quality is a little more tricky, I fear…

The stories from this faraway place:

The Ferry
The Cottage
The Permitted Area
The Winter
The Shipbuilders Arms
The Piano
The School
The Mainland
The Cottage, Again
The Moon
The Baths
The Lighthouse
The Brewery
The Griffin
The Rain
The Prison