Hello, it’s the author here. I thought I’d switch off the village voice for this blog post and talk as me for once. That is, instead of pretending to be an article written by a committee of scribes in a ghost village! I hope you’re enjoying the extra content here at salmonweird.co.uk either as an introduction to the books or as an expansion of the wider universe.

Your support here is much appreciated and the lovely feedback I get on the short stories and the character features (which I haven’t done in a while but will do as release date for book two draws near). I am to write a blog post here about twice a month whether or not a release is due. Throughout this year, I expect a new short story every couple of months too though most will now appear on Buy Me A Coffee (more details later).

So why do I do this? What do I hope you get out of reading Salmonweird?

Entertainment – Naturally!

The main and most obvious thing I hope readers take away from literally anything I write, is entertainment. I hope you have fun reading it. I hope you remember each book, character, scenario and plot with fondness. Because ultimately that is why most of us read fiction at all. Did you find the first book entertaining, or the second or any other in the series? The short stories? Yes? Then 90% of my job is done.

The importance of entertainment cannot be overstated. I wish we valued it more. As this pandemic goes on, we’ve needed distraction. Every book we open need not be profound. Sometimes all we need is a Big Mac for the brain. I know Salmonweird is not mindless tosh, but there’s enough of it in there.

Encourage Curiosity

A recent reader told me she learnt some new things about history she never knew before after reading Salmonweird. Because of the way I deal with characters and the historical period in which they lived – this reader put the book down and went onto the internet to learn more. If the book inspires curiosity in you to learn more about our past, I feel I have achieved something else I set out to do.

Most of us did not get a good history education. It was – perhaps until Horrible Histories – dry, stuffy, obsessed with dates and events, with little in the way of making it engaging or fun. This is something else I wanted to do.

Understand Interconnectedness

Setting the story in a single small village I hope to impart the importance of understanding that historic events do not exist in a bubble. As the books go on and new characters are introduced, some with connections to already existing characters, I hope readers see the past as present, real, and impacting on everything that happened since.

When we talk about the huge number of people that died in The Black Death, we’re talking real lives. These are people with families. Some died childless, some before they had a chance to start their life and realise their dreams. And all these things have the capacity to impact events decades or centuries later.

And that’s how – as the series goes on – I hope readers get to see how events reverberate through time.