The Shore

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Kevin Kronig led the young woman over to the railing.
“We’re stranded about half a kilometre off the most beautiful forest I’ve ever seen. It cascades from the clouds down the hillside like the mane of a spirit of the Earth. Where it meets the water, the sands are of a gold you’ve never seen before, and flocks of birds form living clouds that dance over the canopy.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and gently swivelled her around until she was facing the other way.
“We are no longer in an ocean or sea, but on a vast river. On the opposite bank, another glorious forest reaches from the water up to the clouds. The water isn’t empty either, but filled with boats of all shapes and colours. Not dull, rusty steel like ours, but of living wood and canvas and hemp.”

This is almost where the story ends, but it begins far away on a Scottish beach with a man throwing stones into the sea. On the journey, there are ghosts of the past, there is love lost and love found, but most of all, there are doors. Not the ones that adorn the front of our houses and dot the walls within like a plague, although there are plenty of these too, but those in our minds. They shut out what we don’t want to see, to know, to remember. We lock them, chain them, brick them up and paper and paint over the space and pretend they aren’t there. If only that worked. Not all the doors are of our own making though.


Publication date: 26th May 2018
Length: 408 pages
Sample scene – The Interview
Additional information – About the book
View the book on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com

New Year Update

Progress on “The Shore” turned out to be achingly slow last year. More than anything, I blame moving from the North-East down to Perthshire for this. The housing market there isn’t tanking by any means, but it’s very, very unpredicatable, and it took a very anxious six months to sell. Then I spent the tail end of the year settling in and doing far more redecorating than I intended.

The second draft is about 80% done now, and I hope to finish it early in the new year. However, once that’s complete I plan to let it stand for a couple of months whilst I work on something new. I do hope to get “The Shore” complete this year, but absolutely no promises!

Update on new project

After 7 weeks, and over 120,000 words scribbled out longhand, the very first draft of ‘The Shore’ is done. I’d love to be able to say what it’s about, but it’s complicated :-). It has ghosts, bad poetry and strangeness, but a distinct lack of sci-fi. My first drafts are always akin to sketches, and some parts stay to be coloured in, whilst others die under the dreadful assault of the eraser. Only time will tell what survives and what the final shape will be.

New year, new project!

After Return to Eden was published in November, completing a venture that was over fourteen months in the making, I took a wee break to do other things. However, I’ve now started work on a new novel. I can’t say too much about it yet, only that the working title is ‘The Shore’.