I first had the idea for the world of Endland many years ago. In fact, it was in the long summer that preceded the start of my teaching career. I had been living in the Highlands of Scotland for several years, a place that is still close to my heart, and though I loved the lochs and peaks and ancient mysteries that they held, I was keen to see more of the world. So, I packed up my car and drove the length of the UK, stopping to see family, friends, and sites of interest on the way, before driving on to a ferry headed for Spain.

I remember watching England disappear below the horizon as I began my adventure on the continent, and, though I would instantly fall in love with Spain, a country that would be my home for the next three years, I couldn’t help but recall all the things that I admired about my home country – the history, the culture, the folktales and myths, the kindness, the fears – everything that made it … England.

And, slowly, as I crossed the Channel on a warm June evening, my mind was consumed with a foggy nostalgia, through which I glimpsed sight of a strange and special place – Endland.

The Endland that I began to write of more than ten years ago, during a Spanish summer spent searching for my first teaching job, living out of tents or strange houses, and watching my bank account deplete, was an Endland of whimsy and absurdism – of Shakespeare-writing monkeys on drifting rafts, oak trees intent on revenge, and impossible to solve mysteries at stone circles and hidden forests.

Over the years, however, Endland began to take on a richer and more relatable tone. And, from that nostalgic fog, two young boys appeared, filters of my own childhood memories and the eyes through which my tales of Endland would be told.

And now, as I near my completion of this much neglected and procrastinated over novel, I see that it has taken on more and more of me as the years have passed. The hundreds of crime stories that I have written have shaped its narrative more than anything else, and now rather than one long story, Endland is a collection of cases that are linked together by its two young protagonists.

Yes, Endland is a mystery book set in a mysterious world. A world that, while similar to ours in many ways, adds flesh and bones to the folklore that we know, love, and sometimes fear.