Rae of Light

A Palindrome Character Interview  Originally featured as a guest post on Ian Richard's website Ideally we’d like to be interviewing Robert right now, but if you've read Six Dead Men you'll be well aware, he’s solitary, preferring the worlds tucked between the covers of a good book. So we’ll leave him be and turn instead to someone who knew him well while he was living in Haddington: Gabriel Haskey, school librarian at Knox Academy, now retired and living in Crete. Interview Mr Haskey – it wasn’t so long ago that you knew Robert fairly well. What was he like when he was at Knox Academy? Robert hasn’t changed all that much. I haven’t seen him since his 15th birthday. But he writes me long thought provoking letters. Always been a deep thinker. Likes his own company. Reads voraciously. What’s the first thing you notice about Robert? His nose is always stuck in a book. What was his relationship like with his classmates? Never quite one ...

So I’m launching another book this Easter. It’s a collection of vignettes related to characters from Six Dead Men and its prequel, Palindrome . I can’t call this a collection of short stories because in truth the pieces are really a moment in various characters’ lives. As these character snapshots link the two books in The Robert Deed series, I’ve decided to call it Six Degrees . And how exactly did this collection come about? Well, when you write a novel, peripheral characters often ask you to tell their side of the story.  At times their voices are so loud and persistent in your head that they are hard to ignore. This was indeed the case with characters from both  Six Dead Men and Palindrome . So  Six Degrees was born out of this . But it also grew out of my desire to play with the short story form while trying my hand at Flash Fiction. I’ve since sent two of the stories off to Mslexia’s annual short story competition and now have nails bitten down ...