“It was his safe place. No wonder that he would do anything to protect it.” His island has been, for Mark Atkinson, the inspiration for his life’s work, a saga he calls The Enchanted Circle. His imagination has turned this place into a land of romance and adventure peopled with tableaux from the story. His beloved Selena Delahaye has consistently rejected his love and with it his writing; but, as his cousin Fay will explain, “Whatever I tell you, I can’t get anywhere close to the impact this saga has made on Lori; and don’t lose sight of the fact that Mark has been working on it pretty well ...

I first wrote 'Christmas Night' in 1998-99 and then made a few amendments in 2003. Some things mentioned by characters in the story are from those years which led to my giving the final version of the novel in 2019 the subtitle, 'A Tale from the Recent Past.'  Though I have been heartened by the support of my publishers and the opinions of my closest friends, I have also been encouraged by the fact that any changes I have made to this Christmas story, never left the main ideas with which I started. The events and scenes which I most wanted to write are much as they were when ideas first took...

I began writing at an early age and completed stories and novels of my own as a result of childhood reading and imagination. I have been asked a few times now (in, for example, interviews on Lakeland Radio and Eden FM Radio) where I get ideas in the first place. It has always been my wish that ideas should be my own, though I obviously have many favourite authors and their tales. There is no real substitute for a good story as a means of developing characters, their experiences and relationships. No one should agonise too much about adapting ideas they have met with somewhere before. I was in...