Barefoot Times

Inspirations

My writing has been inspired by many of the books I've read over the years. I have listed below some of the more obvious and notable ones.

• The concept of twin worlds and the ability to "flip" between them was inspired by Peter Straub and Stephen King's book The Talisman.

• The idea that subspace was in some way at right angles to real space came to me after reading Dean Koontz's book Seize the Night in which he describes a time machine that goes sideways in time.

• My introduction of Sheol in Part 5 was inspired by Anne Rice's book Memnoch the Devil, although her Sheol is quite a different place to mine.

• The Siege of the Delphinidae in Part 7 was inspired by Peter Jackson's depiction of the siege of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers.

• The idea of the seduction of a boy named Mark in the movie that Chris watched in Part 9 and the significance of the red sky was inspired by Peter Straub's book lost boy lost girl. I was originally going to have Chris reading that book, but to do so would have necessitated revealing at least some of its storyline, which I was loathe to do.

I would also like to thank SBL members Mark Davies, Tim Mills and Ray Foret Jr for their encouragement and suggestions along the way.