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When I considered all of the places that I could set The Infinity Bridge, a range of options bounced across my brain. I wanted somewhere in the UK, but was bored with London based stuff, especially as the book is likely to have as big a USreadership as
a UK one. I think as a writer it helps to have knowledge about where you are writing about—it gives a certain integrity to the plot, and it augments the descriptive aspects of the  prose.


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Leeds or Manchesterwere the next considerations—I have a
good knowledge of both, having lived in one and worked in the other. But there was something missing about them, and indeed nothing that quite worked for the story. I love both cities, yet the sparkle wasn’t there.

Then it struck me... what about York? I’ve had a love
affair with York since I was a kid. My grandfather worked for the railways, based in York, and the place had attained a near mythical status by the time he passed away when I was nine. I can recall my trips there as a child to the RailwayMuseum, to the Minster, and to the
fabulous Shambles. I bought my first Charlie Brown book there, and still have the copy in the house (so... I’m a hoarder... sue me).

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My experience of York as I’ve aged has been every bit as much  fun. My brother, Dan, went to college there and also worked there for a while after. So I advanced from day trips to the Viking exhibition Yorvik, to pub-crawls and staying over there for weekends and even weeks at a time.

What is it about York? Quite simply it is the best historical
city I’ve every visited—above Chester, Bath, Edinburgh
Cambridge, Oxford, you name it. It wears its history
proud—and what a history. Roman walls and ruins; Vikin archaeology and exhibitions; Georgian grandeur; the Industrial Revolution; Dick Turpin, Guy Fawkes, and a thousand ghosts. It is a microcosm of British history, it bleeds it from every cobble and every sweeping frontage.

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The InfinityBridge is based on the familiar concept of alternate realities, the idea that parallel to our own there are an infinite array of realities similar in many ways to our own, yet different in some specific way. What better place then to consider the divergence that could happen if, say, the Romans never invaded us? Or if steam-power persisted as the dominant technology? Or Guy Fawkes had blown up Parliament, and James I with it? For a place already replete with stories, the possibilities are endless.

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So now I’d found my setting, I next needed to do
something with it. And that involved knights, androids, alternate worlds... and, of course, Merlin.