(Click in the cover for a larger image.)

It’s 1990, but not the 1990 you might remember. Not exactly. A slightly different leg of the trousers of time.

See the world through the eyes of Pete and his friends – ordinary people in ordinary circumstances – as the world changes in terrible, unanticipated but plausible ways in that parallel universe.

Pawns is about life, and love, and death, and surviving, and the randomness of who gets dealt what hand in the game of life. Above all, it’s about seeing life from the point of view of the pawns in the game. A pawn’s eye view.

Pawns are never told what the players are doing...

I planned the whole of Pawns, and wrote the first half of it, in the late 1970s. It then languished until I picked it up again in 2011. At first I considered updating the first half to take account of changes in the world in the meantime, but quickly realized that it wouldn’t work.

So Pawns’s leg of the trousers of time had already diverged somewhat from ours at the very beginning of the book.

FREE to view on screen – although a payment of a pound or two would be much appreciated if you read it, like it and can afford it!

You can read the book here in your browser.

Published by Xin Publishing, available in print from Amazon (or can be ordered in any good bookshop).