…is a game, a tennis match, a battle of wits, an exercise in horse-trading, and whatnot, but every once in a while you just have to concede the point to your editor. So (sadly) the following lines will not now appear in White Crow, when it’s published in July.

I know some who have seen great fissures in the earth, rent cave mouths and slit rock, wherein lies the entrance to the path to Hell. I spoke to a man from the North of England some years gone, who told me he had seen such an entrance with his very eyes. I understood from him that the gateway to Hell is somewhere outside Bolton.

Maybe it’s for the best…there are some nice librarians in Bolton, after all.

I think I might start posting more deletions. Could make a whole new book out of them…