Graham Joyce is one of my writers. Like you, I have a bunch of them. I come across them somehow, often at a book sale, buy something cheap, then after enjoying it, work my way through their back catalogue, and still enjoying them, buy each new book as it comes out. Too rarely I reflect on how lucky I am to have found them, and as the years pass I wonder what writer I may be missing out on as I scan shop shelves.

I read his latest about four or five months ago (and included a quote from it in an earlier post). Just a few weeks later, I was posting on the horror of MH17 being shot down over the Ukraine. Today, I read Joyce’s far superior post touching on the same topic.  Sadly, the reason I read it, is because two months late, I accidentally heard news of his death.

Strangers die all the time. Who am I to speak of a man who I never met, or to pretend knowledge by appropriating details from wikipedia? I can only gently suggest you seek out his books. The magic of writing means that I enjoyed a number of hours within his head, touching his thoughts with my eyes, drawing them into myself. There are many worse ways that I could have spent those hours, and worse ways you could spend yours. If you like to read and like to think and have conjured up for you strange intrusions into this world, it would be a kindness for you to read his work.