For a while it seemed it would never be published, and the eventual British edition was edited without my knowledge (taking out most of the paranoid puns, which still seem to me to ring truer than almost anything else in the book). She wouldn’t have encountered much disagreement from most of the editors I was published by when I wrote the book. Smith - who was that writer who set his stories in Liverpool? Ramsey Campbell, that’s right - that Face That Must Die. I was opening my mouth when she corrected herself: not Guy N. For example, not long ago I was sorting through the horror titles in a second-hand bookstore (split spines, wilting corners, ballpoint scrawls, unidentifiable stains) when the shop woman told me she liked horror too: King, Herbert, but not that Guy N.
In particular I want to suggest why I wrote this book, which of all my stories seems the one most prone to provoke unease or worse. I want to talk honestly at last about why I write what I write. Introduction At the Back of My Mind: A Guided Tour Lastly, I’m especially grateful to Piers Dudgeon for encouraging this book.
Incidentally, some readers may like to know that Peter Sellers appeared in both Murder by Death and the Inspector Clouseau films. I hope that my good friend George Cranfield, manager of the Odeon London Road, will forgive the liberties my character takes with his cinema. Since writing it I’ve heard that Cantril Farm claims an abnormally high number of fatal heart attacks among young men.
I suppose I may be the only person to thank the planners responsible for building Cantril Farm and sending people there at least they helped me write this book. The Social Security people were remarkably loath to tell me what benefits John Horridge would receive, while the Planning Department wanted only to convince me that nobody was transported to a housing estate such as Cantril Farm against his/her will.
Apart from Jenny’s help (psychological and financial as well as by reading each chapter once it was finished) I seem to have written this one more or less on my own.
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