The Collector of Tales — David Payne

This is the first book in a series of tales about a journey. The simplest of journeys. The journey that we all make after our expulsion from Paradise.

In The Collector of Tales, this journey is well underway and we find a man of middling years at a decision point in his life. It is not a big decision, in fact it is a very small one. One of the many and various choices that we all make in our lives. In this case he is choosing which way to go. Nothing complex or meaningful about it: is it one path or is it another road?

All he is looking for is a place to rest for the night. The choice is easily made but is not without its consequences. The Collector of Tales is an account of those consequences.

The story is set in a medieval kind of world that exists somewhere in our future, rather than in our past. It is light on technology; a little rough in parts; brutal in others and crude of language. Across this landscape The Collector journeys, gathering the tales of those curious people that he meets.