I was once a film studies librarian at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. That's a city so far away now, on the sweet Pacific coast of Canada. I spent my days surrounded by films, screens and movie talk. Now I am in another world: a dreamy town on the edge of the Cotswold Hills in south Gloucestershire, England – one of the four kingdoms of an island nation.

 

I lived most of my life in Canada, but now I am an orphan immigrant in the land of my forefather, the Welsh ones. The other bunch were from France, way back. The Welsh gave me a new home in the UK. The French gave me a name: Payment. Yes, it's French. And I like to think it means "Peace-maker."

 

As a young man, I studied both film production and creative writing. Around the same time, I travelled around the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as in India.

 

Writing is a way of remembering all that. But more often, it is a way of dreaming about possible worlds.

 

 

ABOUT THE WRITING

 

In Rabindranath Tagore’s footsteps, Richard Payment writes beautifully, and generates a moving evanescence, working, as he does, in the age-old but always compelling area between writing and dreaming. This is ... a writer we must not lose in the new unsatisfying welter that corporate book publishing has become.

Frank Delaney author, journalist and broadcaster

 

A fresh voice, one that follows its own promptings and isn’t going to be marshalled by what other people might want.

Elizabeth Buchan, author Light of the Moon

 

The book is a true gift and guide to better understand the quest for and sources of euphoria and completeness.      

Amy Barone, author Kamikaze Dance

 

I adore the sparse style and the easy melody of the prose. 

A natural writer, this fellow.                          Sonja Yoerg, author House Broken