There is a tendency to drift rudderless following the passing of a parent although in this case it was illness rather than death. A father who had previously dominated practically every aspect of my life no longer able to offer guidance and direction. “Just write everything down.” Someone suggested. So I did, 250 pages, three fictionalised accounts of events and actions that seemed to make very little sense. Fictionalised to distance myself from the narrative and for, additional objectivity, an invented author. Peter Jarman would be, like the narrator in Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, merely a camera. It was hoped, when reading back these three stories, through triangulation to re-calibrate my life. While ‘Three Journeys Into The Labyrinth’ was published in hardback it was only ever intended to reach two readers; myself and someone who would say, “I think I can help you with that.”

To those around me, my life must have appeared going well. Like my father, I was both a builder and engineer and had recently designed and constructed a new office for the hi-tech company I founded eight years earlier. The company was the first to develop technology to display digital video on a PC screen: a decade before YouTube and dogs riding skateboards.  And as this was dawn of the Internet age perhaps no surprise there was more interest in the company’s new browser software than its owner’s apparent mid-life crisis.

The book remained what it was at face value, three stories and a collection of predictions regarding   the likely impact of high technology and networked communications. As far as recalibrating my life it failed. But then I decided to use text file containing the three stories to test AI functions built into a second version of the browser my company was about to release. The result was enough material for a second book ‘Fahrenbrink,’ the fourth, and final, journey.

The book is available from third party sellers on Amazon.

Alternatively hardback copies can be purchased in the UK from Steinkrug Publications Ltd for £9.50 plus £1.80 post and packing.