The Promise Tree

Set in a fictional Sussex village beneath the South Downs of England,  the story follows new arrival Dani Lace, ex-model turned photojournalist,  as she is drawn towards the legend of Jack-in-the-Green and the mysterious chalk figure of the Long Man.

The Promise Tree Book One is a detective story without a detective. The heroine, Dani Lace, notices strange things happening but it is the reader who is the detective as Nature and history try to communicate with Dani. From the very beginning, there are dozens of tiny clues which the reader can accumulate as the trees, or is it Nature as a whole, affect Dani's thoughts and behaviour. History shows her the way things were. Is it trying to tell her where Man went wrong? The story is about questions but it's up to the reader to notice them and think about them. The three women in the story, Dani, Edwina and Freda are all drawn in to what is happening, whereas the men are not, with the exception of Walter, the old country labourer, who is not so much affected by it as a part of it.

'Si Texen', a pen name, is English, born in Luton, Beds. Fatherless by the age of three. Outdoor country childhood. Brought up mainly by older sister and aged grandmother (born 1865.) Mother mostly out at work. Solitary child, but for sister. Started telling myself bedtime stories for entertainment from about the age of five, extending stories for weeks, sometimes months. Pretty well unteachable at school. Hated English. Homeless and familyless by the age of twelve: sister and grandmother died; mother had nervous breakdown. County boarding school from the age of twelve to fifteen, for boys and girls with difficulties similar to mine. There, a teacher decided it was a waste of time trying to teach my form English so read to us, I now realise cleverly, 'The War of the Worlds,' taking one whole term to do so, after which I taught myself to read with 'The Call of the Wild' by Jack London, my first book. Married at twenty-two. Paid for and sent myself to art college in my twenties. Completed a five year photographic course. Became a studio manager in London. Single parent to a two year old daughter at thirty-four, when I also married for a second time to model girlfriend, then twenty, who is still my wife. I am now only really interested in photographing wild flowers and the female nude. It may be said I am probably still in the woods with my sister. 'The Promise Tree' could not have been written without the hundreds of hours of freezing work on the language conundrums which my wife and I struggled through together, in France, for Book Two. Her efforts and contributions have been extraordinary. I don't often get on with men but do sometimes form lasting friendships with my female models. I like good manners, no neighbours, rock'n'roll music, good quality almost anything and, the impossible dream, people I can trust.