Paul D Coombs is a writer of stories mired in either one or all of the strange, the gothic, the dark, and the beautifully tragic. He lives on a rock, floating in space where he inhabits a small clutch of islands known as the United Kingdom. Born in Cardiff, Wales, he now lives in the splendid and sepulchral North West of England.

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Among many others, his writing is inspired by the likes of Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, and Olga Tokarczuk.

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Ray Bradbury is my absolute favourite - I discovered his short stories after taking a chance on a collection called The Illustrated Man I found in a second hand book shop for 99 pence. His short stories are always profound in a very human way, stories that resonate and expose our deepest fears. The Night is among my favourites - a supposed story where "nothing happens" - yet it's positively swollen with foreboding... his grasp of what goes on inside the characters heads is sumptuous, this time the worry about a boy simply being late home - something to which anyone who has had children can relate to. Something Wicked This Way Comes is my favourite Bradbury novel - a dreamy dark fantasy - something beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. 

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Shirley Jackson also had that very special talent to get inside a characters head in a way in which I can recognise myself.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a particular favourite of mine....just a knack of making us feel we are in a slow impending doom-laden decent. The deeper we sink, the deeper we want to go. Lovely!

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Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, is an astonishing amalgam of murder mystery, dark feminist comedy and paean to William Blake. It is just wonderful.

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Amid the excessive drive to produce and consume, Paul thinks that a central idea that underlies his work is people's need for untamed tales - a re-connection to the past, present, and future through the gothic, the strange and via psychological realism. Between the paralysis by analysis and binary belief systems, he believes that people are ever more desperate for escape, the internal human urge for stories soaked through with rich perspective, stories that tear open the soul, stories that reveal who we are, stronger than ever.

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