Spotlight: Cryptogram by Michael Tobert

Welcome to the dystopian world of 2050: two men and a woman, lovers haunted by the echoes of a past 800 years before.  A dystopian futuristic fantasy weaving reincarnation and the Cathars of 13^th Century Europe.

Publishing 12^th December 2014 on Cosmic Egg Books (imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd)

Cryptogram  …because the past is never past, by Michael Tobert

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ISBN: 978-1-78279-681-7 (Paperback) £9.99 $16.95

EISBN: 978-1-78279-680-0 (eBook) £4.99 $7.99

It is the near future. In a cold town in northern Europe, the war is over but the streets are still dangerous. Stephen, Suzanna and Rokas live under the shadow of the gun-king Porphyrian, but are driven by their common history and unfinished business during an earlier age of darkness, the Cathar Inquisition of the 13th century.

The settings of the 13th century are the Inquisitorial court, the medieval village, the arid landscape and the society of heretics. In the 21st century, it is the polotti hall, the bullet-riddled café, the armaments factory, the jazz club; while all around is endless forest inhabited by reclusive tribals.

And between past and future?

... Other times and other places, stories and sideways glances.

Because the past is never past.

Lives loop. The direction of travel is circular.

What do we bring with us when we arrive? What is progress? What is death?

Author: MICHAEL TOBERT lives in Scotland and has been writing ever since he stopped imagining he looked good in a suit. Now, he bakes the second best sourdough in the country and spends more time looking in than looking out.

Michael wrote 'Cryptogram' to explore the idea that it is not just nature and nurture that forms us, but also the things we bring with us when we are born; the loves and traumas of lives gone by. He has seen this in people he's known, people who appear to have so much more about them than can be explained by their family or the circumstances of their birth. And he argues that if the idea of reincarnation is true – for which there is more scientific support than may be generally supposed – then it must give our lives a circularity; we must forever be orbiting the pasts we have sprung from. It is this circularity which is overlooked in much of western writing with its assumptions of progress and direction.