I had a couple of reviews for Earthdream when it was first published, both pretty good really, but there is no trace of them on the internet, and I've lost track of them too. There is just one review revealed by Google, but it is actually in the shape of an academic paper, Earthdream: A critical interpretation, by a Venezuelan academic, Hernán López-Garay, and appearing in the journal Systemic Practice and Action Research (downloadable for the modest sum of 34 Euros!). I still have the note from my publisher which was attached to a photocopy he sent me, saying "Here's something pretty far out, a post-modernist review of Earthdream. See if you can make any sense of it". I remember feeling somewhat perplexed at this notion of having been deconstructed. It was all very fascinating, but in a way it served to distance me from my own writing.

So I've been floating the idea of writing my own review, if for no other reason than to try to engage with my own words again, to try to reduce this distance that I've felt, to kind of re-own my book. I think the passage of 20 years possibly confers sufficient objectivity to be able to do this. The author of Earthdream does actually feel like an altogether different person from the one writing these words now.

But, tentatively embracing this idea, I have to admit that I don't really know where to begin. Possibly the main reason why my book sunk without trace is that it cannot easily be categorised. It sits firmly on no single shelf; instead, it finds a rather slim hold on all manner of different shelves: philosophy, religion, science, psychology, spirituality, new-age, economics, environmentalism. It's always given me a problem this, to the extent that for many years I've been in the closet as an author. I've rather feared mentioning this side of my life because it always invites that inevitable question ... so what's your book about?

I need to be able to answer that ... succinctly. Certainly in less than the 10,000 words of López-Garay's paper! And in somewhat more approachable language. It's going to be quite a challenge, one I've avoided for way too long.