Whoever Wants to Buy a Knot?

what kind of man is the knot-shop man?

THE KNOT SHOP rarely has any customers. A knot isn’t something most people (that is, most grown-ups) think they need to buy.

But if you’re a bright, perceptive kind of child, and if you’re in difficulty — maybe you need to find your sister after she has been abducted by pirates, or perhaps you want to seal a reckless promise a prince once made to you — then you’ll know that the knot-shop man can help. He can tie laces or parcels, he can play cat’s cradle or untangle your knotted kite strings . . . and, best of all, he knows how to tie the knots of fate.

The Knot-Shop Man — four stories intertwined. Four knots tied to four fates. And threaded through them all, a knot mythos that binds the world and everything in it from the moment all its parts were tied together to its final Unravelling.

Stories Here and Now

Read excerpts online or download in PDF format.

The Fisherman & the Mermaid
A very short story from the Water book.
PDF contains two pages.

The Fisherman and the Mermaid
 
 
The Poet and the Princess

The Poet & the Princess
A short story from the Air book.
PDF contains three pages.

The Earth Baby
A very short story from the Earth book.
PDF contains two pages.

The Earth Baby
 
 
The Firework-Maker and the Dragon

The Firework-Maker & the Dragon
A very short story from the Fire book.
PDF contains two pages.

The Girl & the Wolf
A special story from the Knot-Shop Man project — this one isn’t in any of the books.   It’s a variation on a well-known tale.
PDF contains six pages.

The Girl and the Wolf
 
 
Chapter 1

The First Chapters
Opening words from each of the four books. If you want to journey to Arxnodorum, where the knots of fate are tied, you’ll need a coin with a hole in the middle.

The set of four books, The Knot-Shop Man, was published as a special limited edition on 09/09/09.