The Collector of Tales is the first of a series of books that I will be writing over the next few years. They are set in a parallel world that is a mixture of medieval and classical and which draws, in some cases explicitly, from the history and features of our own. The tale revolves around an intinerant collector and teller of stories in a world where the spoken word is still an important means of gaining knowledge. This is how he earns enough to feed his large family that lives somewhere in the midlands. This first book is about his search for a tale of a people called the Fire Dancers and whilst he pursues this tale through the northern lands, he collects a whole series of other tales about the people that he meets there. Although humanity seems to like order, this is a world of random events and as he heads through the tale, The Collector is drawn into the world of the Fire Dancers through a series of ostensibly bizarre and otherwise unrelated events.