Diomedes was written over three or four nights, and in the end incorporated bits and pieces from a story I first wrote twenty years earlier. I think most writers have one or two stories they like a great deal but which will never find a home outside the writer’s drawer (or these days the writer’s flash memory, I suppose). But sometimes these orphans can be dismembered and sewn together with newer work, then brought to life to wreak revenge and...

... oh, sorry. That’s someone else’s story.

Speaking of which, in retrospect, the title obviously owes something to Gene Wolfe’s “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories”. Obviously the stories have no connection other than my subconscious at the time working in mysterious and sometimes embarrassing ways; however, I heartily recommend Gene Wolfe’s work to anyone interested in great story telling.

  — Simon Brown, April 2006