FIRST BASE WRITER

        The setting of  A Manner of Walking is based on the city of Bristol, and if you are familiar with the city you will no doubt be able to visualise some of the places described. A significant area of the Bristol of the 1920s has changed beyond recognition, due in great part to the bombing suffered during Word War II. However, the road close to which my family owned a blacksmith's business, Blackboy Hill, is still much the same as it was over a hundred years ago. The trams have gone, of course, taken out of service from the end of the 1930s, but it is still a busy thoroughfare, with shops and businesses on either side. Most of the buildings that were there in 1925 are still standing. See the photographs below. Blackboy Hill in the early years of the last century   Blackboy Hill in May 2016         In the story, the hill in question is called "Upstoke Hill" and Larkin's blacksmith business is situated in the fictitious Co...

When I started to write A Manner of Walking , I didn’t have a title. I didn’t have a plot as such. I had a setting: a blacksmith's shop; I had a time: the 1920s. The 1920s in Britain were a period of depression and mass unemployment, but other images came to mind, too. When I thought of the 1920s, I would think of the characters made famous by F. Scott Fitzgerald, including the Great Gatsby; of the society written about by Evelyn Waugh in “Vile Bodies”; of the Charleston and " flappers ", images of the "jazz age" and, among certain sections of the higher classes of society, a spirit of wanton abandon.          Like a lot of people, I was particularly attracted to reading about the " Bright Young People " of the day. In my book, these are epitomised by Penrose , my lead character, and the " Queen Victoria Square set ". You will read all about their mischief making.   There was one book I was keen to get hold of: "Society Racke...

My name is Michael Dawes and this blog is about the books I have published and am about to publish. To start: I always thought I wanted to write a book. Perhaps you have too. The one thing I needed to work out is what to write about . That sounds obvious, but it is not easy. In my case I knew I wanted to write fiction, because I knew I would enjoy creating characters and watch them have a life of their own on the page. Then there was the question of subject matter itself, the time and the location. I went to a writing class in London . I found that the tutor, probably quite rightly, spent a lot of her time encouraging us to think about our own experiences and jot down some “ golden nuggets ”, as she termed them, which could inspire us to go further and develop a story. My own golden nugget was the recollection of some wrinkled, faded, old black and white photographs of a blacksmith's shop in  Bristol , taken in the early years of the last century. It was a business that had been ...