Bristol authors book for Christmas! Cut-throats! Cribbage???
If you’re still struggling for ideas for what to buy the book lover in your life for Christmas, local author Darren Bane may have the perfect solution.
Bristol-born Darren, 54, who lives in Weston-super-Mare, has just published his tenth book in nine years.
Yo Ho Ho Ho! Is a full-length comedy novel with a festive theme, about the flagging fortunes of a fictional Weston-super-Mare pub.
The book is now available, as a paperback, through the likes of Amazon and other online retailers. It will shortly be widely available as a digital book, too. At present, the digital format can only be bought from the bookstore of the publishing platform he uses, which is www.lulu.com.
Darren said: “This is the final part of a trilogy, which began with ‘The Big One’ and continued with ‘Uncle Prawn’.
“They are actually all stand-alone stories, so you don’t have to have read any of the others in order to enjoy this one, but there a couple of scenes which occur in all three books, from the perspectives of different characters.
“This book is about three years late, I think thanks to me having writers block and needing to sort out a few plot problems, and real life getting in the way, so I had piles and piles of notes, and had written the first three chapters several times over.
“But finally when I had sorted out some of my plot dilemmas, I took a week off work in August and wrote it, from start to finish. I had hoped it would have come out a little sooner, but there was a technical problem with the publishing platform, which only came to light recently.
“However, it is out now, and just in time for Christmas, which is a relief, as there is a Christmas theme to it.
“It’s a very different book to the one I originally planned to close the trilogy with. The original plan involved some key characters travelling to France in order to thwart a ‘hostile takeover’ of their favourite pub.
“But I thought a ‘road movie’ in a book would be too similar to the first part of the trilogy, so I needed something else.
“I then remember reading an article about the history of Steep Holm, in the Bristol Channel just off Weston-super-Mare, and the piece spoke about how the island was once used by pirates and smugglers, who were trading in illicit liquor, and I had a bit of a eureka moment, and decided to incorporate that in my story.
“The story starts with a travel guide being published which contains a very critical review of the pub which is at the centre of the trilogy, and which is in danger of going out of business.
“The landlord is a bit of a miserly type who hates Christmas, hates pirates, for reasons that will become apparent, and who is not convinced that the classic card game cribbage may somehow save the pub.
“It’s very silly, but hopefully if it raises a couple of smiles on the faces of anyone who reads it, then I’ll have achieved what I set out to do with it.”
As for what happens next, while this book marks the end of this set of comical capers, he is already working on two new comedy novels as well as his second crime thriller.
Full details of all his books can be found on his website, www.darrenbane.co.uk
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