A WRITER'S JOURNEY By David Bowmore

Please welcome the talented David Bowmore to the Writer's Journey Blog.

From about the age of six, I was lost in an imaginary world where Luke Skywalker went on adventures with Bilbo Baggins in The Doctor’s TARDIS. I knew I had to get these stories on paper. I knew I wanted to be a writer.

However, for various reasons, my schooling was not the greatest and I left with poor grades. Thus, I was forced to find employment in a profession that takes anybody – catering.

After considerable hard work, I made my way from washing pots, via waiting tables, to running kitchens only to give it all up to become a teacher. The aim was to inspire young chefs at a further education college, but I found myself teaching people with worse literacy skills than myself about sentences and paragraphs and how to write letters.

I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I simply could not believe some of the stuff that made it to a printers - terrible plots, bad analogies, even worse dialogue. I would throw books down and scowl at my wife.

‘What?’ she would say closing her Agatha Christie and her eyes.

‘Tripe, utter, utter tripe,’ I would say in disgust.

Finally, she’d had enough of these in-depth critique sessions and said, ‘Why don’t you write something then? You’ve always wanted to.’

So, I did. Three years ago, I sat myself down and decided to write the best novel ever written. An epic adventure to rival the greats. It would have tears and laughter and lots of swashbuckling and a bit of romance too. By the end of November 2017, I had nearly sixty thousand words of utter, utter tripe. It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be.

But I’d caught the bug. The bug of sitting at the keyboard and not knowing where your fingers are going to take you, or what characters will spring from the imagination.

I needed to find a tribe, so joined some groups on FaceBook. It wasn’t long before I found the Inner Circle Writers’ Group (ICWG). I submitted a story I thought might fit their Literary Fiction call, even though I had no idea of what the term Literary Fiction meant.

It was accepted. Yippee! I was a published writer. Queue corks popping. A couple of months later, you could have driven a train through my mouth when I heard it had won favourite story in the book. You see, Grant—who runs the ICWG—asks for readers to vote on their favourite stories in each anthology. The prize; a publishing contract for a collection of short stories. But I didn’t have a back catalogue, so I wrote like blazes setting all the stories in the same town, and less than a year later,

The Magic of Deben Market was released.

Queue more Champagne corks bouncing off the walls. The COVID19 pandemic has forced many people to approach old things in new ways. Acting is a profession hit particularly hard by current social distancing regulations. Elaine Sturgess is an author I connected with briefly earlier in the year. She has links with producers and is friends with the well-known British actress, Leslie Ash. Together they want to help actors and writers, so came up with BookStreamz – it’s sort of a cross between Audible and Netflix, and could well be a new way to entertain readers.

In June, my winning story – Sins of The Father – was performed (or enacted might be a better word) by actors (some of them well-known on British TV and Film) via Zoom from their homes. To have my words read by people who know what they’re doing in terms of breath control, passion and delivery was fascinating. A tremendous feeling of achievement sits alongside a heavy dose of imposter syndrome.

Imagine my reaction when, at the beginning of November, I signed a contract for The Magic of Deben Market to get the BookStreamz treatment. And I’ve also just released a best-of collection, Tall Tales & Short Fiction. I never thought I would come so far in such a short amount of time.

Bio: David Bowmore was born on a winter’s night with the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning welcoming him into a brightly painted Gypsy caravan. Forty-five years later he started writing fiction. After a steep learning curve, his short stories and flash fiction began to appear in various collections.

David is a classically trained chef, a personable teacher, and an unqualified landscape gardener. He’s lived here, there, and everywhere, but now lives in Yorkshire with his wonderful wife and a small white poodle.

David tends to write thrillers and mysteries as well as stories with a touch of the supernatural about them. He focuses on character and the oddities of being a human being, sometimes with humour, but more often with dark unreality.

When he was younger, he had a love of science fiction and fantasy. The Hobbit and The Lord of Rings were particular favourites. In adult life, his reading taste veered towards thrilling mysteries, particularly Golden Age crime. You know the sort of thing – country house murders where everyone is a suspect, impossible locked room mysteries with more red herrings than your local fishing hole.

Since his first published story, 'Sins of The Father' appeared in Vortex, published by Clarendon House in June 2018, his work has appeared in more than ninety anthologies. He has also released an award-winning collection of connected short stories and a best-of collection.

Links

Website : www.davidbowmore.co.uk

The Magic of Deben Market:

(or click the cover) https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Deben-Market-David-Bowmore/dp/0244790191

Tall Tales & Short Fiction : http://mybook.to/TallTalesShortStories

BookStreamz :

https://bookstreamz.com/?read=DavidBowmore