Coventry Book Extravaganza April 2025

Saturday was an interesting day. I’d decided at the last moment to book a table at the Coventry Book Extravaganza at the Belgrade Theatre. There’s a few of these throughout the year in different towns and cities. I’m already booked into the Lichfield one later in the year, but decided to do this one as well to clear some shelf space of my books. I went along with a good spread. Once again, ‘A Hundred Years to Arras’ and ‘Calendar of Ghosts’ did well. Also, one chap bought a clean sweep of my ‘Dracula’, ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’ graphic novels, as well as ‘The Signal-Man’ and ‘Amnesia Agents’. Result! It was great to meet the fella who had delivered to Dave Hitchcock his first graphic novel ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’, so made a bee-line for one of my few remaining copies of mine and David’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ ‘The Signal-Man’. There’s also always somebody who has their own family story about The Great War, which is wonderful to hear as an author; great to know that my own WW1 book connects with people.

My table display - just in front of the toilets!

 

Talking of ‘A Hundred Years to Arras’, which is a fictionalised version of my relative Robert Gooding Henson’s time in the trenches, over the last few months I’ve been chatting with someone who has Robert’s medals. He was told as a youngster that they belonged to his great-grandfather, but as far as all the official records and family lore goes, Robert had no children and never married. I don’t think I can say anything else publicly as we’re still working out what the family connection is, but it’s incredibly exciting and fascinating to see that this story still has a life beyond the book. Keep an eye on the blog for any further information! By strange coincidence, at the same time I’ve been contacted by another relative I didn’t know I had, deepening the family tree. Branches spread and split and separate, and you start to appreciate how everyone is connected in one way or another; you just need to find where.

A Hundred Years to Arras

 

In terms of sales, Saturday was one of my better days. Being positioned in front of the toilets wasn’t much a hindrance, it turns out! If you’re coming across me for the first time, let me give you an overview:

 

I’ve written comics independently and semi-professionally for too many years to count. You can find my literary classics adaptations here. They’re also available through any bookshop and most online sellers. If you’re interested in other comics that I’ve done, the best thing to do is contact me directly, apart from the issues of ‘Commando’ that I’ve done, where you’ll need to seek out back issue sellers. They’re very good!

 

As for novels, ‘A Hundred Years to Arras’ was my debut novel for publisher Unbound (now an imprint of Boundless), which you can find here. Again, you can obtain it anywhere – it’s in some branches of Waterstones and many independent bookshops, and of course online. In the gap between ‘A Hundred Years to Arras’ and my next ‘traditionally published’ novel, I’ve self-published the short story collection ‘A Calendar of Ghosts’ and the novella ‘The Rock Bled Black’, set during the Welsh coal miners’ strike in 1910.

 

They say write what you know, so that’s what I’m doing right now. After a few false starts (the sequel to COG, ‘The Calendar House’, is still happening but is in the background for now), I’m working on a novel that I’m quite excited about, hoping it might have wider appeal. I have a working title which I might reveal to you soon once I know how it’s going to be published, but this time it’s more recently historical, covering a period from 1983 to 2025 in the lives of two friends who meet as teenagers and are forever connected by their shared interest in one particular rock band and its frontman. I can’t help but steer my writing towards literary fiction, but this has a few different elements to it. 

 

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