Harry Dymond is a man who notices the little things and tries to fix them. Like a dripping tap, or a box left behind in a skip. Unfortunately, he’s not so good at the big things, like seeing any purpose in life after retirement, or working out why his wife is on the point of leaving him. Then things get interesting. Way too interesting.
I’m delighted to announce that my dad has written a novel! Dear Leonard is about a man who’s struggling to cope with the realities of retirement when he’s plunged into a world of mystery, danger and even murder. It’s a Bildungsroman for the boomer generation, an exploration of the idea that shaping your identity and growing as a person doesn’t stop in your early 20s. It’s also a real page-turner. I read it pre-publication and didn’t want to put it down because I needed to know if my hunch about a certain character was correct!
My dad (Roger Griffin) and I did NaNoWriMo together in 2010 and I can highly recommend it as a way of kick-starting that novel you’d like to write “one day”. (I can also recommend doing NaNoWriMo alongside a friend or relative – the mutual encouragement really works.) But while my Victorian detective novel fizzled out at 10,000 words, he created the backbone of what became Dear Leonard. Now, a couple of years later, he’s finished it and self-published it on FeedARead.
It’s so tempting for writers to quit after a few thousand words, or just leave that novel inside their heads where nothing can touch its crystalline perfection. So I’m really proud of my dad for actually finishing Dear Leonard and having the guts to put it out there.
He’s now working on another novel, which I understand will be historical fiction, based on a true story and set in Cardiff. I can’t wait to read the next book too.