This post is really overdue. I published Bronze in September 2023 and actually thought I'd blogged about it. Clearly I was wrong, so this post is a belated attempt to put that situation right.
Most books have a genesis backstory, an event or a conversation that gets the thought processes churning. My first two books, Parallel Lives and The Journeymen were both originally short stories written working away from home in my last few months of Royal Air Force service that kept tapping away at me. Skin, for all it's near future politics mixed with the largely unresolved WMD issue that we went to war for was in many ways a parallel story of the manufacturing company I was working for at the time.
The Last Simple was inspired by the ludicrously short chapters in the Dan Brown (and other writers') books, and Project: Evil was simply inspired by catching the end of a Roger Moore Bond movie and thinking 'how the hell do you go about project managing a secret lair for a megalomaniac?
Digital Life Form was sparked by a conversation about where tech will go in the future - we'd just bought one of those new-fangled Tom Tom Sat Navs. That was written in 2011 and most of the tech was pure Sci Fi - what we would now call AI and self driving cars was only vaguely talked about.
Hotel California was, obviously, inspired by the song but quickly took on a new meaning. I still refer to famous folk leaving too soon as new residents. Bronze, on the other hand, was someone else's idea.
I'm retired now, but two years ago I finalised my fifty-one circuits of the sun as a wage slave, working as a lecturer in a Welsh technical college, teaching maths and science in the aeronautical engineering department. I worked in a small office, with just five of us in a room that was technically overcrowded. My desk was in a corner facing the only door, so the other guys (it was an all-male environment until I left, my replacement has moved the diversity dial and is doing a great job). You've probably assumed I was probably the oldest in the office and you'd be correct with the other four ranging from just under forty at the time to mid fifties. Not only was I the only one who taught the tough academic stuff at that time, I was the only one who wrote stuff - books, satire, occasionally blogs. That sentence will be relevant in a paragraph or so.
Given the age of the other guys it shouldn't come as a surprise that three of them seemed to go through a mid-life crisis simultaneously. They'll deny it, but one by one in early 2023 they all bought soft top sports cars. I'm not being a critic - I'm jealous, I missed my mid-life crisis, probably because I had a major life change leaving the RAF and buying my first and so far only house while learning to survive in civvy street in my mid forties. Anyway, first one, Steve, bought a Mazda MX5, a second, Jason, bought a BMW - don't ask what model, it had a soft top and probably didn't have working indicators - and the third, Simon, bought an Alfa Romeo Spyder. It's on the cover of the book, if you're into these sort of things. Simon is a keen detectorist and extremely knowledgeable about British history.
Anyway, the three amigos started meeting up at the weekend, parking up three soft-tops abreast at a café on the Horseshoe Pass or somewhere in the Llyn Peninsula to have a coffee or two and put the world to rights. Then one Monday, after one of these meetings, Jason entered the office and said he'd had a great idea for a TV show. He was telling the room, but looking directly at me as I shuffled maths worksheets for my first lesson. Apparently he'd been following Simon in the Alfa and it came to him - Bronze the Detectorist Detective. A TV show each week with Bronze solving a crime. I pushed for more, but that was it really. I went off and taught my lesson and pretty much forgot about it. Until break time when he brought it up. And lunch. And afternoon break. Remember the sentence about how I was the only person with a writing background?
Obviously the brief was a little thin, so quietly I gave the idea some thought. Although I'm no detectorist - I have literally bought and used one for the first time in my life this year for messing around with the grandsons on the beach - I have a long term friend from my Airforce days, Dougie, who was and is an armourer and who drifted into Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or bomb squad as his calling is often called. He trained in EOD and was involved in clearing war graves in the Balkans as the Serbians often booby-trapped them. I recalled Dougie recounting some of his experience on a fleeting visit to me after we both had left the RAF and it had stuck with me. Doug kept in the industry, has worked near the DMZ in South Korea, was part of the team that cleared the Falklands of land mines and works clearing brownfield sites in the UK these days. So I created an amalgam character, only known as Bronze, who had a military career in the Special Forces and in EOD and who was now consulting as a civilian, just as Dougie does today. Dougie wasn't in the Special Forces, BTW, that was the usual artistic exaggeration.
I created a synopsis that covered chapter by chapter what would roughly happen in the book and set it mainly in Mold, north Wales, a very nice town not that far from my home but with a diversion to Pristina as part of a murder mystery. For the benefit of North American readers, the grungy stuff that forms on your windowsill and in the shower is spelled mould over here - the town isn't musty! Bronze, as well as being a consulting EOD specialist is also used by police investigating serious crimes by using his skills to look for buried evidence and is roped in by north Wales Constabulary to assist with the investigation of a man found in a field just outside of Mold with his head almost cleaved in two. Scattered around the man are what look like bronze artefacts but turn out to be from the Copper Age and originating in the Balkan region.
By the way, if you've never heard of the Copper Age it's because we didn't really have one in what we now call the UK - we went from Stone to Bronze pretty much in one leap, but in continental Europe Copper was the metal of choice for a long time and, despite not bothering with it as a pure metal much, north Wales was home to one of the largest copper mines in Europe. The other large one was in the Balkans - the book is fun, fast, violent, scary and yet educational. Dougie provided lots of background information on how bomb disposal operates and I've tried to incorporate that in the story in an authentic way.
The book weaves a seemingly unrelated crime and a serial terrorist bomber from Bronze's past with the investigation of the crime literally in his own backyard. For a bit of fun I incorporated the office people into the characters, not always in a flattering way. To be fair I did something a little scary as a writer - I set up a shared folder in the public part of my cloud and gave them all access as the book developed. Being a little mean I stopped sharing the story after a very dramatic cliff hanging moment, so they had to wait for the book to come out to find out who survived and who didn't.
I'll post the first couple of chapters on the blog in a day or so, for you to sample it.
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In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September. All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.
The book is available in eBook, paperback and hardback formats, there are links to all my books below
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Follow me on Twitter: @RayASullivan
email me at raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com
Check out my comedic ramblings as Throngsman on www.newsbiscuit.com
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