Novels | Steve Shearwater

The last few signing sessions for my Cumbria/Police novel until later next year!

After a hectic two weeks when I’ve been all over north Lakeland and north Cumbria, we are now down to the last few book signing sessions of my Cumbria police novel, ‘My Cup Runneth Over’ (readers’ feedback here), before I head back to much snowier climes in the USA!

Here are the locations, dates and times. Wherever and whenever possible, I hope that we can all support our invaluable local bookshops rather than online alternatives – a classic case of “if we don’t use them, we lose them!”

Wednesday, 7 December 2016

2:30-3:30pm – Bookends Carlisle, 19 Castle Street.

Thursday, 8 December 2016

11:00-11:30am – Bookends Keswick, 66 Main Street.

3:00-4:00pm – Farrer’s Tea and Coffee House, 13 Stricklandgate, Kendal

Friday, 9 December 2016

10:30-11:30am – Threlkeld Coffee Shop, the Public Room, Threlkeld

Book-signing sessions in Cumbria for week commencing Monday, 5 December 2016

Tuesday, 6 December

COCKERMOUTH: 09:30-10:30, New Bookshop, Main Street

(WORKINGTON – provisional – 11:15-12noon -venue not decided – attendance numbers needed)

(WHITEHAVEN – provisional – 1:30-2:30pm but possibly sooner -venue not decided – attendance numbers needed)

Wednesday, 7 December

PENRITH and CARLISLE are likely for this date. Please let me know if you would attend either of these locations.

Thursday, 8 December

KESWICK: 11:00-11:30am, Bookends, Main Street

KENDAL: 3:00pm-4:00pm, Farrer’s Coffee Shop, Stricklandgate

Friday, 9 December

THRELKELD PUBLIC HALL coffee bar: 10:30-11:30am

Saturday, 10 December

(ULVERSTON – provisional – attendance numbers being sought – venue t.b.a.)

(BARROW-IN-FURNESS: possible)

The first ‘official’ photo of Steve Shearwater!

ewr-5d3-161130-006_400pxsq2016_eddie-wren_all-rights-reserved

It has now become common knowledge that Steve Shearwater is the pen-name of Eddie Wren, author of Cumbria police novels, the first of which is ‘My Cup Runneth Over’.

You can view reader responses here.

Great fun, signing and selling books at a Christmas Fair in Aspatria

Just after I arrived at the Community Centre, yesterday, I was delighted to have a long chat with Mary Bragg of Cockermouth, who had just finished reading my new novel – ‘My Cup Runneth Over’ – on Kindle, the evening before, and who was wonderfully complimentary about it. Thank you, Mary

I confess that I also sold more books than I had dared anticipate, so that was very pleasing, too.

reece_canon-g10-161127_600px2016_eddie-wren_all-rights-reserved — Eddie Wren (alias Steve Shearwater), L, and Peter Reece

Then Peter Reece – one of my former colleagues in crime (fighting!) – appeared, following his own grin into the room, and when I wasn’t busy with people at my little sales’ table, we naturally had great fun swapping old ‘war stories’. (I’m the one on the left, in the photo, and Peter would tell you he’s the better-looking one, on the right!)

Incidentally, the little town is pronounced “Sp’yatri,” in Cumberland dialect but gets its proper name from ‘Ash Patrick’, after the famous saint preached there in the Fifth Century. Another Cumbrian place name that comes from the saint is Patterdale – Patrick’s dale – at Ullswater.

Interestingly, despite its small size, both Peter and I worked at Aspatria years ago, during our respective police careers.

All told, the Fair provided a wonderful afternoon. My sincere thanks to the organisers.

Who is YOUR key character in ‘My Cup Runneth Over’, and why?

If I may start what I hope might become a ‘ball rolling’ on this topic, let me say that even to my own surprise, the character I found myself wanting to get back to when I was writing was – of all people – ‘Ike Nick’!

Isaac Nicholson was not a real person but was based on a conglomerate of real individuals I encountered during my police years, many of whom had anything but an easy life, but even though they had hard, unforgiving and often offensive manners, I found a lot of these people to be among those we typically refer to as the ‘salt of the earth’.

Farmers certainly presented their own challenges to young police officers and no doubt some of them used to take a special delight in giving us a hard time. However, show them that you had at least some grasp of their challenges or a small understanding of their livestock and things often changed. Typically, they were still ‘grumpy old gits’ but at least you weren’t enemies anymore.

So as the title of this blog asks” Who did YOU most identify with? Or who did you hate most? Or who made you laugh the most, and why?

In some ways, the story in My Cup Runneth Over took on a life of its own. I’m not joking when I say that some days I would re-read what I had just written and it was like reading something I had never even seen before! As a result, your own insights would genuinely be of great interest to me and I hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to post them as a comment please.