Week Ending: Ex-hack launches debut novel

COULD Manchester freelance journalist and public relations man David Chadwick be about to embark on a second career as a novelist?

Chadwick has been a wannabe published writer for the last 25 years, but after numerous knockbacks, his debut offering Liberty Bazaar has hit the bookshelves and the online Amazon store.

It’s a gripping yarn set during the American Civil War, but in Lieverpool, with its central characters an escaped slave girl Trinity and Jubal, a high ranking Confederate officer.

The book has already got a ‘starred review’ from influential American review magazine Kirkus.

“It’s 25 years since I started writing fiction. It’s taken a long time (to get published), so this is a very welcome and fulfilling moment,” Chadwick told Week Ending at his launch at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.

“A lot of people think it would be onerous, doing a days’ work as a journalist or PR adviser and then start writing a novel or short story.
 
“But it’s not like that – it’s a complete release and a very therapeutic activity.”

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Talking of ex-hacks, and Week Ending was sorry to see that Michael Taylor’s political ambitions were thwarted in Hazel Grove.

However, on the upside, he will now be free to publish his debut tome – a risque novel about colourful Cheshire-based tycoon Roger Cashman.