Bulwell-born man celebrates publishing his debut book

Chris Eggleshaw, who was born and raised in on the Highbury Vale estate before moving to West Bridgford nearly 30 years ago, has just published his novel Chance Meetings.

The novel is being promoted by Bookcase in Lowdham, the owner of whom is the sponsor of the annual Lowdham literary festival which has in the past attracted a number of prestigious authors including the late Alan Sillitoe and latterly Joanna Trollope.

Chris said: “Writing is something I’ve always wanted to do but I had a job for the past 20 years or so that was pretty demanding.

"But now I’m retired, I’ve now got the time to so this, especially in this last year or so when we’ve all had a bit of time on our hands.

“The book is about a young man’s infatuation with a woman who he’s introduced to by an old acquaintance, who admires this woman.

"The story moves on that the old acquaintance has affairs and it seems like everything is going to drop into place for this man to be with this woman but unfortunately it all goes rather wrong, based on another other factors.

"It’s set in the late 70s when the country is in a bit of a mess when the Callaghan Government is coming to an end in 1979 and takes us into the early years of Thatcherism.

"It came out about six weeks ago and it’s done pretty well so far.

"People who remember the period and remember what life was like back then have said it captures the spirit of the time pretty well.”

With the first novel under his belt, Chris is now already working on a second book, which he says will be a very different tale to Chance Meetings.

He continued: “This one is set in the USA and deals with German immigrants being moved there at the end of the First World War because they were the biggest population settlement after the Ango-Saxons as it were and the way they were treated and the process that eventually ended up with Germans fighting against Germans in the Second World War.

"I’m trying to capture that and and I’m about 50,000 words into it at the moment and this will be a much bigger book, probably about 120,000 words by the time it’s done.

Chance Meetings is currently available through the Bookcase or online here.

And Chris is hoping to get the book available in county libraries soon.

He said: “Cartlon Library already holds a copy and what I want to do is get out to local book clubs and U3A groups and promote the book and I’ve got a quite a few lined up, but obviously I can’t really do a lot of that until we get out of these restrictions.

"But the Bookcase has sold about 40 copies so far, so it’s going well.”