THEY SAY EVERYONE HAS A BOOK IN THEM AND DAVID CROCKETT FROM GEMLIFE WOODEND AGREES.
The Vietnam Veteran and retired dentist played around with writing a novel for a few years, but it wasn’t until the Covid lockdowns that he finally put fingers to keyboard.
“Well, there wasn’t much else to do, so it was the perfect time,” he said.
The first manuscript David started was not the first he finished.
“I wasn’t happy with where that was going, so I shelved it for a number of years,” he said. “I wrote and finished a series of crime stories first.”
The three titles, Thirty Days has September, A Week is a Long Time, and A Dish Best Served Cold are politico-crime thrillers centred on Detective Chief Inspector Brian Cochran.
“He turned out to be a fascinating character to write,” said David. “The first story wasn’t going to be about him particularly, but the more I wrote, the more central he became. Cochran was interesting because I made him a Vietnam Veteran like me, and that informs how he goes about putting the pieces together and solves the cases.
David said he believes years of experience helps authors craft a better story.
“I’m 80 now so I was able to draw on 65 years of being an adult, which makes a big difference to how you plot the story and develop the characters,” he said.
Once those stories were complete, David returned to his first tale – a piece of speculative fiction called Memory.
“It started from the idea that every memory from every point in history is encoded in our DNA,” he said. “What if ancient memories were preserved and retrievable? In Memory, the DNA of a young woman carries a coded message of an ancient talisman of unimaginable power.”
David’s other book is Destiny, which he describes as, ‘like Dan Brown but better written’.
Novel writing is currently on hold so David can concentrate on exploring his family tree, which he has managed to trace back to 1100s Germany and 1500s Britian.
“Whether it is for novels or my family’s own fascinating past, I enjoy the research part most of all. It’s great, the best thing in the show.”
David’s novels are available from independent bookstores in Mornington where he is invited to meet readers and other authors.
NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH
Like David, do you have a book in you, but don’t know where to start? You can begin today. November is National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.
Learn more: nanowrimo.org