The Photographer, the Forge and the Schoolboy
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Time travel writer Andy Conway uncovers a photo of his 12-year-old self, which has popped up in an exhibition of historical photographs of Birmingham.
In this fascinating video, Andy Conway is reunited with the photographer who caught him as a schoolboy waiting at the factory gate, 45 years ago.
Janine Wiedel’s exhibition, Vulcan’s Forge, is at the Hive gallery in the Jewellery Quarter, an astonishing social history project that captures the people who worked the forges, factories, mines and workshops of Birmingham and the Black Country.
The exhibition has been extended, so runs till early January 2022 (not early December as said in the video).
Birmingham historical fantasy author brings Dickens’ Ghosts of Christmas Past to New Street
Before A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens met three ghosts out of time… or so it goes in the imagination of Andy Conway, the author of the bestselling Birmingham historical fantasy series of novels.
The Ghosts of Christmas Past is the thirteenth novel in the bestselling ‘Touchstone’ series, largely set in Birmingham, and this story sees Charles Dickens visiting the city on secret business, on the verge of bankruptcy and desperate for his next big literary success.
The Ghosts of Christmas Past trailer
Christmas Eve. 1842. New Street, Birmingham. The present and the future haunt the past when a pair of reluctant time travellers find themselves stranded in Victorian Britain. Andy Conway’s The Ghosts of Christmas Past out now in Kindle and paperback.
The Ghosts of Christmas Past
Before A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens meets three ghosts out of time…
Christmas Eve. 1842. New Street, Birmingham. The present and the future haunt the past when a pair of reluctant time travellers find themselves stranded in Victorian Britain.
Fred Smith is a young man caught in a street riot in 1934. Mrs Hudson is an old lady who can’t remember why she’s at the station in 2019. Fred wants to change the world, Mrs Hudson wants to protect time. Can they work together to get back to the future?
Is the secret to their timeslip something to do with Belle, the young orphan girl staging the Christmas pantomime for the city’s poor children? Or the ‘Worst Man in Birmingham’, notorious miser and vicious businessman, Ebenezer Swingeford? Is it oppressed clerk, Bob Cratchit and his rebellious son, not-so-tiny Tim?
Or could it be something to do with Charles Dickens, the young author visiting the city on secret business, on the verge of bankruptcy and desperate for his next big literary success?
Whoever holds the answer, the city’s notorious criminal gang, the precursors to the Peaky Blinders, are out to rob a fortune, and they will murder anyone who gets in their way… just like their leader, Slogger Pike, murdered old Jacob Marley on this very night, eight years ago.
As the snow falls on Christmas Eve, ghosts lost in time haunt the dark heart of the city in search of the true meaning of Christmas.
The Ghosts of Christmas Past is the thirteenth novel in Andy Conway’s bestselling time travel historical fantasy series.
Ghosts of Christmas Past reading
Andy Conway reads a chapter from The Ghosts of Christmas Past just ahead of publication at the Tippling Tales Christmas event.
The Courier trailer
Haunted Town
A boy out of time. A girl to save Britain. A war between them…
Drawn to a portrait of 1940s screen star, Eleanor Gale, teenager Mitch finds himself pursuing a romance across oceans of time while foiling a Nazi plot to invade Britain.
In 1984, young Raheem ‘Mitch’ Mitchell is a teenager who doesn’t fit. A ‘young fogey’ in vintage clothes, obsessed with old music and old movies, suffering fits that mystify doctors, he is a boy out of time.
Falling in love with long lost movie star Eleanor Gale, he visits the Welsh town where her greatest film was shot…
… and finds himself back in time, face to face with the woman of his dreams.
In 1941, he works on the film that might save Britain from Nazi invasion, and investigates the traitor in their midst who is working to make that invasion happen. But just who is the secret German spy? Is it the cinematographer who was trained in Berlin before the war? Is it dashing actor and love rival Denholm Bourne?
Or might it be Eleanor herself? Just what dark secret is she hiding?
Mystery, suspense, secrets, romance, and a good old dose of derring-do. Haunted Town is the latest historical thriller in the Touchstone Origins series.
Buy the ebook at:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com
and at Amazon Kindle stores in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Japan, India, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia.
Unfinished Sympathy
Mystery, suspense, blackmail and scandal in 1908 New York…
To live for you, to die for you…
Searching for his long lost love, reluctant time traveler Mitch finds himself in 1908 New York, caught up in a dark case of blackmail and secrets with famous composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma.
Investigating a mysterious threatening letter, Mitch must walk two contrasting worlds: uptown high society where opera-loving millionaires plot and scheme, and downtown ghettos where Jewish mobsters battle Chinatown gangsters for control of jazz clubs and nickelodeons.
Featuring a teenage Irving Berlin, jazz pioneer James Reese Europe, a young Duke Ellington, corrupt police chief Charles Becker, and notorious gangsters Big Jack Zelig and Mock Duck, Unfinished Sympathy is a gripping thriller of murder, blackmail, adultery and scandal set in the last days of New York’s Gilded Age.