A CAERPHILLY author has self-published three new novels.
Brian Bodman, originally from Pontllanfraith and living in Newbridge has spent decades writing novels under the name Billy Bodman.
The 79-year-old has written most of his pieces around working in sales management and as a steward at the British Legion in Cwmbran and in Abergavenny. Over the past couple of years Mr Bodman has been consistently writing, with the results being the three new books and also three more on the way.
Event Horizons is one of the three new novels. It is Mr Bodman’s first sci-fi novel, set in the South Wales Valleys. The book follows a teenage boy who is able to access the Quantum Universe and to change the course of time.
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Noblesse Oblige is again set in the South Wales Valleys and charts the Cromwell era of Britain in a historical adventure, covering Oliver Cromwell’s death and the looming threat of a civil war. It also covers exiled Royalists planning to reinstate a Stuart king to the throne, civil unrest, illegal land gathering and how a young orphan taken in by the Margam family in the Monmouthshire valleys gets tangled up in murder, rape, pillaging, kidnapping and treason to try and untangle the web of deceit and to find the truth about himself, his faith and morality.
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Runner is the third of Mr Bodman’s novels. It is a romantic adventure thriller set in the 1850s and begins with the ill-fated Chartist march from Blackwood to Newport. It follows the Earl of Tredomen’s refusal to allow his estates fall into decline and how he pins his family’s future on the gold fields of California. The story also follows a Chartist’s son called Daniel Richleigh who wants to get his parents and younger brother out of the grind of day-to-day existence by accumulating wealth.
Daniel’s brother Jack plans to win the prestigious Talbot Cup at the Whit Monday tournaments on the Talbot Estate in Monmouthshire.
Throughout the characters’ journey there is romance, heart-warming and heart-breaking, conflict, kidnapping and piracy which ends in a confrontation among the ruins of Sebastopol at the height of the Crimean War.
“I was born in Penllwyn, Pontllanfraith, which is the home of the 15th century mansion of the Morgan family – Penllwyn Sarf – given for fighting alongside Henry VII,” said Mr Bodman on his inspiration for his work.
“I have used that as the basis for the historical stories. Lots of research goes into those, which includes fighting in the Crimean War and will go on to 1850’s New York and then the gold fields of California.
“I invent the drama as I go along.
“In the sci-fi novel Event Horizons, I began by wondering where the minds of stroke victims go and decided that they may have the ability to leave their body and travel the airways. There was also a lot of research into Quantum Mechanics and more for that.”
You can get Mr Bodman’s work on Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Ikeeponwriting
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