'Authors give many reasons to release a novel. Mine was simple, it was a promise made to a dying friend'. - Paul Flude

 

My wife, Dawn, and I first met Steve Hughes twenty five years ago,he was designing the artwork for a folk album we were recording. He became part of our family. Steve was a talented artist, sculptor & computer builder. In later years would usually be found in his workshop fabricating metal to produce a part, to make a tool, to machine the art he envisaged. We both lived in mid Wales but we left him behind in 2019 to join our children in Australia. I think he knew that we would never meet again. 

 

With his health failing, we spoke through FaceTime. Talking became difficult so we exchanged jokes and wrote each other short stories. Then the doctors advised him that that there was no more treatment, another heartbreaking moment. Conversations through the iPad were very emotional, a close up of his face covered by an oxygen mask, the sounds of difficult breathing, it was intimate yet distant at the same time. Suddenly he announced: “Let's write a novel. It's always been my ambition to have a book published.” I cautiously agreed, although we never knew how much time he had left. 

We fell into a a working arrangement. I wrote the storyline & the plot. Steve added depth & colour to the actors He wrote scenes and added characters, sometimes without full knowledge of my storyline. These I would weave into the script. This had the effect of propelling the plot into new uncharted territory which added a different dimension to the novel. For example, he came up with the great name 'Trivet' for my randy, young Black Country Thug. So I had to invent a storyline for   the moniker .

As Steve's health worsened, he wanted to know where the narrative had reached & where it was going. Steroids sometimes made him super active in the middle of the night & the ward nurses had to warn him to keep quiet. Because of the time difference we were fortunately awake to handle these calls. I found myself under a great deal of daily pressure to invent & write it all down. I was working eight hours a day & felt like a perverse version of Scheherazade, she composed stories to stay alive. I wrote because Steve was alive.

 

Steve passed away at the half way stage. During one of our final conversations I made a promise to complete & publish the novel. He was the catalyst, without him 'Drowning the Valleys' would never have been written. I was fortunate to find an enthusiastic & talented editor in Will Rees at  Jelly Bean Publishing, whose input helped me to triumphantly reach the finish line and massage the final twist in the tale. 

 

I started the narrative with a premise: Two vehicles racing towards each other over a blind canal hump-backed bridge. Below, in the water, a narrow-boat loaded with explosives with the timer running down the last few seconds. Who was in the vehicles? What were they carrying? Who was the mystery man on the towpath waiting to benefit from the collision and explosion? What were his motives? 

 

Initially I started writing as a screenplay & continued to run it as a film in my head throughout the story. I envisaged a 1960's black and white British cops & robbers 'B' movie. The supporting film to the main Hollywood feature of the day. For style, my inspiration was my favourite adventure writer, Clive Cussler but with a peppering of  British eccentrics. I set much of the action in & around Aberystwyth and Machynlleth, Steve's nearest towns to his village of Abercegir. I never put actors faces to the players except to say that I would love Welsh Actor, Richard Lynch, play the lead.

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The shadowy figure is Dyn Tawel, who is bent on halting the English desecration of his beloved Welsh Valleys & heritage. He recruits terrorists & vindictive hardened criminals to secure a cataclysmic weapon that the Authorities are forced to deny exists. Determined to stop them is a disgraced ex-detective, driven by the knowledge that the ruthless gang have kidnapped his daughter – a young woman passionately involved with her boss, voluptuous, raven-haired Ricki.  

Should he fail the British Establishment and Armed Forces are prepared to sacrifice innocent lives to maintain the status quo and protect the royal lineage. The fast moving action moves from  Shropshire to Wales, onto the sea & then to the very heart of  England. Finally a fitting, thrilling climax. 

The delicious rich tapestry of characters are woven together with the lives of a million innocent Midlanders hanging in the balance. Only an old lady running a Machynlleth tobacconist knows the truth.

 

We received this letter from Steve some months after his death:

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Dear Dawn & Paul,, 

 

When you left for Australia, I knew that I may never see you again but it was the right thing to do.

Don't grieve for me, be glad that I am in your memory trying to help you do what you must and leave the rest, it's just trivial.

Let me be that little Jimmy Cricket keeping you from working too hard. 'The Book' has helped me but in the end I'll never see it complete, I hope you do, 

 

All my Love, 

 

Steve