#BlogTour The Road to Cromer Pier by Martin Gore

Today it's my turn on the BlogTour The Road to Cromer Pier by Martin Gore. This is a nostalgic read, and it's historical fiction, an homage to showbiz and family.

About the Author
I am a 61 year old Accountant who semi-retired to explore my love of creative writing. In my career I held Board level jobs for over twenty five years, in private, public and third sector organisations. I was born in Coventry, a city then dominated by the car industry and high volume manufacturing. Jaguar, Triumph, Talbot, Rolls Royce, Courtaulds, Massey Ferguson were the major employers, to name but a few.

When I was nine year’s old I told my long suffering mother that as I liked English composition and drama I was going to be a Playwright. She told me that I should work hard at school and get a proper job. She was right of course.

I started as an Office Junior at Jaguar in 1973 at eleven pounds sixty four a week. I thus grew up in the strike torn, class divided seventies. My first career ended in 2015, when I semi retired as Director of Corporate services at Humberside Probation. My second career, as a Non Executive Director, is great as it has allowed me free time to travel and indulge my passion for writing, both in novels and for theatre.

The opportunity to rekindle my interest in writing came in 2009, when I wrote my first pantomime, Cinderella, for my home group, the Walkington Pantomime Players. I have now written eight. I love theatre, particularly musical theatre, and completed the Hull Truck Theatre Playwrite course in 2010. My first play, a comedy called He's Behind You, had its first highly successful showing in January 2016, so I intend to move forward in all three creative areas.

Pen Pals was my first novel, but a second, The Road to Cromer Pier, will be released in the Summer of 2019.

I’m an old fashioned writer I guess. I want you to laugh and to cry. I want you to believe in my characters, and feel that my stories have a beginning, a middle, and a satisfactory ending.

Follow @AuthorGore on Twitter, on Facebook, on Goodreads,Visit martingore.co.uk
Buy The Road to Cromer Pier

About the book

Janet’s first love arrives out of the blue after forty years. Those were simpler times for them both. Sunny childhood beach holidays, fish and chips and big copper pennies clunking into one armed bandits.

The Wells family has run the Cromer Pier Summertime Special Show for generations. But it’s now 2009 and the recession is biting hard. Owner Janet Wells and daughter Karen are facing an uncertain future. The show must go on, and Janet gambles on a fading talent show star. But both the star and the other cast members have their demons. This is a story of love, loyalty and luvvies. The road to Cromer Pier might be the end of their careers, or it might just be a new beginning.

Review

I can imagine this read will evoke quite a nostalgic feeling in many readers. More so because of the Pier and times at the seaside. Enjoying the compulsory trip to the seaside and the something that reminds us not only of the past, but also our recent past.

Gore presents an accurate and realistic picture of the world of theatre. In this case theatre in a perhaps less than glamorous setting, a place that is filled with memories of the glory days of old.

The interactions between organiser and artists, and lesser known actors or actresses with more famous ones, it reminded me of Jonathan Creek. More specifically the way Creek and the illusionist interact with each other in regards to the stage tricks, the public and being in the public eye. The banter, the know-how and the very tight world of those on stage and behind the curtain.

This is a nostalgic read, and it's historical fiction, an homage to showbiz and family. In this case the very special type of family the stage brings together. They understand each other and support each other, then in equal measures they are determined to rise higher than those at their sides.

In a way the story is synonymous with that feeling of Britishness that seeps through now and again, something we seem to have lost in such divisive political times. The seaside tale is something the majority of us have in common.

Plunking copper pennies in amusement arcade machines, catching crabs off the side of the pier, paddling in the icy and drabby looking sea (as a kid it looked ocean adjacent) and doing so in multiple weather variations.

For me Cromer Pier captures that part of the past. I think it will conjure up different things for each of us depending on our frame of references.

Buy The Road to Cromer Pier at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Buy at Amazon com.