‘I HAD this image of a middle-aged man chasing someone dressed in a rabbit suit, late on a drizzly night in a small city,’ local writer Brian Thomas explains, about how his latest book The Never-Ending Tales of Dara’s Bar came to be.
‘I mulled the idea over for a while, and out came The Long, Long Night of the Bunny Ruse, the first tale that my wayward character Will Buckwater, a frustrated writer, hears on his unexpected journey.
‘Other stories followed quickly after that, along with the up-and-down (but mostly down) back story of Will.
‘Will has lost the writing knack, wants to get it back, and has found himself in this backstreet tavern listening to a bunch of fanciful stories read by its strangely-familiar clientele.
‘In the linking narrative, Will is guided through his destructive past and made to face his resulting lack of confidence by the bar’s friendly and attentive landlord, Dara.’
Along the way he hears about a retired policeman haunted by his criminal nemesis, a treacherous charity shop worker, a former rock band planning a middle-aged return to the boards, an architect with a dark secret who is hounded from a cafe by a bunch of malevolent cyclists, a fatally explosive seaside music hall show, a troubled assassin, and a man receiving startling emails from an old friend from beyond the grave.
Also add to that the frantic rabbit-chaser, the parish council that elects a stuffed bear as its chairman, and the poignant recollection of a life-affirming bond between an old tramp and a 10-year-old girl set in a US city park in the 1960s.
Described as ‘a portmanteau entertainment,’ it employs an anthology film’s technique of stringing together several apparently unconnected incidents over a single, binding narrative. It’s been dubbed ‘a real gem of a book’.
Brian says: ‘It’s very English in many ways, except for the final story about the tramp.
‘None of it is true, but some of it is based on my own experiences over the years – except for Will’s presumed “writer’s block”, which I’ve thankfully never suffered!’
He admits that it is quite different from his first novel, Guts, a comic thriller – described as ‘a rollicking read with a twist at the end’ and featuring a group of newspaper folk trapped by a storm in a creepy Cornish countryside hotel filled with glass cases of menacing stuffed flightless birds and with a crazed killer on the loose, all on a frightening weekend break with their intolerant new boss.
Even so, Dara’s Bar retains much of the writer’s trademark humour that has made his titles so appealing to readers.
Most popular of his titles is The Other Side of the Ribbon, his memories of some of the hilarious things said and done in provincial newspaper offices in the seventies and eighties and illustrated with his own cartoons.
He also uses his cartoon skills in both the fictional tale of an imaginary flying saucer magazine, The UFO Armageddon, which pokes fun at both believers and nay-sayers, and his zany collection of comic poems and song lyrics When Rabbits Go Bad.
He has also published a book of his more serious poems, described as ‘enchanting, entertaining and reflective’ when released last year. He is currently working on a third novel and several other creative projects. Definitely not a Will Buckwater, then!
Born in Cornwall, Brian has also eclectically worked as a librarian, a school photographer and a newspaper advertising clerk/copywriter.
A former chief reporter of the Mid-Devon Advertiser, he also edited the Newton Abbot town guide for several years and fronted an original rock band in the 1980s. All of his books can be found on Amazon.