Guest Post ~ Turning-Point, by Calvin Hedley

Matthew Pelham’s disappearance, while flying an RAF Harrier, can only

be explained through investigations conducted some forty years apart.

The quest involves wartime intelligence services, high politics in the

Third Reich and beleaguered Britain, and has incalculable implications

for the war’s course and future events.

Available on Kindle at Amazon US and Amazon UK

also in paperback

Tony Riches has kindly extended this opportunity for me to introduce myself and my writing.  I’ve been interested in creative writing for many years and have had some publishing and competition success.  I concentrate mainly on novel-writing now, and my first completed novel, Turning-Point, is now released on Kindle and CreateSpace.  I’ve begun a second novel with the working title of Zigzag, and I am putting together an anthology of short stories, and am developing other projects, including tentative ideas re a follow-up to Turning-Point.

Writers employ many different methods when working; there’s no ‘correct’ process.  In short, what works for each individual is right.  As a blind author with no sight at all, the same rule applies to me.  Obviously, pen and paper are not appropriate, nor do I use a Dictaphone or other recording device much.  I overwhelmingly depend on special screen-reader software, which ‘reads’ screen activity as it occurs on my computer system.  This verbal feedback allows me to type, read, reread, edit, and organise my work.  Indeed, somewhat perversely, the screen-reader’s proven to be a very accurate proofreader, as a sentence that sounds wrong usually is wrong in one way or another.  So, through using keystrokes and touch-typing, I can run at around 80 words a minute once I’ve got a head of steam up, and some of the words actually make sense too, which is a bonus.

I’m less proficient on the Net than within the confines of Microsoft Office, but the screen-reader nevertheless enables me to carry out virtually all my research, and it can work with some CD-ROM applications too.  I did find the involved process of turning a Word file into an e-book entirely beyond my capacity, but with help from Tony and Douglas Burcham, the journey’s now complete, and I offer them my very grateful thanks.

Turning-Point is a split-time mystery thriller.  The plot concerns the unexplained disappearance of an RAF pilot in 1979.  Investigations, conducted against the backdrops of the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the Falklands Crisis in 1982, piece together a temporal jigsaw that includes British and German wartime intelligence agencies, high politics in the Reich and Britain, war policy on both sides of the Channel, assassinations, and a photo depicting a seemingly impossible image, delivered by a complete stranger who is a mystery in himself.  But after more than four decades, why is MI5 still interested?  What can a grieving father and daughter achieve for a missing son and brother, and can they gain ‘closure’?  And what tantalising possibilities does the mystery still offer for Britain in the future?

Calvin Hedley

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About the Author

Calvin Hedley has been partially sighted since birth and became registered blind in 1982. He lost all useful sight in 1997 yet continues to pursue his writing career. Calvin read History and Politics at Warwick University and lives in Coventry with his wife Denise.  Find out more at 

www.facebook.com/calvin.hedley.3