Lockdown at The Secondhand Bookworm

LOCKDOWN AT THE SECONDHAND BOOKWORM

You would think that being forced into various states of lockdown since March 2020 an independent film editor, writer and more recently an author of novels set in an eccentric English bookshop would find plenty of time to write - and I actually had planned to have at least six more novels in my bookworm series published by now - but in fact I am still dipping into writing book 9 - Lockdown at The Secondhand Bookworm- and have several more chapters to complete.

It's annoying really because I really would like to have written the numerous titles and stories planned but it's not meant to be. Today however, I have been reading through my manuscript hoping to get in some writing over the Christmas holidays which could take me to the finish line, despite the noise, ups and downs of living in a mad house with very noisy people.

I would like to share a big section from the first chapter in Lockdown, setting the scene for the story because it describes The Secondhand Bookworm nicely. I'm looking forward to finishing this novel one day (!) and hope to have it ready for my proof-reader in the near future. The text is unchecked and is the first draft and the cover is presently unfinished but here we are:

Excerpt from Chapter One:

There was an art section, which included books about sculpture too and a recent acquisition of eight books about Tiffany glass; a topography section opposite the front door, with lots of tomes about Castletown, including local fields where buildings had once stood, as well as detailed histories of outside toilets or ghosts that haunted roads or houses; a section for Folio Society books on the left hand side of the bay window, and a case of small white Observer books on the right hand side of the bay window.

In shelves under the front of the counter were runs of leather tomes, new ordnance survey maps, odd volumes of literature with pretty bindings, and Penguin book jacket mugs. A spinner containing Shire albums sat on top of the counter with a till, PDQ machine, cash book, business cards and selected volumes displayed amongst it all. A computer monitor stood to the side slightly with a computer tower and printer located beneath. 

Behind the counter were the rare, antiquarian and first editions, kept in neat rows on sturdy cases. A small private walkway led under the staircase where boxes of carrier bags and a stock of now out of print postcards sat, as well as bags of books people brought in for sale, paper carrier bags for postcards, coats, personal bags and a few odd items such as a broken kettle from the kitchen, some fancy free standing book shelves Georgina had snagged on a call and three cardboard boxes of cheap paperbacks to go outside. There were also some small cardboard boxes full of free maps which topped up a box with a plastic front that leaned against the outside bay window low wall for visitors to help themselves.

 A public walkway led through to the first floor stairwell which had books about transportation in cases surrounding it. In the back room were topics such as history, royalty, nautical and war. A large door led into a tiny private kitchen that backed onto a small mossy yard surrounded by the tall buildings of other shops and flats, including the back of the Indian Restaurant which had caused many a sewage catastrophe by pouring cooking oil down its sinks and clogging up all the drains. 

On the next floor there were two rooms and a stairwell. The room at the front contained topics such as gardening books, showbiz biographies, music books, tubs of sheet music and travel books and guides; the room at the back was solely for children’s books, easily distinguished by the kiddies road map rug on the floor and posters of fairy tale characters Nora had tacked to the rare spaces of wall (her favourite was David Bowie as The Goblin King from the movie Labyrinth, even though it scared a few children, and one adult, who was her colleague, Roger). 

A door was located down a tiny narrow corridor in the children’s room which led to the staff toilet. It was mightily inconvenient being located one floor up, especially if Nora was running the shop by herself and had to remain in the front room to deal with customers and guard the till from robbers, but she had developed a skill for flying upstairs quickly during quiet moments. The outside loo in the yard was obsolete and just contained boxes of Christmas or Halloween shop decorations and hundreds of spiders. 

In the second floor stairwell stood a case containing humour books as well as a display area and a large case for cookery books. Leading up to the next floor were shelves hugging the wall filled with brand new Wordsworth classic paperbacks which Cara ordered from a new book supplier, merging into a shelf of Doctor Who or Star Trek novels (they always seemed to have an excess of those) and crime novels. In the front room on the top floor there were many different subjects housed in endless cases, such as science, religion, equestrian, crafts, occult, sports and astronomy and finally, a converted attic room with slanting ceilings stood up a flight of three stairs and overlooked the yard, especially designated as a paperback fiction room. 

The building itself had an interesting history. It was centuries old and had been a barber shop and then a baker shop in the 17th century, which Humphrey believed was the origin behind Sweeney Todd. The character of Sweeney Todd had first appeared in The String of Pearls, a penny dreadful written by an unknown author that was published in England in 1846–47. Humphrey insisted the story had roots in macabre and dastardly human pie making that took place in what was now The Secondhand Bookworm. Although he only said it to tease Nora, Roy who ran the Castletown TV station had recently interviewed Humphrey about it and many tourists to the town lapped up his theory keenly. Nora often found people cutting their hair in the attic while taking selfies. 

In later years, the building had been a family home where a mad woman had thrown her children down the stairs and a boy had been slung into a covered well (Nora still avoided the flagstone area by the door where the well was covered and the boy’s ghost supposedly roamed). It had also been a tobacconist shop which had supplied pipe tobacco for the author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy J. R. R. Tolkien, and then a bookshop, owned by a Mr and Mrs Lodbrook who had specialized in Norse mythology. Mr and Mrs Lodbrook had transformed the whole building with fitted shelves throughout but had kept the attic for storage. They had retired from the world of bookselling and now lived in a boathouse on the River Thames. 

Georgina Pickering had purchased The Castletown Bookshop in a fit of enterprising ambition several years ago while she still ran her original bookshop in Piertown. That had since closed down but Georgina had employed Nora to run her new branch in Castletown and Nora had inherited several eccentric customers, including Mr Hill, a potty old man who had sold and bought back the same fifteen books for the past thirty years. At practically the same time, Georgina had also purchased a smaller bookshop in nearby Seatown from two hippies, which was managed by Cara Jolly, Nora’s sister-in-law. 

Now trading as The Secondhand Bookworm, the rambling old bookshop in historic Castletown sat in the shadow of the Duke of Cole’s newly restored castle and had been enjoying a surge of commerce due to Nora’s publicised relationship with His Grace, which had been revealed during the past Valentine’s Week festival. It was a fun place to work, even if Nora feared being crushed by over twenty-seven thousand books weighing upon the creaky and cracked ceilings above her and even though she found bookworms a very special breed that required exceptional patience.

MORE SOON. Meanwhile, books 1-8 are available NOW from Amazon - Kindle, KindleUnlimited and in Paperback.

AMAZON UK LINK: BOOKWORM NOVELS