Malcolm Havard
Historical Fiction Author
Other historical fiction
For the last five years I've been working on on a new novel. It's not been continuous, I've put it aside to move onto other things but always return to it because it's something that I think is important and I want to do it justice. It's called ELEVEN DAYS.
Eleven Days
In April 1917 the average lifespan of a British pilot posted to the Western Front is measured in days.
Eddie Grenville is 19, young, keen, idealistic. He hero worships his brother Percy, follows him into the RFC.
Then he finds that Percy has committed a war crime...
Eleven Days looks at how war changes people. Set against the events of Bloody April, it drops the reader into the most dangerous part of the first global war.
LEVIATHAN
It's a foul night in late October 1916.
You're alone, in the cockpit of a frail, unreliable biplane, chasing a Leviathan in the darkness. A Zeppelin, somewhere out there in the night, sent to attack your country.
You're cold, frightened, with nothing but your own thoughts and memories for company.
And you're 20 years old.
The Neutral Zone
You're a young woman in love.
He's everything you could ask. He's thoughtful, quiet, gentle, considerate.
But It's 1915.
You're a patriotic Belgian.
Your country is occupied.
And he's a German officer.
The Neutral Zone and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by Malcolm Havard that looks at how the Great War impacted ordinary people. A father who has lost his only son; a soldier celebrating Christmas in the trenches not knowing he's in the sights of a sniper; a mutilated ex-servicemen who befriends a young boy, these are stories that will touch you and make you think - and be glad that you weren't caught up in the conflict and its aftermath.
Older Published books - All available on Amazon
Novels
Although set in WW2, this is not a war book. It's a book about ordinary people who have to do extraordinary things. The LMF of the title stands for Lack of Moral Fibre - a weapon that the RAF used to keep crews pushed to the edge of endurance going. It was essentially a finding of cowardice.
One of the great things about creative writing is the ability to play. Some books are hard work to write, Gabby never was. It was just an excuse to have fun and write something to make me - and hopefully others - laugh.
Gabby is a lazy, borderline incompetent, junior employee. He is also an Angel. Yes, he's Angel Gabriel. However, he is perhaps not the Angel Gabriel as portrayed elsewhere.
Gabby is a Celestial, the traditional creators of the universe. He works for the Celestial Authority’s Department of Intervention in Anthropology, the body responsible for the management of the created worlds.
The Celestials’ – and Gabby’s – universe is changing. The Celestials have a rival, the Universal Union of Planets (the UU), an association of the created worlds that has grown to dominate life across many galaxies. This has brought a whole new set of regulations that Gabby has to abide by. More pressingly though, after an overambitious expansion of the Union, the universe has run out of money. In this new Age of Austerity, the Celestials find they can no longer create in their old-fashioned, expensive way (although why is beyond Gabby). A new way must be found.
This new way is the much-hyped Celestial/Private Partnership (CPP). Trialled as a pathfinder project to develop the Earth in a cheaper, more cost effective way, the idea is to bring the best that the private sector can offer in ideas and methods. A competition is held for Project Earth with the idea of rolling out the solution across the rest of the universe as the prize for the winning team.
What could possibly go wrong?
Short story collections
Take a look and enjoy!
Hurricane Season
This series of fiction and nonfiction pieces is a little bit of an indulgence. It is, in many ways, both a love letter from a fan and my own small contribution to righting a wrong. It is centred full square on a machine, the Hawker Hurricane.
© 2019