A Blackburn author has spoken of his delight after publishing his debut novel.
‘A New Dawn’, by Alan Bretherto,n follows a man who experiences visions of The Titanic disaster in the current day, as well as having intercutting chapters about a family aboard the ship at the time.
Alan, who has a passion for both writing and history, was born and raised in Blackburn and now lives in Rishton with his wife.
Speaking about his book, he said: “I was sat one day watching a documentary and it asked the hypothetical question of ‘if you could go back and be on the ship one minute after it hit the iceberg, what would you do to make a difference?’.
“I thought that was a pretty good idea for a story so I started writing it.
"The book follows a man called David Thelden who is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and soon after the diagnosis he starts seeing visions 100 years in the past.
"He starts getting obsessed and looking more and more into why he’s having them.
"Ultimately, he discovers it has something to do with the sinking of the Titanic.
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“Intercut with that, there are chapters following a family that are actually sailing on the Titanic and following their story.
"Both of them have a single shared fate and it follows what that could be, what the reason is for them being tied together.”
Alan explained that writing has been a passion of his since he was young but this novel was the first time he felt the push to publish it to a wider audience.
He said: “I’ve always been writing and making up stories since a young age and I’ve just never shared them. I’ve never had the confidence to.
"But I thought this one was really good. It was the first one I really poured my heart into and taken the time to actually get to an end and edit it down.
“That spoke to me as meaning it was something worth sharing. My wife is very supportive and she told me to stop sitting on it.
"It took me four years to write it and I was sat on it for another year just umming over what to do with it. She gave me the final push over the edge.”
Alan, who has also had a children’s book published and is working on continuing that series, is in the early stages of pitching the book to streaming services, with the dream of getting it adapted into a film.
While this is on the cards, his day job as an administrator and his efforts in writing a follow-up to A New Dawn are taking priority.
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He said: “I’m just writing them at the moment in between working and other life, other things that get in the way.
"I’m getting a pitch pack together so I need to write the screenplays first and then try and get some sort of agent to approach these services on my behalf.
“But a lot of the feedback I’ve had so far for A New Dawn is asking me ‘when’s the movie coming out’. I thought maybe it’s something to look at because streaming services are always looking for fresh, original content.”
A New Dawn is available to buy on Amazon and Kindle.
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