The House on Boulby Cliff – Kevin Corby Bowyer

We struggle in the gloom of February, with a post-Covid glimmer on the horizon but still some distance away. It’s been a year of trying to keep going with lockdown resolutions, but actually, what is required right now is some gripping reading. May I recommend, as a rattling good yarn and page-turner, a novel by an organist.

Kevin Bowyer studied with Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, David Sanger, Virginia Black and Paul Steinitz, and in his early career won first prizes in five international organ competitions. His 1987 world premiere of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s two hour solo Symphony for Organ, considered “impossible” ever since its publication in 1925, helped to cement his reputation as a player of contemporary music and music of extreme technical complexity. This virtuosity led to a busy recording, touring and teaching career – however Covid-19 brought this to a grinding halt. The book he had been ruminating on for years could finally see the light of day.

Writing as Kevin Corby Bowyer, his first novel is an intriguing ghost story/love story/whodunnit set in and around the North East coast of Yorkshire, which happens to be where I grew up. I asked Kevin to tell me more about how he came to write it.

Tell me about the setting of the book in that particular bit of Yorkshire. Is there a personal link?

Well, I’ve always loved Whitby. I had this story in my head for years and it wasn’t until the pandemic struck and all my work was cancelled that I got the opportunity to write it down. The interesting thing is that I always thought of it as being set on the Norfolk Broads. But when I actually sat down to write it I suddenly knew that it had to take place on that part of the Yorkshire coast – Whitby, Scarborough, Boulby and the villages inland. I don’t know why. Something pulled and all the pieces dropped into place. The more research into settings and history that I did, the more it became obvious that the book had to be set right there. It was as if the story and the characters themselves insisted on it.

How long did the book take to write? How did you fit it in with performing and teaching?

The story flowed right out. It went through preliminary drafts of course (seven to be precise…), but it was all done in six or seven weeks. As for fitting it in with other work – that’s easy – there wasn’t any. It had all dried up. Every day I’d wake at 5am and work through until 6 in the evening.

How did you meet Joseph Loganbill, who created the cover illustration?

Easy one. Joe Loganbill is married to my eldest daughter. He’s from the USA but now the family lives in Kintyre. He’s a professional painter with an amazing eye for detail. There’s a terrific emotional charge in his paintings and I hope he’ll supply covers for all the remaining books in my series.

What are you writing now?

The House on Boulby Cliff is a book in which everything points to an event that takes place in late 1965. Some of the passages occur in earlier times – the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and it occurred to me while writing that many of the characters could have really interesting stories of their own. So I’m now writing the story of Kate Regan, the earliest character mentioned in Boulby Cliff.

When complete there’ll be a trilogy of long books: In the Silence of Time; In the Wake of Life; These things, and us, are left behind. I’m just in the process of finishing the first draft of In the Silence of Time: it’ll be in the order of 1,000 pages long and contains about 300 characters. I’m having a great time writing it – I get very involved with my characters and think of them as people I know.