Wigan author talks about his ambitious new novel

David Edwards, who worked for a firm at Martland Mill before moving into logistics and living in Whitley, has published Something to Tell You, an ambitious piece of speculative fiction.

The novel follows the families of Bert Leinster and his best friend Sam Murray, who work at CERN in Switzerland which delves into some of the deepest questions of how the universe was formed and works.

When their research creates a storm of Higgs Boson particles, also known as the God particle, people are forced to accept living underground and hide away in order to survive.

Bert, though, doesn’t accept the narrative but becomes embroiled in a battle to save humankind against Lily, a plant with rather unusual powers,

David was inspired to come up with Something to Tell You’s unusual premise after visiting CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is not too far from where he has made his home in Switzerland, although he says the philosophical musings behind the book had a rather more mundane starting point.

David said: “I was sitting in the garden asleep and a flower was just blowing against my foot. I woke up and thought something was trying to talk to me. That’s bizarre but it went on from there, thinking about who and what we are.

“When I went to Switzerland I heard about Cern, where the Large Hadron Collider is, and I went there with a retired professor.

“We went 100m underground. I found the science of the Higgs Boson incomprehensible but I started to change the development of the book.

“It started quite scientific but then I pruned that out to make it more philosophical. It’s a world we could have but God forbid it ever happens.

“It’s very different to anything I’ve done before but the more you look at facts like we are 99.9 per cent empty space and question what we are doing and why the more you feel there must be something different to life, and that’s why I wrote the book.”

David’s career in writing has been a varied affair, with his list of works including anti-romance novels about the Cheshire set published under the pen name Jack George Edmunson, historical novel The Ebb and Flow and a children’s book, The Black Hand Gang, which has Facebook as a central concept.

He has now moved into the field of speculative fiction, a comparatively unusual genre but one which has recently been in the headlines due to the successful TV adaptation of one of the most famous books of the type, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

David has been living in Switzerland for six years and is currently based in a chalet in the mountains above Lake Geneva but says he still looks back with affection at his time in Wigan.

He said: “I have fond memories of going to the old rugby stadium and walking down from the Cherry Gardens to the DW Stadium to watch the football.

“I have a lot of lovely memories of nice people in Wigan.”

Something to Tell You by David Edwards is out now. Find out more at www.troubador.co.uk