James Walker

James Walker is a retired engineer who spent the early part of his career as a patternmaker, making models (patterns) in wood used to make castings of, amongst other things, propellers for the shipbuilding industry. He spent the latter part of his career supervising the building of aircraft undercarriages, most notably for the Hawk aircraft as flown by the Red Arrows. He was brought up in the Scotland Road area of Liverpool, known, unjustifiably he always thought, for being tough, where the police walked round in twos, and where there was a pub was on every corner. He spent part of his early childhood chopping wood from houses bombed during the Second World War to sell as firewood, the money being used to buy comics which he loved reading. Amongst them were the Eagle, the Victor, Superman, and the very scary Frankenstein. Secret documents have since revealed that the Government was considering banning Frankenstein because of its horror and violence, something he really enjoyed, even though it did keep him awake at night as he read with his torch beneath the blankets, his parents thinking he was fast asleep. In his teens, The Beatles put Liverpool on the map with their music. A near neighbour, (and second cousin), was becoming a famous pop star, too, and would go on to grace British television screens for decades. He did attempt to follow in her footsteps but, by the time he did, it wasn't enough to simply come from Liverpool to be noticed, and he was told by the London record producer listening to his demo tape to go home, write some original material, and come back and see him. Sadly he never did get round to writing that hit song, or anything else for that matter, until recently that is, when he decided to write The Girl in the Mirror: Horla's Visit A keen runner and fell-walker, when not engrossed in family life or his new passion for writing, he like nothing better than to walk in the mountains of Snowdonia, the Lake District, and the Glen Coe area of Scotland.