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Gavin Boden

Gavin Boden Author
Gavin Boden AuthorThe series of children’s books called Time Travelling Heroes, the first of the series ‘The Dreams of Time’ was Launched at the Baumber Walled Garden Literary Festival near Horncastle, Lincolnshire on the 27th and 28th July 2019.

Born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire in August 1970 to parents, Denis and Evelyn Boden, Gavin was named after the eccentric registrar when his birth was recorded. In the early days before he started school, he spent a lot of time in the garden of his home playing football, drawing and making a nuisance of himself.

When Gavin started school he didn’t have far to go, on the same street as his home, Bramhall Street Infants school was his first – at Bramhall he can remember making his first friends and eating his first ever school dinners (the way he writes about Cleemsby Academy in his books is taken from his experiences here). He’s still friends with some of the children he met back then.

From there, he went to Elliston Street Junior school, which is still only on the next street. There he played as the goalkeeper in the school football team, and as a boy wanted to go on and play in goal for Grimsby Town, who he used to go to watch regularly.

When he was 11, he moved up to Matthew Humberston Comprehensive school, where he met a lot of his present-day friends. Every day he used to walk the two miles in all different types of weather conditions, sometimes arriving home from school soaked to the skin.

During the same year, Gavin found that himself and one of his friends Russell Pearce had a knack for solving the Rubik’s Cube, Gavin’s best time for solving it was 36 seconds so he went off to the British Championships (I know, I was surprised that there was such a thing). At the finals, he twisted and manipulated his cube so much it exploded into the separate little cubes, so he had to start again with another one. He finished 12th, which although he wasn’t happy with, it gave him recognition in his local area and he appeared in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph every night for a whole week.

About the same time he moved school, his Brother brought home what they thought was a white toy poodle puppy (Gus) which he had been told was 10 months old, so wouldn’t grow much bigger. Over the next 10 months, they realised that he was only 10 weeks old and grew into a standard poodle, which when stood on his back legs was taller than Gavin. Gus became one of Gavin’s best friends until he sadly died in 1992.

Schooldays happily behind him, Gavin’s lust for sports led him to play pool and tenpin bowling for his county. In a bowling tournament at Cleethorpes Bowl he broke the house record by bowling 268, 276, 227 = 771, which stood for more than 6 years. He went on to bowl competitively around Europe and still plays to a very high standard today.

He started working for a furniture shop in Grimsby called Lees Furnishers, where he learnt the art of sales, then after a year went to work in Rayners Furniture in Freeman Street in Grimsby (which has now sadly gone). With all the people he met from working at Rayners and playing in the local leagues at pool, snooker, football, tenpin bowling, squash and attending the gym he became a well known figure and would often be seen on a night out in Cleethorpes.

Although he concentrated heavily on his career, he knew he had a book or two in him but didn’t know what event in his life would make him sit down and put pen to paper.

Between 2006 and 2017 he lost his Dad, his Mum, his sister and his brother. This made him rethink his life and he wanted to make sure he made some kind of mark on the world. In 2017 he started writing an opinion column for a national furniture publication Furniture News, it was at that point he realised that writing took his thoughts away from all the grief around him and he could escape into his own world while he wrote.

His sister Jane, who passed away in 2013 always said to him that he should write a book, a book from his own imagination, not something which could happen in the real world. While she had been on holiday Gavin used to write magical poems about their cat and leave the poems for them for when they returned. Even when he was a young boy at school, she used to say his stories were amazingly original.

In 2017 Gavin and one of his best friends Anthony Kyme set about raising money for MacMillan Cancer Research because of how they helped his sister during her illness. They decided to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most pins knocked down by a pair in tenpin bowling in 24 hours, the record stood at 35,976 set by Steve and Trace Wiseman from Louisville Kentucky in April 2017. On the 24th June 2017 Gavin and Anthony bowled none-stop and knocked down 37,653. At the same time, they managed to raise over £7,000 for MacMillan.

Writing has become a big part of his life and he hopes to continue writing to create imaginative books which people all over the world can enjoy.

Author Websites

Website

Gavin Boden

Amazon

Amazon Profile Page

Gavin has embarked on his career as an author, his first book (part of a series of five) The Dreams of Time touches on his life long interest in Time Travel

Latest Books Available on Amazon

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Time Travelling Heroes and the Dreams of Time by Gavin Boden

An amazing children’s book

april

Overall an enjoyable read. Starting a chapter with how the protagonist is feeling, the weather etc is an amazing way to establish the tone/mood.

Very nice character development of Ryan, changing his behaviour once he saw the effect it had on others.

For a children’s book this is perfect and it is clear that Boden is passionate about fiction!

An excellent debut book for Gavin Boden

Gemma O

This evening I started and finished the time travelling heroes in one sitting. This was a brilliant lighthearted and easy to read book. Although it is aimed at middle grade readers, I believe readers of all ages will enjoy this book. I loved how the character of Ryan can travel forwards and backwards in time through his dreams. This idea worked very well throughout the book. An excellent debut book for Gavin Boden.