Steve Barron , brother of our very own published writer Helen Hefferman, joined our meeting to give a talk of the Maritime Writing.
Steve is a published author of three books on Train Ferries , a very specialist subject and a book on Fast Ferries. He is, in his own words a Transport Nerd and like the better known Train-spotter , he is mad about….Ferries!
Steve explained this is ‘niche’ writing and he is basically marshalling known facts and offering an opinion on them. Initially he sets boundaries on the information that will be provided to give an expectation on the completeness of the subject being covered. Not every ferry can be included as there may be some he is unaware of, therefore being in detailed research and taking care to check facts is important. The facts must be arranged in a coherent way to allow the ‘story’ to be digested easily and aspirational photos are also included to help.
Steves’ sources for research included contemporary Newspapers and Technical publications, patents stored at the Mitchell Library , Lloyds register of ships and archives. Other sources were the internet and old, second hand books (Abe books website being useful). American Universities’ often publish digitally , out of Copyright books and these are freely available.
It was a most interesting talk and gave a fascinating insight into researching for specialist types of writings.