$Flamborough Head and lighthouse seen across the cliffs and sea$

Yorkshire author

Gerry Woolfenden

Stories, Yorkshire, and the people who inspire them.

Welcome

Welcome to my website. This is a place for stories, for the communities that shape them, and for the people who quietly insist that their lives deserve to be told.

I have spent much of my life working with people: in hotels, education, computing and consultancy, both in Britain and overseas. Those years gave me a deep interest in character, community and the extraordinary things that can happen in apparently ordinary lives.

I now live on the East Yorkshire coast, where I write with my guide dog, Philip, never very far away.

Gerry Woolfenden with his guide dog Philip — Gerry and Philip

About Gerry

I was born and brought up in Yorkshire. My father spent his career as a senior detective in the West Riding, and his work gave me an early awareness of the stories, secrets and contradictions that exist behind everyday appearances.

My own career took a rather different path. I worked in hotel and catering management before moving into higher education, computing and international consultancy. Through the British Council I worked in several countries, including India, Turkey, Egypt and Cyprus. The people I met and the places I visited have remained with me, sometimes reappearing years later in unexpected corners of my fiction.

Blindness changed the practical way I write, but not the desire to write. I dictate my novels and work closely with modern technology, shaping every chapter by ear as much as by eye. What matters most to me is that the characters feel real, the settings feel lived in, and the reader closes the book feeling that they have spent time among people worth knowing.

How My Stories Find Me

“Every story begins with a voice. Mine usually begins with someone quietly asking, ‘What about my story?’”

My earlier novels were plotted carefully. I knew where the story was going and expected the characters to follow.

Then, while writing The Room Above the Café, something changed. The characters quietly took over. They began making decisions I had not planned, forming friendships I had not anticipated and leading the story into places I had never intended it to go.

Since then, I have often felt less like the person creating the story and more like someone standing at the side of a stage, watching events unfold. That was how Drayton Top grew, and it is how the people of Flamborough continue to develop across several books.

Sometimes a character who has appeared only briefly seems to step forward and ask, “What about my story?” More often than not, that is where the next chapter begins.

I don’t think I invent my characters any more. I simply get to know them so well that, eventually, they begin telling me their own stories. Every new novel feels less like creating a story and more like making a new group of friends.

Flamborough Head, its chalk cliffs and lighthouse above the North Sea — Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire

The Flamborough Collection

A sequence of novels set among the cliffs, cobles, lifeboat crews and communities of Flamborough and the East Yorkshire coast.

Boats Below the Cliff

About the Book

In the spring of 1914, life beneath the white cliffs of Flamborough follows familiar rhythms: fishing, farming, the lifeboat and the sea. Yet beyond the Headland, Europe is moving towards war.

At the centre of the story are fisherman and writer Will Driffill, Elizabeth Conrad of Sewerby Hall, the men of the lifeboat crew and the families whose lives are rooted in the village. As old divisions begin to soften, love, duty and community draw them together on the eve of a conflict that will change them all.

Why I Wrote the Book

I wanted to write about the men who went to sea beneath the Flamborough cliffs, and about the families and communities who waited for them ashore. The history matters, but the heart of the novel lies with ordinary Yorkshire people living at the moment when one world was ending and another was about to begin.

Winds Beyond the Head

About the Book

The war reaches far beyond Flamborough Head. Richard Conrad serves with the Grand Fleet, Joe Kendrew is aboard HMS Spitfire, and Tom Blankensop and Rob Kendrew face the realities of the Western Front.

At home, the village carries on. Boats still go to sea, newspapers are printed, friendships deepen and families learn to live with absence, fear and uncertainty.

Why I Wrote the Book

The second book is not simply about war. It is about a community learning how to live while war is always present. I wanted the wider world to enter Flamborough without allowing it to overwhelm the people whose lives remain rooted there.

Light Above
the HeadlandComing soon

Light Above the Headland

About the Book

The war is over, but returning home is not the same as returning unchanged. Men come back carrying wounds that can be seen and others that cannot. Families must rediscover one another, and the village must find a way to build a future from what remains.

Why I Am Writing the Book

My thoughts kept returning to the people of Flamborough after the Armistice. I wanted to follow them beyond survival and into recovery: new businesses, new relationships, changed expectations and the enduring pull of home beneath the lighthouse.

Other Novels

The Room Above the Café

About the Book

A warm novel about a group of people whose lives become connected through a café and the room above it. What begins as a collection of separate lives gradually becomes a story of friendship, belonging and unexpected second chances.

Why I Wrote the Book

I have always been fascinated by the way communities come together, often without anyone consciously deciding that they should. A small act of kindness can alter a life; several such acts can create a family. This book grew from that idea.

Drayton Top

About the Book

Charlotte Hargreaves inherits a closed hotel in a remote Pennine town and arrives expecting to settle an estate. Instead, she finds a community with its own history, loyalties and quiet determination to survive.

As the hotel begins to live again, a proposed development threatens the landscape and water on which the town depends. Charlotte must decide whether Drayton Top is merely an inheritance or the beginning of an entirely different life.

Why I Wrote the Book

The Pennine villages shaped by the Industrial Revolution have always fascinated me. Many have endured the loss of the industries that created them, yet their character and resilience remain.

Charlotte owes something to a hotel manager I once knew. Cyril, the quiet front-of-house manager, was inspired by a former SAS sergeant who travelled on a moped and never spoke about his service. Like the fictional Cyril, he never spoke about it. He never needed to.

The Keeper of Secrets and Lies

About the Book

A Yorkshire detective story set against the shadowed world of intelligence, loyalty and deception. The investigation begins with a crime but soon reaches into secrets that powerful people have worked hard to keep buried.

Why I Wrote the Book

My father spent his career as a senior detective in the West Riding. I grew up understanding that an investigation is rarely only about evidence; it is also about people, judgement, patience and the truths they choose not to tell.

10 Blind Dates and a Life

About the Book

James Fitzpatrick is persuaded to embark upon ten blind dates. What follows is funny, uncomfortable, touching and much less predictable than anyone expected.

Why I Wrote the Book

I wanted to write a romantic comedy in which age, experience and imperfection were advantages rather than obstacles. The dates provide the laughter, but the novel is really about loneliness, courage and the possibility of beginning again.

Murder on the Bias

About the Book

When murder intrudes upon the apparently gentle world of indoor bowls, James Fitzpatrick finds himself drawn into another investigation. Beneath the etiquette, friendships and quiet rivalries lies something considerably more dangerous.

Why I Wrote the Book

I play indoor bowls and know that the game contains far more character, humour and competitive tension than an outsider might imagine. It seemed an irresistible setting for a mystery.

A Bus from Kaş

About the Book

A journey through Turkey becomes the beginning of a story about memory, love, consequence and the lives that remain after the official story has ended.

Why I Wrote the Book

The novel grew from my years working as a British Council consultant and from people and places that stayed with me long after I returned home. Barbara inspired Ripley Jackson, though saying more would reveal too much.

“Gerry, we are not the story. We are what’s left when they stop telling the story.” — Jasmine

Barbara once said, “There ought to be a film called A Bus from Kaş.” The final three chapters were among the most difficult I have ever written.

The film was never made.

The novel was.

Who knows what may happen one day?

Audiobooks

Bringing the stories to life.

My audiobooks are narrated using modern AI voice technology, then individually edited, mastered by me and quality checked by me. The technology provides the voice; the final production remains a careful, hands-on process.

Audio Sample

The two-minute sample will play here once audio-sample.mp3 is added to the website folder.

More audiobook editions are currently in production.

Looking Ahead

There are always more stories waiting.

The Manuscript Gambit was inspired by a fraud that affected around 1,500 investors across Yorkshire and involved approximately £88 million. I have not yet decided whether it will become another James Fitzpatrick novel or stand entirely on its own.

And however many other books appear, my thoughts keep returning to Flamborough. The characters are still there, quietly tapping me on the shoulder and asking, “What about my story?”

Philip

Philip is my guide dog, my companion and my closest friend.

A Guide Dog is not simply a pet that has learned a few commands. Philip is highly trained, exceptionally intelligent and capable of making constant judgements about obstacles, traffic, routes and safety. The cost of breeding, training and supporting a guide dog throughout its working life is considerable, but the independence and confidence that dog provides cannot easily be measured.

Philip has enabled me to continue living, travelling and writing with a freedom that would otherwise have been much more difficult. He is also an excellent listener, a patient colleague and an uncompromising judge of when enough work has been done for one day.

Philip standing on a rock by the sea — Philip by the sea

Philip resting on his rug at home — Philip resting at home

A Final Word from Philip

Hello.

I’m Philip.

Officially, I’m Gerry’s guide dog.

Unofficially, I’m Head of Quality Control.

I supervise the writing, make sure breaks are taken at the correct time and provide valuable guidance on all matters involving walks, meals and comfortable places to sleep.

Gerry thinks he writes the books.

I allow him to continue believing that.

Now, if you’ll excuse me…
I think it’s time we all went for a walk.

Philip