Local author puts Littleborough on the literary map

Denise Greenwood

A Littleborough author is hoping to ‘tempt’ readers with her first novel about which tells the tale of a clergyman struggling to come to terms with his modern-day demons.

Denise Greenwood uses her experiences of a Roman Catholic upbringing in Manchester together with the people and landscape of her adoptive town to set the scene for ’Temptation’. Far from being doom and gloom, the story also contains much dark humour; an inheritance of Denise’s many visits to comedy venues over the years.

Together with husband Jerry, she moved to Littleborough 20 years ago where the scenery, landscape and local characters created the stimulating environment that has provided the bedrock on which to develop her writing.

‘Temptation’ is peppered with references to Littleborough landmarks but as the names have been changed, local readers will have fun identifying them. The vicar in her novel lives in the fictional village of ‘Littlecross’. Surely it’s no accident that the place-names are so closely related?

The canals, towpaths, railway and local pubs are also to be discovered in the book as are the local churches.

Although Denise had aspirations to be a writer from the age of seven, it was not until she had been made redundant from her job in retail training and operations after sixteen years that she finally got the time to take up writing as a full-time career. Previously, most of her writing had consisted of producing policy guides together with technical and training manuals.

Although ‘Temptation’ was written whilst Denise was still working full-time, being made redundant has given her the opportunity to broaden her literary horizons and be more systematic in her craft. She lists Robert M Pirsig and Thomas Hardy as being among her influences.

Her second book, ‘Star Keeper' is due to be published next year and Denise is already hard at work on ‘Crushed’, her third book.