AN author has described how reading children’s books to his granddaughter inspired him to swap the factory life for the literary world.

Retired Jim Larkin, 75, worked as an industrial sewing machine technician at Northgate Factory on Parr Industrial Estate.

However, in recent years Jim has enjoyed a new hobby in writing and has had his first novel published.

Entitled Three Bags Full, it tells the tale of a murder mystery, centred around hard-drinking Liverpool detective Joe Delaney as he becomes involved in a tangled web of murder and deceit following the discovery of a body on Liverpool dockland.

For its Liverpool-born author, writing has become a regular hobby since he took it up eight years ago after retiring.

“I’m a new kid on the block, as the saying goes,” said Jim, who explains that reading stories to his grandchild was his inspiration to put pen to paper.

“It was after my granddaughter asked me to read a SpongeBob Squarepants story and she asked me could I write stories that I decided to start writing.

“After months of pulling my hair out my sister-in-law Val realised I was fast becoming a hairless alcoholic and intervened. She helped to put me on a new learning curve and as they say, the rest is history. My first novel was created.”

Jim has now written five other books ranging from amusing books to thrillers, mostly set around the Merseyside areas of Liverpool and St Helens.

And well as writing, Jim has also involved himself in the whole book-making process.

“I wrote the stories on my computer, printed the pages and cut them to A5 size. I glued and bound the books with the cover I helped to design with Val.”

There are plans to publish his other self-made works in future, with Three Bags Full out on Amazon and Kindle after being produced by Publish Nation London.

And Jim hopes his works can inspire others to take up writing. “Maybe it will encourage others like me to enter into the world of fiction. As the saying goes – everyone has a story to tell. Maybe I could help them in some way, who knows.”