CLEVELAND bowler Peter Baines is known as a sharp shooter on the green and is now growing a reputation as a wordsmith, having released his fourth novel in just two years.
Mr Baines - who plays at Cleveland Sharks Bowls Club - recently published Dead End at Barra Bay, a story about two businessmen who become fed-up with the 'rat-race' in Brisbane and seek an alternative lifestyle in the Daintree region.
On their journey north, they stop off at Barra Bay where they meet the town elders who also happen to be on the management committee at the local bowls club.
Mr Baines said the story was about the fragility of relationships, love, hate and deceit but also frivolity and good times.
Cleveland bowls club is said to have been the catalyst for the storyline, with ideas for Mr Baines' novels coming to him while on the green.
"I joined the club a few years ago to keep active," Mr Baines said. "But bowling does much more than that. It keeps my imagination active too.
"So many ideas flourish when I'm at the club and that's what inspired me to write about the 'goings-on' at a bowls club."
Mr Baines' first book, Deep Down Under, was released in 2018 and recounted his time on-board submarines while in the navy.
A who-done-it novel about the riotous behaviour of sailors in Sydney's Kings Cross, titled Bluder Down Under, followed in 2019.
He was also encouraged to re-write his first book in the first person last year and eventually re-released it under the title They Called me Bondi.
It is now listed as recommended reading at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, England.
Mr Baines is selling Dead End at Barra Bay for $21, including postage. His other books can be bought on Amazon.
Mr Baines is currently in the process of writing a sequel to his latest book.
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