Hookland & Creeper's Cottage

Well, here we go again.

The Children of Lir is tucked up safe and sound with Ghostwoods, in the queue for edits. 

Secret Order of the Literati is out with beta readers.

So, next up I'm working on Creeper's Cottage.

You may notice, on the back of Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran, there's a glowing endorsement from a writer named David Southwell.

David's someone I've been in touch with through my publisher.

I often rave about #FolkloreThursday, which is an absolutely fantastic Twitter trend every, err, Thursday (doh!). They've even got a Folklore Thursday website up.

David's got a project called Hookland, which feeds into that.

In its own words, Hookland is:

[T]he psychogeography of a place that doesn’t exist built around the real myth circuits, Albionic shadows and actual places of a 1970s childhood. Stories told in the form of the sort of travel that used to be given away at petrol stations, a cultural artifact from when the TV news carried UFO sightings and ghosts on their nightly bulletins along with reports of IRA bombs.

It's a lost county in England where all the folklore you've ever heard of finds its home. 

I'm really excited by David's project, because it's a sort of creative commons playground for artists. He's busy working on The Phoenix Guide to Strange England, which is the accompanying guidebook to Hookland, and there's already a Wirter's Bible for those participating in an upcoming anthology.

Creeper's Cottage is a story I've had rattling about in my brain since visiting The Black Country Museum last October.

Creeper, in this instance, doesn't relate to a climbing vine or a feathered fowl, but to a creeper thief, the kind that steals into your bedroom at night whilst you sleep. So, I suppose Thief's Cottage would work as well, though perhaps less... well, creepy.

Anyway. 

It was going to be a novel in its own right, but the idea happened to coincide with learning about all of David's stuff, and it just seemed to fit together that the whole thing should be set in Hookland.

The manuscript is at a piddling 8,000 words at the moment, hardly even born. I started, then had to put it on hold whilst Secret Order took off. Now that's out of the way, I'm really excited to be returning to it. Even though it's a work of complete fantasy, the research for it is almost as heavy as historical fiction, as half of the places and characters already exist in David's world. Although Hookland is all about collaboration, it's important that the stuff I'm writing isn't directly contravening anything he's already conjured up. The beauty of any story set in Hookland is that it needs to fit seamlessly into that psychosphere. 

The past few months have been great fun. I've always wanted to rewrite The Children of Lir - check. I've always wanted to take a shot at a trilogy - check. I've always wanted to try collaborating on a decent project - underway.

I'm really enjoying the creativity I'm feeling at the moment. 

Gábor Csigás

I'd just like to take a moment to pay homage to a member of the Ghostwoods team who just spreads joy wherever he points his cursor. Gábor Csigás is the graphic designer at Ghostwoods Books in charge of cover art, and he's an absolute genius. Below are some of his works, including my novel Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran. There's an article showing how he created that cover on the Ghostwoods website. If you're interested in commissioning him, he can be reached via Twitter and his website.

Sharing Secrets

It is done.

Eight days of edits, 1,087 words and almost three pages added. So that's pushed it up over the 80,000 mark, which is satisfying.

I think I'm happy with it.

The Secret Order of the Literati, Book I is about ready to meet its first friendly beta readers. Little nervous, as it's not what I usually write. I've been heavily into literary historical fiction lately, what with Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran and the forthcoming Children of Lir. 

This is a total departure from poetics. Fast-paced and fantastical. Hugely influenced by people like Borges (The Library of Babel, The Book of Sand), Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind) and Sloan (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore) in terms of magical realism, though I may just have stepped over into full-blown crazy town. 

Really, I just wanted to have some fun.

Try something new.

I've always wanted to attempt a trilogy. This is me taking a shot at an opener. If it flies, it flies. If it doesn't, well, back to the drawing board.

I'll be dedicating this one to Christiane. I get the sense she really would have enjoyed it. So, even if it doesn't get picked up, I think I've created something worthwhile. 

Nothing left to do but see if it can swim.

Taking a couple of days off to catch up on some other stuff, but then it's back to the keyboard to crack on with Creeper's Cottage, a creepy ghostie story I'm planning to set in David Southwell's Hookland. 

Who Writes Novels?

World Book Day 2016

Well, this year World Book Day isn't 23rd April, or 5th March - it's 3rd of March. They love to keep you guessing! The most regional world event ever. World Book Day, World Book and Copyright Day,  International Day of the Book - whichever name you know it by, it's a day to celebrate that seductive tangle of forest, glue and ink that is the book.

Follow along on #WorldBookDay

As with last year, I thought I'd mention a few of my favourite reads and paperback romps. 

Not to mention, all this week, Ghostwoods Books have my novel Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran on special offer for Kindle, and a fun photo competition to enter before 15 March. All details here.

The book  I have just finished reading:

Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes

(review)

Living in Africa, I realised that I really haven't read much African-authored fiction. I decided to change that, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the results. This is a fantastic whodunnit based in Ghana. I'd also recommend Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.

The book I am currently reading:

The Hummingbird's Tear by CM Kerley

Every now and then a cover design floats past on Twitter and I can't help myself. Sadly, the content doesn't always match the quality of the artwork. This one does, however. A solidly written fantasy series. Beautifully poetic opening and imaginative, detailed world.

Author crush of the year:

Kate Evans

(review of Red Rosa)

My aunt bought me this for Christmas. It's a graphic novel of the life of revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg. It's absolutely fab, and Kate Evans brings her story to life brilliantly.

Top of my TBR pile:

The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch

Translated from German, this book just looks enticingly dark and kookie. Really looking forward to cracking the spine.

Poetry:

Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames by Luis d'Antin van Rooten

(review)

Discovered in a charity shop with a friend, this is perhaps the maddest poetry book ever invented. Traditional English nursery rhymes phonetically read in a thick French accent, then back-translated to find meaning. Has to be read to be believed.

Reading lists:

Samhain Horror 

If you like your fiction dark and bloody, here's a fun reading list to keep you awake at night.







Mother's Day 

Three sumptuous, complex novels to enchant any mother on Mothering Sunday.

Charity Shop List (AKA The Blue List)

A set of highly diverse books I picked up on a whim in a charity shop in Scotland. By coincidence, they are mostly blue.

Aleister Crowley

Slightly mental reading list pertaining to the occult icon Aleister Crowley, from biography to fiction.

And, finally, a shout out to my publishers: Ghostwoods Books, Green Sunset Books and Netherworld Books.

More juicy reads here.

Fun Things With Ghostwoods

Just some fun stuff.

My publisher Ghostwoods Books has a promotion running on the Kindle version of my novel Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran, this week only. US Link ($2.99) / UK Link (£2.16).

Also, you can win a copy of their latest release Cthulhu Lies Dreaming, and a pack of Shrieking Toad coffee from The Coffee Shop of Horrors, by entering their Coffee and a Book competition. Just send in a picture of your cup of coffee (or a hot beverage) and a book you're either reading or recommending.

All the details on their website. Enter before March 15th.

Secrets Laid Bare

Really? Was it really only five months ago I was doing this for Swan Song? 

Blimey. 

Thus begins the author's edit of Secret Order of the Literati. It's far shorter than Children of Lir: 79,100 (293 pages) to CoL's 123,000 (308 pages). CoL is heavier on word count for the pages because there's more descriptive. Secret Order is faster-paced, so more dialogue and line breaks.

The editing process for this one is very different. For the first time ever, I've written a book so complex I require flip chart paper and an assortment of multicoloured sticky tabs to figure it out.

I always have been, and undoubtedly always will be, a 'pantser'. Someone who writes by the seat of their pants, without thinking too far ahead in the plot (which would make me a 'plotter').

Usually this works really well for me. But this time, the book is so fast-paced, and involves so many inter-related characters, I've slightly lost myself. The action was all happening a little faster than I could think about it, so I'm having to go back and make sure that I've got a grip on everything.

I have three revision sheets on the go:

1. Character details. That's the one below with all the sticky tabs. Making sure a character doesn't have green eyes on one page and blue on the next. Jotting down details about them and making sure I have a continuous reference for how to spell names and places. 
   
   
2. The sheet after that is a timeline. The plot has chronology craters wide enough to warrant 'Please mind the gap' signs in flashing neon lights. It was more important to get the action down in whatever order it came to me than to decide whether it made sense in the grand order of things. Because the story follows several different characters, it's not always going to work in a linear time frame, but you can't go having someone murdered one minute and down the shops the next. This isn't a zombie novel.
   
   
3. Finally, my WTF? page. This is where I can chalk up any questions that come to mind whilst reading through. Any dangling threads that the kitten of literary destruction can bat at to unravel the entirety of the plot. I can't stop to ponder each WTF bullet-point as I go, otherwise I'd lose the train of the novel, but these are things I need to find answers for somewhere along the line.

It's not going too badly. I've just hit the 100 page mark. Entering the in-between territory. I tend to remember writing the beginnings and endings of my books quite well, but the bits in between sometimes feel like someone else wrote it. That game where you draw the head, fold the paper, someone else draws the body, etc. You only really see the full picture at the very end, when you unfold everything in the edit. So it does start to feel like a voyage of self-discovery.

So far, I'm happy with it. I guess I wonder whether I've introduced too many characters, but it seems to be holding together. I think people nowadays are more comfortable with multi-character books. It's also interesting for me, as this is the first third-person novel I've completed since Lucid - which was the first novel I ever wrote. Seems strange that over the past eight years I've strongly favoured first-person.

I think because it's third-person, you can, as a writer, feel slightly more detached from the story. I was so hell-bent on writing it, that I don't think I've had time to sit back and enjoy it until now. Through editing, I'm starting to see things in it that I really like. Even made myself laugh at one point, which is a good sign. I'm nervous about letting anyone else see this one because I'm hoping to pin two more books on the end of it. If it's a flunk, it's a flunk. But I'm starting to hope it's a goer.