Announcing To End All Wars

It felt like I spent the back end of last year sitting on more news than I was sharing, but finally I get to announce one of those big secrets that it's been driving me crazy to keep quiet about, and that's that my novel To End All Wars will be coming out this year from publisher Aethon Books.  Indeed, it's actually quite far on in the process, as I'll come to in a minute, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's out sooner rather than later.

To End All Wars was one of three novels that materialised out of the reckless burst of creativity that was my first year of writing full time - the other two being The Bad Neighbour and what ended up as A Savage Generation, both of which have since come out via Flame Tree Press.  But of those projects, To End All Wars was by far the most personal, the most ambitious, and probably in many ways the most difficult, both from the point of view of writing it and the point of view of subsequently convincing anyone that it was a valid commercial prospect.  For To End All Wars belongs to what, so far as I can tell, is an extremely small sub-genre, maybe even a sub-genre of one: it's a serious science-fiction story set during the First World War.  Or, thinking about it, maybe it's a novel about the First World War that happens to contain some elements of science-fiction, but either way, there are surprisingly few books out there that bring the two together.

But Aethon, thank goodness, were willing to look past that hard-to-categorise awkwardness to the equally hard to categorise book underneath.  They're a new publisher for me, and their approach is excitingly different to what I'm used to: To End All Wars will be out in all the usual formats, but there's an added focus on the audio edition, which they're putting a good deal more care into than usual.  And for that reason and others, while I've been unusually lucky on that front, I  suspect this one's going to be in a whole 'nother league.  The book's currently in the hands of actor Macleod Andrews and, based on the brief sample I've heard, I've got absolute confidence that he'll bring infinitely more to it than a mere reading, because that sample was as faithful to the tone of To End All Wars as I could have hoped for.  Oh, and the same, by the way, goes for the cover art; isn't that stunning?  I'm still amazed every time I see it, it's so precisely what I had in mind and so full of the sort of period-specific detail that only a seriously dedicated artist would bother to get right.

The upshot is, the book of mine that I'm perhaps proudest of, and certainly poured most of myself into, is finally close to seeing the light of the day, Aethon are knocking it out of the park on the presentation front, and I can't wait to have it out there and in people's hands - and, perhaps even more so, their ears.  As ever, I'm bound to be talking a lot more about this one now that the cat's out of the bag, and hopefully that'll include a release date in the not-too-distant future.  But for the moment, I guess I'll just go back to gaping at that cover art in slack-jawed delight and listening to Macleod's sample recording over and over again.

2019: Is It Bad to Have Had a Good Year?

Looking back, it feels absurd to say that 2019 was a good year, even when I'm only trying to sum up my own experiences.  Whatever your stance, it's safe to assume you probably got as fed up as everyone did with the unremitting tire fire that was British and US politics, which increasingly looked like a cruel parody of how you might imagine modern democracies ought to be run.  And even all that seemed like nothing besides a messy sideshow to far more cataclysmic problems, as the world in general finally caught on to the fact that we're not centuries but decades away from irreparably trashing the only planet we have and then proceeded to go back to sticking its fingers in its ears and whistling.  In the face of all that, anything that's not screaming despair seems a bit silly.

Still.  Personally I had a pretty good year, all told.

To immediately row back from that glimpse of optimism, it's fair to say that probably had a lot to do with 2019 not being the horror show of 2018, and thus being better basically by default.  But it's also fair to say that, while it had its share of tribulations, nothing went horrifically wrong, and there were a lot of happier moments along the way.  On the writing front, I was convinced at the end of 2018 that I wouldn't still be in business by this point, and I am, and I have four books lined up, among them a project with one of my favourite publishers that came absolutely out of the blue.  In that sense, it's probably also true that 2019's biggest virtue is the extent to which it set up good stuff for 2020.  Okay, so I have no clue how I'm going to get through this one, either, the money hasn't exactly been rolling in and I can't keep on operating at a loss forever, but this time I'm determined to stick with the writing career for another twelve months at least.  Things have gone well enough to warrant that commitment, but even if they hadn't, there are a couple of novels I'm itching to write and I'd really like to get one of them out of my system.

And it's not as though 2019 didn't have a few legitimate high points.  I've had a couple more books released, that's certainly something.  With some doubts towards the end of last year as to the future of the Black River Chronicles, it was a tremendous relief to get book three, Eye of the Observer, out there, knowing I'd be wrapping up the series exactly as I was hoping to in the upcoming Graduate or Die.  And while the release of my standalone thriller A Savage Generation wasn't such a joyous experience - the reception has been on the decidedly quiet side - I was still glad to finally usher it into the world after a gestation period of nigh on a decade.  After all that time and so much revision, I was past the point where I could objectively say whether it was any good, so the fact that what reviews there have been are positive was a big weight off.  Sad to say, the under-performance of both my books with Flame Tree Press means that writing more thrillers in the foreseeable future feels like too big a gamble, but I hope it's something I'll return to eventually, since I feel like I didn't altogether suck at it.

Elsewhere, while the short story side of things didn't prove terribly profitable, a lot of what I had out was exciting in its own right.  After a desperately slow start, the year saw my first translations into Italian and Japanese, my first pick for a best-of anthology, a return to Interzone after too long a gap and my fourth appearance in those stunning hardback anthologies the other branch of Flame Tree have been routinely putting out.  Add to that a couple of new stories appearing and a couple more reprint sales upcoming for this year, and the short fiction front definitely offered up its share of treats, not to mention a reminder that it's something I really want to go back to devoting more energy to if I can possibly find the time.

And then there's the personal stuff, which hasn't been particularly dramatic and was all the better for that.  Mostly it was a case of plodding along, both figuratively and literally; most of my happiest moments were spent wandering in the wilds, and the highlight of my year was getting through all twenty-six miles of the Yorkshire Three Peaks on my own, an achievement I've been meaning to tick off my bucket list for an awfully long time but certainly didn't expect to enjoy half so much as I did, or to get such phenomenal weather for.  Oh, and I got to the end of my first fully fledged D&D campaign, which was an awesome experience ... thank you, Jimi, if you happen to read this, for the immense amounts of work you put into our crazy epic of an adventure, I'm about to wrap up a four book series and I still don't have a clue how you pulled it all together!

Now, I'm not much for new year's resolutions, and if I was going to make any, they'd mostly involve continuing stuff I've already started.  Foremost is a bid to stop working such nutty hours, which I've made some real advances with - yay for not hammering away until nine o'clock most nights! - but still have a way to go on.  Generally I've come to appreciate that you can't become a successful writer by simply throwing every waking hour at your career, or that maybe you can, but it's probably never going to be worth it in the long term from the point of view of not becoming a burned-out shell of a human being.  This job has demanded a lot of me over the last decade, and I don't resent that - I hope to have fourteen or fifteen books out by the end of 2020, and that seems a fair payoff - but there are other things I'd like to be devoting attention to, and it would be amazing to get to the end of a year and not feel ready to drop.  Actually, I think that maybe is my new year's resolution: to not put writing first to the extent that it totally kicks my ass.  That seems reasonable, right?  If I could pull that off, get these upcoming books out, and, I dunno, maybe make some proper headway with my snail-paced attempts to learn Japanese, then I reckon that'll be 2020 put to good use.

My Fantasycon 2019 Schedule

I've been largely skiving from the convention scene this year, and 2019 might even have proved to be the first year in goodness knows how long that I didn't go to any at all, but a recent bit of (as yet undisclosed!) good news spurred me to take the leap and, as the kids say, get me some Fantasycon.  And at time of writing, I'm glad I did, since I've managed to blag my way onto a lot of fun, interesting stuff over the course of the weekend.  Here's what that looks like:

Friday 7pm - Scotland on Screen (with Allen Stroud, Shona Kinsella & Heather Valentine)

Highlanders, Outlanders, Trainspotters, Scots! The best of Genre film that draws on Scotland for inspiration, direct or otherwise.

Honestly, I'm not sure there's forty-five minutes of subject matter here, and yet, of all my three panels, this is the one I'm most excited for, partly because I love talking movies and partly because I love even more talking about obscure movies, and this has the scope to get pretty damn obscure!

Sat 1pm - YA genre fiction (with AK Faulkner & Ian Hunter)

Writing it, reading it, what works, what doesn’t, and how it overlaps with fiction marketed towards older and younger readers. What do you want to see more of? What gives it a sustained home in our hearts?

Whereas this is theoretically safe territory, except that my approach to writing for young adults is just to write for adults and hope no-one ever calls me out on it.

Sat 3pm - Person or Pet? (with RJ Barker Katherine Inskip & Jacey Bedford )

Sentient non-humans, nonsentient pets, soulbonds and free will in fantasy stories. The panel explore the muddy waters of how we treat non-human characters, and the problematic issues of consent tied into these tropes

In which I'll be talking a lot about a certain floating eyeball companion who, as up-to-date Black River Chronicles readers will know, is steadily getting that series' weirdest plot line.  Yes, it's the Pootle panel!

Sat 5.45pm - Reading

Though actually, due to an apparent programming snafu, my slot amounts to eight minutes or so somewhere between half five and six o'clock, since there are three of us crammed in there.  Then again, I have Pete Sutton and Ramsey Campbell as more than respectable company, and I'm sure that if I talk fast I can get through a page or three.  It'll almost certainly be from the newly out A Savage Generation, assuming I don't forget to bring a copy.

Sat 10pm - Dungeons & Disorderly D3: Vault of the Cow (with David Thomas Moore, Mike Brooks, Ali Nouraei, Stewart Hotston & Jonathan Oliver)

The Terrifying Sorcerer of Terrifying Evil has been defeated, the Sheep on the Borderlands sheared and penned, and the Temple of Elemental Weevils properly fumigated. It is time to venture in the Underdork! In module D3, Vault of the Cow, the players will clash with the sinister, mysterious race known only as The Cow of the Underdark...

Very likely to be the highlight of my event weekend, this, since David Thomas Moore's surreal, audience-interactive role-playing pastiche proved great fun last year, when my barbarian accountant managed to save the day (or possibly undermine the entire quest, I can't exactly remember) by realising at the last minute that our party had gone over budget.  Incidentally, gang, I'm still waiting on your expenses claim forms, and no, Lembas bread is not tax deductible.

-oOo-

So that's me.  I'll be around from around six on the Friday, assuming that by some rare miracle the British transport system doesn't fail me, and ducking out at banquet-time on the Sunday, since banquets are a tool of the wealthy oppressor and not for us impoverished writer types.  (Okay, it's mainly because I want to get home in time for tea.)  Do find me and say hello if you're there, and assuming I genuinely don't forget, I might have a few budget copies of A Savage Generation to sell to anyone who's interested.

A Savage Generation Reviews Round-Up

A Savage Generation has been out for a couple of weeks now and has already gathered itself a smattering of reviews, so I thought I'd compile them here for anyone who's on the fence about grabbing a copy.  Fortunately, they mostly seem to be very positive, and a couple are seriously glowing, so clearly the consensus is that you should!

Given how far outside my usual wheelhouse this one is, it was reassuring to discover that a couple of people I know to be familiar with my wider work hadn't been put off.  Andy Angel, who blogs at Ebookwyrm's BlogCave, must have read just about everything I've written, as he himself says: "I'll admit I'm a big fan of Tallerman and his writing in various genres, I've been reading him for years."  So that he concluded, "I tell it as it is and this is one of his best" means a lot!  The same goes for Theresa Derwin's very thorough (and five star) review on Goodreads, which I'd recommend to anyone who wants to get a solid sense of what the book's about, since it does a great job of setting out the major characters, conflicts, and themes.  And she wraps up by saying that "It’s an excellent novel and there were genuinely tense moments throughout, as well as some great characters.  Another great book from Tallerman."

Of course, you can never be totally certain that people you've met aren't sparing your feelings ever so slightly, so it's reassuring to get a similar response from total strangers!  There's a nice, in-depth write-up at The Coy Caterpillar Reads which begins "The book world is rife with Post-Apocalyptic novels of zombies, disease and despair.  A Savage Generation cracks that mould and gives us something alarmingly real" and ends "Overall, this one of the best Post-Apocalyptic novels I have had the pleasure of reading."  But perhaps my favourite of the exceedingly positive reviews is the one from Bekah's Bookshelves, which states that "I read a lot of post apocalyptic fiction and I'd say this book is up there with the better ones."  While the reviewer struggled to start with - "Initially it was a little difficult to connect with the characters as the book switches POV quite frequently" - she urges that it's worth sticking with to "...see all these different characters come together in unexpected ways" and wraps up, "I highly recommend this book..."

Not quite so positive or detailed, but still definitely on the thumbs up side of things, there's the review at The Bookwormery, which notes, "...while this does feel like an episode of The Walking Dead, there is so much more to it. Yes the Sickers are out there and if they bite, scratch or spit on you, you will get infected, BUT, this is also about children, and how they are affected, left to pretty much fend for themselves while the adults plot and fight amongst themselves and the Sickers."  And Booker T's Farm awards 3 paws, which I think is a fairly good amount of paws, and says, "I found "A Savage Generation" to be a very action-packed, speedy read.  I was invested in what was happening to most of the characters," adding, "I felt an attachment to some while others I not-so-secretly wished would meet then demise."  Given how horrid a few of them are, that seems fair enough to me!

Inevitably, there were bound to be people who didn't dig A Savage Generation quite so much, and one of those was The Caffeinated Reader, though they're nice enough to point out that the only real reason was down to personal taste: "I would have enjoyed this SO much more if it hadn’t been in the present tense and I have to say because it was I found it a struggle to get through, just solely on that. Because the plot is interesting, the characters are stereotypical but I’m not looking for unique ones in a zombie story, they’re appropriately awesome and simultaneously scared sh**less when the time calls for it."  In fact, does that even count as a negative review?  They even add that "it’s not the book, it’s me" which seems awfully fair-minded.  So that only leaves Dark Reads, and even they didn't exactly hate it.  While they "...found the story slow moving and ... didn’t get the suspense and excitement I would usually get from this type of book" the reviewer does go on to say that "overall ... the premise, imagery and writing were good, this one just didn’t work for me on an emotional level."

So there we go!  A fair bit of love, a lot of liking, and a couple of folks who didn't get on with A Savage Generation but were nice enough to point out that maybe the book wasn't altogether at fault.  Given some of the bizarre reviews I've had before now - yes, person who gave the second Black River book one star based on the synopsis, I'm thinking of you! - I'm pretty happy with that.  And if you've been won over, you can find A Savage Generation at all the usual stockists, in e-book, audiobook, paperback and really lovely hardback edition.

Announcing a Savage Generation

It always seems like the really big news you have to sit on forever and a day!  But okay, the cat's now out of the bag: The Bad Neighbour wasn't the only novel I sold to Flame Tree Press last year.  There was a second, and now it has a cover and it's up on their website, so I reckon I'm okay for me to announce it.

The book now known as A Savage Generation has been through rather a lot of titles and iterations since I wrote the first draft the better part of a decade ago.  For a long while it was just Funland, the first novel I wrote full time and the only one I've ever blogged regular progress reports on, what feels like half a lifetime ago.  Then it became War For Funland and sat on the metaphorical shelf for a long time, as the sale of Giant Thief and the need to write its sequels absorbed all my attention.  When I returned to it soon after I packed in the day job for good, it was with another new title, Degenerates, and a good deal more experience.  I wasn't wholly happy with what I found, but there was a ton of stuff that worked - so the only way forward was to tear what I had down to its foundations and build it up again.

Under any other circumstances, I'd feel wary about a novel that had gone through such tumultuous growing pains.  In this case, I genuinely think the result is something I couldn't possibly have written in any other way.  it's a sprawling, complex novel, stuffed with characters and ideas and plot threads, some of which belong to a much younger me, some of which came in later.  Perhaps it's not the most cohesive thing I've ever written, but it has an energy and sprawling ambition that I'm not convinced I could replicate if I just sat down and tried.  Possibly it's even two books by two different versions of me mashed together, but if so, I spent many a month neatening the seams until I was certain the results stayed glued!  In short, it's a crazy goddamn thing, but I'm proud of it, and I've glad it's found the home it has.

And here we are and I haven't said one word on what it's about, so here's the blurb:

Sickness is ravaging America, driving the infected to savagery.

Petty criminal Ben Silensky is determined to get his girlfriend Carlita and son Kyle free of the quarantined city they live in - determined enough to risk a foolhardy crime and then to team up with Carlita's equally desperate cop cousin Nando.  Once they're out, Nando is certain they'll find a safe haven in the prison, White Cliff, where his uncle works.  But unbeknownst to him, White Cliff has already become a survivalist colony named Funland under the management of entrepreneurial convict Plan John.

In Funland itself, guard Doyle Johnson is shocked when his ex-wife abandons his son Austin into his care.  Fearing the vulnerable position he's been placed in, he recruits the help of Katherine Aaronovich, the prison's doctor.  However, Aaronovich's traumatic past has left her with vulnerabilities of her own, along with a radical theory on the nature of the epidemic that will place all their lives in jeopardy.

As the last vestiges of civilisation crumble, Funland may prove to be the safest or the most dangerous of places, depending on who comes out on top - and what can't be held together will inevitably be torn apart.

Oh, and the fact that it ended up under yet another new title?  That's just because Flame Tree weren't thrilled with the previous one.  But hey, I'm happy with what we settled on, and it surely does look cool in bright blood red, smeared across that image, doesn't it?

Guest Interview: Russell James

This week on the blog, I'm talking to my fellow Flame Tree Press author Russell James about his new release The Playing Card Killer, which looks something like this:

Brian Sheridan may be losing his mind. It’s getting hard to know what’s real.

He’s plagued by dreams of women strangled with a red velvet rope, their corpses left with a signature playing card. And while awake, he’s hallucinating a strange man who appears to be stalking him. Brian hopes all this is driven by his sudden withdrawal from a lifetime of anti-anxiety medications.

Then the victim from one of his nightmares shows up on the news. She’s been murdered and Brian immediately fears he may be the unwitting killer. Detective Eric Weissbard thinks the same thing, and starts to build a case to get Brian behind bars and stop the string of horrific murders by the man the press have dubbed The Playing Card Killer.

Can being proven innocent be worse than being found guilty? That may be the case as the truth about The Playing Card Killer sucks Brian into a whirlpool of kidnapping, torture, and death.

And without further ado, here's the interview...

- How much of yourself and your own life went into The Playing Card Killer? Do you like to draw on what you know or would you rather make it up from whole cloth?

I am proud to say that nothing about being a serial killer sprang from any real life experiences. And I’m going to stick to that story.

However I will admit to spending a lot of time in the story’s location, Tampa, Florida. It’s a great city and the varying locations make it a super background for the novel. Selecting the locations to wrap the story around grounded the tale in a level of reality and forced some of the storytelling into directions I hadn't specifically planned on. But I think that sparked more creativity, which probably gave a better result than if I’d just invented a convenient city from scratch.

- Do you have a favourite character in The Playing Card Killer? Who was most fun to write and are they the same person?

The killer (to be vague and avoid spoilers) was a fascinating character because of the twisted process that made him who he ended up being. But I really like Detective Weissbard. He’s a fish-out-of-water in his new job with the Tampa PD. Being a good detective, he’s dedicated to finding the truth, and follows the leads where they go. He gets to be almost as confused about the killer’s identity is as poor Brian is. I also got to give Weissbard more depth through his interactions with his wife, and that was fun.

- Did you have an elevator pitch, and would you be willing to share it?

Could discovering you aren't a serial killer be worse than discovering that you are?

- What most motivates you to hit the keyboard and get writing? If you had to pin your impulse to tell stories down to one thing, what would it be?

There’s always an itch to get a story down on paper. An idea I think is interesting or a certain storytelling twist that I want to incorporate into a novel. But the real kick-starter to writing it is getting some positive feedback from readers. Sometimes it’s a review, sometimes an email. The best is when I meet someone at a convention or signing who really enjoyed what I’d written.  Knowing that what I’d written made an impact on someone makes me want to stop whatever I’m doing and get back to work. 

A great example was when I got a note from a man who’d read my novel Sacrifice. In that novel, a bunch of high school friends get together after thirty tough years to vanquish a demon they thought they’d killed decades ago. He said it inspired him to look up all his old friends and get caught up. That made me very happy.

Q Island spawned a lot of other examples. I got a lot of positive feedback from parents of autistic children very satisfied with how I portrayed Aiden, the autistic child in that novel.

- You've worked across quite a range of genres. Was that a conscious decision or simply a case of telling the stories that came to you?

An idea tends to suggest a genre, and that’s the way the writing goes. I did specifically seek out a genre with the Grant Coleman adventure series through Severed Press. Some of my horror novels would earn a hard-R movie rating, and at conventions I would have to steer parents away from them when their kids asked them to buy it. But I had nothing to steer them to. So I decided that I wanted to write some monster books like the ones I loved as a kid, keep any sex out of them, and tame the language down to what can pass on network television. The writing style and plot twists aren't dumbed down, though. Severed Press has a fantastic fan base for giant creature books, and I specifically wrote one to try and crack that market. Lucky for me, and Professor Grant Coleman, I did.

- Do you have a dream project? Are there tales you've been itching to tell but not quite figured out a way into?

I have a story about  a teenager and an old priest who are battling demons across France and Italy to keep Lucifer from enslaving the world. The Exorcist meets The Da Vinci Code. Still trying to pull that one off.

- Of everything you've written, what would you most like to see made into a mega-budget Hollywood movie? And what are your thoughts on dream casting and an ideal director?

I’ll officially go on record and offer ANY of the stories I've written up as a movie or mini-series.

I’d really like Q Island to make it to the screen. In it a virus breaks out on Long Island, New York that turns people into crazed killers. The government quarantines the island. A woman is trapped there with her autistic son. He gets infected, but he does not get sick, and his autism gets better. She realizes he could be the cure to two things, if she can get him off the island. She had to get past the government, past the crazies, and past the gang leader who has his own plans for the miracle boy.

I think this would be a great miniseries with the big cast of characters, After seeing Bird Box, I cast Sandra Bullock as the hero mom. And put anyone who directed any Avengers movie in charge.

- You've written three books now following your paleontologist hero Professor Grant Coleman. Is that a profession that particularly interests you?

I've loved dinosaurs since I was a kid and thought it would be amazing to discover the fossils of ancient animals. When I needed a continuing character for my adventure tales from Severed Press, palaeontology seemed like the profession that could get wrapped up in a bunch of stories like that. So through Grant I could vicariously pursue a career that I could never do in real life.

- What’s up next? What are you working on and what’s in the pipeline that you’re allowed to talk about?

I have a short story coming out in March in the Flame Tree Publishing American Gothic anthology.  It’s wedged in there between Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce and a bunch of excellent contemporary authors. I feel like a weekend jogger suddenly running the hundred meter dash in the Olympics.

The next novel is about two National Park Service rangers at Fort Jefferson National Park, out west of the Florida Keys. They encounter rogue spies, a conspiracy dating back to the 1960s, and end up in the fight of their lives with giant crabs. It’s the start of a new series set in our wonderful National Park system. I also have a couple of novels and a novella out making the rounds, and we’ll see what happens with those.

-oOo-

Russell James grew up on Long Island, New York and spent too much time watching late night horror. After flying helicopters with the U.S. Army, he now spins twisted tales, including horror thrillers Dark Inspiration, Q Island, and The Playing Card Killer. His Grant Coleman adventure series covers Cavern of the Damned, Monsters in the Clouds, and Curse of the Viper King. He resides in sunny Florida. His wife reads his work, rolls her eyes, and says "There is something seriously wrong with you."

Visit his website at http://www.russellrjames.com, follow on Twitter @RRJames14, or say hello at rrj@russellrjames.com.

THE PLAYING CARD KILLER is available at:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Barnes and Noble

...and everywhere else!

Guest Post: The Headless Earl of Dean Castle, by Catherine Cavendish

Robert the Bruce gave the land on which the castle stands to the Boyd family to thank them for their support of him at the Battle of Bannockburn and in 1350 work was begun on building a fine castle keep. In the 1460s a palace was built following Thomas Boyd’s marriage to Princess Mary.

For over four hundred years, Dean Castle was home to successive generations of Boyds until the 4th Earl – William – was captured at the Battle of Culloden. Fighting as a Jacobite, the Earl fell victim to an ambush created by his own son. It would prove the ruination of him. He seems to have gone willingly to his inevitable death by beheading. His only wish was that his severed head be caught in a large cloth. He couldn’t stomach the idea of it rolling around in the dirt.

His wishes were duly carried out but it seems his head is still around. People have reported seeing it rolling along the floor of the corridors as if propelled by someone using it for a bowling ball.

But the headless Earl is not the only spirit apparently tied to the Castle. The 4th Earl was the last of the Boyd family to live there and even then – as a result of a devastating fire in 1735 – the building was in a parlous state which he couldn’t afford to repair. James Boyd sold the castle in 1746 and it passed through a number of hands until the 8th Lord Howard de Walden inherited it and commenced some serious restoration work. Finally in 1975 the 9th Lord Howard de Walden gifted the keep, the estate, his father’s collection of militaria and his grandfather’s collection of musical instruments to the people of Kilmarnock. Since then it has been open as a museum and the ghosts have been active.

Guides and visitors alike have reported seeing an elderly woman in an ankle length dress, with a plaid shawl covering her head. She is most frequently witnessed along the walkway overlooking the courtyard but has also been known to manifest in the kitchen. In 1992, the ghost beckoned to a guide who then followed her into a room used as an office. Immediately, the guide became violently ill, yelling for something to get out of her and apparently oozing a nasty substance from her skin. She subsequently recovered and continued working at the Castle.

Other people have reported hearing ghostly medieval music coming from the Minstrels’ Gallery and a portrait of the ill-fated William Boyd has a habit of dropping off the wall in the study.

In keeping with many castles, Dean Castle has a dungeon complete with an oubliette. Here, prisoners would be thrown down and left to rot without food or water until they died. It is believed that the last woman to suffer such a fate still haunts the dungeon to this day. She was a supporter of the Covenanters and affects visitors by constricting their breathing.

Sadly, if you want to visit the Castle you will need to wait as its website reports that it is currently closed for restoration work (reopening in 2020 I believe). The park and grounds are open though and some beautiful walks are to be experienced there.

For ghosts of a different kind, here’s what to expect from The Haunting of Henderson Close:

Ghosts have always walked there. Now they’re not alone… 

In the depths of Edinburgh, an evil presence is released. Hannah and her colleagues are tour guides who lead their visitors along the spooky, derelict Henderson Close, thrilling them with tales of spectres and murder. For Hannah it is her dream job, but not for long. Who is the mysterious figure that disappears around a corner? What is happening in the old print shop? And who is the little girl with no face? The legends of Henderson Close are becoming all too real. 

The Auld De’il is out – and even the spirits are afraid.

The Haunting of Henderson Close is available from:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Flame Tree Press

About the author:

Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Catherine Cavendish is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. In addition to The Haunting of Henderson Close, Cat’s novels include the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy - Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients and Damned by the Ancients, plus The Devil’s Serenade, The Pendle Curse and Saving Grace Devine. 

Her novellas include Linden Manor, Cold Revenge, Miss Abigail’s Room, The Demons of Cambian Street, Dark Avenging Angel, The Devil Inside Her, and The Second Wife 

She lives near Liverpool with her long-suffering husband, and a black cat who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue. 

You can connect with Cat here:

Catherine Cavendish

Facebook

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Guest Postage

Tomorrow will see the birth of a grand new dawn on this blog, albeit one that admittedly only involves catching up with the entire rest of the internet!  At any rate, I'll be hosting my first ever guest post, which is fairly exciting, but also likely to cause a bit of confusion for anyone who's forgotten this isn't just where I ramble on about ancient, long-forgotten anime.  So I figured I'd better offer a bit of forewarning: tomorrow it won't be me here, it'll be my Flame Tree Press stablemate Catherine Cavendish, and there'll actually be something interesting on offer, in the shape of Catherine talking about the morbid history and tenacious occupants of Kilmarnock's Dean Castle, in service of getting the word out about her new novel, The Haunting of Henderson Close.

Which looks something like this:

Ghosts have always walked there. Now they’re not alone… 

In the depths of Edinburgh, an evil presence is released. Hannah and her colleagues are tour guides who lead their visitors along the spooky, derelict Henderson Close, thrilling them with tales of spectres and murder. For Hannah it is her dream job, but not for long. Who is the mysterious figure that disappears around a corner? What is happening in the old print shop? And who is the little girl with no face? The legends of Henderson Close are becoming all too real. 

The Auld De’il is out – and even the spirits are afraid.

See you back here tomorrow!

2018: Things Fall Apart

2018 was a rubbish year.  I guess you probably don't need me to tell you that.  I don't know anyone here in the UK who's had a brilliant time of it over the last twelve months.  I mean, wherever you stand on the Brexit debate, in practice it's been a life-sucking, debilitating mess that's dominated the news like a black hole, while every other of the multitude of problems the country's facing has been shoved aside.  Spiraling food bank dependence?  A dysfunctional transport network?  A disintegrating health service?  Horrifying levels of child homelessness and poverty?  Mate, who cares, we're trying to Brexit here!

And yeah, I know this blog is supposed to be about my writing, but my Gran died a few months ago.  It wasn't unexpected; she was very old and no one lives forever.  But she was a tremendously independent woman and I'd always hoped that was the way she'd be able to go out.  Instead, thanks to a misdiagnosis by first paramedics and then hospital staff that led to her being sent home the night she'd had a severe stroke, she died miserable and confused.   And, you know, I don't blame the paramedics or the hospital staff, not really: I blame the cuts that placed them under such impossible pressure, I blame the politicians that imposed those cuts, and to a lesser extent I blame the folks who refuse to listen to these sorts of stories and keep pretending that all's well.  At any rate, her death, and the circumstances surrounding it, have cast a long shadow over the year.

Though, let's face it, the writing side of things has been fairly dreadful too.  I was supposed to have two books released in 2018, and as you might have noticed, that hasn't happened.  Judging by Amazon figures, the one I did get out, The Bad Neighbour, appears not to have done at all well.  Its main misfortune seems to have been being something of a square peg in a round hole as far as Flame Tree's launch line-up went, and so not getting near the readership I'd intended.  Meanwhile, the third Black River book, Eye of the Observer, has run into ... well, I suppose "problems" is the word, though it seems a small one under the circumstances.  The book's finished and I'm really happy with it, but whether there'll be another as was once planned, whether it'll come out in its present form, or when it'll come out at all, are questions for the publisher to determine rather than me, and at time of posting they're yet to do so.  I mean, I'm sure it will be released, and I absolutely promise it won't come out in a form that doesn't do its predecessors justice, but beyond that I can't say.  And months of not knowing whether you'll get to finish the series you've been putting your heart and soul into for three years?  That's not been much fun either.

All of which together means I probably won't be writing full time for the bulk of 2019, or maybe at all in any significant way.  At time of posting, I'm effectively out of contract, with the Brexit cliff edge and all that entails less than three months away.  Frankly, I could really do with an income.  And as much as this is what I want to do and all I've ever wanted to do, I guess I could stand a break.  You can only bash your head against the same wall for so long without wanting a breather.  Likewise, you can only send so many unanswered e-mails and chase so many late payments and watch so many opportunities fall apart due to the indifference of others before you wonder what the hell it is you're doing.  I love writing, but everything that surrounds it has been a horrible slog for rather too long now.

Anyway, sorry to be so bleak!  Let's finish up with some good stuff, eh?  I ran the Swaledale marathon for the first time in two decades, that was pretty cool.  I'm finally getting round to my long-term goal of learning Japanese.  I got the platinum achievement on Bloodborne, which really was quite difficult and life-consuming, but also a ton of fun.  I've seen some truly great movies and more nineties anime than any human being could ever possibly need.  I got short fiction into a couple more of those gorgeous Flame Tree anthologies and sold a story to The Dark, which people apparently liked a lot, something I didn't altogether expect because it was tremendously weird and personal.  And more than anything, 2018 has reminded me that I have some wonderful family and friends.  Though even there, a couple of them I'll be seeing a hell of a lot less of thanks to - you guessed it - Brexit!

So yeah, I'm all out of positivism.  Go away, 2018, and think about what you've done.

Bad Neighbour News

I've been a bit rubbish at talking about The Bad Neighbour here since it came out, mostly due to unfortunate timing: it was released as I was hammering to get the final draft of the third Black River Chronicles book done, and then I was on holiday, and honestly, it's all been a bit horrifically busy and chaotic for the last couple of months.  Yes, even the holiday.  There were wasps.  I'm not kidding.

With all of that, I haven't kept track of every review, though thankfully I've seen enough to know that they've been mostly positive so far.  However, a couple of real standouts stuck with me enough that I managed to make a note of them.  My favourite, the one I've been quoting all over the place, comes from Linda Wilson at Crime Review, who says that "The Bad Neighbour was all too real and all too depressing and certainly deserves the appellation northern noir.  It is also a well-written and cleverly imagined crime thriller with a knife-sharp edge."  Meanwhile, in the only local paper to have thus far picked up on the Yorkshire connections, Sally Clifford at Bradford's Telegraph and Argus says, among other nice things: "Exciting, gritty, and dramatic, this book has it all."

Obviously, that doesn't tell you a great deal about what The Bad Neighbour's actually about - though the Telegraph and Argus review does go into quite a bit of plot detail if that appeals.  However, I've been all over the place talking about the whys and wherefores of the story, so if you want to get a feel for it without risking plot spoilers then there's plenty out there.  A couple of pieces that I've mentioned already, because they were in my blog tour, are the interview I did with Lucy Hay and an article I put together for Random Things Through My Letterbox where I discuss eight books that have had a huge influence on me and my writing.  But since then I've also taken part in a Q&A with Anne Bonny over on her website and, perhaps the ideal starting place if you're wondering if the book's for you, written a piece introducing my protagonist (though, as I insist on pointing out, definitely not hero!) Ollie Clay.

Last but self-evidently not least, I've done my first proper interview in a while, with Paul Stretton-Stephens of the Crime Fiction Lounge podcast.  This one was a real pleasure, partly because Paul's a thoroughly nice bloke and partly because it was a joy to actually, really talk a bit about The Bad Neighbour rather than just writing about it in one form or another.  And also to get diverted onto totally unrelated topics that I'm nearly as enthusiastic about, like the impossible task of trying to pin down my favourite movie and my struggles to learn Japanese.

And that's it for the moment, I think, though there's more on the way.  And if any of that made you want to grab a copy of The Bad Neighbour - you do, right? - then it's in all of the usual book-selling places, in a dizzying choice of paperback, hardback, e-book, and audio formats.  Personally I'd go for the hardback, because it's lovely.  I mean, as lovely as a grim and gritty Northern crime thriller with a "knife-sharp edge" can be, anyway!

The Bad Neighbour is Out Today

Today sees the release of my sixth novel, The Bad Neighbour - also known as The Bad Neighbor, since I was fool enough to come up with a title that wouldn't work on both sides of the Atlantic!  It represents a lot of firsts for me, and a huge departure from everything that's come before.  My first standalone novel.  My first novel to get a hardback release.  My first serious stab at writing a thriller, and my first significant dabbling with writing crime.  My first book to be set wholly in the real world, and my first to draw significantly on aspects of my own life.  In fact, The Bad Neighbour is a good deal more personal than anything I've put my name to before now.  One of the early reviewers found it a little implausible that somebody would spend all of their money on buying a run-down house in an unfamiliar, impoverished area, as my protagonist Ollie Clay does, but that's exactly what I did seven or so years ago, and the reason I had a base from which to write this very book.  Of course, it worked out a hell of a lot better for me than it did for Ollie.  My neighbours haven't always been brilliant, but I've never had to deal with anyone like Chas Walker, the right wing thug who makes Ollie's existence a living hell, and I've certainly never gone quite so far off the deep end as Ollie ends up doing.

Which reminds me of another first: I don't know that anything else I've written has addressed current affairs quite so directly.  I wrote The Bad Neighbour in what seems, now, to be a very different and rather more innocent time.  When I conceived the book, and when I decided to write in a small way about some of the toxicity I saw bubbling away beneath the nation's surface, Brexit wasn't even a rumour, and I'd no way to guess how much of that bile would soon be gushing forth.  Less than a year after finishing the final draft, I came home from holiday to find out that my local MP, Jo Cox, had been murdered in the street by a far-right domestic terrorist, and suddenly what I'd written didn't seem half so dramatic or implausible.  Ollie's story has become, for the most part, shockingly likely, though I dearly wish it wasn't.

On a far happier note, one last first: this is also my debut with a new publisher.  Indeed, a new publisher in both senses: today marks the true birth of extremely exciting upstart Flame Tree Press, who also happen to have five other books out today, the first wave of what's set to be a truly astonishing catalogue.  So you might want to grab a copy of Tim Waggoner's The Mouth of the Dark, J. D. Moyer's The Sky Woman, Hunter Shea's Creature, Jonathan Janz's The Siren and the Spectre, or the legendary Ramsey Campbell's latest, Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach, while you're shopping for The Bad Neighbour.

Which is totally a thing you should do!  You can pick it up from Amazon UK and Amazon US in paperback, hardback, e-book and audio formats, and Waterstones have it here.  And as ever, early sales are especially crucial, so if you fancy it, don't wait!