Monthly Archives: January 2019

Spectre of Springwell Forest – Influences and Inspiration

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What writers inspired my latest novel Spectre of Springwell Forest?

Two undoubted influences on the story are Susan Hill’s seminal The Woman in Black, and the shorts of ghost story par excellence author MR James (such as The Ash Tree and Oh Whistle And I’ll Come To You My Lad). There’s also a smidgeon of Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier present, along with a dash of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. In fact, pretty much all my favourite ghost stories have informed this novel in some way, shape or form.

In the case of The Woman in Black, one of the major inspirations was the structure of the novel, including the framing device, and the famously upsetting, terse finale. I’ve always loved the way that book begins in a more settled present; at Christmas (like my story) but with a sense that the apparent serenity of the present masks long buried pain. Certainly as Arthur Kipps recounts his bone-chilling visit to Eel Marsh House, it becomes apparent that he is opening wounds that have never really healed.

With Spectre of Springwell Forest, I wanted to capture something of this tone in the framing device structure, and with the nasty sting in the tail right at the end. Thematically my novel shares other DNA with The Woman in Black – the apparent threat to children, for instance. Don’t Look Now also deals with the death of children and the supernatural.

On the other hand, I didn’t want Spectre of Springwell Forest to be one hundred percent clear cut in its explanations. The Turn of the Screw has an ambiguity that has always appealed to me, and in my novel, amid the spooky shenanigans I wanted to hint that there might – just might – be a natural explanation.

In the case of MR James’s stories, it was more the terrifying tone of those tales that proved an influence, rather than plot specifics. His superbly suspenseful prose remains unsurpassed. If my book contains a tenth of the churning dread conjured by his writing, I will have done very well. Of course, my novel doesn’t set out to copy his work or the other afore-mentioned classics, but seeks to be its own beast.

Spectre of Springwell Forest is out now. Pick up your copy here (in the UK) or here (in the US).

First Love: Another short story coming soon

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I have some more exciting news on the publishing front. Dragon Soul Press has selected my short story Papercut for inclusion in their upcoming romantic anthology, First Love.

The theme for this anthology is self-explanatory, but with elements of fantasy. My story, Papercut, concerns a lonely teenage boy living with his ultra-strict Jehovah’s Witness mother. One night a mysterious girl made entirely of paper appears in his dreams, and… Well, you’ll have to read it to find out what happens.

First Love is released on the 28th of February. Watch this space for further updates.

Spectre of Springwell Forest – An introduction

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Spectre of Springwell Forest, my first novel published via a traditional publisher (as opposed to self-published) is out now.

A nail-biting, bone-chilling supernatural mystery, Spectre of Springwell Forest is a ghost story in the classical tradition, but with a number of important differences. Here is a more in-depth introduction to the story than I have previously written about on this blog.

SSF coverThe novel opens in Exeter, 2010. Lily Parker learns that her daughter Olivia is to move to the village of Springwell, near Plymouth. To the surprise of her husband Andy, this sends Lily into terrified despair. She tells him that Olivia absolutely must not move to Springwell, under any circumstances. Andy wants to know why, and Lily then tells him what happened to her many decades previously, in 1979, warning him that she has a horrifying secret that she had previously hoped to take with her to the grave.

In 1979, Lily and her then six-year-old daughter Olivia, along with her first husband Tom Henderson, move to the sleepy village of Springwell. Here they meet a tight lipped community of secretive villagers who seem to have something to hide. Lily then discovers a painting of an abandoned railway tunnel in her attic, by a local artist, Alison Merrifield. Lily is strangely drawn to the painting, particularly the dark maw of the tunnel, and ends up hanging the picture in her hallway.

After meeting her neighbour and other mothers dropping their children at the local primary school, Lily is surprised to learn they all have similar paintings in their homes, all of them painted by Alison Merrifield, all of them showing the same abandoned railway tunnel. The other mothers dismiss this as something of a village in-joke, and when Lily visits Alison in her local craft shop, Alison herself insists she cannot understand why the paintings of the abandoned tunnel are so popular. But Lily senses she is being lied to.

Shortly afterwards, when Lily and Olivia go for a walk in the local forest, they come across a fenced off area in the heart of the woods where the barbed wire has been mysteriously torn apart. Investigating further inside the fenced off section, they discover the very same abandoned railway tunnel of the painting, and enter the tunnel… where something I won’t tell you about happens.

After this incident, Lily starts to make out a mysterious figure in the painting of the railway tunnel. As time passes, the eerie figure becomes more and more clearly defined, but Lily is disturbed to discover no-one can see it but her. Worse still, as the sinister figure is revealed, Olivia starts to behave in an increasingly alarming manner…

Then things get really scary, building to a horrifying and unexpected finale.

I hope this introduction whets your appetite for the story.

Spectre of Springwell Forest is out now. Pick up your copy here (in the UK) and here (in the US).

Happy New Year 2019!

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Happy New Year!

2019

Last year was a hugely significant year for my writing, not least because my first novel to be published by a traditional publisher, Spectre of Springwell Forest, has now been released. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, what are you waiting for? Click here (for the UK) and here (for the US) and dive into a nail-biting ghostly mystery that will brighten up your January with page-turning suspense.

So what are my writing plans for 2019?

For a start, I have submitted a short story entitled Paper Cut for inclusion in the upcoming Dragon Soul Press romantic fantasy anthology First Love. More to be announced on that front in due course.

Aside from that, I have started writing my first novel for 2019 – an as yet untitled ghostly tale which is lighter on the terror than Spectre of Springwell Forest and The Thistlewood Curse, yet still falls neatly within the psychological/supernatural thriller/horror spectrum in which I greatly enjoy writing. I will keep my lips sealed on details so far… suffice to say it involves a famous dead actor, his rather less famous actress widow, a large sinister house, a medium, and a big mystery.

Also this year, I intend to finally stop procrastinating and write the science fiction novellas I have put off since mid-2017 (when I opted to write Echo and the White Howl instead). Those I really will say nothing about for now.

On top of that, I hope to have at least one other novel released this year, possibly horror mystery The Irresistible Summons which I wrote back in 2015, depending on what my publisher makes of it. Watch this space for more updates on that and other writing related matters throughout the year. Here’s hoping it’s a good one.