A whole year has whizzed by since the last set of Heritage Open Days and suddenly they're on us again. This year it's better than ever since the event lasts for two weekends rather than one, with the same fascinating mix of history and culture to explore. We're whizzing about ourselves at the moment and [...]
Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal is perhaps one of the town's best kept secrets. It nestles down a side alley, past a car park, on the edge of the river next to the church, but hidden away behind its own original stable block, now the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry. But if you [...]
Dashing in to say that my new 75-word story Things That Go Bump is up at specialist flash fiction website Paragraph Planet today. It's a flippant little piece about ghosts, dead fish, and things that aren't quite as they seem. Do go and check it out - and I hope you have as much [...]
We're often told that writing can be a lonely business and it is: I can spend hours sitting in front of my computer in the tiny space I call a study, plotting, scribbling or typing on my latest work. Sometimes the only contact I have all day is chatting to people online, so it made [...]
These days the good old fashioned ghost story seems a bit overlooked, so it's always nice to find new examples, especially by well-thought of authors. And The Shadows Call is a great example of the genre. Penned by Matt Hilton, who's better known for his Lee-Child-style thrillers but who loves a good paranormal yarn, it's [...]
Saturday found me in Derby, at my first ever EdgeLit sci-fi/fantasy book convention. This is an annual event, staged at The Quad in Derby city centre by the talented Alex Davies and his crew. I'd heard lots about it in previous years, but had always been double-booked somewhere else. This year, with my publisher Fox [...]
We're in the middle of a long-lasting and unusual heatwave here. There's been no rain at all for over three weeks now, and temperatures have been around 26c for at least 15 consecutive days. That might not sound like much but believe me, it's almost unheard of for Cumbria, where the weather often changes every [...]
