Got Ghosts? You will have!

Terrific news in the last few days – my new book ‘Got Ghosts?’ is due out from Fox Spirit in October, all set to coincide with Halloween!

The book is a complete romp, very loosely based on the hit TV show ‘Most Haunted’, and features a haunted English manor house, and all the things that go wrong when the film crew of (entirely fictional) television series ‘Got Ghosts?’ come for a weekend to make a programme there.

Greystone Hall’s owner Emily has far too much to deal with, including a plethora of ghosts, an arrogant producer, happy and unhappy mediums, a set of missing paintings, and yet more ghosts, not to mention a burgeoning romance with someone she doesn’t expect.

More details to come, but then if you’re good psychics you’ll know that already…

 

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All of a twitter

I’m slowly creaking my way into the twentieth century (never mind the twenty-first!) and have just opened up my own Twitter account.

It’s much more fun than I expected, with lots of local Cumbrian and Lakeland events, venues and people to chat to, as well as all my own interests to follow such as museums, art, architecture, history, gardens, reading (of course!), ghosts, and even the odd pot of chalk paint.  And new friends made already, which is always nice.

If you’d like to track me down, I’m on as F_Glass_Author (all the better ones were taken!).  I’ll usually follow legitimate fellow-tweeters (ie, no spammers or scammers) back.

Bookshop Trail

The other day I picked up a leaflet somewhere about a bookshop trail.  Not just any bookshop trail, but specifically the ‘Dales & Lakes Bookshop Trail’, which is a collective of secondhand bookshops in the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District national parks and their surroundings.

I’d never come across this before, and was delighted to find that there are twenty-six participating stores, including several in the small “book town” of Sedbergh, which is situated roughly half way between Kendal and Yorkshire.  We visited the town for the first time last year and I was amazed at the number of book shops lining the streets.  Now, apparently, there are six – not bad for a town of around 3,000 people!

And it’s not just Sedbergh.  The shops listed cover a vast area from Hawes and Hebden Bridge in the Yorkshire Dales, to Keswick and Penrith in northern Cumbria, Whitehaven on the far west coast, and Cartmel and Grange-over-Sands in the south.

It’s an impressive cooperative project.  And I’m really looking forward to trying to visit every bookshop on the list!

Ja Windermere!

Dave and I haven’t been particularly well lately – all kinds of winter bugs at work – but last Saturday we shuffled up the hill to Windermere town centre to see the “German” Christmas market.

Ja Windermere is a brand new venture which has never been run before.  And it was very sweet.  Hardly in the same league as Birmingham’s famous Frankfurt Christmas Market, but it featured around 40 stalls selling food, drink and gifts, and was large enough to have closed two of the roads in the town centre (with parking for reindeer behind the Tourist Information Centre!).

The main difference to other Christmas markets is that it was only German in name and style, not in content.  There were a couple of stalls selling gluhwein, and one doing Frankfurters and German sausages, but apart from that all the produce was local, and the whole event was sponsored by Made In Cumbria, a local trade cooperative organisation.

Even so, it was great fun and had really drawn in the crowds.  We spent an enjoyable 20 minutes strolling round the stalls, bought a handful of bits and bobs (including some Herdwick cards to frame) and then shuffled home again.

I’ve since read in the local papers that it was a roaring success, so hopefully we can expect a bigger and better Ja Windermere here next year.

Say goodbye to Necessity’s Door

As mentioned the other day, my novella Necessity’s Door is now out of contract, and no longer available as of today.  Sorry if you missed it but, er, it’s been on sale for over three years now so where were you?!

In the meantime I’ve taken the opportunity to re-vamp my website, since I was taking all the links to the book down anyway.  I’ve checked the remaining links, added a link to that story I rediscovered recently, and also included for the first time three of my previously published stories, to read free on the site.  You can choose between Come Friendly Bombs which was commended in an online contest, Huff and Puff which was published in Mslexia, or Peeping Tom which was published by Pill Hill Press before they ceased trading.

I hope you enjoy poking around, and I hope to have more new stuff to add soon.

Story from the archives

What a nice surprise.  Like the historian I studied to be I’ve been digging around in old files and archives, and have just re-discovered a short story I had published way back in 2011, which I quite thought had disappeared.

‘Clones’ appeared in The New Flesh magazine, which ceased trading not long afterwards (although I’m sure the two events weren’t actually linked…  Ahem.).  I assumed that the magazine’s web site would cease to exist, took the link off my own web page, and promptly forgot all about it.

Just shows how wrong you can be.  Thanks to the wonders of the internet The New Flesh site is still accessible, and my story is there along with many more.  The story is more than a little strange – but perfect for Halloween, so if you want to read about a scientist doing dreadful things with a vat of goo in a laboratory, follow this link!  I hope you enjoy it, and if I find any more buried treasure I’ll be sure to let you know.

Last chance for Necessity’s Door

A quick update – my gay crime/erotic romance novella Necessity’s Door comes out of contract from Riptide Publishing this coming Tuesday (1st November).

If you’ve been meaning to get yourself a copy and forgetting, then this weekend is pretty much your last chance.  Hurry along to my website for more details on where to get hold of a copy, before it vanishes from the shelves and you miss it forever!