C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 39

Podcast S01E12 ~ Chapter 11.1 (Part 1 of 2) Up Now!

Chapter 11 (Part 1of 2) of The Crows is online today!

CW for coma patient, physical space violations and objectification, the [encouraged] relapse of an alcoholic character.

CHAPTER 11: DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

Links on my podcast page.

Chapter 11.1: Damsel in Distress

…in which several days pass eventfully…

“I dare say you’ve seen many a person die in this room,” Dr Monday said conversationally over Carrie’s head, wiping the beads of sweat from her brow. He had his own unique scent, filling Carrie’s head with peace; sepia film reels and withered violets, her father’s old jumper and peppermints masking forbidden Camel cigarettes, warm mahogany and washed linoleum, unused cardboard and Bakelite appliances. The smell of memories, not all of them her own.

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, pp. 205-6

This chapter ended up being really long but I found a place to cut it so that it stayed a reasonable length for the episode. I failed to find a good place in Ch 12 so that one is double the length (about 40mins)! Apologies for that in advance.

Dr Monday is a shadowy form in a suit, who turns up to house calls wearing masks of human skin. It is unclear whose faces he is wearing, but he has a substantial collection. If you would like to know more about him, you can check out my posts on getting medical help in Pagham-on-Sea, and find out about his companion Miss Charlotte.

If you’re enjoying the podcast (or just these posts with the extracts and titbits) you can buy the book to read along.

Come and chat in the Goodreads group if you’d like to!

The History of Pagham-on-Sea ~ Bonus Episode Transcript with Guillaume Velde

Introduction

CMR: Hello, and welcome to the next episode of Eldritch Girl, which is a bonus episode, and today we have the very elusive Guillaume Velde with us and who I’ve managed to track down. He’s a very difficult man to get hold off. But Guillaume Velde has done a guest post for me on the blog before and talking about the Pagham-on-Sea Museum and Containment Facility and he’s going to tell us a little bit about his research interests, and as lockdown lifts he’s going to go back to town and carry on with some of his research so Guillaume, welcome to the show.

GV: Thank you for having me.

CMR: It’s really lovely to actually get to meet you at last and so yeah would you like to introduce yourself a little bit and maybe say a little bit about the museum and your research interests.

GV: Well, I am a wandering researcher, I suppose you could say. I have a day job but it mostly doesn’t matter where I am when I do it, so I am free to pursue my research interests, to a great extent, and these take me to Pagham-on-Sea fairly often. My major research interests are really in the histories and the folklore of coastal areas, especially around shipwrecks and wrecking; both the actual history and the stories that people have spun based on that history.

CMR: Very interesting. I mean we should point out, as well, this is Pagham-on-Sea East Sussex not the Pagham, West Sussex and, yes, so. Okay, and can you tell us anything about what you’re researching at the moment in terms of shipwrecks around that area of coast.

Smuggling and Wrecking

GV: Pagham-on-Sea provides some unique challenges. It has a very interesting history. Firstly, there have been the normal run of people just not looking where they were going. Obviously there are rocks off shore and if you look at a map of the south coast of England there’s just wrecks all over the place, you know it’s not particularly uncommon to have wrecking hotspots.

Pagham is not noted for the quantity of its wrecks, but it has some interesting special things about the ways that people tell stories about them and also due to some quirk of history, some objects from a couple of very important shipwrecks have ended up in the museum here. So it is a good place to be for what I am currently researching.

So Pagham had a bit of a wrecking problem as many areas on south coast did where people would attempt to lure in ships by means of lights onto the shore to wreck them and steal the cargo.

CMR: Yeah.

GV: It usually involved also disposing of the unfortunate crew. You can certainly see, when the story is told by various people, you can see evidence of unwarranted alcoholic bonuses, shall we say, that were either salvaged in a fairly heavy double quotes or simply smuggled on via the beach there.

CMR: Yes, sorry I was gonna say I knew that the town does have or had a big smuggling history. There’s a there’s a smugglers’ tunnel isn’t there, that runs quite a way out, and it’s meant to be underneath or come out of Fairwood House, which is quite away from the coast actually.

GV: Yes, it is, I think one of the reasons why there was such a big smuggling presence is simply that in Pagham-on-Sea, a lot of the people who were at least organizing the smuggling were actually very well… often very well organized. So this is not what you see in some places, which is sort of very freelance, I suppose, these days, you’d call it small business.

I mean I grew up in a coastal area, and there was very, very, very much even now, there was a great deal of what you might call individual level smuggling. In Pagham, though, at its heyday, this was being actively funded by people who were quite well off and quite important, as far as we can see, and this is probably why the the main smugglers’ tunnel leads all way to Fairwood House.

I have no wish to besmirch the memories of individual families here, but as clues go, that is not a subtle one.

CMR: Yeah one of them was, I think I can’t remember what they’re all called Peter or John or something. But one of the Sauvants was the magistrate as well, which helped at that time. [It was Thomas Sauvant.]

GV: Yes, there were reasons why the excise were not notably successful in this area.

And the fact that all of their liaisons in low what passed for local law enforcement we’re all quite cheerfully drinking smuggled brandy probably accounts for this to a certain extent. There is an interesting social history to be written about whether the people who ended up running the show actually planned to end up running the show and ran it like a business, or whether they ended up in this position simply by consuming smuggled products and having to take responsibility and diverting attention more and more and more. And it’s entirely possible that the Sauvants in question – because there were multiple generations of this, it was a family business – just kind of preferred not to think about it too much and in fact had simply ended up in that position by making a lot of decisions which seemed pragmatic and sensible at the time, and after 20 years or so, had actually put them in an extremely questionable legal position.

CMR: I mean there were into all sorts of things, though, that family. There’s lots of links to the occult and all sorts of interesting rumors… and yeah, I mean they were just a very questionable bunch really.

GV: I think they were really bad at saying ‘no’. It seems to be a family trait that I think they went into the occult when it was fashionable to be into the occult, and they were into smuggling when that was a way to make quite a lot of money. But again, I don’t get the feeling that there was any organization there, I mean if you look at the noble families or semi-noble families, they are not up there among the great organizers or the great schemers.

CMR: No. Yeah, that’s fair.

GV: They just… You know that they have spent several centuries just narrowly escaping being in serious trouble that that’s the entirety of their story.

CMR: Yeah, yeah.

GV: There were no great high points, there were no great low points, they just kind of… just about escaped from penury, with every other generation or so.

CMR: Yeah, I mean arguably until the very last one, and that was like… their death duties had gone through the roof, and Sir Jack was very ill and… yeah, I think I’d agree with that. I mean that wasn’t until sort of the mid- to late-20th century anyway.

GV: Yes, and I mean an awful lot of families in a similar position, whose wealth was not easily accessible necessarily, as in, bound up in land with those legal obligations attached to it, found themselves in similar positions.

CMR: Yeah that’s true, and in terms of the wrecking and the – that history, what would you say is some of the most interesting things to have come out of your research so far?

Fairy Lights (Farisee Lights) & Social Networks

GV: I don’t think it was uncommon for wreckers to cultivate ghost stories, smugglers too, very notably, and I mean this shows up in quite a lot of fiction about smuggling, too, the idea that you put about the story that so-and-so’s ghost is wandering angrily on the shore at night for some ill-specified reason, and that they will visit terrible vengeance, possibly involving a spike, upon anyone who interferes with their nocturnal meanderings. Because if you can scare off the kind of people who are likely to believe in ghosts then you’ve made an appreciable reduction in the number of people who are likely to interrupt you. If you can cultivate a kind of a supernatural air, then people are just going to avoid the place at night, anyway, which is again to your benefit if this is somebody you are doing something extremely legally questionable.

In Pagham-on-Sea there is a slight complication here, of course, which is that there are lots of fairy lights and there are lights moving at night, which nobody has ever admitted to. These days, when smuggling along the coast is rather rarer and much less well funded – obviously, there is smuggling that goes on across the channel, but very little of it seems to end up in Pagham-on-Sea, you know this isn’t a it’s not a particular hotspot of that kind of thing.

CMR: No.

GV: You still get a lot of lights along the coast that really don’t seem to have a purpose and that wander at will, and, of course, if you are… especially a sailing ship coming up past Pagham-on-Sea, whether the diverting light is being waved in the air by a wrecker or by a fairy is really slightly academic. The rocks are still quite spiky, and I mean there are lots – I’m not, I do not wish to to besmirch anyone’s good name, but there are lots of stories about kleptomaniac fairies so the result may in fact be precisely the same. And in fact the result is probably the same for people from the town as well, because if you interrupt a fairy on the cliff top, or if you interrupt interrupt a wrecker the difference in what happens is largely going to be the precise manner in which you die. Because neither of them are notably friendly to people who wander up in the middle of the night asking bloody stupid questions.

CMR: Yeah, that… yeah, yes, that’s very, very true.

GV: So you have this interesting thing where you can’t actually tell what bit is organic story, you know, the supernatural like the fairy lights, what bit is kind of mythological posturing put about by the wreckers themselves, and which bits are just made up.

Of course there, there are grave difficulties in thinking and talking too much about things like fairy lights, because you have to be very, very careful about what is story and what isn’t anyway, but, the presence of actual unexplained lights does make taking to bits the stories about wreckers significantly more interesting.

CMR: Yeah, I’m trying to think of a good example that I heard, and I know about… I mean, Seamus McVey is the obvious famous one there’s lots of urban legends and local myths about him anyway because he’s the one that got buried alive in the smugglers’ tunnel and again that’s like Fairwood House related. And, and you know, obviously, you know Harold Bishop’s book?

GV: Yes.

CMR: Yeah I mean that’s it so there hasn’t been I don’t think there’s been an updated version since like 1987 but, so that’s the book obviously on the history of Fairwood House for any listeners that don’t know, and it’s published with Basingstoke University Press. I’ve quoted from that actually in my Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea Volume one and, but not the Seamus McVey section, and I’m going to kind of think about doing that in volume two so maybe actually Guillaume, we could kind of reconvene for volume 2 of the folklore and I’ll get you on some fairy lights and wreckers.

GV: I think there is a very interesting situation here where Bishop and other people have really concentrated on McVey as a person and as an individual, whereas the the social dynamics of the wrecking and smuggling are more interesting because of course it’s not just one person, and it’s not just one character doing it, and there’s all these social networks up and down the coast. And, as I said, in Pagham that becomes especially interesting when you consider things like the fairy lights and what else might be trying to prey on shipping. There are stories to be told about the interactions of smugglers and wreckers, with other things that are trying to prey on shipping. And I do not think some of those stories, [which] exist in oral history, and there are some trial records that have some more than usually odd stuff in, [which are in] the archives, and I don’t think those have been visited enough. I think that there’s a very interesting study to be written in future on that.

CMR: Yeah I was also thinking about Daniel Pierce’s journals. He was a local farmer contemporary again with McVey so that’s the 1780s I think. No, sorry, 1740s. Way out. They’re in East Sussex Record Office, I think, at the moment, but I think when people look at Pierce’s journals, I think you’re right, like I’ve had a brief look at them for for certain bits and pieces, but I think a lot of it is kind of neglected because Pierce writes in a very… Even though it’s a personal journal, a lot of what he’s writing, if he was writing kind of blatantly, would be very incriminating if those journals were found. And it… kind of reading between the lines you get the sense of this network of farmers and like gentry, as in like gentry farmers, in that in that whole county, who are all recipients of some sort of ill-gotten gains but nobody’s really talking about it in that sense.

And Pierce of course knew McVey, and we know that, because – not to, not focus too much on McVey as a person, as you say, and but there’s a story where McVey bet his pistols on a cock fight at the King’s Head, and he lost them to Daniel Pierce. And so those pistols are now in the museum aren’t they as part of the smuggling collection. And that’s often dismissed or glossed as like a random encounter but nobody’s really asking well you know who who else was at these cockfights? And we know that events like cockfighting and dog baiting and gambling and that … that was all going on at the time, and there are those social networks of people that that overlap and map them to, you know, not just who was doing these sorts of activities, but who they were meeting, the deals they were making, all of that kind of stuff in terms of social networks.

GV: I mean as in most towns, it would be very, very interesting to… instead of having all these official records have a short but reliable list of who was going for quiet drinks with whom, in this connection certainly. But yes, I think it’s not just that, it is that other things are likely to be preying on shipping, and fairy lights are possibly a good indicator of that, and I think there are there are stories, not so much as smugglers’ run-ins with other smugglers or smugglers’ run-ins with wreckers, or either of their run-ins with their paymasters, I suppose you could say, but their run ins with other things that they didn’t really understand.

And there are some fascinating things which… which sound almost like sea monsters, but are probably not actually sea monsters, described in, for example, some of the investigations into some other acts and, of course, those investigations were perhaps a little perfunctory given some of the financial interests involved. But there was a lot of stuff in there you wouldn’t necessarily make up.

The Lighthouse

CMR: Right, yeah. I think a lot of it has been kind of dismissed as well because, like there’s nothing in the lighthouse logs, is that right, but the lighthouse keepers… there is a lighthouse and the lighthouse keepers have never recorded seeing anything unusual.

GV: The lighthouse was built rather later, though, and I think is kind of important to remember that most wrecking activity had wound down rather before the lighthouse was built, and most of the wreckers had moved on to – or wrecking families, had moved onto smuggling by then, presumably because it was lower risk. So the lighthouse was not actually built to defend against wreckers and the lighthouse was built as part of the wide-ranging program to build lighthouses in areas where maritime safety had been a problem, and especially in areas where navigation could be confusing.

So the building of the lighthouse… it’s, it’s really important to see in the national scale, because there was a big push to build lighthouses in the 19th century, where they were sensible to [do so]. The threat that the lighthouse is defending against is much more the geography than the inhabitants of Pagham at that time.

Now the lighthouse is interesting because, as you say, the lighthouse logs, the logs of the lighthouse keepers, do not contain any of the scandal or social tension that you find in some other lighthouses where lighthouse keepers have perhaps gone a little bit strange. Now that’s partly because it’s less isolated than lot of other lighthouses but at the same time if you look at the folklore around say the fairy lights and weird happenings especially around the coast, I mean Pagham-on-Sea is not short of weird happenings, but especially the weird happenings that happened around the coast, there is this kind of black spot around the lighthouse and it is remarkable that in a town notable for the richness of its ghost stories and strange folklore and things going bump in the night, as it were, nothing at all has been said about the lighthouse, even though it is a lonely place comparatively by the edge of the sea and lighthouses attract that kind of story.

In fact, as far as I can see the lighthouse never really saved anyone from wrecking and never really caused you know, was never involved in anything. People sat there for ages until it was automated. And it just sat there you know, nothing interesting has happened in that lighthouse which in Pagham-on-Sea makes it an intensely interesting place and I know a number of people who are trying to work out what is going on there, whether it is the lighthouse itself or the rock it is built on.

It is built on bare rock, you will note, there is no soil on that little headland at all.

CMR: Yeah, no there isn’t at all.

GV: It’s built straight onto bare rock, and essentially there was some speculation that this was the cause of it, but it’s kind of hard to say.

CMR: Yeah, yeah it’s… yeah that lighthouse is a bit of a black spot, it’s really interesting that you say that, and it’s the question about the rock itself as well, because I mean we know a lot about the soil of Pagham-on-Sea. Well, maybe people don’t who are listening, and so just to… just to clarify, I don’t know how to put this delicately… the soil around Pagham-on-Sea is what we describe as hyper fertile. So the local saying is, don’t plant what you don’t want to grow, or don’t put in the ground what you don’t want to grow, which means anything of any organic material whatsoever. And, especially at a particular time of year. And so, that also means like your if you do have to dispose the body don’t bury it. That’s the official advice.

GV: Yes, there was that kind of fascinating heyday of agricultural experimentation, and in Pagham-on-Sea that just went in a slightly different direction with slightly different results, than it did in much of the rest of the country.

CMR: [laughs] Yeah…

GV: This of course presents opportunities and problems. No one is ever short of fruit in Pagham-on-Sea.

CMR: This is very true. We are very blessed down there. Moving into that because we have to: fossils. Is what I’m going to say to you.

GV: Yeah.

Fossils [Are Official Secrets]

CMR: There is a reason the museum is called the Museum and Containment Facility.

GV: Well, yes, I think a certain amount of this is overreaction, but. So the problem here is that if you’re in a situation where everything you put in the ground that was once organic grows, you have a real problem where it comes to fossils. And for a long time nobody thought about this, and this is really, really interesting but… everyone knew that you didn’t bury people. Everyone knew that when you planted seeds you got incredibly fast luxurious growth. Everyone knew about the interesting approaches to agricultural science that got us there and they might not talk about it, but it was generally a known thing, um. But nobody until really comparatively recently thought about fossils which, of course, are underground and were once organic.

The problem here really began to come with the installation of civic infrastructure, and specifically sewers and pipework. I mean let’s just say when when a giant stone ammonite crashes unexpectedly through the wall of your sewer, you find yourself with problems on a number of levels, not just sanitary ones.

CMR: [laughs] I shouldn’t laugh, that was very expensive, that was.

GV: It was extremely expensive and it was absolutely terrifying and no one really made the connection. When, because of course it’s been growing and it had been moving and because, obviously, when, as it grows it’s being pushed through the soil following paths of less density, you know it’s growing in a direction and i’m one of these things came through the wall of the sewer and people were like what on earth is going on here um, and so they patched it up.

CMR: The sewer, not the ammonite.

GV: The sewer, not the ammonite, the ammonite was in great condition. We’ve still got it in the museum.

CMR: Yeah I’ve seen it, it’s fucking massive.

GV: It’s enormously huge. I mean, then a little while later, a couple of years later, another one did the same thing. And people run around waving their hands in the air going, you know, what’s going on here what’s wrong, etc, etc, and there was much conspiracy theory and occultism going on around this. And then the third one occurred. And you know, once is a coincidence, twice suggest malevolence, but, on the third time, you have to admit there’s probably a design flaw somewhere.

This was the event that firstly got people to understand that they needed stronger sewers, and got people to take seriously that they had a whole new set of hazards to deal with when installing infrastructure in general, not just sewers. I mean a suitably large trilobite will quite happily just cut through a phone cable like it’s nothing you know. But also these were the events that got people thinking about what was going on here, you know, and the design of the containment facility itself was partly a response to a threat to infrastructure and people think is this terribly you know, occult malevolent thing, which is because they’re still thinking in a two sewer interruption world rather than a three sewer interruption world.

CMR: Right, yeah.

GV: Because people want there to be this great eldritch threat to the world, where what they just actually are is, is large bits of stone that will screw up your infrastructure. Anyway, yes. So what they did was, they began mapping out the contours in the ground, what some people call ley lines. And they did this with very precisely balanced dowsing rods. Let’s not forget that, especially the late 19th century, was really a heyday of precision instrument manufacturing. So when I say precision dowsing rods, I mean it. These were very, very carefully designed surveying instruments: eccentric perhaps, but very carefully thought through. And what they did was they made sure the sewers ran with the contours with the ley lines, rather than across them, because of course the fossils were trying to move along the contours too. So if you had your sewers running parallel to where the fossils were trying to migrate, for want of a better word, it was massively less likely that they would be collided with.

And this kind of surveying still actually has to be done before major projects in case anything has shifted underground or in case anything is still moving. We think we’ve got all the really big ones now, but we wouldn’t necessarily know until it actually hit something. So it’s good practice to install things where possible where they won’t get hit by migrating fossils.

So, Pagham-on-Sea, for fans of infrastructure projects out there, is the only place you’re likely to see a telecoms engineer wandering around in a hi-vis jacket with a dowsing rod and a GPS receiver attached to it making careful notes about where the dowsing rod dips and does not dip. And, most of the telecoms companies, especially, are kind of resigned to this now, but some still kick up a fuss, but fortunately, the Council insists because really.

CMR: Yeah, it really has to be done, or it’s such an expensive way to run your life.

GV: It does amuse me that people, as I said, like to think about the containment facility as this kind of eldritch occult thing, whereas actually it is to make sure the phones and the sewers keep working. There’s a kind of amusing juxtaposition there and amusing contrast.

CMR: I mean the fossils don’t move when they’re out of the soil, we should point out.

GV: Yes, exactly. That’s why the containment facility is designed the way it is. So the fossil exhibitions of course are presented quite conventionally because, in that context you know they are in a display case, they are off the ground. It’s quite easy to stop them accidentally getting thrown out or being a problem. In the actual storage places the the fossil storage is very carefully kept above ground on plastic legs and the point is that the fossil should never be able to touch the ground.

Now this is, in my view an absurd overreaction. As are the extremely… as are the very serious security restrictions around them, because these things do not move fast when they’re in the ground. And even if one escaped and touch the ground, you would probably have a good four or five days before it had submerged itself, you know these things do not move fast. So a certain amount of this is overreaction, in my view, but it makes for an interesting exhibit.

Other Museum Collections

CMR: Yeah, it does. I’m really looking forward to when the museum can reopen after lockdown and we can all go back in, have a look. We’re opening up again April time, but are you going to be going down there soon?

GV: Yes, I’ll be going down as soon as reasonably possible, there are some objects in the museum I wish to look at, except for the one that’s gone missing, which I will have to look at the place where it isn’t, which is very annoying but they keep losing it. There’s – there’s a table they keep losing. It loses itself, they say. I don’t necessarily understand what they’re going on about there, but every time anyone – it always – every time anyone catalogues wherever it is, it isn’t there next time they look and it’s hard because they usually quite careful with the inventory management and their collections management down there. So it’s a little bit odd that something the size of a table would continually go missing, but when they find it again, maybe they’ll be able to keep track of it for long enough for me to go and see it.

CMR: Is that from a wreck?

GV: Yes, yes. There’s a collection of rather odd items from a Romano-British shipwreck which actually happened at the entrance to the Solent. It’s not quite clear how the objects ended up in Pagham-on-Sea museum but I’m glad they have, because it means I can consult them and examine them on my trips down, without having to make another trip.

CMR: Yeah that’s good. What’s your favourite collection that’s not… that we haven’t mentioned? Which one are you really looking forward just to browse around as opposed to study?

GV: Probably the the Arbitus collection.

CMR: Oh, yes, I love that one.

GV: …which has so many stories in it, on so many levels. The Arbutus collection is the multi-century collection of women’s neckwear for those who don’t know, by a vampire called Jeremy Arbitus. He gave the collection to the museum when the museum opened. Not all the parts of the collection are in particularly good condition, I mean each one as is well known, each one has a single bite mark in it. Arbitus was a vampire and it comes with the territory. Some of them are also bit stained and this this kind of – there’s a regrettable prejudice, which is even more regrettably backed up in fact, that vampires can be very messy eaters. And one or two of the parts of the Arbitus collection really do show that. But the social history, the person of Jeremy Arbitus, the fashion…

Jeremy Arbitus was a prolific vampire and very, very keen on consent, which makes him a very interesting and good counterpoint to the prejudice against vampires they don’t that they don’t really care about humans at all. And I believe he is being used by the vampire community in initiatives to underline the importance of consent and good human vampire relations more recently, but that’s more your area than mine, I’m not…

CMR: Yes. I mean obviously it helps that… I say ‘helps’ that he’s no longer with us, but yeah he’s very much the poster boy for historical…

GV: …responsible vampirism.

CMR: Yes. It’s used to say this is very much not a ‘new thing’, there is precedent for it.

GV: And part of vampiric culture. Which the vampires have never been in any doubt of, but the humans need reminding of on a distressingly regular basis.

CMR: Yes, and also arguably some of the newer vampires on the scene. And it depends how… there’s this whole conversation about… yeah I mean we’re getting into into some very complicated undead discourse at this point so.

GV: And I’m not intending to…

CMR: No no. Let’s leave that alone.

GV: It is certainly interesting that he can be, and is used, as a stick to beat humans with about vampires, shall we say, about vampires being able to not just be the rather one dimensional predatory monsters have so many unfortunate stories.

CMR: Yes. I mean, vampires do benefit from some very good media PR at the moment. Where are you going to be staying then? Because if you’re going to go down, I mean I can’t imagine a lot of places are open, when do you normally stay?

The King’s Head

GV: I often stay at the King’s Head.

CMR: Oh. Yeah. That’s nice. I like it in there.

GV: It isn’t prone to particularly dramatic hauntings. It does a decent pie and chips. And some of the bands, they are they’re quite nice and they finish early enough for me to go to bed, so I mean it’s it’s great, it’s nice, and it’s much nicer than any of the chain hotels or all that kind of thing.

CMR: Yeah, I mean I think you’ve just got the TravelInn, and that’s a bit… yeah. Anyway, I I really liked the King’s Head, though. I like the duel story they’ve got on the wall in the snug, you know, Swales versus Eales. I love that. Do you want me to tell that one?

GV: Go on, you tell that one.

CMR: Ok so this is in 1716. There was an ongoing feud between the landlord of the King’s Head, which was Thomas Swales at the time, and the landlord of the Exchange, which is a couple of just kind of like… You sort of go out of the King’s Head and turn left and the Exchange is like, on the end of the road, but yeah you know where I mean. And that was for the affections of the recently widowed Maria Whitten.

And so they fought a duel in what’s now the beer garden of the King’s Head, which was at the time, where they did you, cockfighting and stuff, like we mentioned before, and Swales chose pistols and he shot Eales in the shoulder. And Eales shots Swales in the thigh, I think, and they both kind of got patched up and survived the resulting infections and only to find out that Widow Whitten had run off with Captain Nathaniel Black of the Royal Navy so. Just generally devastating for everyone and they’ve got that story on the wall in the snug, which is lovely, along with a little painting of Swales do you know the one I mean, I mean like the little portrait. Because doesn’t he haunt the pub?

GV: Yes, he does haunt the pub or so they say. I’ve never seen him. But they certainly have a reputation of being haunted by him, and they do say on a dark night as is traditional you know, on a dark night when everything is still, you can hear him stomping about outside complaining about the price of lamb.

CMR: [laughs] Yeah I’ve heard that story. I haven’t heard him… I haven’t heard him either, but um yeah that’s what they… that’s what they say.

GV: He swears something terrible they say.

CMR: The problem is, it’s Pagham-on-Sea, how would you tell that that was a ghost? It could be just anyone!

GV: Yes, I mean, I’ve said some choice things in that beer garden myself so.

CMR: Oh, well, I think that’s all we’ve got time for unfortunately, but maybe I’ll see you down there when your next about because I want to go back down as well, but um yeah it was absolutely lovely to have you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing about your research and stuff and we will reconvene at a later date, hopefully.

GV: Thank you for having me.

Podcast S01E11 ~ Chapter 10 Up Now!

Chapter 10 of The Crows is online today!

CW for fire, pseudo-injection, physical health deterioration.

CHAPTER 10: BRAIN FEVER

Links on my podcast page.

Chapter 10: Brain Fever

…in which Carrie is unwell and Ricky starts a fire…

The neighbour was due to die in fifteen days and he still hadn’t got what he wanted. Fairwood’s aura repelled him again – he had tried his luck at the back fence, to no avail. His farsight was almost totally gone, and, for the first time in a long time, he was anxious. What if the wyrd were not as immutable as it ought to be? What if it was fixed for everyone else, but not for him?

He’d seen a single magpie on a branch that morning, black and white feathers ruffled in moody silence.

(One for sorrow, that’s how the rhyme goes.)

The crows had mobbed it, chasing it off in a flurry of feathers, dropping a scrap of thin, paper-lined foil on the ground, the kind used in sweets packaging. Without his farsight, that omen was hard to interpret.

Should he have gone into town at all? He could feel the threads of his wyrd constricting around him, warp and weft trapping him like a fly. The town made him feel like that, too, claustrophobic amid the concrete.

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, p. 197

In this extract, you see the crows engaged in more bird-bullying (through Ricky’s memory of earlier that day), which prompted Ricky’s visit to town and Carrie’s encounter with him there at the start of this chapter.

Ricky is banned from SupaPrice due to … an incident. Here’s a list of all the pubs in Pagham-on-Sea that he’s banned from, most of which were before he was even legal (18, in UK) so its just as well his drinking days are behind him anyway.

If you’re enjoying the podcast (or just these posts with the extracts and titbits) you can buy the book to read along.

Come and chat in the Goodreads group if you’d like to!

Podcast S01E10 ~ Chapter 9 Up Now!

Chapter 9 of The Crows is online today!

CW for bird death, and the POV of a relapsing alcoholic.

CHAPTER 9: BAD OMENS

Links on my podcast page.

Chapter 9: Bad Omens

…in which Guy Bishop brings Carrie flowers…

A sharp smack at the window made him jump and turn, the book slipping from his grasp and thudding to the carpet.

The crows were perched on the weathered stone rail in a line, laughing with wicked beaks agape. A frightened sparrow had smacked right into the glass leaving a crazed, circular crack, a smudge of blood, and a single brown feather.

Guy lunged at the window, thumping the frame with his fists, the cracks spreading.

The murder took off in a stiff fluttering of glossy black feathers, leaving the small brown body broken on the flagstones, one wing twitching slowly into the talons of death.

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, p. 181

This week, we meet Guy Bishop again in more detail, and learn a bit more about his personal circumstances. We also meet Harold (Harry) Bishop, his father, historian, author and avid bibliophile.

The sparrow in English folklore is sometimes viewed as a death omen. In Kent and Sussex, the lore gets a bit grim: if a sparrow flies into one’s home, then it must be caught and killed by the catcher, or the catcher’s parents will die. Some variants say unless it is killed, the catcher themselves will die. In this case, the sparrow isn’t caught but is killed by the glass window. Because it doesn’t enter the home, Harry Bishop optimistically interprets it as a bad omen for Carrie, whom they were just discussing. The sparrow was driven to fly into the window by the crows, and Harry seems to think that this tableau is a representation of Carrie’s fate. Is he right? Let’s find out.

Author Interview ~ Nita Pan on Goremance, Villains, Writing Queerness, and Having Fun with Horror

Interview Transcript: Introducing the AuthorNita Pan

Nita Pan (she/they) is a nonbinary, demisexual/biromantic polyamorous and neurodivergent YA/Adult Own Voices writer of the soft, bloody and monstrous. After traveling throughout the United States and parts of Europe, and meeting people from all around the globe, they decided to put their strange and extraordinary experiences to good use. When not writing, she can be found re-watching Star Trek, wandering the stacks of her local library, and creeping around the local cemetery, talking to crumbling gravestones. 

Their work has more recently turned to exploring the slasher-romance/goremance genre, although has always flirted with horrormance in various forms, especially with gothic themes and elements.

You can find Nita Pan’s website here; on Twitter and Instagram [both @nitapanwrites] and get gothic romance, erotic horror and more in your inbox for the price of a coffee per month via their (18+ only) Patreon. Their first published short story, Life and Death, is available in serial format on their Patreon, or you can find it in the anthology FROM ASHES TO MAGIC.

podcast

Listen to the author interview on my podcast.

Spooky by Association

Among Nita’s current projects, which include the drafting-stage Gospel of Blood series, Eldritch Girls Just Want to Have Fun (co-written with C. M. Rosens), and the dark fantasy Nightmare Hours, some of which will be available as snippets on their Patreon, is the indie anthology SPOOKY BY ASSOCIATION.

If you like The Magnus Archives, Nita’s story has very similar energy with a twisty premise, and fits into another series/’verse that they are playing with at the moment.

The anthology features the following stories and a talented line-up.

Look out for updates on this, and the pre-order links, which will be available later this year (2021).

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Click on the arrows to scroll through all 10 images in the embedded postAuthor Interview Transcript: Introduction

CMR: Hello, welcome to the next episode of Eldritch Girl! I’ve got Nita Pan with me, which is exciting! Nita, would you like to introduce yourself to everyone?

NP: I’m Nita Pan and I’m a librarian and horror author, my pronouns are she/they, and I write stories based off of dreams, my various travel experiences and fictional tropes. My short story, Life and Death in From Ashes to Magic was published late 2019 and i’m currently serialising that on my Patreon /NitaPanWrites. When I’m not writing, I tend to read, listen to music, and just stare at the ceiling contemplating my entire existence.

CMR: Mood.

[Laughs]

CMR: Oh, so you’re currently editing an anthology as well and which I’m in which is exciting. What’s your story called that’s in that in the anthology because we’re gonna hear you read an excerpt of that for us.

NP: um yes, it’s called The Field Devours and it’s about a flesh eating corn field that stalks people.

CMR: Oh, the pun, I love it.

NP: It’s part of the SPOOKY BY ASSOCIATION horror anthology that I’m putting together, which is due to be released later this year. Here we go.

Extract from The Field Devours (2021)

“There is this field in the dark. I can’t help it. I go into it. It calls to me. It sees me. It has no eyes and it sees me. It -” 

The small man clears his throat, interrupting Lee. 

It’s a sharp grating sound that reminds Lee of nails on a chalkboard.

The man shifts in his respective plastic chair. Crosses his legs. The fabric of his khakis rustles loudly in that cramped library study room. “Sorry… Mr… Ms…”

Lee flinches as the man struggles to figure out what honorific to use with them. “Lee or Dawson is fine with me.”

“Lee… Dawson.” The man – Richard, Rick… Lee can’t remember his name and is too embarrassed to ask – rolls their full name over his tongue. 

Lee shivers. Their name sounds wrong in his mouth.

The man – The Recorder – pushes his thick-frame glasses up his nose with his middle finger.

Lee frowns and hooks their boot-clad feet around the legs of their chair. Was it on accident or was he flipping them off? If this guy is going to be a dick, they aren’t going to stick around.

Liar, they shoot at themself. You’ve got to tell someone your story. About what happened to Eric. Lee thinks about the blood. The field. Someone else has to know about the field. Lee isn’t crazy. Lee can’t be. 

The Recorder pulls out a cassette recorder from his pocket. “Would you repeat your name and opening statement for the recorder?”

Lee flicks their shaggy dark hair over their shoulder, exposing the teeth indents on their jaw. They tug on the sleeves of their hoodie – one of Eric’s hoodies – and tears threaten to spill. “Sure. My name is Lee Dawson and I am being hunted by a flesh-eating field.”

~ Nita Pan

Interview Transcript

CMR: I love that story. I’ve read the whole thing and it’s really good. It’s kind of like I can see, like the the kind of the Magnus Archives influence on it as well.

NP: [laughing] Yeah.

CMR: But it is very much its own thing, in that – I can’t give anything away, but I really did enjoy it. What other kinds of influences were there on it?

NP: Well, Children of the Corn was an idea, just because originally it was going to be like a group of people in the corn that were making people think that, like the corn was eating them, but then that didn’t really pan out. So I just stuck with the field itself eating people, but also just growing up surrounded by numerous cornfields.

CMR: That’ll do it. It’s that kind of Ordinary Gothic idea, the Gothic of where you live.

NP: Yeah.

CMR: So, who else is in the anthology apart from us?

NP: So we have – apologies if I butcher anyone’s names, I haven’t said any of these last names aloud:

On Reflection by Michelle Tang
Hitchhiking by Hester Steel
The Dark Pursuit by Frank Rudiger Lopes
Hide and Seek by Allie Pino
The Killing of Christian Pacey by Alice Scott
Gunslingers and Garlic by L. J. Thomas
The Purple Cloak by Joana Varanda
The Field Devours by Nita Pan
The Reluctant Husband by C. M. Rosens

CMR: Yay! And that’s going to come out the end of this year?

NP: Yes.

CMR: I’m excited, it’s got such a good range of stories in it. Do you want to say a little bit about the range, or is that giving too much away? Without spoilers, obviously.

NP: Yes. One is about what appears to be a haunted cabin on a cruise ship [On Reflection].

Another is written in second person and there’s just something very strange going on with that, with the main character, we’re not entirely sure where it’s going, but it goes in a very fun direction [Hitchhiking].

One [is] about a bit of an asshole professor, who’s trying to control something beyond his control [The Dark Pursuit].

There’s another one where there’s a ghost on a ship [Hide and Seek].

There’s an appearance with Death [The Killing of Christian Pacey].

There’s a Western vampire short story [Gunslingers and Garlic].

There’s an autobiographical ghost story [The Purple Cloak].

And then there is mine [The Field Devours], and then there is the one that gets to close it all up and have it leave everyone thinking about it, is the eldritch… um…

CMR: Mine’s the… eldritch 1930s one.

NP: Yeah, eldritch 1930s. That.

CMR: It’s hard to describe mine.

NP: But it’s not though! It’s – it’s very Weird.

CMR: It is very Weird. Like, Weird body horror. [Laughs]

NP: Yes.

CMR: Like, Michelle Tang’s one is really good, that kind of reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe, it has those kinds of edges. And I know she’s had a couple of short stories published in different anthologies recently, I think she’s in Chimera (Lost Boys Press, 2021).

NP: I believe so.

CMR: And a couple of other people are in different things as well, like [L. J. Thomas] has got a novel out, and I’m beta-reading another novel she’s written as well which is a YA Bluebeard retelling, which is really cool.

NP: Oh, I can’t wait to read that one.

[laughs]

CMR: It’s just really nice, I’ve discovered loads of different voices. Yeah. How does The Field Devours map onto your other work? Because you do have a load of different things that you write. I really liked your published story Life and Death, which is the dark fantasy, very tragic romance, star-crossed immortal gods story that goes in a really dark tragic direction which I love so much, and that’s being serialized on your Patreon at the moment for people who don’t want to buy the anthology – you can just get it for £3.50 per month.

Do you feel your work going in a particular direction or do you just write what you feel you want to write about and how does that work for you?

NP: My writing is actually very seasonal, so it really depends on the season and what mood I’m in on what type of genre or content I want to write. Overall there’s like several tropes like I really am a sucker for enemies two lovers or enemy lovers, found family, villain love interest slash the villains winning, but overall it really just depends on my mood on what I’m working on, and what type of genre. I don’t write as much YA as I used to, but I do have a couple YA projects that I do want to finish writing.

CMR: What are those?

NP: One is a secret project that not even you get to know about.

CMR: OK. Dammit!

NP: Otherwise I won’t end up finishing writing it. And the other one is a murdery werewolf book, tentatively titled The Legend of Shadow-Wolf Forest, just basically exactly just werewolves and murder, attempted murder, there’s a scene where a character gets like the whole Carrie at prom thing going on there with rabbits’ blood.

CMR: That sounds great.

NP: Absolutely delightful!

CMR: That does actually track, because… [laughter] you have started to write more gore, body horror, and goremance… that’s a new direction. Anyone I think reading Life and Death, and then reading some of your most recent stuff is going to kind of have that experience of…

NP: whiplash.

CMR: genre whiplash, yeah. And because, well, for anyone who doesn’t know, we are co-writing a goremance together which is Eldritch Girls Just Want To Have Fun, which is slated to come out next year, and we’re sort of in the first draft of that at the moment.

So what do you like about writing goremance and erotic horror?

NP: I like writing both of them, just because of the lack of any boundaries and being able to combine the whole… like, I firmly believe that romance and horror go hand in hand, and it’s just a lot of fun combining the two because they just they can blend so seamlessly together, and it really paints a really pretty – pretty, bloody, picture.

CMR: Yeah, I think romance and horror go so well together because you’ve got a lot of tropes in romance that can be quite problematic, sometimes in terms of the dynamics and the relationships between the characters, and all you have to do to explore those a little bit more and push them to a kind of more logical conclusion, or interrogate them, is to put them into the horror genre.

And it’s those sorts of like, how do you give somebody agency in a relationship or how do you kind of address those sorts of power imbalances, and then horror is a really good way of exploring anxieties within romance and, like those sorts of tensions as well, but yeah.

NP: All of that. I mean when I get into a story there’s parts where I’m like okay, this comes from a little… This is like a little bit deeper and more complex than when I start up, but when I start out a story it’s really I just have the aesthetic of romance, and then just blood and gore combined and then from there, it gets a little bit more complicated, but the way I start out it’s not like I have a goal or a mission with a project, it’s just – I write it to have fun.

CMR: I think that’s really important though. If you’re not having fun with it, it doesn’t read as well and it’s not like it, it just doesn’t flow as a project if you’re not really into it. So you’ve got your… writing in Eldritch Girls, where you’re writing the perspective of Tosh Haraldson, who is your original character for that. And this is actually based off your idea, but I kind of was like oh I love this idea, please write this with me!

NP: Yes.

CMR: How does Tosh fit into this, because he is not a love interest let’s be fair.

NP: No, he’s not. I just started with him, it was like he was the first new character that I’d come up with in a really long time, and so I was like just starting from scratch and I was like, what can I do for a character that I’m like, I’ll make the absolute ideal love interest just gone terribly wrong, and all of his choices reflect that. I suppose he’s just someone who experienced some family- and religious-based trauma, but instead of like taking control of his life, he just continues to blame all of his problems on the trauma instead of trying to heal from it, and so consequently, he just has a lot of anger issues, is yeah, very murderous, like is literally a stab-first-ask-questions-later person. But I would say, the only redeeming quality is that he adores Sasha, the other – your character.

CMR: Yeah, but that’s only because he’s very into the idea of her killing him. Horribly. Like, really violently. Because that’s what he’s into. That whole dynamic is incredibly toxic and she’s also like not… she’s nobody’s ideal love interest, but she’s that kind of princess character who also kills people for fun. Well, not for fun, but because she thinks it’s art.

NP: And we love that for her.

CMR: So that’s what people can expect from Eldritch Girls. It’s kind of mild splatterpunk, would you say that’s fair?

NP: Yeah. I think, with the early readers that we have had, it’s like people go into it expecting it to be like – the events of the first chapter to be like, fake. And like, oh no this isn’t really happening, you know, this is this is too terrible to actually be happening. Then, oh nope, this is happening, this is… this is. So, people have hope for the characters I think that they’re not as terrible as they are, and they’re very, very wrong to have that hope.

CMR: Yeah, so it opens with a snuff film audition which is live. And you get it from Tosh’s perspective, watching Sasha’s audition while she’s carving somebody up alive who’s strapped down to a gurney, and then you get it from Sasha’s perspective, and Sasha’s perspective is her thinking about the choreography. Whereas Tosh’s perspective is like, this is really hot. [laughter] So much blood.

CMR: What’s your favourite bit of that awful relationship so far that we’ve written?

NP: I just like their dynamic. He is not the hero, she is not a damsel in distress, if anything, it’s the other way around. But he’ll go into it thinking that he’s – not a hero – but not thinking he’s the damsel in distress, he’ll go into it not seeing himself that way, and get himself into a situation where someone, namely Sasha, has to get him out of a bind. This is the book you’re getting into.

[laughter]

CMR: Bu um – I really like the transition from snuff films and gangsters to a man-eating field. It think that’s great.

NP: Yeah. I drafted a whole short story, edited it in one of the rounds, then started a couple of other ones in a completely – like not completely unrelated genre, just more flowery writing, with vampires and set in a cold setting, so you get you get that great blood-on-snow aesthetic. But yeah, then writing The Field Devours was a bit of a whiplash from that too so.

CMR: Yeah, so the vampire-cannibal romance is your Gospel of Blood series idea. Is that going on Patreon, or is that…?

NP: A Savior, Dark which is basically the vampire Jesus and cannibal Mary Magdalene story is not going on Patreon, I want to query that. I want to try, so. There are several other short stories instead in the universe, one is Mary mother of God, with an axe-lesbian Joseph, and then there’s another one with a vampire Esther – not vampire Esther but magician Esther, the King that she’s forced to marry is a vampire, so there’s – you have a fun dynamic there, there’s a lot of hatemance going on there. And those I’m planning to put on Patreon.

CMR: I love it. Cool. I’m really excited for that. I am a Patreon supporter, so I’m just like, mwahahaha. I get access to all of this joy.

What’s your favourite trope to write? I know you said there are a few tropes that pop up in your work, or nearly always pop up in your work.

NP: I really like writing, whether it be platonic or romantic, relationships that just really shouldn’t be. Like these two people or these three people or four people should not be around each other like this, or interacting like, just. Whether or not some of them are bad people or they just need a lot of therapy, and they shouldn’t be interacting with people in the depth that they are until they get things sorted out… I just like writing the messy relationships.

CMR: Yeah, mess is fun to write. It’s also quite cathartic to write as well. I think that maps onto Eldritch Girls quite well in that absolutely disastrous way that everyone deserves love but not them, but they’re going to get it anyway because the world is fundamentally unfair. What about – I mean you haven’t got… well there is a the tragic romance between Lee and Eric in Field Devours, so I was going to say not in that, but you did, right, you did get that tragic scene in there, like that tragic backstory.

NP: [gleefully] Yes I did.

CMR: You’ve got a lot of different rep [representation] in your work as well and, like, everybody is slightly queer which I like, in some sort of way. So Lee [The Field Devours] is nonbinary, Tosh [Eldritch Girls] is cis but bisexual…

NP: Flamingly bisexual.

CMR: Very, yeah! Disaster bi. [laughs] So what other rep do you have in your work in general, and why do you think you want to tell those stories?

NP: I think, basically, I think there’s maybe like out of all the work that I’ve written maybe about five straight characters and everyone else’s some shade of queer. Whether or not it’s like super on page or like they’re in you know, like a obviously queer relationship or not um but, I think it’s just because I got bored of reading about the same type of relationships and romances of just the same cis-female and male couple where just it’s the same thing… it just… I mean, not that I don’t like to read those or watch those every now and then, but it sort of got boring after a while, so I’m like, well, I don’t have to write that, so.

CMR: Yeah it’s very liberating I think when you kind of realize, you can write stories that map more closely to your story, or stories that are more things that you actually wanted to read growing up, but yeah.

How do you find it, like, mapping those sorts of things on to the horror genre and bringing different kinds of rep to that? How does that work for you?

NP: My biggest worry was the ‘killing your gays’ trope, but I think I circumvented that by making everyone gay. I don’t know if it works or not, but that’s what I’m doing.

CMR: Yeah, but I think that’s important to have just stories that don’t revolve around like the sexuality of your characters or the gender of your characters being the main part of the plot, and I think the more stories that we have with people just being allowed to be in different kinds of narratives, the better it is in general.

NP: Yeah… there is just a lot of books where – you know, there’s a lot of really good ones coming out where it’s not about the characters’ gender or sexuality that’s coming up, but previously, like the last several years, there weren’t that many that were bestsellers or well known that were coming out, it was always in the ones that were Coming Out [Narratives].

Not that these ones aren’t okay, it’s just when you have the only books available are ones where it’s revolving around the characters’ sexuality or gender, and not just them as a person, I mean it gets a little bit. I don’t know it, it feels like there’s a lot of focus on queer pain, which is what a lot of these stories are about. It would be nice if they were seen as people only just doing things on the page, and maybe something [about their sexuality/gender] gets mentioned once or twice, like how it’s bound to be in a lot of settings and scenarios, like where you place the book at, but overall it’s like, why can’t people just write queer people as people?

So that’s just where I was coming from, like not wanting to focus on the whole aspect of gender and sexuality, and more just on them, on other aspects of them as people.

CMR: Yeah and I think that’s it’s also really important in stories where like you have queer villains, because I think growing up we’ve had so many queer-coded villains, queerness as an inherently villainous thing, I think I just found those were the characters that I was just really drawn to growing up like, ooh I wonder why…

NP: Same!

CMR: Like, what is it, why is this character so fabulous?! I was definitely into Scar [Lion King 1994] and Maleficent [Sleeping Beauty 1959] and like there was all my really early kind of teeny crushes I guess, I so loved them, and it’s interesting now because I’m kind of worried about… I don’t know if you feel like this as well, like, writing villains who are queer feels very normal to me and feels very natural to me and feels very like comforting as a thing, but again, it only works if you’re everybody else is, so you’ve got that kind of balance because otherwise you’re just… like I’m always worried about perpetuating negative stereotypes by telling a story that I want to tell.

Kind of telling my story that I want to tell, but I feel more comfortable telling certain parts of my story through a villainous character, or an anti-villain character and antihero character. Because some parts of stuff or some parts of life, are just messy and they are not very nice and it’s much easier to interrogate that and to pick that apart through the lens of a character is not your quintessential hero.

I don’t know, I think the balance is really hard to get right, but it’s something I really enjoy reading as well, so.

NP: I do think with me is that, like you, it’s like it was a lot of the villains, that I always would connect to growing up and stuff like that so it’s like I already liked the villains, and then, when a lot of them are just queer coded it’s like, I like them even more as I’m getting older and stuff like that, and I’m like, oh, well, might as well just write everyone as some shade of villain and have a good time.

[laughter]

CMR: Yes! I think sometimes when you’re reading books about heroes and villains in that kind of clear cut way, sometimes what the heroes actually stand for I don’t necessarily connect with. The one trope I really hate is that it turns out the villain is villainous because they are so alone or they’ve been so ostracized, and then the response the hero has to that is to isolate them even more by incarceration or you know, like removing them from their support system of hench people, like why are you doing this? They were the only people they had! I just really hate that. That’s my least favorite trope I think.

It’s that idea that these people are set up as villains in the story and then deserve to be alone forever just because the hero thinks so, and you’re supposed to agree with that, because you’re supposed to connect with the hero, and there is no other rationale. Does that make sense?

NP: Yeah, yeah it does. That one annoys me a lot, and the one where they always… This is very, very basic but it’s the one where they always create this amazing tension between the hero and the villain and it’s – they completely set it up, I mean, even though you know that most authors, or at least authors that have been that are widely published, don’t go for it, but where it’s just like you could have this perfect… whether or not it be like the hero descending into villainy or both of them having their own separate goals, but still like romancing each other, like I want to have a villain and a main character as endgame. I just want more of that.

I haven’t read the second book, so I don’t know what happened, but it looks like there is a whole enemies to enemy lovers kind of relationship going on in Wicked Saints [by Emily A. Duncan]. What else, there was another book that I remember seeing being promoted and I don’t remember what it was like I know I don’t know remember like five minutes but. [laughs]

CMR: I think it happens more in dark adult fantasy.

NP: Yeah.

CMR: And I think that’s where horrormance can really come into its own with those sorts of blending and problematising and complicating things.

NP: No, yeah I agree with that. I think with horror there’s more freedom to create the messy relationships, like the really messy ones, and explore the different dynamics with that.

CMR: And with horror, it allows you to see the outcome of that even if the outcome is horrific. Because that’s kind of the point of the genre is to horrify you or to have an effect on the reader that is not necessarily a positive effect. I think we get a lot of the same things out of writing that, like I would say definitely that Tosh and Sash’s relationship is not a positive example of a romance.

NP: No, it’s not! Not at all! And it’s like, god, I hope there aren’t people like them, but there are people like them who have relationships.

CMR: Yes! Oh god. It’s a lot of fun to write the dialogue, because we co-wrote dialogue together, so it’s yeah it’s really fun just lurking in the shared [Google Doc] filling in lines, then you filling in your lines when it’s my turn, and it just works so well.

NP: It’s a lot of fun. Oh, I miss it.

CMR: We’ll get back to it. We’ve both been doing other stuff. I mean obviously the Spooky by Association anthology is something that’s taken up a lot of your time, putting that together and sorting all of the editing out and getting cover artists and potential illustrators (fingers crossed!) So excited. It’s such a lovely group of stories as well and I don’t think there is anything very kind of extreme and splatterpunk-y in there.

NP: No, there isn’t, but each person’s voice is very clear. It’s really nice like so anyone else who reads it and then wants to find more stuff by whatever of the authors, it’s like, you get a very clear picture of their voice and I, and I believe content too, of what they write.

CMR: Yeah definitely, I think because we’ve all been reading the doc as a whole and, like sort of line editing our stuff and each other’s stuff before it goes off to the editor, which is really lovely actually because it’s become like a really nice community project which I really like, so thank you for doing that, that’s been really, really fun to be part of and I really appreciate it.

And yeah it’s been it’s been lovely to kind of put that together and get a sense of different people’s styles and I think I found quite a lot of authors that I haven’t read anything by before. Yeah.

I think, with The Field Devours as well it’s, that’s almost like it’s a slightly different voice for you?

NP: It’s because part of it’s in first person. I used to write a lot of first person, like all I used to write was first person and I wrote probably you know, maybe 400,000 words in first person of various projects over the years and then I switched over to third person past tense. And that was a little bit of a different voice so it’s fun, because The Field Devours is written in both third person and first person so it’s very interesting combination just to see how my voice changes a little bit with each new section.

CMR: Yeah I really enjoyed reading it, and reading your Patreon posts as well, like I can see the variation in your voice, which is really cool, because I read Life and Death, and that was where – and I’d kind of read a little bit of your stuff before, some of your unpublished stuff, and that had been like third person, like close third person perspective, and then I read Life and Death, which is free verse and set out very differently to your prose. and it’s first person, and it was such a change, but it was such a good change, and it really showed how much range you have as an author.

That was the story that I really gelled with the philosophy, I guess, like the tragic philosophy of it and I kind of went yeah I actually think I really want to write something with this person.

NP: Aw!

CMR: Yeah, that was that was kind of my instrumental moment, and being like if I ever get a chance to write something with you I will take that. I really enjoyed it. And so, as I said, that’s being serialised on your Patreon. So people can go on there and see that. I really enjoy experiencing your other work through your Patreon as well, so there’s like poems and other short stories. And you’ve got is it two in second person or one?

NP: Both of them are in second person, but they’re like, instead of ‘you’re going over here and you’re doing this’, it’s sort of like a letter, like it’s directed to another character in the story.

CMR: What’s your next story for the Patreon?

NP: Oh. Oh lord, I have three that I’m trying to debate which is going to be my next project for it, and I’m going to just decide within the next couple of days and just finish it, edit it, but either… one of them is going to be one of the ones from the Gospel of Blood universe. One is the Eldritch Girls prequel. One is basically a demon and a witch are getting chased across the nine circles of Hell trying to get back to the mortal world.

CMR: That one’s quite smutty, isn’t it?

NP: I’m hoping, I can finally make it smutty, yes.

CMR: Yeah so if you want to get in on this and go to patreon.com/nitapanwrites and yeah, you will not be disappointed. Content warnings abound, but hopefully, you will not be disappointed. It’s super cheap as well guys. It’s super cheap. Like your top tier is what, $4.50?

NP: $4.50, yes.

CMR: That’s £3.50 in British Pounds. Come on. Worth it. Well, yeah! Thank you ever so much coming on and it’s been really lovely to have you.

NP: Yes, thank you for having me and my ramblings.

CMR: Very welcome, I shall be rambling at you later!

Podcast S01E09 ~ Chapter 8 Up Now!

Part 2 of The Crows kicks off today with Chapter 8.

CHAPTER 8: INBRED AND EVIL

Links on my podcast page

Chapter 8: Inbred and Evil

…in which Ricky Porter comes for tea…

Carrie shook her head, half-convinced this was something her sleep-deprived brain had conjured. “No, see, you’re doing it wrong. You don’t admit you kill people if you want to make me like you.”

Ricky frowned. “Honesty’s the best policy, that’s what they say, right? Read that somewhere.” He reached for the mince and she didn’t stop him. “The thing is,” he said, tapping the table, “The thing is, if I lied to you, said it was all herblore and starlight and all that airy-fairy crap, you’d find out eventually. I could spend my time tip-toeing around cleaning up the corpses and pretending to be vegan, but to tell the truth, love, I really can’t be arsed. It’s a lot easier for me if we all know what we’re signing up for at the start.”

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, p. 154

I love inverting tropes, and playing with Gothic and Weird concepts. This chapter actually owes more to an early Season 1 episode of Midsomer Murders, which is a long-running British crime drama series of 21 seasons, based (originally) on a series of seven books by Caroline Graham. It first aired in 1997 after the watershed, and I was allowed to stay up and watch it. Episode 1, The Killings at Badger’s Drift, was based on Graham’s novel of the same name which was first published in the 1980s. I’ve talked about the influence of Midsomer Murders on my work before, but this particular episode buried itself under my skin as an impressionable ten-year-old, and Badger’s Drift as a place seems to have lent a lot of its vibes to Pagham-on-Sea. I can’t say too much about the episode or the book plot, but another one that really stuck in my mind and apparently gave me the name ‘Gerald’ is Written in Blood, with the eccentric writers’ circle whose members made my skin crawl off my bones. Honoria Lyddiard will haunt me forever. I have yet to read the book, where she has a point of view, and I’m not sure I’m ready.

Why do I tell you this? Well, I think by this point, you’re aware of what is going on with Ricky’s family to an extent, and this is not the central mystery of the novel. The Gothic novel is (in part!) about uncovering things that are hidden, but also can have a lot to say about class and class relations. Ricky Porter coming for tea in the big house and just… laying it all out there is a fun set piece of the novel, and it was a way of shifting the expectations of the narrative so you’re not wondering when Carrie’s going to find out what Ricky does and how he operates. It was fun to set up two people with different backgrounds – educated to University degree level versus completely unschooled autodidact, urban middle-class-aspiring working class versus rural working class – in a space designed for them to serve in [Fairwood House/The Crows] but which they both believe they have actual ownership rights to. There’s a weird power-play dynamic going on across the kitchen table [and, indeed, with the kitchen itself, which is more a working-class space than the rest of the house] and I don’t know if all that comes across, but their whole dynamic from this point onwards maintains those elements.

If you’d like me to chat more about class dynamics and take those apart a bit more, or there’s anything you’d particularly like answers or discussion on now we’ve cleared Part 1 and are galloping into Part 2 and all the fun supernatural horror it promises, drop me a line!

Submit a form.

Horror Podcast ~ Schedule for April 2021

Welcome to Part 2 of The Crows – and a brand new author interview for the month! I’m so excited to share this one, where I chat with my co-writer Nita Pan (she/they) about our joint project Eldritch Girls Just Want To Have Fun, their Patreon and its exclusive content, erotic horror, surgical horror, eldritch cosmic horror and cannibalism. Also cats.

We’ve also got some more bonus content to look forward to, and five chapters (8-12) coming up. It’s going to be fun!

Illustration: Ghost by Tom Brown1st April – The Crows Chapter 8 5th April – Author Interview with Nita Pan 8th April – The Crows Chapter 9 15th April – The Crows Chapter 10 19th April – Bonus Episode! 22nd April – The Crows Chapter 11 29th April – The Crows Chapter 12

I’m so excited about the bonus episodes. There’s some fun things coming up this month, and a few of my favourite scenes. I’m looking forward to sharing this part of the novel with you and inviting a few more guests onto the show! I’m thrilled we managed to track down Guillaume Velde, that elusive gentleman who is attached to Pagham-on-Sea’s museum as a researcher. Guillaume has given talks at the PoS History Society, and I’ve got him on the show to talk to us about the museum collections in more detail.

OVEREXPOSURE- Short Story Out Now!

This short story is available on my Ko-Fi to buy – https://ko-fi.com/s/107c5a9e93

You can also grab it on Amazon and Smashwords and all other ebook retailers.

Add and review on Goodreads.

A dark, tragic, Weird romance for psychological horror fans with a scalpel-sharp ending

When Charlie, an affluent, award-winning photographer, catches sight of a glamorous man at a party and immediately forgets what he looks like, she has to see him again. And again. And again. When he realises the extent of her obsession, is it already too late?

Content Warnings for self-mutilation, gore, mental health deterioration

Welcome to Pagham-on-Sea! New Releases!

Not endorsed by Pagham-on-Sea Tourist BoardNew Releases

THIRTEENTH is now available for pre-order! Get it through Amazon – UK, US, CA, BR, FR, DE, JP, ES, etc! Get it on Smashwords (epub). You’ll also be able to borrow it through ebook library services when it becomes available!

You can also get a free ARC on Booksprout, and add it to your Goodreads.

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll get a discount code for Smashwords (epub only) that reduces the cost from $4.99 to $2.99!

This eBook has all 5 illustrations by artist Tom Brown, and a family tree. It will also become available in paperback in May.

Cover design by Rebecca F. Kenney

Fancy something much shorter that will make you wince?

Try my short story OVEREXPOSURE out 31 March 2021, or buy it NOW direct from my Ko-Fi Shop!

Add it to Goodreads, buy it from Smashwords, Amazon UK, US, CA, AU, ES, DE, FR, BR, JP etc, and other ebook retailers (Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Angus & Robertson, Thalia, and Bol.de)

OVEREXPOSURE features Wes and Charlie, who have cameo appearances/mentions in The Crows, and is a prequel standalone short.

Enjoy! if you head to the Ko-Fi, you can also grab a box set of The Crows, Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea Vol. I, and Overexposure, all for £6.99.

Romancing the Gothic: Sponsored Tweetathon

Hi frens! I queued up a load of talks on YouTube (all free), and live-tweeted them as I watched, all to raise money for the project they are part of. As a result, the project got a few new subscribers and Patrons, and people donated some pennies to the cause to keep it going.

I lasted roughly from 07.30-17.00, took a 5min comfort break and 15mins for lunch in that time, and completed 9 talks on my playlist out of a possible 14.

It’s not too late to sponsor me for my feat!

You can show your support on Ko-Fi – www.ko-fi.com/SamHirst – with the note #RtGMarathon2.

My threads are embedded below – all 9 of them! So you can see the fruits of my Herculean labour and follow the links to donate there as well.

Subscribe to the YouTube Channel while you’re watching along and reading my thread!

Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/romancingthegothic to support the project and get additional video content! Or, as I said, show your appreciation for mental endurance and throw some pennies in the Ko-Fi as a one-off tip.

#RtGMarathon2: kicking off with https://t.co/SjC7VV9JHt

This is the video of Kaja Franck's talk: ‘It’s only Twilight if it’s from the Forks region; anything else is just sparkling vampire romance’: Twilight, the Gothic Novel and the Female Reader @KajaFranck

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 2
A Reluctant Movie – Lucie Bea Dutton

Watchalong: https://t.co/OwsSiC0hR0

Our speaker was Dr Lucie Bea Dutton talking about the only English language adaptation of a Georgette Heyer novel – 'The Reluctant Widow' 1950 – and what exactly happened!

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 3

Watchalong – https://t.co/5k3ccnpF1M

Speaker: Eric Jurgens.

Class: 'Old monsters are new again: the changing interpretations of Grendel’s mother in Beowulf'.

Live tweetathon in aid of @GothicRomancing https://t.co/0trJcfbCCX, pls donate!!!!

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 4

Watchalong: https://t.co/vSF9yFDebg

Speaker: Rose Sinister

Class: 'The ‘Exotic’ American Vampire: Blood and Sugarcane in Louisiana.'

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 5

Watchalong:https://t.co/P1vVNNKo2V

Speaker: Cristina Diamant, talking about the ways Transylvania is depicted in the Gothic and the ways in which Transylvania portrays itself and produces the Gothic.

Transylvania and the Gothic @crispinadiamant

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 6

Watchalong: https://t.co/p7QJN4adbf

Argentinian Horror Cinema with Valeria Villegas Lindval

Donate to https://t.co/0trJcfbCCX to support this project and keep @GothicRomancing running for another year!

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 7

Watchalong: https://t.co/3BICMho9Lh

Marita Arviniti talked to us about Gothic Drama and did a deep dive into two contemporary productions of Gothic works on the stage – Frankenstein and The Monk.

Donate to @GothicRomancing: https://t.co/0trJcfbCCX

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 8

The Gothic and Second Language Acquisition – Alicia Dominguez

Donate to https://t.co/0trJcfbCCX to keep this project going for another year! My tweetathon is to raise money for it. Follow @GothicRomancing but also can't pay fees with follows soooooooo

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021

#RtGMarathon2 – Thread 9

Watchalong: https://t.co/74foTnmnXs

Jonathon O'Donnell @demonologian joined us to discuss demonologies and their connects to race and empire in modern American politics.

Donate to https://t.co/0trJcfbCCX to support @GothicRomancing

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) March 26, 2021