C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 44
December 8, 2020
Ghostly Advent Calendar Days 8-18
A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one
Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale
Of sprites and goblins.
In celebration of the release of F is for Fear, featuring 13 tales of terror including my own short story, ‘The Sound of Darkness’, 25+ stories of ghosts, ghouls and spooky goings-on have been collected for you here, all ready to be accessed and read by the fireside. Days 1-7 were in this post: links to historical ghosts, 1100s-1600s! Days 8-18 are here – ghosts of the 1700s and 1800s, with fiction thrown in. Enjoy the jumbled windows, free book links and ghost stories galore!
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December 4, 2020
Ghostly Advent Calendar Dec 1-7
A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one
Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale
Of sprites and goblins.
In celebration of the release of F is for Fear, featuring 13 tales of terror including my own short story, ‘The Sound of Darkness’, 25+ stories of ghosts, ghouls and spooky goings-on have been collected for you here, all ready to be accessed and read by the fireside. Days 1-7 are in this post!
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November 23, 2020
Medieval Murder and Modern Day Detectives
Hi everyone! For those who would like to join in, I’m running an interactive creative approaches to history course in December based on a real medieval murder case. I’m a medievalist by training and teach Adult Learning courses at Cardiff University’s Centre for Continuing and Professional Education (CPE), and for December I’m teaming up with the Romancing the Gothic project to teach a condensed version of an 8-week course with a creative response element.
This is based around my latest book (nonfiction, so not under my pen name! Le gasp!) published with Pen and Sword Books this year. Murder During the Hundred Years’ War: The Curious Case of William Cantilupe is now available in hardback, and you can pre-order the eBook which releases 31 December 2020.
On this two-part course you will explore the true story of William de Cantilupe, murdered in 1375, his relevant family background, and the trial that condemned two men for his killing: his squire and his butler. But did they do it?
You will hear the evidence and the twists and turns, the conclusions and assumptions made by historians since the 1930s, and the gaps in the evidence that will forever remain unknown. Why did historians form conclusions – now assumed to be correct – based on so little evidence? Who would you convict (or would you)?
There will be an opportunity to creatively reimagine this case for yourself, with others or individually, as an optional assignment. You could choose to fictionalise any aspect of the case, bring it to life through an artistic medium of your choice, or use it as inspiration for a novel or play – it’s up to you!
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The course I’m running is open to everyone, will be taught on Zoom, and take place over 2 weeks: Class 1 of 2 is on Friday 4th Dec 2020 and Class 2 of 2 is on Friday 11th Dec 2020. There is a morning option at 10am GMT, and an evening option at 7pm GMT.
Eventbrite tickets are £5.80 which covers the cost of both classes and access to the source pack, containing the learning materials.
If you already support the Romancing the Gothic project on Patreon at the second tier or above, or you’re an equivalent monthly supporter on Ko-Fi, contact Dr Sam Hirst the project leader/convener for a free space! You can get in touch with them on Twitter @RomGothSam, or email them at hollyhirst84 @ gmail . com.
How do I sign up?!
Easy! You can sign up here
Register on Eventbrite
(morning)
Register on Eventbrite
(evening)
It is fine if you don’t do the reading or just want to drop in for interest! The creative response to the course is optional!
November 19, 2020
The Sound of Darkness
My short story ‘The Sound of Darkness’ is the twelfth of thirteen tales of terror in Red Cape Publishing’s latest anthology, F is for Fear. F is for Fear is part of their A-Z of Horror series, and submissions are now open for the next collections
Murat Yildiz is a grown man with a flat in Luton. He has a girlfriend called Cheryl, a steady job, and is big and heavy enough that most people don’t fuck with him. He also has a deep-rooted fear of the dark, embedded at a very early age while growing up in a walled council estate in Pagham-on-Sea.
One night, Murat comes home to find his living room light has blown, and is incapable of going inside. This prompts recollections from his childhood, as he thinks about the council estate he left behind and something that stalked children in its dark places. He remembers his own narrow escape one summer night in 1998, and the terrified whisper of his then-best friend, Tommy Danage:
Have you ever listened to it? The dark?
[image error]Add to GoodReads and grab your copy today!
‘The Sound of Darkness’ is my own (very brief) exploration of childhood fear and trauma, of absences, grief, and mixed heritage identity erasure, and what fear of the dark can represent. It’s also about two lads stuck in a lift as the lights flicker on and off, as shadows shift in the mirrors around them.
There are 13 stories in this anthology including mine, and all are creepy, well-written, engaging and definitely worth a read. From sleep paralysis to spiders, lots of common fears and phobias are explored and while there are content warnings galore (that’s the point of the collection!) there will be something in here to creep you out.
November 1, 2020
CONTEST WINNERS!
And the winners are…. Ken, Frank and Grace for #TheCrowsContest and Carol for the #HalloweenEbookHamperPrize draw! Congratulations all!
Congratulations Carol Cassada!
I did a draw per platform! This is the Twitter draw… Congrats Ken!
Frank and Grace won the Instagram and Facebook draws respectively…
All prizes winging their way to you all soon!
October 30, 2020
Halloween Contest Contributors! Part 3 of 3
A closer look at the contributors of the hamper up for grabs… PRIZE DRAW on 31st October! LAST CHANCE TO ENTER 30/10/2020
C. M. Rosens
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C. M. Rosens is an author and fairy godmother of two based in England and Wales but is lucky enough to have family and friends all over the world. She is a lover of the Gothic, the Paranormal and the just plain Weird. Summon her with chocolate, ghost stories and central heating.
Yes, it is me! You can find my fiction on this page, with some reviews linked! You can get the first five chapters of my novel The Crows on Wattpad for free: https://www.wattpad.com/809591678-the-crows-1-1-the-creepy-old-house
Reviews of The Crows by other bloggers:
Red Cape Publishing’s review May 2020
Meredith Debonnaire’s review May 2020
Erebus Horror’s review May 2020
Nimue Brown’s review Feb 2020
Nita Pan’s review Jan 2020
I am offering an eBook version of The Crows.
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Wolf Conservation Centre
Yes, the contributors are sponsoring a wolf from the Wolf Conservation Centre for a year on behalf of the lucky hamper winner. We aren’t affiliated to it, but we all love wolves! Not all the novels up for grabs have a wolf connection, but a lot of them do. So we thought that would be a fun addition, and we’d be doing our bit for nature and the ecosystem too.
[image error]Photo by Steve on Pexels.com
We will adopt a wolf for you at the Friend level, and you’ll receive a certificate of adoption, 8″x10″ photo, wolf bio & 1 year of periodic email updates (Digital Only). Simply choose your wolf!
There are Mexican Grey Wolves and Red Wolves to meet, as well as the three Ambassador wolves. Find your wolf fren and we’ll sponsor them for you.
We’ll Adopt a Wolf for you for 1 year at the Friend level. We are not affiliated with the Wolf Conservation Centre.
HOW TO ENTER
Want to enter the competition? Easy! But it’s your LAST CHANCE TODAY!
Here’s the tweet: LIKE, RT and FOLLOW the authors (tagged in the graphic). Bonus entry if you comment with a Halloween gif! Want another shot at winning? You can get bonus entries if you LIKE, SHARE and FOLLOW on Instagram and Facebook, too.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIT'S HERE! #HalloweenEbookHamperPrize – including an audiobook and a wolf*
— Celtic Medusa Rose-FromTheGrave-ns (@CMRosens) October 20, 2020
FOLLOW THE AUTHORS
LIKE AND RT
BONUS ENTRY – Comment a Halloween gif!
*yes a real wolf, adopted for you for 1 year from The Wolf Conservation Centre which is not affiliated with the prize draw authors. pic.twitter.com/UgLEhGuiXY
October 28, 2020
Halloween Contest Contributors! Part 2 of 3
A closer look at the contributors of the hamper up for grabs… PRIZE DRAW on 31st October!
Mari Hamill
Mari’s Werewolf Talk interview with me is here.
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Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mari Hamill graduated from Harvard with an A. B. in English and the University of Michigan with a Ph.D. in comparative literature. A world traveller who has lived in Puerto Rico, the United States of America, Canada, France, Italy and Switzerland, Mari speaks French, Spanish, German and some Italian. She has been featured several times on Evan Carmichael’s list of the Top 100 Twitter users in Los Angeles.
Her debut novel is Werewolf Nights. Since the novel’s publication, she has talked to college students about writing, has had several appearances on the radio and at author events, and has even been the guest of honour at an improv show.
Find her here:
Werewolf Nights Book Facebook Page
The Full Moon Bakery (Facebook)
Author Street Team (Facebook)
Twitter @Werewolf_Nights
Instagram @MariHamill
Mari Hamill is offering the eBook version of her novel Werewolf Nights.
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E. M. Prazeman
Author E. M. Prazeman combines her love of history, romance, mystery and travel to write stories of adventure, intrigue and passion. Her website is http://www.emprazeman.com/.
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EM Prazeman is the author of the twin LGBTQ+ historical fantasy trilogies The Lord Jester’s Legacy and The Poisoned Past, as well as various short stories published in the nooks and crannies of the kinds of anthologies and magazines that often aren’t very well-behaved. She’s also written the pagan afterlife novel After as KZ Miller and a memoir, House of Goats, as Tammy Owen. Her husband, international man of mystery Rory Miller, is a well-known author and lecturer in the field of conflict communications. They have the obligatory clowder of cats, as well as goats, chickens and dogs on small acreage in the Pacific NW, where life and nature inspire them. For more information visit emprazeman.com.
Masks | Facebook
E. M. Prazeman | Facebook
E. M. Prazeman on her trilogy The Lord Jester’s Legacy:
I’ve always been a fan of lace and blade, age of sail, and adventures with lots of intrigue like The Three Muskateers, The Mask of Zorro, and more recently The Pirates of the Caribbean and Black Sails. When a young gay man in foppery and a mask began creeping into my dreams, demanding that his story be told, I had to set it in a fantastic world of subtle magic, rich music, and of course I had to have the gorgeous clothes and ornate, deadly weapons not just as window dressing but as crucial elements to the story. Masks are especially critical and I did a lot of research to get the physical, emotional and spiritual presence of masks to feel as dangerous, fascinating and mystical as they are in the real world. And then of course I had to write about love. Mark’s story is about fighting his way out of not just being treated like a disposable human being, but feeling disposable, which gets in the way of his finding and keeping true love in his life. I really enjoyed pushing him to his intellectual and emotional limits in very dangerous physical and spiritual realms. Of all the characters I’ve conceived and watch grow organically within a story, he suffers the most artfully, and wins the most gracefully.
E. M. Prazeman is offering the whole trilogy of Lord Jester’s Legacy as a prize in eBook format. Book 1: Masks | Book 2: Confidante | Book 3: Innocence and Silence
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HOW TO ENTER
Want to enter the competition? Easy!
Here’s the tweet: LIKE, RT and FOLLOW the authors (tagged in the graphic). Bonus entry if you comment with a Halloween gif! Want another shot at winning? You can get bonus entries if you LIKE, SHARE and FOLLOW on Instagram and Facebook, too.
IT’S HERE! #HalloweenEbookHamperPrize – including an audiobook and a wolf*
— Celtic Medusa Rose-FromTheGrave-ns (@CMRosens) October 20, 2020
FOLLOW THE AUTHORS
LIKE AND RT
BONUS ENTRY – Comment a Halloween gif!
*yes a real wolf, adopted for you for 1 year from The Wolf Conservation Centre which is not affiliated with the prize draw authors. pic.twitter.com/UgLEhGuiXY
View this post on Instagram
October 23, 2020
Halloween Contest Contributors! Part 1 of 3
A closer look at the contributors of the hamper up for grabs… PRIZE DRAW on 31st October!
Shawna Reppert
Shawna’s Werewolf Talk interview with me is here.
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Shawna Reppert is an award-winning author of fantasy and steampunk who keeps her readers up all night and makes them miss work deadlines. Her fiction asks questions for which there are no easy answers while taking readers on a fine adventure that grips them heart and soul. You can find her work on Amazon and follow her blog on her website (www.Shawna-Reppert.com). You can friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter, where she posts an amazing array of geekery. In the past, Shawna has on occasion been found in medieval garb on a caparisoned horse, throwing javelins into innocent hay bales that never did anything to her. More recently, she has been spotted in Victorian dress taking tea with her costumer friends.
Shawna Reppert is offering the audiobook version of A Hunt by Moonlight and the eBook version of Ravensblood.
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April Aasheim
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USA Today bestselling author April Aasheim did not have a conventional childhood. When she wasn’t traveling the carnival circuit with her parents, she was exploring ghost towns in the Superstition Mountains or learning to read Tarot with her mother. The second oldest of six children, April hails from a zany family and brings her diverse life experiences to every book. The Universe is a Very Big Place is her first novel, published by Dark Roots Press (2013). You can find updates and more information on her website, https://www.aprilaasheimwriter.com/.
April Aasheim is offering two eBooks for the hamper prize: The Witches of Dark Root and Touch of Light.
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HOW TO ENTER
Want to enter the competition? Easy!
Here’s the tweet: LIKE, RT and FOLLOW the authors (tagged in the graphic). Bonus entry if you comment with a Halloween gif! Want another shot at winning? You can get bonus entries if you LIKE, SHARE and FOLLOW on Instagram and Facebook, too.
IT'S HERE! #HalloweenEbookHamperPrize – including an audiobook and a wolf*
— Celtic Medusa Rose-FromTheGrave-ns (@CMRosens) October 20, 2020
FOLLOW THE AUTHORS
LIKE AND RT
BONUS ENTRY – Comment a Halloween gif!
*yes a real wolf, adopted for you for 1 year from The Wolf Conservation Centre which is not affiliated with the prize draw authors. pic.twitter.com/UgLEhGuiXY
View this post on Instagram
October 20, 2020
WIN Halloween Prizes! Books! A Wolf!
You read that correctly, yes. I’m hosting two competitions, with the prize draws to take place on Halloween.
The #HalloweenEbookHamperPrize is a collaborative prize draw which includes:
– An audiobook version of A Hunt by Moonlight, by Shawna Reppert
– An ebook version of Ravensblood, by Shawna Reppert
– An ebook version of Werewolf Nights, by Mari Hamill
– An ebook box set of The Lord Jester’s Legacy (Books 1-3) by E. M. Prazeman
– An ebook version of The Crows by C. M. Rosens (moi)
– An adoption pack for a wolf, adopted for you for 12 months by the contributing authors, from the (US) Wolf Conservation Centre (none of us are affiliated with the WCC, we just like wolves).
So, if you’d like to win a virtual hamper full of reading material, a free audiobook and a wolf, here’s what to do!
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TWITTER:
1 entry per follow – follow all the authors for x4 entries [All the authors are tagged in my post! So you can find them easily!)
1 entry for Like + RT the posts by the authors with this graphic
1 bonus entry for commenting with a Halloween gif
INSTAGRAM:
1 entry per follow (author accounts, which I’ve tagged in my post)
1 entry per sharing to story (please mention me @cm.rosens in your story so I can see you’ve done it)
FACEBOOK:
1 entry per share
1 entry per follow (author pages, will be tagged in my post)
Good luck!
I will be posting about the authors and their work all this week, do check out the links and reviews in the meantime.
The Paghamverse Giveaway
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A second contest is to win a signed paperback of The Crows (UK folks only, sorry, unless you’re ok to help me with p+p) or the ebook version (International winners), PLUS the 99p folklore companion (ebook).
For this one, you can enter on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and I’ll be doing x1 draw per platform. If you win one, I’ll take you out of the draw for the other 2, if that makes sense.
TWITTER:
Follow me @CMRosens if you haven’t already, and LIKE + RT the original post tagged #TheCrowsContest.
INSTAGRAM:
Follow me @cm.rosens if you haven’t already, LIKE AND SAVE the post tagged #TheCrowsContest, and SHARE it to your story (mention me so I can see it!)
FACEBOOK:
Follow my author page /CMRosens, LIKE and SHARE the post tagged #TheCrowsContest.
TWO COMPETITIONS and some GREAT prizes! Feel free to enter both! The draws will take place on Halloween, names out of a hat. I might do a live video of me doing that, so keep an eye on IGTV. Happy spooky season folks!
September 21, 2020
Welsh Gothic: Language
The question of language in Welsh Gothic has undergone a shift since 1997 and the implementation of the Welsh Government’s Welsh Language policies. It is no longer a site of contest, but protected in law and promoted across the country. It is visible on all official signs, official forms are bilingual, and schools where Welsh is the primary and only medium of education are far more prevalent than before. Free Welsh courses are also on offer for adults, funded by the Welsh Government and local councils.
The death of the language was once a site of Gothicised anxiety in fiction, or used by non-Welsh speakers (including some who identified as Welsh for complex reasons of colonialism and Anglicisation) as a marker of barbarism, backwards-looking attitudes, and a fatalistic refusal to embrace the [Anglophonic] future.
The bleakness and futility inherent within the Gothicised Welsh identity was often described and demonstrated through characters alienated from and by the Welsh language, or, in Welsh-language literature, by characters fighting to defend it and inevitably punished for their acts of domestic terrorism by the penal system, incarcerated physically and psychologically.
You can read more about this in a previous post on Zombies and Zombification in modern Welsh Gothic fiction.
So how is language incorporated into Welsh Gothic nowadays? The answer is, for the most part, far more naturally. Requiem (2018) is an English-language production, but there are Welsh-speaking characters in the town and they converse with each other in a natural mix of Welsh and English, switching back and fore in conversation with subtitles provided for the non-Welsh-speaking viewer. It reinforces the sense of place and of distinctiveness – but not of difference. The subtitles normalise the switches in language and allow access to the conversations.
So what does the Welsh language add to Welsh Gothic? Fairly obviously – the sense of a modern Welsh identity, the gradual healing from the deeper socio-cultural scars of centuries of Anglicisation, the fluidity of Welsh/English switches, and the diversity of Welsh speakers themselves. Requiem‘s Welsh speakers are all white and Welsh-identifying, but this is not the case in reality and normalising this picture can create a distinctly Welsh flavour to Gothic texts. It can create a sense of belonging or be used to highlight the disinheritance and distance from a communal and individual identity.
The main character in Requiem, Matilda, is not a Welsh speaker, but suspects that she is the missing Carys, a child who disappeared from the town without trace 20 years previously. If this is the case, then she has been disinherited not only from the chance to learn her own language and understand the community who communicate in both modes, but also from her original Welsh name and identity. Even Matilda’s accent differs starkly from the accent of Carys’s mother and younger brother, creating an aural difference that forms a barrier between them. She is also persistently called ‘the English girl’ by locals intimately connected with the missing child whom Matilda believes herself to be.
This is a barrier that Matilda is desperate to break down, and through the series she tries to communicate her identity and suspicions without much success – the key to it all, in the end, is in the universal language of music, not verbal explanations or conversations. The dark midpoint comes when Matilda smashes up her cello, a key part of her identity, and not only signals that she is ready to step into the void left by the mysterious Carys [for better or worse], but also destroys the means by which she can truly communicate her soul.
The Power of Words
Why does language matter? How does language play into Welsh folklore and mythology? And how else is this interplay used within Welsh Gothic fiction?
Jenny Nimmo’s The Snow Spider trilogy is written in English with the odd Welsh word thrown into the dialogue without translation together with untranslated stanzas of Welsh songs. First published in 1986, the first book (The Snow Spider) is a tale of deep loss and belonging, of learning your place in the world, and of painful family choices. At a time when Welsh was a contested medium and there were real fears over the decline of the Welsh language, normalising its use in Children’s literature in this way was a powerful choice that potentially risked alienating the majority of its readership, but managed to do so at points that deliberately created a sense of the uncanny.
Welsh is associated primarily with Gwyn’s grandmother (his nain) who is rumoured to be a witch. She is a positive and sympathetic character in the novel, as witches in Wales were respected figures: see this previous post for historical context.
Some reader reviews of Jenny Nimmo’s The Snow Spider reveal confusion over the “magic system” and why Gwydion Gwyn could make things happen simply by speaking to the wind and offering a gift. The answer is very simple: in Wales, words had power.
The bard was a high status position, not a mere entertainer. A bard memorised the whole corpus of material passed down to him from his mentor without forgetting or changing a single word. A bard was the keeper of collective communal memory in story and poetry and song, a bard composed original poems in his head in deeply complicated and notoriously difficult forms, and recited real genealogies deliberately merged with mythological and Biblical ones, charting the lineages of their patrons all the way back to Adam and Eve.
A truly good poet could recite a curse poem that would actually kill. Every ruler had a bard to immortalise them in praise poems, and the Anglo-Norman lords in Wales adopted this practice and patronised Welsh bards to compose praise poems that were also recorded in commissioned texts.
Poets like Dafydd ap Gwilym and Lewys Glyn Cothi are best known, but it wasn’t an exclusively male occupation: the 15thC poet Gwerful Mechain wrote in the bawdy/erotic tradition, and her work was suppressed by male Welsh scholars of the more prudish 19th and 20thCs because of their erotic content and ‘gleeful indecency’ (Lauren Cocking’s phrase). The title of her most infamous poem is sometimes translated as C*nt, so there we are. Language is a wonderful thing.
How this level of power translates in a society that has a complicated relationship with the power of words (empty words and meaningless words, or an intrinsic distrust of anything we are told marking out a distrust of authority figures, for example), is something that could be further explored.
Some Questions
This is a vast topic that I’ve skimmed through and not even really scratched the surface of, except in brief bullet points. A few of the many questions we can ask about words, the power of words, and the importance of language in Welsh Gothic texts written today are:
How can language – both English and Welsh, but also other languages that represent identities and individuals from the diverse communities in modern Wales – be used in Welsh Gothic today?
How can we look at Wales and the Welsh language specifically as a vehicle for the Gothic, and tap into its heritage, its potential for subversity and its rich literary tradition, making this accessible to a modern audience?
These are questions that haunt modern writers of Welsh Gothic, and are points to ponder.
