C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 45

Welsh Gothic: Landscape

I’ve been thinking more about modern Welsh Gothic recently and want to re-watch the BBC’s 6-part mini-series REQUIEM on Netflix (still there as of 19/09/2020) which plays with the tropes and atmosphere so well.

Comments on the series are somewhat divided between loving it/loathing it, and I’m not going to discuss whether or not it’s a good/well-acted/well-written show here, just highlight the ways it can be classed as Welsh Gothic. This will probably end up as a short series of posts that highlight different tropes and aspects that the show – and other recent releases – use, and to consider what modern Welsh Gothic looks like or could look like.

A quick note on terminology: Welsh Gothic does not have to be written by Welsh writers – there is a broad definition for it, but it should be set in Wales and, in my opinion (which is a little narrower than other views) it should touch on at least one Welsh-specific issue or theme. I’d consider films like House of the Long Shadows to be Welsh Gothic if inadvertently: in this film’s case, it engages uncritically with, and perpetuates, the Barbaric Backwards Welsh discourse. I’ve discussed this in a previous post and linked to other reviews that note the same issues.

Requiem (2018)

REQUIEM is an example of Welsh Gothic not created/written by a Welsh-identifying person. It was created and written by Kris Mrksa with additional screenwriting credits going to , and directed by Mahalia Belio, but filmed in Wales and supported by Welsh Government funding.

It was shot on location at Cefn Tilla Court, Monmouthshire, Newport (South-East Wales), and Dolgellau, Gwynedd. It features an Australian character (as you would expect from the screenwriters’ credentials) and has a nuanced approach to insiders vs outsiders, playing down some themes that appear in earlier Welsh Gothic.

In Requiem, the danger comes from within the community itself, and there is an alliance and a conspiracy between the mixed residents of the village (English, Welsh, and the token Australian) and there is a lot of ambiguity around the identity of the protagonist herself who occupies a strange kind of liminal space throughout the series.

One thing I loved about it was the setting: the landscape does an awful lot of the work in creating the atmosphere, so let’s talk about the setting for a moment.

Welsh Gothic: Imprisoned by the Landscape

The sense of isolation and oppression is created not just by the script or the direction (both of which I personally liked) but by the choice to set the action in a small town surrounded by thickly wooded hills. The creeping sense of unease stems not only from the fact you don’t know what’s in the woods. It comes from the fact the woods are so obviously desolate, and yet inescapable. Whatever is going on in woods like these, or on the bare mountains, or even in the valley itself: all of that must remain unseen. You know something’s wrong, but no one talks about it. You know there’s something, but it’s invisible, or just out of sight. There is only the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary. And yet, there is something wrong. Thus the woods are an uncanny site of anxiety, so familiar and so ancient, and yet deeply concerning.

There is a children’s park in the series that is overlooked by these trees, and it reminds me strongly of one where I grew up. You are overlooked by the wooded hills all around you and they are largely empty. You know there are walkers, bikers, ramblers, dogs, animals, birds, all that. But you sit on the swings and realise you are completely alone. It just… doesn’t feel as if you are. The best way I can describe it is… knowing you are being watched by nothing at all.

[image error]Requiem (2018)

I hoped that the reveal at the end would be similarly intangible – that is the difficulty with horror and mystery, as the writers of the horror podcast The Magnus Archives acknowledged in their Q&A at the end of Season 1. There needs to be enough of a reveal to satisfy the audience as regards the mystery, but to reveal everything subtracts from the horror and can take away its power to horrify or scare. A balance has to be found and maintained, so that the suspense isn’t completely destroyed but the mystery is wrapped up to a reasonable degree of satisfaction.

[I personally enjoyed the conclusion and the ending of Requiem. I’ll try not to spoil it, but I will talk a little bit more about the concepts that get us there because they kind of align with Welsh Gothic themes.]

The theme of dispassionate, uncanny landscape is not exclusive to Wales, but if you’re writing Welsh Gothic the landscape can become more than a setting, and almost a character in its own right, in the way that the urban location can be a character in Urban Fantasy. In film this is easy to do because you point a camera at it and it does it all by itself. In writing, one might argue that you have to appreciate how it feels in order to get that on-page, and that can be a bit more difficult when you haven’t experienced the kind of uncanny feeling it creates before.

Another 2018 release that does this is the period film Apostle, where the imprisonment of the characters is literal in several senses (to specify how would be spoiler-y). Set on a [fictional] remote Welsh island, it was written and directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Huw Evans and starred Welsh actor Michael Sheen as the on-screen-Welsh cult leader. The film was largely shot on a set built at Margam Park, also home to Margam Castle which is Gothic par excellence all by itself but doesn’t feature in the film.

While once the imprisonment of peoples was reflected by texts about entrapment by industry, in particular by the mines and the spectre of their unhealthy legacy, Apostle and Requiem are examples of how modern post-industrial Welsh Gothic still reflects anxieties of entrapment. Even the noir crime drama series Hinterland plays on these themes, with claustrophobic shots and a sense of isolation pervading the scenes, creating an atmosphere of bleakness despite the landscape being more open, rural and coastal.

Other sites of entrapment and confinement could equally be urban spaces or council estates, or farms and the daily struggles within the agricultural industry. Yet in all this, the landscape is never far away – the lakes are deep and still, the rivers are merciless and fast, the hills are present and brooding, the trees grow thickly in silence around the fields and sprawling concrete, and from all around, the land watches.

The Welsh Gothic series of posts, a contextualised summary of Jane Aaron’s book Welsh Gothic (UWP, 2013), are listed here.

Post-Devolution Welsh Gothic (1997-2013)

Wales: Land of the Living Dead – Context (1940s-1997)

Haunted Communities – Industrial Gothic (1900s-1940s)

F is for Fear: 28th October 2020

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My short story THE SOUND OF DARKNESS is being published in the @redcapepublishing anthology F is for Fear, part of the A-Z of Horror series. Release date is 28th October 2020-!
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The theme of the anthology invited writers to submit a story around a common phobia or fear. I chose fear of the dark because there is so much you can do with that: is it a fear of darkness itself or of what might be inside the darkness?

The Sound of Darkness

This is a more personal kind of story for me too. It features a half-Turkish protagonist who has his Turkishness erased growing up (in a council estate in the late 1990s).

The darkness of the estate has a lot of urban myths attached to it and is itself an antagonist – but I wanted to play around with darkness as a metaphor for absence and obscurance, and how terrifying that can be from an existential perspective.

Darkness is a site of mystery and potential understanding if you face it and see what is in there. And maybe darkness is only scary depending on where you are and who you have grown to be.

I don’t know if that worked or not or if it is just a story about a man trying to overcome his childhood fear and recalling the incident that set it off. I hope that it is at least a fun story with some tension that creeps at least a couple of people out in places.

Sponsor my Marathon!

It’s a tweetathon, really, but I think it’s the typing equivalent and it’s catchy, so I’m not changing the hashtag. Yesterday I queued up all the Romancing the Gothic talks and lectures I missed on YouTube, and got through 8 of them, live tweeting as I went. I was tweeting notes from the talks for 8.5 hours, from 14.30-23.00 BST, to raise money for Umbrella Cymru. Umbrella Cymru is a Waleswide support organisation for gender and sexual diversity. Check them out and donate directly via their website.

I also linked ways to support individual speakers and the charities they wanted to raise donations for, so feel free to do that instead or as well. You can support advocacy groups and charities that fight against modern Roma oppression based in the U.K. and E. U., and/or donate to the BH Legal Fund to support Native Americans arrested while protesting political rallies on their land.

My charity live-tweeting #RomancingtheGothic #RtGMarathon for @umbrellacymru is going to start at 14:30 BST (so in about 25mins). Donate via their website. Here's the full Playlist. I doubt I'll be able to manage all 10 so apologies to those I miss out. https://t.co/dhgZQZQUy8

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

AND WE ARE OFF #RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic donate to https://t.co/6njLpiwX6x — kicking off with WELSH GOTHIC with Sophie Jessica Davies. @sophiejd94 ko-fi https://t.co/WHcD5zECIP https://t.co/7BluSzsHYq

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

#RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic thread 2- catching up on @sydneeisanelf and her lecture on race and the depictions of the Romani in the Gothic. My playlist is posted on thread 1.

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

#RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic Thread 3 – I am now into the Sunday talks that I missed. I won't be tweeting the Q&A, since I don't do that usually and need eye-breaks but you can watch along on YouTube via @RomGothSam Channel. I might use the Q&A for comfort breaks.

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

Thread 4? Cat on Ossuaries #RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic
Ossuaries are tangential to the Gothic perhaps but definitely on brand for the talk series and topic. Death is not necessarily the end-!

Antonia in THE MONK wakes beside corrupted corpses and Poe talks about the death

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

Thread 5 of my #RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic – to sponsor these many hours of live tweeting YouTube talks donate to https://t.co/6njLpiwX6x

This is Rayna Rosenova on A Spectacle of Gore and Horror: the French revolution and its Gothic representations.

CW :: bloody violence

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

Thread 6 of the #RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic is the talk by Laura Davidel @LauraDavidel on Anne Rice’s Vampire Women: between Impairment and Power. Starting this in a few mins. Need to use the Q&A of the end of 5 to stretch my legs and step away from screen staring.

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

Thread 7? 7. #RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic sponsored tweetathon. Donate to https://t.co/6njLpiwX6x

Madelyn Schoonover @eyreudite What You Buy is What You Own’: Neocolonial Masculinity, Appropriation, and Guilt in Pet Sematary.

CWs for body horror, child death, colonialism

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

#RtGMarathon #RomancingtheGothic Thread 8 of 10-!!!! This is @CarolineDuvezin on Gaily Ever After: Neo-Victorian M/M Romance. I was sure I heard this talk but apparently I missed it so here it is. This is way fluffier than previous threads. CW for homophobic laws and homophobia.

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) September 3, 2020

Let’s Talk About Werewolves #7: Werewolf Talk with Shawna Reppert

It’s been a while since the last Werewolf Talk post, but this one comes with a raffle so is surely worth the wait! Yes you read that right: author Shawna Reppert is offering a free Audible copy of her novel A Hunt by Moonlight to the lucky winner.

A Hunt by Moonlight

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Something more deadly than werewolves is stalking the gaslit streets of London. Inspector Royston Jones, unacknowledged bastard of a high-born family, is determined to track the killer before more young women fall to his knife. But his investigation puts him in the way of a lord who is a clandestine werewolf and the man’s fiancée , a woman alchemist with attitude and a secret of her own. Will they destroy Royston to protect their covert identities, or will they join with him to hunt the hunter?  

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Hunt-Moonlight-Werewolves-Gaslight-Book-ebook/dp/B01J51G0QC/

Audible https://www.audible.com/pd/B08BBGH3MY/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-201910&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_201910_rh_us

To enter, FOLLOW Shawna on Twitter @ShawnaReppert and tweet your favourite werewolf gif, tagged #HuntByMoonlightRaffle. The winner will be chosen and announced on Sunday 30th August 2020.

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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.

Werewolf Talk with Shawna Reppert

Q1. What are your impressions of the werewolf in fiction/film? Do you have fave books/movies?

Okay, this is going to sound horribly arrogant, so let me state at the outset that I am speaking about my own personal tastes and not saying that I’m right and everyone else is wrong. The truth is, I actually dislike how werewolves are portrayed in most fiction and film. I grew up with the half-formed scruffy wolfman version of werewolves that has about as much resemblance to real wolves as Mickey Mouse does to a real rodent. In their changed form, they were grotesque, slavering things with no thoughts that existed only to kill. Not terribly interesting as villains and certainly not attractive as a protagonist.

One of the only books I came across that had a werewolf version that I actually like was Wolf Moon by Charles de Lint. Not surprising, really. . . he’s one of the writing gods at whose alter I joyfully worship. His wolf, when he becomes a wolf, is a true wolf, but keeps its human mind. . . if I remember correctly. I read the book when it first came out, about 16 years ago. I do remember that, like all his work, the book was beautifully written and that the werewolf was the hero, and unjustly persecuted. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ll have to dig up that book and read it again. It’s one of the few books by de Lint that I’ve only read once or twice.

Q2 What’s so interesting to you about the werewolf concept? Do you think it has as much power to frighten or horrify as it once did?

[image error]Seamus

What really drew me to the werewolf was the wolf part of it. I’ve always loved wolves. In my twenties I had a wolf-hybrid with a high percentage of wild blood. Basically, Seamus had just enough husky in him that I could tell people that he was a ‘husky mix’ without having to cross my fingers behind my back. Seamus died in his sleep on the winter solstice of 2002. I still dream about him at night and wake up missing him.

I feel like I have a really deep spiritual connection with the wolf, so when I decided to write werewolves I knew I wanted to focus on the instincts and the unique capabilities of the wolf. Wolves’ senses are so keen, they get so much information from their sharper hearing and especially from their keen sense of smell, it’s like they are living in another world superimposed on our own. I wanted to write novels where those wolf-senses are integral to the story, and that’s what lead me to the idea of writing werewolf mysteries. I am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, and much is made of his ability to solve a mystery due to his sharp observational skills, including the ability to discern and catalogue scents. It occurred to me that a wolf’s keen senses would be of great advantage in solving a case.

I think the idea that werewolves are supposed to horrify or frighten is based in a worldview that what is wild and natural is evil, and therefore it’s not a vision of werewolves that I have any interest in.

Everyone is entitled to their own take on a fantastic creature, of course. I come from a very pagan approach, where nature is sacred. Wildness is not evil and the Other is not something that’s necessarily to be feared and hated. Not everyone in my book would agree with that view, however. Far from it. In my version of Victorian London werewolves are existing out in the open, but they’re very much—well, not even second-class citizens. More like third or fourth class citizens in most people’s eyes. It’s interesting to play with that. It’s a great way to talk about things like racism, homophobia, and sexism without using the buzzwords that get everyone’s back up. It’s a sideways approach that works around people’s preconceived ideas.

For those authors who do want their werewolves to horrify and frighten, whether the werewolf has the power to do so all depends on how well it’s written. If you write them well and you want them to be frightening, they’re going to be frightening. If you don’t do it well, your ‘frightening’ werewolves will wind up camp, comical or just disgusting. It’s all in the writer’s skill and dedication to craft. If writers want their werewolves to live in their readers’ nightmares, they have a lot of material to work with in the collective unconscious. There’s the whole traditional folklore of werewolves. In most cultures, certainly in most Christian-centric, Eurocentric cultures, werewolves are evil, slavering beasts. People were so afraid of werewolves because people are afraid of themselves and their own wildness. The werewolf represents the animal nature within that early Christian culture tried to suppress. Plus, there’s the primal fear that dates back to when humans spent their days trying to find things to eat while not getting eaten themselves. There’s a bred-in-the bones fear of those shadows out in the forest. Maybe it’s a bear. Maybe it’s just a shadow. You don’t know. Authors who want scary werewolves will always have a lot to work with.

Q. 3 Do you see werewolves and their transformation as a form of body horror? How do you handle this in your work/how do you think about it if not in these terms?

My novels fall more into the genre of gaslamp fantasy or steampunk Victorian detective novels, not horror. Body horror just isn’t a thing I’m interested in. For my main werewolf, the struggle is more psychological. In wolf form, he has a human’s mind with a wolf’s instincts. In the series he has only killed a human in self-defense or the defense of others, but being a Victorian gentleman, he has a hard time dealing with the ‘beastly’ nature of the killings.

I have to admit, writing werewolves in a universe in which they are one of the only fantastical elements makes the whole transformation hard to wrap my mind around. In order to write it, you have to believe it, at least for the span of time during which your hands are on the keyboard. In my own head, I tell myself some hand-waving rationale involving quantum physics and how matter and energy are interchangeable. It probably doesn’t make much sense, but then quantum physics really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, at least not in any way I could put into words. Within my story-world, my characters
are working with a Victorian’s sense of how the world works. They are still arguing about whether failing to wash hands between operations impacts infection rates in surgery patients. There’s a lot about the world they don’t yet understand, and how werewolves transform is just one of the many mysteries their scientists are trying to work out.

Other works by Shawna Reppert:

Moon Over London

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Werewolves are disappearing from the gaslit streets of London. Are they being murdered? Kidnapped? Few beyond the ’wolves’ own families notice they’re missing, and fewer still care. With the aid of a clandestine toff werewolf and a lady alchemist with attitude, Inspector Royston Jones is determined to protect all those who dwell in his city. But his superiors are indifferent, the werewolf community suspicious, and he has too few leads and too many suspects—including his estranged uncle. Only one thing is certain—unless he can solve the mystery, more ’wolves will be taken every time the full moon rises.

Amazon  https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Over-London-Werewolves-Gaslight-ebook/dp/B07V27BGKS/

World Building and Language Workshop

On Saturday 15 August 2020 I took part in the Romancing the Gothic‘s Gothic Creative Day via Zoom, leading a workshop on world building and language. The workshop was not recorded, but it was pretty popular, so I’d be happy to run it again. In the meantime, here are my slides for you to play along at home.

Part 1 of the Workshop [Sample!]





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There’s no right or wrong way to start your story idea. It might come to you character-first, or plot-first, or just a glimpse of an aesthetic/vibe. When you’ve figured out a viable story idea, you could try to distil it down into a basic concept so that you can communicate what the story is about to others, but also to yourself.

What’s your concept? How does your setting compliment the concept, how does it complicate things, how does it work with the story?

A CONCEPT is a short sentence that sums up your story. It should contain the following elements:
– Genre
– Main Character
– Central Conflict of the story
– Setting
Your concept can express these in any order.

GOTHIC WORLDS can be anywhere, and on any scale (micro to macro).

•An attic/cellar
•A house
•A ruin
•A village
•A town/city
•A dark fantasy or historical fantasy setting

Activity 1

CHOOSE A CONCEPT (but note we haven’t put the setting in yet)

◦A young orphan is raised by their jealous step-parent whose envy becomes homicidal, forcing them into a cat-and-mouse game of survival.

◦A child is cursed by an enemy of their family to fall into an enchanted coma on their sixteenth birthday while their godparents race to find a loophole.

CHOOSE YOUR SETTING:
~ Gothic mansion (but the action never leaves the front door)
~ A vast pine forest
~ A rural village in the 1700s
~ A modern-day coastal town

THINK ABOUT:
Why are your characters there and how does the setting impact the characters?
Why is your setting the way it is? Brainstorm some factors that make it work with the concept and aesthetic you want. There has to be internal logical cohesion to the setting or readers won’t be able to properly suspend their disbelief.

ACTIVITY:
Now you have your concept [either the ‘Snow White’ or the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ basic concept] and your setting, put them together. How does the setting affect the shape of your story?

~What do you need to include in this setting to make the story work? What Gothic conventions and tropes fit? For example, if you’ve chosen to have Snow White take place inside a Gothic mansion and never leave it, then you’ll need to think about all the elements of that story – how does she run away or hide? Is it like Gormenghast, essentially it’s own world, or is it like the Winchester House or Rose Red where the house itself changes around you? Why can’t the characters go outside? Are they trapped for some reason [natural or supernatural], or is it a nuclear winter, or is it a metaphorical mansion and actually a space station, or is it on a remote island battered by storms? Or something else? How do you introduce other characters? Are they already living in the house, or can you enter but not leave? Why? Where do they come from? Where did they come from before (or is this something that will never be answered?)

#AmReading Poetry: How To Unpeel A Monster by Nimue Brown

How to Unpeel a Monster



How to Unpeel a Monster by Nimue Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A brilliant anthology that deeply resonates with me. I just got this and spent yesterday curled up crying with it for a while because some of the poems here really connected and expressed things I have been trying to get at within myself, and isn’t that what poetry and art is for?

Nimue Brown has a strong, relatable voice with a lot to say that’s worth saying. The anthology goes through facets of life and personality, covering mental health, politics, community, spirituality, relationships and the essence of interpersonal connection, ageing and more. I think this is one I’ll be returning to a lot.



View all my reviews

Take off a skin. Take down a defence.
Take a risk, trust a little.
Soften that hard, uncompromising hide.
Take off the skin that cannot be touched.
Take off what is too scarred to be
Properly human.
Take off the weight of history.
Take off a skin.
~ Extract from ‘How to Unpeel a Monster’ by Nimue Brown

Highlighted/stand out poems in the anthology in the order they appear:

How to Unpeel a Monster
The New Clothes
All Those Heart Metaphors
Butterfly Dance
Family Afternoon Out
I may or may not be melting
Those who are dead to us
Necromancer’s Courtship
No monster left behind

These are my favourites from the first reading but I think the list will change depending on my mood and circumstances. This is a book I’ll be returning to a lot.

Buy the book here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08D6RX7Z7
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08D6RX7Z7

Add to Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54673948-how-to-unpeel-a-monster

Learn more about Nimue Brown:
Twitter: @Nimue_B
Instagram: @nimuebrown
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nimue-Brown/e/B00AZM663S/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1

Saints & Sinners Part 2

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Interviews in Pagham-on-Sea

We asked residents of Pagham-on-Sea what they thought of these questions.

What is the gravest sin anyone can commit?

What, like murder? Murder, yeah. Like Hitler an’ that.
– Josie, 15, student

Betrayal.
– Anon., age unknown, shadow lurker

Not paying your tab.
– Mirren, age unknown, nightclub owner

Can you be damned [in your belief system]?

Bloody hope so, some right nasty c***s about.
– Joe, 83, retired engineer

‘To be condemned to live in only one form, that would be damnation’ – do you know who said that? Joseph Barker. Some think we’re damned already, and I tell them, no, that’s those undead twats. Do I look dead to you?
– Lola, 38, retail manager

Damnation is so last century. It’s all cancel culture now.
– Mirren, age unknown, nightclub owner

What do you think of the Seven Deadly Sins? What are they to you/do you have an equivalent?

Lust, Sloth, Vanity, Pride, Envy, Grumpy and Doc.
– Ralph, 56, farmer

Why stop at seven?
– Mirren, age unknown, nightclub owner

I don’t know if I can name all of them, what do you think? Equivalents? … Racism… Fascism… Slavery but like sweatshops and kids and trafficking and that, like you know, I don’t know if there’s like a word of it. Being, like, any sort of -phobic, just let people live their lives, yeah – how many’s that, is that seven? Oh, I guess like trafficking is a separate one… so that’s five… we’ve got five… Toxic positivity, yeah. Yeah and when people tell you to just do yoga, they can fuck right off.
– Josie, 15, student [with mum Lorraine, 42, retail assistant]

Who is one of the most famous ‘sinners’ you can name?

Frank Sinatra. S’in the name, isn’t it?
– Ralph, 56, farmer

Jack the Ripper maybe?
– Lola, 38, retail manager

Me.
– Mirren, age unknown, nightclub owner

Saints & Sinners Part 1

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Introduction to Pagham-on-Sea

This month’s #WiPWorldBuilders card is on saints and sinners, looking at beliefs and belief systems in our fictional worlds. Let’s talk about some of the belief systems in Pagham-on-Sea first.

For context, the town’s population is around 12,000, while the population of the commuter estate (Queen Mary’s and Jubilee) on the other side of Pagham-on-Sea Parkway station, has roughly the same number of people. The contrast in the demographic is stark.

The town’s stats are 95% white, which is lower than its larger neighbour, Bexhill-on-Sea (98% white). Bexhill has a higher population of residents born in the UK than the national average, so that’s a factor, but the national average obviously includes the large urban [and economic] centres where the population is naturally more diverse.

Pagham-on-Sea has a very small Chinese and Thai community, which in town is literally just a few families who run restaurants/takeaways, massage parlours and acupuncture therapy salons. There is a disproportionately high demand for acupuncturists, massage and chiropractor treatments in town because of the large werewolf population in Barker Crescent. Turning is painful, especially for younger and older Wolves, and massage therapies help.

There’s a small Muslim population, with a few Sikhs and Buddhists, but these are literally in the tens, not the hundreds. The estates’ combined population is more diverse with more people commuting from PoS to London, with the high speed express train running through at 6am allowing people to get to work for 8/9am. In the estates, the demographic stats are more like 78% white, with larger BAME communities.

The majority of people identify as Christian or atheist/agnostic on the census forms, with most people identifying as Christian doing so nominally [culturally] rather than because they are practising. Church attendance figures collectively suggest that far from being the majority in practice, Christians may be as low as 15-20%, a similar number to the Muslim population.

Against this background, a range of variant belief systems exist among the preternatural population. The answers to a lot of the questions on this month’s WiP World Builders’ card is – it depends who you ask. So let’s ask a few people around town and find out.

Does the concept of sin exist [for you]?

Are you asking, does it exist as a concept or…? I mean, yeah I get it in the sense of it’s a religious idea. I think there are… I think bad stuff happens, people do bad stuff, yeah. I don’t think – is that sin, I’m not sure. For me, I’m not sure. No. Bad things happen but – I don’t think it needs to get religious. Like you don’t need to make a religious thing about it, if, is, does that make sense?
– Tom, 23, market trader

Sin is separation, basically. You can take that as separation from the Divine, but on a micro-level, separation from your own self. For me, it’s the barriers that prevent you living as a whole, authentic person – hiding from your flaws, for example, or denying parts of your nature. For me, that is, living as one being with a dual-natured form, ‘sin’ of this kind exists, yes, and I would say it is inherently damaging. Father Christopher talks about sinning against oneself, one’s nature, and that really resonates with me, although that’s not to say that separation from the Divine is less important or serious. It’s all connected.
– Joyce, 76, retired teacher

Sin is an outdated idea. When you transcend the form in which you were born and have the glories of your true lineage bestowed on you, and you see for yourself what ageless mysteries lie beneath your feet, waiting to wake, there is no more need for these ideas, or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. There are only possibilities.
– Doris, age unknown, housewife and part-time cleaner

Make Yourself a Coat of Arms

I love this – I’ve published on arms and seals and the uses of medieval iconography in my academic life, but this is a really fun exercise and might be useful for self-reflection.

Some medieval facts:

> If you weren’t important enough to have your own arms, you would bear those of your lord. For example, William Marshall (1146/7-1219) started off in the household of the Tankervilles and bore their arms until he was allowed to carry his own. [You’ll notice he was very long-lived: nobles often lived beyond 60, with the benefit of good constitution and diet etc].

>There was a sense of visual unity in family crests, but individuals chose what went on them as they inherited the title and lands. Some chose to adopt their father’s, but add something of their own; their son might revert to a further direct paternal ancestor (because patrilineal primogenture was the model of inheritance) and adopt their great-grandfather’s arms without changing it. It depended on what they wanted to convey!

More on my blog (on hiatus): melissajulianjones.wordpress.com

Loved this post!! Recommend giving this blog a follow.

Dewi Writes

I’ve been trying to make a personal coat of arms (or achievement, as it’s properly known) for a long time now.

First thing’s first: in the UK and many other countries, you can’t just go ahead and design your own coat of arms. To officially acquire one, you have to have one presented to you by the College of Arms. But it’s extremely unlikely they’re ever going to knight me, and if they did, I doubt they’d let me use the one I came up with myself. So, no, this isn’t an official coat of arms.

But it’s a symbol designed using heraldic convention which I could still use to represent myself, especially if I get it copyrighted. So you can do that too, if you have the same peculiar desire to have a coat of arms that I do. (Just don’t go calling yourself a knight on any…

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#WriterlyWiPChat: July Q&A Week 4 (and a bit!) Part 2

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Days 26-31

#SelfieSunday! Show us some good times!

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Do you specify when your WiP is set or do you prefer to keep it vague and timeless?

The Crows had its own timeline, from April-May (although the year isn’t specified, it can be inferred from the dates). The plan is to line up the stories by timeline, so that you can immerse yourself in a town where multiple stories are happening at once, in different areas, to different characters, with some character/setting overlap.

While someone’s having tea and cake at The Sandbox Café with their friend, angsting over the latest vampire drama, some woman is sat on her own in the corner having a crisis of some kind and leaves in a hurry. A couple passing by the window look like they’re having a serious argument. All these people have their own stories in progress, but none of them will ever know what yours is, and you won’t know what theirs are, either. But different novels may have all these stories in them, overlapped by the one moment they converged at the Sandbox. And if you’ve been reading with attention to dates, you might pick that up.

PROGRESS UPDATE! How is your WiP coming along since the beginning of the month?

Thirteenth has been with betas, so I’m now working on the comments I’ve had back so far.

Eldritch Girls is shaping up into a really good first draft! If you’re interested in signing up to beta, contact Nita Pan on Twitter or Insta @/NitaPanWrites.

Assuming they sleep in one, what motivates your MC to get out of bed in the morning?

THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter likes being with her friends and just wants to be able to live a ‘normal’ life. She really enjoys morning runs, they get her out of the house. Her family situation is not the best.
– Wes Porter doesn’t get out of bed in the morning, he gets out of bed whenever he wants and has brunch
– Ricky Porter gets up because he has a routine…

ELDRITCH GIRLS
– Sasha Shaw gets out of bed in the morning to be a step closer to living her dream of fame and recognition as a great dancer and performance artist. Also possibly because it’s not her bed and she just wants to get home and shower.

How long does it take your MC to get ready to go out to a party?

THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter takes a few hours.
– Wes Porter takes all day. He lives in a constant state of party prep/partying.
– Ricky Porter doesn’t go to parties and if he was made to go, wouldn’t get ready.

ELDRITCH GIRLS
– Sasha Shaw takes forever. Arrives immaculate. Is a sloppy drunk mess in five minutes.

How do you know when you’re done with a WiP?

I’m after a certain polished feel to it, I guess. I don’t want to over-edit scenes, and if I feel like it’s being pared down too much I’d get another pair of eyes on it (a professional editor) to finish off. This is after alpha readers have had a first pass over the draft, then I’ve edited, then about 10 betas have read it through, bringing different perspectives. Once the comments have been addressed then it goes to a pro editor if I can afford one. I then give it another couple of passes in different formats. My editing rule is I let it go when I can only see 5 typos/errors. That’s the final pass.

AND THAT’S THE END!
Thank you to Kerri Davidson and Mark E. Gelinas Sr for the questions this month! Follow them on Twitter for more writing games and chat. Kerri is @bagoflettuce and @KerriDavidson20, and Mark is @Elderac. Follow me @CMRosens!