C.L. Raven's Blog, page 17

Creepy Christmas

Many thanks to all our followers and readers for sticking with us and to our talented artists, Ryan Ashcroft from Love Your Covers and River Rose for making our books look beautiful. Also thanks to Ryan for designing this card for us.

 

Master of Puppets

On Friday, we finished editing one of our older novels, Legion of the Damned. We wrote it in 2008 (we think) but after writing Bleeding Empire, thought it would be a good idea to release it as Bleeding Empire’s sequel. Legion features demons that have escaped from Hell and have cool powers. Think evil superheroes but without the capes and their own action figures. The problem was, it was 162,000 words. It needed to go on a major diet. So we starved it, forced it into a gym and cracked the whip until it broke into sweat and begged for mercy. When we were close to the end, we realised the document was missing 6 chapters. The novel was in fact 185,000 words. After a brief swearing fit, we carried on hacking through it with our machete. Also known as the delete button. In the end we managed to cut 63,000 words. So it’s still too long and still needs a lot of work. Probably a major rewrite in some parts. We used to like this book.

Most people, after finishing a novel edit would probably take a few days off. On Saturday, we were at a loss of what to do. So we wrote the final story for Romance Is Dead, the final part of the anti-Valentine’s trilogy. This story (unnamed) will conclude the Trey and Sol story. If you haven’t read Gunning Down Romance and Bad Romance, you have until February 14th. They’re only 77p/99c. The title Master of Puppets would’ve been perfect but that’s a story in Disenchanted, so like most of our stuff, it will probably remain title-less until near publication. They are our nemesis.

We were discussing Trey’s progression from mannequins to paralysed models and wanted to continue the trend. We both said “puppets” at the same time. When the Twin Power is switched on, it really is useful. Today we read through ‘Til Death us do Part and Still Life, which feature Trey and Sol, to make sure we had Trey’s narrative voice right. Turns out, puppets are mentioned in both stories. It’s like past us planted Easter Eggs to hint at things to come. It would’ve been nice if past us had told future us about this. We’ve been trying to think up a plot since August. But still, it makes us look clever. Even if it was by accident.

Power of Three

You know your ghost hunting trip to Stratford is going to be a disaster when your friend says she’s refusing to use her Sat Nav because she enjoys our meltdowns when we get lost. But we’d printed out directions and we were leaving 2 hours earlier then necessary. We were confident.

We were wrong.

We’re not entirely sure where we went wrong. We’d like to blame it on the road closure but we were already lost by that point. We could say travelling in the dark in an unexplored area of England played a part, but previous getting lost excursions have taken place in the day. In reality, we just suck. Then as Cat was driving through traffic lights, it was decided we should go right, not straight ahead. So she turned right. Realising too late that the right lane had a red light. But she was committed. And there was traffic. Cue action film stunt driving and small shrieks of terror and Mickey the Mini Cooper lived to drive another day. Until she nearly ran another red light when reading road signs. This is what happens when functioning on only one Red Bull all day. The world is safer with us caffeinated.

We arrived at the meeting place with one hour to spare. Us being…early? Angels gasped, Santa fainted and somewhere in the world a dinosaur egg hatched. The meeting place was the College Inn car park. So we took the opportunity for a chip and vodka & lemonade break to set us up for a night of ghost hunting. Then Cat got lost on her way back from the toilets and alerted some dogs to her wanderings. We did our usual set piece about what we’d discovered through research for our first location, Meon Hill. Except despite reading the info in the car on the way down, Lynx completely forgot it and had to do the talk whilst reading from Neen’s phone. In 1945, a man named Charles Walton was found murdered on the hill, with his trouncing hoook embedded in his throat, his pitchfork in his stomach and a cross carved out from his chest. To this day the murder is unsolved and rumoured to be related to witchcraft. The bar staff overhead our spiel and one of them revealed her grandfather was actually interviewed at the time! We were gutted we didn’t have time to conduct a proper interview. We’d parked round the front of the pub ‘cos we couldn’t find the car park so we jumped in Mickey and drove. All ten feet of road before we reached the car park. And we were the last to arrive, despite having been there an hour. Ryan was at his work’s Christmas meal in Bridgend so we didn’t have a patsy to lay blame on. And people think Calamityville is a professional outfit! *disclaimer. No-one has ever said that Calamityville Horror is in any way, professional.*

We got back in our car to drive to Meon Hill in a convoy. Driving right past where we had been previously parked. We were last in the convoy, which included a transit van, a Land Rover, a Range Rover and Mickey. We had to park in a layby to get to Meon Hill and Mickey’s arse was sticking out in the road. Who brings a transit van ghost hunting? People really need smaller cars. Us and Neen were the only ones who thought to bring wellies for the trek and smugly trampled through the boggy pathway while the rest of the group did their best to avoid the mud. The two mediums from Dusk Til Dawn events were Sue, a witch, and Michael, her husband. Sue conducted a seance at the base of the hill. We were hoping to climb the hill to see the scene of the murder but this was as close as we would get.

Then it was on to the next location, an old funeral parlour that is now a tattoo parlour. Conducting a ghost vigil in a tattoo parlour was a first for the Calamityville team. Lynx sat next to a cheery looking skull wearing sunglasses. We would’ve invited him to join the team but he looked busy. A doll was used as a trigger object for a girl called Alice but Alice didn’t seem to want to play. Apparently interesting EVPs have been captured here so when we review our recordings of our DVRs, we’ll hopefully have caught something. Though judging by previous recordings, we probably won’t. The vigil was interrupted by phantom voices during the silence, but this wasn’t paranormal. In the dark, Cat accidentally PLAY on her DVR, not REC. Whoops. Then Lynx dropped her Canon camcorder. Remember what we said about being professional?

Finally we headed to our final location, Spiritus, the shop owned by Sue and Michael. We were split into two groups, with the Calamityville team joining three other people – Mel, Tracy and Lyndon. Being the only man, Lyndon took Ryan’s place as the one getting picked on. In order to incite Colin the poltergeist, the group got creative. Never before has anyone behaved so inappropriately towards a poltergeist. Anyone walking in would’ve have thought they’d stumbled across a sex chat line. We’d like to state, we did not start this. But we did join in. When in Rome and all that jazz. As you know, we’re not fans or believers of table tipping. However there were interesting knocking responses on the table and Cat had her night vision camera trained on the scene the whole time. The knocking was not caused by anyone in the group and  during some of the times when the table was rocking, the camera showed Sue had removed her hands from it.

We then headed into the back room, which is apparently haunted by a doctor. As we held hands in the circle, Mel started to sway. She said she felt a magnetic force pulling her backwards. After a few minutes, Cat switched places with her. At first nothing happened. Then Cat felt it. A definite force making her sway backwards. It started gently then built up. It was bizarre. Lynx tried it and felt nothing. Then we did a ouija board. To his credit, Michael did not participate, which we were very impressed at. We always suspect that organisers who participate in ouija boards influence them. The planchette did move a bit and rotated but offered nothing intelligible other than H. Maybe it was a massive STEPS fan. Then we tried our hand at mirror scrying. Again, we’re not believers in this but it was pretty cool to try. Lynx went first, holding a red light under her face. Even though her eyes were closed, it looked like we could see open eyes. It was so strange, a really creepy effect that we attributed to her glittery eyeshadow. When Tracy tried it, she also closed her eyes and it looked like there were a different pair of eyes on her face, slightly higher up and looking in a different direction. Lyndon had a go and appeared to have the shadow of crab pincers on his forehead. We told him Colin had given him crabs after that amorous table tipping. When Cat tried it, it also looked like her eyes were open. Unusual effect but really cool. We moved to the cellar for a brief vigil involving a doctor’s bag but think he’d gone home for the night.

We left at one a.m. and again got diverted because of road closures. For the first time ever, we had printed out reverse directions. Except we didn’t use them because we wanted to avoid the Severn Bridge toll. And as what usually happens when we don’t sleep and are then awake all night, we become horribly sick. Got home at 3 a.m., but because of feeling so crappy we were still awake at 6. Bleurgh. The general consensus is we start staying somewhere overnight. We have a better idea.

A hearse.

With CALAMITYVILLE HORROR painted on the sides in white. Then we can just park up somewhere and sleep in the back. A ghost hunting team with their own camper hearse. You know this has to happen. Now if can we can just put some funds together…*dons balaclavas.* Be right back, we left our wallets in the bank… 

Afterlife of the Party

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. We’d like to blame it on being swept up in NaNoWriMo madness, but we finished our NaNo story on 19th November. This year was different for us. This year we only wanted to write a novella, so aimed to write the 50,000 words required, rather than trying to beat last year’s target of 95k. The novella, The Malignant Dead is based on a short story we wrote about a plague doctor in Edinburgh in 1645. It’s actually inspired by the true story of Edinburgh’s plague doctor, George Rae, except with added horror. It’s not our first historical book, but it is our first historical horror. We haven’t read a lot of historical fiction of the 17thC because it mostly seems to be historical romance (if written by a woman) or about battles (if written by a man) and we wanted to do something different and recapture the love we had for history when learning of the gruesome tortures during the Tudor period.

We now have a taste for it and have decided to write a historical horror novella for every NaNoWriMo, as it combines two of our favourites things – horror and history. The next one will be about witchcraft and we might do one about the Resurrectionists. We haven’t thought that far ahead.

There is one disadvantage to finishing NaNo so early – you spend the rest of the month feeling left out. At least with our novels we had our own targets to beat so we could empathise with the pressure. This year, as we knew we were only doing the 50k, there was no pressure at all. We worked at our normal pace.

But as it turned out, there was a massive advantage to finishing early. The day after we finished, (Wednesday) our grandfather (Grampy, we called him), was taken to hospital.

He died the next day.

At 92 years old, it shouldn’t have been a shock. He’d been ill since the Saturday but showed signs of improving on the Tuesday. On the Wednesday he’d deteriorated. But we thought he’d recover. We were already arranging shifts with our sister and mum so he would have 24 hour care. Then on the Thursday, the hospital rang us, telling us he’d taken a turn for the worse and we should come down.

He died before we got there.

There aren’t enough adjectives to describe what a wonderful man he was. One of the things we loved most about him was that he accepted us the way we are. He never once asked when we were going to meet nice men and settle down with 2.4 children. (Never!) Or asked when we were going to get ‘a proper job’ (Never! Wonder if anyone asks J K Rowling this). All he cared about was that we were happy. He’d often joke about getting piercings and dyeing his hair to look like us. One of our favourite memories is of him doing an impression of his friend trying to talk after toffee had stuck her false teeth together

So that’s why we haven’t blogged. Because we’ve had nothing to say. We’re no strangers to grief. In fact, we know it so well we could enter a Mr and Mrs contest and take home the cash prize for charity. Though we have no mantlepiece for the carriage clock. The hole Grampy has left behind proves how much he was loved. 92 years wasn’t long enough. The world is a darker place without him.

Between the covers

It’s here! Deadly Reflections print cover is ready for its grand unveiling! The front cover was done by the wonderfully talented Lizzie Rose, AKA River Rose and the back cover by the brilliant Ryan Ashcroft of Love Your Covers. We’re so lucky to have such amazing cover artists working with us to make our books stand out and to put our dark writings into works of gothic art.

So here it is! The print copy will be available soon. We’ll keep you posted!

Fairytale ending

To celebrate National Short Story Week, we’ve made Disenchanted FREE on Amazon from today until Friday! Get it here. If you don’t have a Kindle, just let us know and we’ll send you a different format.

Here’s the blurb.

Once upon a time, in lands far, far away, everyone lived happily ever after. Until now. If you thought you knew the fairytales well, think again. In a modern world without morals, where beauty does not always equal goodness and evil sometimes wins, the heroes of the legends learn the hard way that survival will take more than just a pretty face, and a handsome prince does not mean salvation. Ten broken fairytales that are definitely not for children’s bedtime.

Treasure Island

Roll up! Roll up! Ready for another week of winning free books? Get your binoculars ready and your treasure seeking shovel and go digging for treasure. It’s the last week so ready, set, go!

You’ll find the answers to these questions right here on Ravens Retreat. Careful where you look though, this place is booby trapped.

1. For whose blog did we write a Halloween flash fiction entitled ‘House of Wolves’?
2. What do we drink a possibly dangerous amount of?
3. In ‘The Black Kiss’, who is the plait-haired subject of the picture that the main character studies?

For these answers, set your compass for Jeremy’s blog.
1. What is Maxwell’s special talent?
2. When playing the card game ‘Rookie Mistake’, how many cards are given out between four players? (13)
3. What does the Paranormal ability of Previnating allow them to do? (Turn into a mist and fly at a rapid pace)

And for these answers, steer your ship to Reece’s blog.
Which Scholar wrote ‘A Complete Guide to Cornelia’?
What is the sole resounding aspects of every dragon’s behaviour?
What is the one most notable feature of a member of the Scaleguard?

Safe scouring treasure seekers!

Halloweentown

Sorry for all the posts lately, it’s been a busy time with the release of Deadly Reflections and taking part in the treasure hunt. But today we’re giving you THREE Halloween treats. No trickery involved.

The first treat is a Halloween flash fiction we wrote for Eve Jacob’s blog. We had the idea after visiting the Edinburgh Dungeons, but didn’t have a chance to write it. So when Eve asked for Halloween flash fiction, we knew this was our chance. It’s called House of Wolves and follows Ripley and Tristan as they visit a haunted house attraction on Halloween and find that some monsters are real. Read it here.

Our second treat is a crazy/awkward interview we did with Anya Breton. Find out what we think of robots, which of our characters we’d like to bring to life and that wouldn’t be such a good idea. Check it out here.

And our third and final treat is from L K Jay, our fellow ghost hunter. Her ghost story, The Listening Post is FREE today and tomorrow. Who doesn’t love a ghost story on Halloween? Download it here UK    USA

And here’s a random picture of our pumpkins.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

 

Halloween Treats

As Halloween is galloping towards us like the headless horsemen, it’s time to go trick or treating. Except the only trick you have to do is find the answers to the following questions then protect your sweet bucket from any ghouls who may try to steal it and run down the long, dark path to Ravens Retreat (here) to leave your answers at the door. As it’s Halloweek, we’ll also be giving away a copy of our ghost story collection, Deadly Reflections. So you get to win four books!

First, go knock on Reece’s door and search his crypt for these answers:

Reece’s blog

What is the final book in the Buan trilogy called?
What is Reece’s secondary career outside of writing?
How old was Reece when he started writing?

Now creep over to Jeremy’s and rummage around in his creepy basement to find these answers:

Jeremy’s blog

What are Razorbacks?
What does Jeremy have in common with Orion?
What is the name of the board game in The Orion Chronicles?

Time to brave the dank corridors of Ravens Retreat (don’t mind the patients; they’re already dead) and search for these answers:

C L Raven’s blog

Which company did C L Raven threaten to invade with glitter guns and make them sparkle like a Twilight vampire?
In Soul Asylum, in what year did the East Wing burn down?
What did Calamityville Horror do when they were meant to be doing a vigil in the Skirrid Inn?

Did you survive? Post the answers in the comments and the first 3 correct answers will win. Happy hunting!

Ghost Punting

It’s been a while since we went ghost hunting with fellow writer L K Jay and Cambridge had been planned since last year so this weekend we finally managed to meet up and travel to Huntingdon. It’s three and a half hours from Cardiff, which meant waking at an ungodly hour – 5:45 a.m. It should be illegal to be up at that hour. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad, if we hadn’t still been awake at 2:00 a.m. The week before any trip will always be a bad week for sleeping, due to pre-trip/packing anxiety. We’re pretty sure it was Red Bull driving General Pinkinton. Either that or we’re great at driving whilst asleep When we stopped at the Services, some guy shouted “I like your suspenders!” at Cat – she was wearing bright orange and black stripy tights. We refused to acknowledge him, so he kept shouting it then he and his mate stood way too close behind us on the escalator. One centimetre closer and we would’ve kicked them back down the escalator. We try to avoid human contact and being space invaded by strangers is the fastest way to having our fists lodged in your oesophagus. Listen dickwads – if you are too stupid to realise that suspenders are a belt worn around the waist to hold up stockings and are not in fact tights, then we are not even going to waste the energy it would take to flip you the bird. These guys are the reason the Eugenics debate still rages.

Then the junction we wanted to get to Huntingdon was closed because of an accident. The entire stretch of road was blocked off, leading to us being diverted. Somehow we still managed to get there. After arriving in Huntingdon, we dumped our stuff, grabbed our cameras then caught the bus to Cambridge. We were fascinated by the weird bus road – it was a specialised bus route with strips of road separated by large rectangular gaps filled with weeds and grass. We thought perhaps the council couldn’t afford to fill in the road properly, but it turns out they were car traps to prevent cars from using the road. On our journey we passed fields owned by Ministry of Defence. One of the fields had cows in it. So we concluded that a herd of cattle is actually protecting our country. They must be some kind of super soldier. We have to congratulate them – it’s a great disguise. It will totally fool any enemies.

As we got to King’s College in Cambridge, we saw students in their mortar boards and gowns. It was graduation day, which meant we couldn’t get into any of the colleges to do some ghost hunting. L K Jay’s an ex Cambridge graduate so her Cam card is like a key to the city, but today they’d changed the locks. We always manage to visit a place on the same day that some big event is on that we didn’t know about it. It’s a gift. There was also a scavenger hunt, so there were runners clutching maps trying to fight their way through the crowds. We were tempted to tackle one of them and steal their map so we could navigate through the crowded streets, but we didn’t fancy our chances of outrunning them.

Then as we reached a section of shops, we heard a fire alarm blaring. Everyone was being evacuated. A little while later when we returned, the road was closed off and there was a fire engine parked up. It turned out to be a bomb scare.

We definitely picked a fine day to visit.

We visited a haunted bookshop, which is haunted by a little girl whose presence is always detected with the scent of violets. The bookshop is tiny and smells of old books. We would have liked to stay there for a while, but you could only really get three people in there comfortably, so we didn’t have the room to explore properly. We went to see a haunted photography shop, where people have seen a ghost standing on the stairs. We made our way to Peterhall, the oldest college in Cambridge. There used to be a shadowy figure that lurked above the gate. Anyone who saw it supposedly committed suicide. Priests performed an exorcism in the 1960s and there haven’t been any sightings or suicides since. Right by Peterhall was a hidden graveyard. Naturally we explored it.

As we were in Cambridge, we had to have the full experience, so booked to go on a punt ride. You can hire the punts and control them yourself, but that sounded like a recipe for disaster, so we decided the safest thing for everyone would be to have a guide. We didn’t bring a change of clothes, so didn’t particularly want to end up in the Cam, delighting the other tourists. Our guide, Max, was great and told us lots of interesting facts about the bridges and the colleges. The whole time we were there, we were desperate to see someone fall into the Cam (don’t judge, we know we’re bad people) and on the way back, we got our wish. Well, Cat did. She was lucky enough to witness a man falling off the punt into the river We’re hoping the camcorder captured the momentous occasion, but if it didn’t, there’s plenty of footage of ducks and geese for you to enjoy.

In the evening we went on a ghost walk around the city. Cambridge has a lot of ghosts so we didn’t get to hear about all of them. During the Black Death, Cambridge’s priests were dying and the townspeople were terrified that without a priest, the dead’s souls would be at unrest. So they built a college to train more priests. It was a spooky building and is apparently haunted by Reverend Butts (no laughing at the back). He hanged himself and was found by one of the choir boys, with his dog lying beneath him, apparently waiting for help to arrive, rather than fetching help. There’s now a statue of the dog. Though to be fair, our boys also would have sat there, rather than gone for help. The cats would eat us. It’s also haunted by a man and woman. He was a student, she was the daughter of someone important (it’s been a tiring time, so forgive our bad memories). They’d met for a clandestine tryst in her room. When her father came home, she stashed her lover in the linen press. Her father told her they were going on holiday to their country home, her bags had been packed and the carriage was waiting. The college was then locked over the holidays. Three weeks later, she returned home and when she opened the linen press, her rotting boyfriend fell into her arms. There wasn’t a handle on the other side. She died not long later and her father went against her wishes and buried her away from her lover. But their ghosts now meet up at night and walk hand in hand until dawn when they go to their different churchyards. The guide thought it a romantic story. Yes, we also find the idea of your decomposing boyfriend falling into your arms highly romantic. Mills and Boon is filled with that sort of stuff.

Turned out, near where that college stands, used to be a ditch to protect the city. It soon got filled with rubbish, rotten food and you guessed it, bodies. Then they filled it in. We were basically standing on a giant grave. And some of the houses are now sinking into the ditch. Can’t help thinking someone should’ve drawn the ditch on a map years ago. Then just to add to the random things that seemed to stalk us in Cambridge, our bus out got held up by someone being put in the back of an ambulance. It seems we might have jinxed this historic city.

On our way home we seemed to drive right into the storm that is heading for the UK tonight. Pinky is not good in high winds. He was like a pink pinball being buffeted along the motorways. Crossing motorway bridges or passing lorries turned a normal drive into a fairground ride. A weekend of accidents, ghost hunting, people falling into rivers and a bomb scare. Cambridge will definitely not be forgotten!