Tony Walker's Blog, page 2
October 27, 2016
The Ghost of a Place
I notice that in my writing I am often very specific about places. The train stops at Craven Arms; he navigates from Glasgow Central to Glasgow Queen Street station; his office is on Bedford Square; he lives in St John’s Wood and drives down past Point Lobos on the Pacific Coast Highway. Places are important to me.
In fact, I have often wondered whether places have souls. This year, the beloved Sheila and I travelled to Great Malvern to climb the Malvern Hills (from the Welsh Moelfryn – bald hill – I’m interested in words too, but you knew that.)
Then we went through Gloucestershire (see I’m at it again) Worcestershire, with a brief dip into Herefordshire before hitting Somerset and Glastonbury. As part of the trip we went to Stonehenge and Avebury before coming back through the Cotswolds on a sad and rainy Brexit day in Stow on the Wold then up to Cumbria and across into Scotland for a weekend in Kirkcubright. Some of these places breathe when we’re not looking. I’m sure of it.
In a previous career, not wholly unrelated to my writing, I was a tour leader for ghost tours. And from the age of a kid right up to dotage, I’ve stood by lakes and watched the snow come in, or on mountains feeling the wind, or in the middle of a marsh calf deep in peat, or by the sea when the waves are breaking from Ireland (or even in Ireland watching the phosphorescence off the coast of Connemara). But the feeling I get in these places, where does it arise?
Is it from the places themselves – so Glastonbury, or Tara or Whitby (or Jerusalem when woken by the call to prayer) – is it in the places – the dragon energy – that we feel. Does this cause the shiver in the haunted house, or do we take the haunting there ourselves? My rational brain tells me the haunting is all our own, but my heart tells me the world breathes. I’m heart over head every time. Except when I’m not. What about you?
Cockney Rebel: Austin Osman Spare — cakeordeathsite
Phil Baker’s excellent 2011 biography of the gloriously eccentric artist/magician Austin Osman Spare should hopefully revive interest in an unjustly neglected London artist. Hailed as the new Aubrey Beardsley at the tender age of 17 he fell into obscurity and lived in Dickensian squalor when the satyrs and general air of Yellow Book decadence that […]
via Cockney Rebel: Austin Osman Spare — cakeordeathsite
Moonchild ~ Aleister Crowley (The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult ~ Volume 3 (Sphere, 1974)) — When churchyards yawn…
And so we move onto the next book in the series with Crowley’s occult novel, here called Moonchild but also known as The Butterfly Net and, of course, Liber LXXXI. In his brief foreword Crowley states that he wrote this book in 1917. It wasn’t published until the short-lived Mandrake Press put it into print […]
October 26, 2016
Places to Spend Halloween in UK or Ireland.
A word of warning – don’t go! Well, don’t go on your own at night. And don’t go without reading this first.
1) Highgate Cemetery, London: N6 6PJ Tel: 20 8340 1834
Highgate Cemetary is a wonderful Victorian graveyard straight out of a Gothic dream. It’s overgrown, it has ornate tombs and lots of stories. It is also the haunt of a vampire – at least it was in the 1970s. But the people who run the cemetery got understandably upset at would be vampire hunters (and vampire brides) breaking into the cemetery and desecrating the graves. They look dimly on such people, so when you go, be interested in the history and enjoy the tombology, but don’t mention Halloween. I’ve been many times and once I went with a group of American tourists. Our guide was a mysterious Albino, who guessed our true interests. Above the catacombs (there are glass bricks in the pavement above that let you look down) he said he had never been allowed in there. It was a place reserved for special people. He was also extremely anxious that none of us straggled off into the undergrowth and that we were clear of the place by nightfall. I’ll leave you to your own conclusions. Don’t upset anyone, but please go.
2) Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, NE66 5NJ Tel: 01668 215359
Is Chillingham the most haunted castle in England? It’s certainly up there. It’s one of the places that freaked me out. When I used to stay there, I’d get a room to myself and it was unnaturally cold. There is a story that a previous night watchman used to look forward to his chats with the ghostly lady who walked the place in the winter nights when the family were in London. Then there’s the blue boy. I saw a door slamming on its own. I heard ghostly engines of WW2 army vehicles outside the Stable Block and a friend staying in the stable block saw a woman walk through a wall (she hurled a mug of coffee at it).
3) Greyfriars Kirkyard, Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh, Scotland : EH1 2QQ Tel 0131 664 4314
Famously haunted and it has the ghost tours to prove it. Visitors claim to often see things or sense frightening presences. My dad was brought up in a house that adjoins the kirkyard on Grassmarket and he told me about a ball of fire that proceeded through the bedroom while he had a Navy friend staying while they were in their 20s. Lot of weird things happened in the house, confirmed by my uncle independently – and they all came through from the Kirkyard!
4) Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland. Tel: 057 9323040
This is a half ruined castle in the process of restoration. I used to take groups here and we stayed in the delightfully restored parts. The facilities are consistent with a half ruined castle in the middle of Ireland, so don’t expect a Marriott Inn. One misty Halloween I stayed in the circular room high up in the tower, complete with a real log fire, a bottle of wine and a black dog called Bob. He really was a black dog. I had a strange experience in the cellars when I thought I was contacted by a female spirit long dead and I saw a ghostly black kitten. Strange but true. The place is supposed to be built on a site sacred to the druids. It’s a must visit place.
5) The Ancient Ram Inn, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire GL12 7HF.
I’ve never stayed here (surprising) but I used to get lots of stories back from people who had. The place has been investigated and been on TV lots but what always struck me was the malevolence of the spirits. I had people telling me stories of ghosts pushing wardrobes onto them and tripping them downstairs. I had one guy tell me how lights came on and off and his ipad switched itself on in the night. When the lights were on they weren’t even plugged in, so he said.
5) Pluckley Village, Ashford, Kent, England, TN27
This pretty English rural village has featured on TV shows both as a country idyll but also because of its ghosts. It has tons of ghosts wandering the streets which have been much photographed. It even features in the Guinness Book of Records as the most haunted village in England. There’s a screaming man in the brickworks, A highwayman at Fright Corner (yup), a schoolmaster found hanging by her pupils and an old woman smoking a pipe on the bridge. If you go on Halloween, you might even get photographed yourself. Don’t dress up too weird.
6) The Crown Inn, High Street, Bildeston, Suffolk, IP7 7EB Tel: 01449 740510
A pretty thatched country inn in a pretty village. But it’s built on a plague pit! The place has an atmosphere as soon as you walk in. I stayed there one hot night in June. It was very hot. Then I woke up in the middle of the night freezing cold. I pulled my bedclothes round me and thought it was just cold and then when I woke up in the morning, it was warm again. Then they told me that was the room that a servant boy had hanged himself in the long ago. One of our party claimed to get coherent and strange messages through by automatic writing.
7) Yorkgate Railway Station, 303 York Street, Belfast, BT15 1JA
A haunted railway station! They’re the best. Ever since I saw Sapphire and Steel’s The Railway Station, I’ve been a sucker for these. Here a ghost sits at night in the station’s canteen, another (or is it the same one got a bit bored of sitting?) lurks in the stations running sheds. Apparently he is the ghost of a murdered railway employee beaten and left to die in a robbery. Night staff hear footsteps going all night long.
8) Jamaica Inn, Bolventor, Launceston, Cornwall PL15 7TS. Tel: 01566 86250
You can stay here. Supposed to be the most haunted inn in England, never mind Cornwall. It sits by the main A30 road, but in the heart of the desolate Bodmin Moor. The Hound of The Baskervilles may have been set on Dartmoor, but Bodmin Moor would have served just as well for atmosphere. The Inn featured in the TV series Most Haunted as did many of the places, I’ve just listed. People hear disembodied spirits muttering in a foreign language, which is probably Cornish (Bodmin means Stone House in Cornish). You can hear stagecoaches clattering on the long gone cobbles outside, feel unnatural waves of cold and see figures in Tricorn hats – just like pirates.
But if you go to any of these places on Halloween, remember your etiquette. There will be normal people nearby and the owners have to make a living, so be courteous and buy something.
via Blogger http://ift.tt/2f8pZWL
via Blogger http://ift.tt/2ectgzF
Places to Spend Halloween in UK or Ireland.
A word of warning – don’t go! Well, don’t go on your own at night. And don’t go without reading this first.
1) Highgate Cemetery, London: N6 6PJ Tel: 20 8340 1834
Highgate Cemetary is a wonderful Victorian graveyard straight out of a Gothic dream. It’s overgrown, it has ornate tombs and lots of stories. It is also the haunt of a vampire – at least it was in the 1970s. But the people who run the cemetery got understandably upset at would be vampire hunters (and vampire brides) breaking into the cemetery and desecrating the graves. They look dimly on such people, so when you go, be interested in the history and enjoy the tombology, but don’t mention Halloween. I’ve been many times and once I went with a group of American tourists. Our guide was a mysterious Albino, who guessed our true interests. Above the catacombs (there are glass bricks in the pavement above that let you look down) he said he had never been allowed in there. It was a place reserved for special people. He was also extremely anxious that none of us straggled off into the undergrowth and that we were clear of the place by nightfall. I’ll leave you to your own conclusions. Don’t upset anyone, but please go.
2) Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, NE66 5NJ Tel: 01668 215359
Is Chillingham the most haunted castle in England? It’s certainly up there. It’s one of the places that freaked me out. When I used to stay there, I’d get a room to myself and it was unnaturally cold. There is a story that a previous night watchman used to look forward to his chats with the ghostly lady who walked the place in the winter nights when the family were in London. Then there’s the blue boy. I saw a door slamming on its own. I heard ghostly engines of WW2 army vehicles outside the Stable Block and a friend staying in the stable block saw a woman walk through a wall (she hurled a mug of coffee at it).
3) Greyfriars Kirkyard, Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh, Scotland : EH1 2QQ Tel 0131 664 4314
Famously haunted and it has the ghost tours to prove it. Visitors claim to often see things or sense frightening presences. My dad was brought up in a house that adjoins the kirkyard on Grassmarket and he told me about a ball of fire that proceeded through the bedroom while he had a Navy friend staying while they were in their 20s. Lot of weird things happened in the house, confirmed by my uncle independently – and they all came through from the Kirkyard!
4) Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland. Tel: 057 9323040
This is a half ruined castle in the process of restoration. I used to take groups here and we stayed in the delightfully restored parts. The facilities are consistent with a half ruined castle in the middle of Ireland, so don’t expect a Marriott Inn. One misty Halloween I stayed in the circular room high up in the tower, complete with a real log fire, a bottle of wine and a black dog called Bob. He really was a black dog. I had a strange experience in the cellars when I thought I was contacted by a female spirit long dead and I saw a ghostly black kitten. Strange but true. The place is supposed to be built on a site sacred to the druids. It’s a must visit place.
5) The Ancient Ram Inn, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire GL12 7HF.
I’ve never stayed here (surprising) but I used to get lots of stories back from people who had. The place has been investigated and been on TV lots but what always struck me was the malevolence of the spirits. I had people telling me stories of ghosts pushing wardrobes onto them and tripping them downstairs. I had one guy tell me how lights came on and off and his ipad switched itself on in the night. When the lights were on they weren’t even plugged in, so he said.
5) Pluckley Village, Ashford, Kent, England, TN27
This pretty English rural village has featured on TV shows both as a country idyll but also because of its ghosts. It has tons of ghosts wandering the streets which have been much photographed. It even features in the Guinness Book of Records as the most haunted village in England. There’s a screaming man in the brickworks, A highwayman at Fright Corner (yup), a schoolmaster found hanging by her pupils and an old woman smoking a pipe on the bridge. If you go on Halloween, you might even get photographed yourself. Don’t dress up too weird.
6) The Crown Inn, High Street, Bildeston, Suffolk, IP7 7EB Tel: 01449 740510
A pretty thatched country inn in a pretty village. But it’s built on a plague pit! The place has an atmosphere as soon as you walk in. I stayed there one hot night in June. It was very hot. Then I woke up in the middle of the night freezing cold. I pulled my bedclothes round me and thought it was just cold and then when I woke up in the morning, it was warm again. Then they told me that was the room that a servant boy had hanged himself in the long ago. One of our party claimed to get coherent and strange messages through by automatic writing.
7) Yorkgate Railway Station, 303 York Street, Belfast, BT15 1JA
A haunted railway station! They’re the best. Ever since I saw Sapphire and Steel’s The Railway Station, I’ve been a sucker for these. Here a ghost sits at night in the station’s canteen, another (or is it the same one got a bit bored of sitting?) lurks in the stations running sheds. Apparently he is the ghost of a murdered railway employee beaten and left to die in a robbery. Night staff hear footsteps going all night long.
8) Jamaica Inn, Bolventor, Launceston, Cornwall PL15 7TS. Tel: 01566 86250
You can stay here. Supposed to be the most haunted inn in England, never mind Cornwall. It sits by the main A30 road, but in the heart of the desolate Bodmin Moor. The Hound of The Baskervilles may have been set on Dartmoor, but Bodmin Moor would have served just as well for atmosphere. The Inn featured in the TV series Most Haunted as did many of the places, I’ve just listed. People hear disembodied spirits muttering in a foreign language, which is probably Cornish (Bodmin means Stone House in Cornish). You can hear stagecoaches clattering on the long gone cobbles outside, feel unnatural waves of cold and see figures in Tricorn hats – just like pirates.
But if you go to any of these places on Halloween, remember your etiquette. There will be normal people nearby and the owners have to make a living, so be courteous and buy something.
via Blogger http://ift.tt/2f8pZWL
via Blogger http://ift.tt/2ectgzF
Places to Spend Halloween in UK or Ireland.
A word of warning – don’t go! Well, don’t go on your own at night. And don’t go without reading this first.
1) Highgate Cemetery, London: N6 6PJ Tel: 20 8340 1834
Highgate Cemetary is a wonderful Victorian graveyard straight out of a Gothic dream. It’s overgrown, it has ornate tombs and lots of stories. It is also the haunt of a vampire – at least it was in the 1970s. But the people who run the cemetery got understandably upset at would be vampire hunters (and vampire brides) breaking into the cemetery and desecrating the graves. They look dimly on such people, so when you go, be interested in the history and enjoy the tombology, but don’t mention Halloween. I’ve been many times and once I went with a group of American tourists. Our guide was a mysterious Albino, who guessed our true interests. Above the catacombs (there are glass bricks in the pavement above that let you look down) he said he had never been allowed in there. It was a place reserved for special people. He was also extremely anxious that none of us straggled off into the undergrowth and that we were clear of the place by nightfall. I’ll leave you to your own conclusions. Don’t upset anyone, but please go.
2) Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, NE66 5NJ Tel: 01668 215359
Is Chillingham the most haunted castle in England? It’s certainly up there. It’s one of the places that freaked me out. When I used to stay there, I’d get a room to myself and it was unnaturally cold. There is a story that a previous night watchman used to look forward to his chats with the ghostly lady who walked the place in the winter nights when the family were in London. Then there’s the blue boy. I saw a door slamming on its own. I heard ghostly engines of WW2 army vehicles outside the Stable Block and a friend staying in the stable block saw a woman walk through a wall (she hurled a mug of coffee at it).
3) Greyfriars Kirkyard, Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh, Scotland : EH1 2QQ Tel 0131 664 4314
Famously haunted and it has the ghost tours to prove it. Visitors claim to often see things or sense frightening presences. My dad was brought up in a house that adjoins the kirkyard on Grassmarket and he told me about a ball of fire that proceeded through the bedroom while he had a Navy friend staying while they were in their 20s. Lot of weird things happened in the house, confirmed by my uncle independently – and they all came through from the Kirkyard!
4) Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland. Tel: 057 9323040
This is a half ruined castle in the process of restoration. I used to take groups here and we stayed in the delightfully restored parts. The facilities are consistent with a half ruined castle in the middle of Ireland, so don’t expect a Marriott Inn. One misty Halloween I stayed in the circular room high up in the tower, complete with a real log fire, a bottle of wine and a black dog called Bob. He really was a black dog. I had a strange experience in the cellars when I thought I was contacted by a female spirit long dead and I saw a ghostly black kitten. Strange but true. The place is supposed to be built on a site sacred to the druids. It’s a must visit place.
5) The Ancient Ram Inn, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire GL12 7HF.
I’ve never stayed here (surprising) but I used to get lots of stories back from people who had. The place has been investigated and been on TV lots but what always struck me was the malevolence of the spirits. I had people telling me stories of ghosts pushing wardrobes onto them and tripping them downstairs. I had one guy tell me how lights came on and off and his ipad switched itself on in the night. When the lights were on they weren’t even plugged in, so he said.
5) Pluckley Village, Ashford, Kent, England, TN27
This pretty English rural village has featured on TV shows both as a country idyll but also because of its ghosts. It has tons of ghosts wandering the streets which have been much photographed. It even features in the Guinness Book of Records as the most haunted village in England. There’s a screaming man in the brickworks, A highwayman at Fright Corner (yup), a schoolmaster found hanging by her pupils and an old woman smoking a pipe on the bridge. If you go on Halloween, you might even get photographed yourself. Don’t dress up too weird.
6) The Crown Inn, High Street, Bildeston, Suffolk, IP7 7EB Tel: 01449 740510
A pretty thatched country inn in a pretty village. But it’s built on a plague pit! The place has an atmosphere as soon as you walk in. I stayed there one hot night in June. It was very hot. Then I woke up in the middle of the night freezing cold. I pulled my bedclothes round me and thought it was just cold and then when I woke up in the morning, it was warm again. Then they told me that was the room that a servant boy had hanged himself in the long ago. One of our party claimed to get coherent and strange messages through by automatic writing.
7) Yorkgate Railway Station, 303 York Street, Belfast, BT15 1JA
A haunted railway station! They’re the best. Ever since I saw Sapphire and Steel’s The Railway Station, I’ve been a sucker for these. Here a ghost sits at night in the station’s canteen, another (or is it the same one got a bit bored of sitting?) lurks in the stations running sheds. Apparently he is the ghost of a murdered railway employee beaten and left to die in a robbery. Night staff hear footsteps going all night long.
8) Jamaica Inn, Bolventor, Launceston, Cornwall PL15 7TS. Tel: 01566 86250
You can stay here. Supposed to be the most haunted inn in England, never mind Cornwall. It sits by the main A30 road, but in the heart of the desolate Bodmin Moor. The Hound of The Baskervilles may have been set on Dartmoor, but Bodmin Moor would have served just as well for atmosphere. The Inn featured in the TV series Most Haunted as did many of the places, I’ve just listed. People hear disembodied spirits muttering in a foreign language, which is probably Cornish (Bodmin means Stone House in Cornish). You can hear stagecoaches clattering on the long gone cobbles outside, feel unnatural waves of cold and see figures in Tricorn hats – just like pirates.
But if you go to any of these places on Halloween, remember your etiquette. There will be normal people nearby and the owners have to make a living, so be courteous and buy something.
via Blogger http://ift.tt/2f8pZWL
Places to Spend Halloween in UK or Ireland.
A word of warning – don’t go! Well, don’t go on your own at night. And don’t go without reading this first.
1) Highgate Cemetery, London: N6 6PJ Tel: 20 8340 1834
Highgate Cemetary is a wonderful Victorian graveyard straight out of a Gothic dream. It’s overgrown, it has ornate tombs and lots of stories. It is also the haunt of a vampire – at least it was in the 1970s. But the people who run the cemetery got understandably upset at would be vampire hunters (and vampire brides) breaking into the cemetery and desecrating the graves. They look dimly on such people, so when you go, be interested in the history and enjoy the tombology, but don’t mention Halloween. I’ve been many times and once I went with a group of American tourists. Our guide was a mysterious Albino, who guessed our true interests. Above the catacombs (there are glass bricks in the pavement above that let you look down) he said he had never been allowed in there. It was a place reserved for special people. He was also extremely anxious that none of us straggled off into the undergrowth and that we were clear of the place by nightfall. I’ll leave you to your own conclusions. Don’t upset anyone, but please go.
2) Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, NE66 5NJ Tel: 01668 215359
Is Chillingham the most haunted castle in England? It’s certainly up there. It’s one of the places that freaked me out. When I used to stay there, I’d get a room to myself and it was unnaturally cold. There is a story that a previous night watchman used to look forward to his chats with the ghostly lady who walked the place in the winter nights when the family were in London. Then there’s the blue boy. I saw a door slamming on its own. I heard ghostly engines of WW2 army vehicles outside the Stable Block and a friend staying in the stable block saw a woman walk through a wall (she hurled a mug of coffee at it).
3) Greyfriars Kirkyard, Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh, Scotland : EH1 2QQ Tel 0131 664 4314
Famously haunted and it has the ghost tours to prove it. Visitors claim to often see things or sense frightening presences. My dad was brought up in a house that adjoins the kirkyard on Grassmarket and he told me about a ball of fire that proceeded through the bedroom while he had a Navy friend staying while they were in their 20s. Lot of weird things happened in the house, confirmed by my uncle independently – and they all came through from the Kirkyard!
4) Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland. Tel: 057 9323040
This is a half ruined castle in the process of restoration. I used to take groups here and we stayed in the delightfully restored parts. The facilities are consistent with a half ruined castle in the middle of Ireland, so don’t expect a Marriott Inn. One misty Halloween I stayed in the circular room high up in the tower, complete with a real log fire, a bottle of wine and a black dog called Bob. He really was a black dog. I had a strange experience in the cellars when I thought I was contacted by a female spirit long dead and I saw a ghostly black kitten. Strange but true. The place is supposed to be built on a site sacred to the druids. It’s a must visit place.
5) The Ancient Ram Inn, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire GL12 7HF.
I’ve never stayed here (surprising) but I used to get lots of stories back from people who had. The place has been investigated and been on TV lots but what always struck me was the malevolence of the spirits. I had people telling me stories of ghosts pushing wardrobes onto them and tripping them downstairs. I had one guy tell me how lights came on and off and his ipad switched itself on in the night. When the lights were on they weren’t even plugged in, so he said.
5) Pluckley Village, Ashford, Kent, England, TN27
This pretty English rural village has featured on TV shows both as a country idyll but also because of its ghosts. It has tons of ghosts wandering the streets which have been much photographed. It even features in the Guinness Book of Records as the most haunted village in England. There’s a screaming man in the brickworks, A highwayman at Fright Corner (yup), a schoolmaster found hanging by her pupils and an old woman smoking a pipe on the bridge. If you go on Halloween, you might even get photographed yourself. Don’t dress up too weird.
6) The Crown Inn, High Street, Bildeston, Suffolk, IP7 7EB Tel: 01449 740510
A pretty thatched country inn in a pretty village. But it’s built on a plague pit! The place has an atmosphere as soon as you walk in. I stayed there one hot night in June. It was very hot. Then I woke up in the middle of the night freezing cold. I pulled my bedclothes round me and thought it was just cold and then when I woke up in the morning, it was warm again. Then they told me that was the room that a servant boy had hanged himself in the long ago. One of our party claimed to get coherent and strange messages through by automatic writing.
7) Yorkgate Railway Station, 303 York Street, Belfast, BT15 1JA
A haunted railway station! They’re the best. Ever since I saw Sapphire and Steel’s The Railway Station, I’ve been a sucker for these. Here a ghost sits at night in the station’s canteen, another (or is it the same one got a bit bored of sitting?) lurks in the stations running sheds. Apparently he is the ghost of a murdered railway employee beaten and left to die in a robbery. Night staff hear footsteps going all night long.
8) Jamaica Inn, Bolventor, Launceston, Cornwall PL15 7TS. Tel: 01566 86250
You can stay here. Supposed to be the most haunted inn in England, never mind Cornwall. It sits by the main A30 road, but in the heart of the desolate Bodmin Moor. The Hound of The Baskervilles may have been set on Dartmoor, but Bodmin Moor would have served just as well for atmosphere. The Inn featured in the TV series Most Haunted as did many of the places, I’ve just listed. People hear disembodied spirits muttering in a foreign language, which is probably Cornish (Bodmin means Stone House in Cornish). You can hear stagecoaches clattering on the long gone cobbles outside, feel unnatural waves of cold and see figures in Tricorn hats – just like pirates.
But if you go to any of these places on Halloween, remember your etiquette. There will be normal people nearby and the owners have to make a living, so be courteous and buy something.
via Blogger http://ift.tt/2f8pZWL
October 14, 2016
Using Twitter to Sell Shit
One solution is to use lists. Twitter has a wonderful feature that you can assign people to lists. I have for example:
Horror - groups and things tweeting about horror movies, books, etc
Groups - writers groups,
Marketing - people giving cool tips about how to market books
Writers - lots of individual writers trying to sell their books to me.
Political - newpapers etc,.
Funny - what it says
etc
So I can read all writers, all marketeers and filter out the rest. Still 5000 marketeers is a lot of tweets. When it comes to writers, many of them mainly tweet about their books. I don't find these effective as many don't appeal - the odd ones do, but many I just end up muting. I bet they mute me too.
There are various email list readers such as Hootsuite
Managing your lists can be an issue. I wish there was a clear drag and drop app to do this, but I have been using Twitter List Manager because, although it looks a bit primitive, it lets you know who is in a list, which list they are in and also if they are NOT in a list. There is a nicer looking one called Icotile which does support drag and drop. The only trouble with this is that from the mass sea of faces, which you can drag and drop (hooray!) you don't know who is already in a list or of they're not in a list and you don't know who the hell they are either. If they have their name on their icon/avatar that's good, but most don't so I've gone back to Twitter List Manager
I tend to try and send interesting and relevant articles I found and I have been using
Klout and Buffer and also using the schedule feature on Hootsuite and also finding things on Stumbleupon, This absolutely works as I have been gaining droves of followers because I post such remarkably interesting stuff. I tend to be a little bit eclectic and I think for best effect you should try to be focused in what you post.
Probably don't post your stream of consciousness. No one really cares.
But, and here's the nub of it, what is the point of having 34,000 followers and following most of them back if they are muting you and you are muting them? Because you cannot read all that shit.
One way round it that cunning people have is follow people to get them to follow back then quickly unfollow them! Bastards. But there's a nifty app called Crowdfire which stops all that nonsense. It tells you who has unfollowed you and who doesn't follow you back.
But that's not enough. For example I sent out notice of my new audiobook reading to my many hundred followers and when I checked the tweet activity, 17 people had seen it, none had clicked on it.
So what's the point in having a million Twitter follows whose tweets you don't read and they don't read yours either. It's not even onanism, at least that gets results for the onanist.
I think you're better off with a community of Tweeters whose stuff you read and they read yours.
What do you say?
October 7, 2016
Amazon Kindle and Diminishing Sales
But as 2015 grew old, my sales dwindled. The basic e-book marketing premise then was - create a "funnel book" which is free, then use that to promote your books which aren't free. I had some trouble doing that. One time, Kindle made my best selling book free when I didn't want them to, and when I tried to create a free book by asking them to price match, they politely wrote back and said they didn't have to do that. This is true. No hard feelings, but God loves a trier. I had a gap in publishing anything, mainly because I didn't write much: I had a new relationship (with Dungeons and Dragons Online).
When DDO and I fell out (don't worry we'll get back together at some time in the future), I turned again to writing and was like what the heck! Look at my sales! I thought it was because of frequency of publication so I published four new stories. Free ebooks went okay, in slightly less numbers that previous years, but the sales stayed near the bottom. Even stuff that had sold well, didn't.
I figured with that Kindle must have an algorithm that favours newly published books. But this didn't seem to work with my new stuff. Of course the new stuff could just be dire, that was certainly on my mind. Still I had good unsolicited reviews both on Kindle and via social media. Then I wondered whether it was the length of the story.
There had been a glut of the so-called Kindle Gold Rushers who put together 1000 words of click-bait crap and sold it for .99c, but Kindle got wise to this and they definitely included something in their algorithm about length. But I have a couple of novel length works which also aren't moving.
So, that left me with the thought that maybe my stuff wasn't selling because it didn't appeal to people.
Then, while trawling through Twitter and the Blogsphere, I came across articles suggesting that all indie e-books were suffering (let's not say all, but most) drops in sales. The problem is that Kindle is so engorged by indie books and that they are not filtered or selected by the agent to publisher selection process, that many are of indifferent quality. People don't know what's good.
I am a man of mature years now. I remember when I was a kid listening to bands there were probably only about 50-100 bands that everyone the world listened to. And in your genre far fewer - so we listened to Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, UFO, then there was Jethro Tull and I liked Horslips (unusual in that in the UK I guess) and then of course Hawkwind, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Wishbone Ash and into Prog land. My friends listened to similar. People into Soul liked their bands. There were bands in the charts but the number overall was small. Now there are millions.
On Soundcloud (oh, yes, deft plug there) now I have some discovered some fantastic bands. Really, really talented, but their listener numbers are small. The Internet has done a wonderful thing for people in that they can get access to an audience, but the potential audience is so huge, your voice is drowned out by noise, even if your voice is lovely.
So maybe we will have to stop thinking we can do it for the money, and just do it for the love of art.
October 2, 2016
Psychogeography: a dérive round Derwentwater.
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So we parked in Portinscale. I made a comment about the name - it's supposed to mean the "prostitute's hut" "Portcwen" but I have a guess that it might be Cumbric Port (G)wen - white port. I made a little comment about this.
Then we walked down past Derwent Bank, the HF holiday place with the lovely garden and the Dandelion Cafe to the jetty on the lake. The place said it was closed with no access for visitors but we walked it anyway and no one stopped us. The light on the lake was awesome. It's worth going to the cafe for the chance to walk down to their jetty.
We walked by Nichol End Marina
Then we walked on. We went past Jemima Puddleduck House (not sure if that's its real name)
Down at the Lake by Lingholm jetty there is a delapidated boat house.
Looking from Lingholm jetty you can see that the lake level is high because of all the recent rain.
Looking down into the Jaws of Borrowdale with the sun sparkling onto the lake.
From the same spot, the peak of Catbells (Cat Bield - or the wild cat's den)
The house is Fawe Park. I believe that is where they filmed the recent remake of Beatrix Potter.
Emerging from the woodland.
Only to plunge back into it again shortly after.
Sheila and me by Hawes End adding ourselves to the picture. The whole point of the trip was to point out the necessary subjective element in the story. I have a very Scottish mouth in this picture I think.
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Looking right after passing Hawes End.
I called this Swimming Bay, because I swam there once, when I was a boy.
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Sheila looking mysteriously down Borrowdale.
Just south of here is a spoil heap from an Elizabethan mine. We found lots of shiny quartz glittering in the sun and I said the place was called Goldscope. Apparently this is from Gottes Gab "God's Gift", though again I doubt that. I said the Elizabethan miners were looking for gold. That might not be true and Sheila and I had a long discussion about "what is truth." I said that truth is merely what we all agree it was. According to Kant the thing in-itself is not accessible to our understanding, what we perceive is the appearance of the thing. Everyone has a different experience of an event, there is therefore no event - it is only an amalgamation of different people's experiences. If there are no experiences there is no event. Sheila however is a Platonist. She thinks that the event exists indepenedently, even though no one can appreciate its form.
From the great bay at the south of the lake.
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Mary Mount Hotel where I had a lager shandy and Sheila had a pint of orange juice and lemonade because we were thirsty. The barman/owner wasn't as friendly as he has been on other occasions. We then walked to the landing stage and realised we couldn't get round and had to go back onto the road for a bit.
The wood where one January I saw a deer standing quiet in the gathering gloom.
Looking from Barrow Bay where I nearly once killed my daughter Catrin by walking on the ice when the lake was frozen, and she fell through...
The landing stage just north of Barrow Bay. There were lots of geese, pink feet and Canadas - all quite noisy.
Coming round Calfclose Bay
My conclusion was that of all the memories and scraps of history, all the ghosts I found at Derwentwater were ones I'd taken there myself. But this is what Sheila said
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