Update Time!

The year is almost drawing to a close and at the moment, I’m wondering where it’s gone. It’s also meant I’ve been wondering exactly what I’ve achieved, so here we go.

Current work in progress

Mother’s Night (Rise of the Hare Witch) now stands at 65,800 words and I’m determined to have a push to get this first draft finished before the end of the month. (Normally, I would have finished this some time ago but various things have held me up this year*. ) I had a read through last night, after just ploughing on regardless, of those early chapters and returning to those I found I was really enjoying the whole Yule fest/pagan vibe coming from the pages. It is exactly the sort of book I want to read – and that is why I’m writing it. As indicated in my Substack, I have been rewriting a few carols to fit my Folk! Here’s another, Solstice Pilgrims (a rewritten Good King Wenceslas to tell of the Mother and Grandmother (Hare Witch)). Much is made of song and dance in this book, but then it is the festive season and as Five Turns readers know, the Dance can mean so many things!

Solstice Pilgrims

Across the land, the Mother looked out
On midwinter’s solstice
When the snow lay round about
Hill and moor and forest

Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When the Hare Witch came in sight
Seeking she who ruled

Hither child, and stand by me,
If thou knowst it telling
Yonder creature who is she?
Where and what her dwelling?

Lady, she lives in the dark
In the cold of Helheim
In the mist of the abyss
Where began our own time

Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
Bring me our Folk hither
Thou and I will see her dine
When we bear them thither

The Mother made her way abroad
And her people followed
Through the drifts, their way they scored
To meet the one most hallowed

Lady, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
My blood runs cold, I know not how
I can go much longer

Mark my footsteps, good my child
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shall find the winter’s rage
Freeze they flesh less coldly.

In the Mother’s steps he walked,
To where the Hare Witch waited
For the pilgrims who’d been taught
Through her, their end was fated.
To her, their sacrifice was pure,
And ours is also pressing,
To feed the land, and Her adore
And receive Her sacred blessing.

Slasher Horror Novella in Verse – hovers close to the end but this is one of those written with no pressure on either author and life gets in the way. The end will come when it will come (but I will say this, it is good!)

What’s to Come?

Into Oblivion – my WWI story inspired by the early observation balloon units which were dotted above the battlefields has been accepted into Coy Hall’s first anthology under his Scythian Wolf imprint. I was particularly pleased with this acceptance as Coy was operating a blind read policy.

Enough Rope – my gothic horror novella set in the Victorian East End and developing some aspects of the world of my novelette Asylum of Shadows will be out in 2025.

The Barricade – my post-apocalyptic novel with Lycan Valley Press is currently out on edit. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share publication dates and a bit more news in the near future.

Plans for Next Year

*I’ve thought long and hard about this but next year, I’ve decided to take a step back from mentoring and jumping in to help others apart from a few friends who I’ll always support at the drop of a hat. Having said that, I know perfectly well that if I see someone with a problem and in need some sort of help, I’ll still probably offer but I will be careful about how much time that takes. Does that make me selfish? A little, maybe, but I was brought up in an environment which taught me to put others first and that still holds true, however, I think I deserve a little ‘me’ time for once. And I’ll still be over at Horror Tree as well.

What do I intend to do with this ‘me’ time?

Twiggy Voo – is an alternative history novel set just prior to WWI, a war which may or may not happen depending on events. Either way, it is a descendent of Napoleon who sits on the throne after Wellington lost at Waterloo. The British royal family is ‘controlled’ and certain members of society have been pushed aside. Winston Churchill in particular is now a rising industrial magnate whose sausages have given him the income to re-infiltrate society’s upper echelons. Cue a murder mystery at the dowager empress’s home with many historical figures appearing in a slightly different guise. This is a comedic effort with cosy crime overtones and I wrote the first few chapters a few years back. Rereading the other night it made me chuckle, so yes, I plan on completing this one.

Women of the Witch Eye – this dark historical novel is currently out on submission and I intend to write the second in this series, taking my characters, John Milton and Jennet Device, back to London at the time of the Putney Debates. I’ve a lot of books to read and research for this one!

In addition to the above, I’m also hoping to carve out time to write several short stories as I like to see a handful of these published each year. Plus I have two other completed novels which I am continuing to shop around. Part of me is thinking I might self-publish those.

Poetry? – oh, yes there are plans. A couple of co-authored things in the pipeline but I intend to work on a new found poetry collection, this one being a dive into the circumstances of poverty during the Victorian era. My family history research led me to primary sources including Workhouse notebooks and material from other investigators of the time. It’s a bit of an homage to those of my family from that time who endured life under the most brutal of circumstances.

Anything else? Well, if by some miracle I manage to to complete the above, then I have a novella idea lurking …

2023 Achievements

This leads me to my most recent reflections, reminding myself of what exactly I managed to come up with this year. Not bad, though I say it myself. Thank you to anyone who’s bought these books and read my work and also those who chose my stories and published them.