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Showing posts from April, 2019

#HistFicThursdays - Gothic Horror - Beneath a Darkening Sky

 Well, this is the last #HistFicThursday blog before I launch Beneath A Darkening Sky at an event in Thurso on Monday 13th . Shame it couldn't be a Friday 13th, but we can't have everything! One thing is for certain: October is the spookiest month. And not just because we have Halloween. Halloween could be a day later and October would still be the spookiest month... Look at how the light retreats at this time of the year: up here, the seasons' turning drains away the daylight at a rate of 2.5hours over the course of this month! Up here, anyway. Our ancestors knew, a long time before they tracked time using clocks, that this month we now call October was a time to look back at what has been and ahead to how we will survive the winter. Is it any wonder then that, with generations of people looking back, October became a month for souls and spectres? People we have loved and lost come back to visit our hearts, imaginations - and, perhaps, our homes - as we recall autumns of ...

Fantastic Fantasy Feasts Book Launch

Maybe outlaws have driven you from your home, or maybe the wyverns have destroyed everything you know.​ Whatever the reason, you are alone in the wilderness and you need to eat. You need this recipe book before those hungry vultures seize their chance.​ A tongue in cheek tale of fantasy cuisine. This book was written as a Christmas present for my brother and 3 of my sisters. We used to have super fun times playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and I knew the old handbook back to front. My favourite section was the Bestiary and I'd include the weird and wonderful creatures in my story of the time. I also loved creating characters. There's something quite thrilling about the role of a dice, and really, really hoping that you get a good enough WS (Weapon skill) to become a warrior. I wanted to be an elf when I was little (I think the phase came after wanting to be a mammoth) so it was a good opportunity for me to fulfil this life dream. (The mammoth would be a...

“Whippoorwill” By Robert Bartram Book Review

"Barely fourteen, Ceci Prejean is a tomboy running wild in the hot Louisiana summer. After breaking the nose of a local boy, her father decides to enlist the aid of Hecubah, a beautiful Creole woman, with a secret past, who takes Ceci in hand and turns her into a lady.  Now, eighteen-year-old Ceci meets and falls passionately in love with a handsome young northerner, Trent Sinclaire. Trent is a cadet at the West Point military academy. He acts as if he knows Ceci. They begin a torrid affair, even as the southern states begin to secede from the Union.  Only weeks before their wedding, the Confederate army attacks Fort Sumter and the civil war begins. Trent is called to active service in the north, leaving Ceci heartbroken in the south. Swearing vengeance on the union, after the untimely death of her family at the fall of New Orleans, Ceci meets with infamous spy master, Henry Doucet. He initiates her into the shadowy world of espionage. After her failure to avert the catast...