The Curse of Heatherwell House (Working Title) came from a slightly different place than many of the other stories in this collection. When I decided that I was going to put together a collection of short stories with the theme of Gothic Horror, I quizzed Clemency on what would scare her. She said “zombies”. Not the easiest thing to work with for Gothic Horror – give me a ghost any day. Here are some thoughts about how I went about creating The Curse of Heatherwell House … Once I had spoken to Clem about the things she finds scary – and discovered which of my back catalogue she found the creepiest – I started to get an idea for a story. It involved a vicar (obviously the younger son of a wealthy family, as all these Gothic vicars seem to be) who took over gravedigging responsibilities because the rest of his parish were too sick to do it. I was pleased with the premise – and perhaps it will turn into another story. Watch this space… But there was one major sticking problem: whils...
Today's #HistFicThursdays blog is a little bit different. The Horrible Histories songs I've shared so far have all been about specific people. Today, we're looking a little bit broader... Meet the Vikings: I have to say, the song above is my favourite Horrible Histories song! Both the songs in today's blog are my sort of music, even though they're not a lot like each other. But the music matches the theme and - without talking too much about the genius of the musicianship (my day job coming into play here) - these two songs show two very different sides of the Viking impact on Britain. The song above is what we are led to believe all Vikings were like. A couple of years ago, on a return from my sister's book launch in North Lincolnshire, we visited Lindisfarne. It is commercialised now, not a great deal like the Holy Island the monks had established there (although the earliest reference to this name appears to have been some 200 years after the Viking raid). B...