Today, in Caithness, the sun is shining and the air is clear. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that, certain weathers and certain times of the year ignite certain music in me. And, on late winter days which are filled with sunshine, I am usually to be found singing the songs of The Spinners . Inevitably, I start humming different ones of their songs (and of course adapting them to be about Orlando and Jess) as I go around doing different things. But I remember almost all the words to them. I haven't heard a lot of them in years, but they are all there, rooted in my memory. It is truly fascinating to think about how these songs have passed through history. They are part of my own nostalgia, which is why crisp sunny mornings make me incapable of ignoring the temptation to sing them, but they are part of something much bigger. There are songs amongst them which are a newer step in the folk music movement. Songs like Silver in the Stubble are amongs...
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 the past. The smell of the coal smoke rippling through our living room chimney and into the ever-more-sparse garden will always transport me directly back to my childhood.
I remember walking home from school, dodging the wet leaves in the marketplace and being drawn towards the smell of the fire at home. 500 miles and million years ago now: the ghosts of friends and neighbours, long-lost through death or distance, swirl around me as I stand in the time and place I am privileged to find myself in now.
And, of course, it is a small step from these ghosts to the ones conjured in my imagination. The darker ones. The ones who will find lurking within the pages of Beneath A Darkening Sky. These ghosts and goblins have been conjured with the mischievous intent of summoning a shiver to stretch down your spine. But, as with all gothic literature, they also play their role in exploring the very real - and very dark - things of which human beings are capable.
The ghosts of the gothic world cannot exist without the cruelty and suffering of the living. My S3 class, who spent weeks studying The Tell-Tale Heart with me - would be able to tell you that "psychological depth" is just as important to gothic literature as "supernatural elements".
Beneath A Darkening Sky does not just contain stories of the supernatural, it contains stories which analyse and critique the human condition.
So, embrace the spooky season by popping along to Spellbound Caithness on Monday to buy and copy of the book, or by ordering online here. Just be warned: there are ghosts and goblins waiting to make themselves known to you.
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