This week, we finally managed to install our new (not new ) item of furniture - a mid-18th Century grandfather clock. It's not bright and shiny like more modern ones, but a dark oak with a warm patina which the beeswax polish is drawing out. In order to set it up, we had to do a certain amount of research - how to hang the pendulum, where the weight went on the endless chain - and it got me thinking... where and when did certain divisions of time come from? The time periods which I have written either had household clocks or didn't, I have not written novels from the time of their invention. Clocks have been around for a long time, and the obsession with measuring time in an ordered fashion dates back to at least the ancient Sumerians. It was they who established a circular reading of time and, I imagine, the sixty seconds/minutes came about as much because it was an easy way to divide a circle as anything else. But it wasn't until much later that the precision of seconds ...
I'm not the Crowvus writer who publishes horror. I've appreciated the brilliant books by Judith Crow, but I know it's not something I can write. The supernatural is different. People will - quite rightly - tell you that horror can encompass the supernatural, but the supernatural is not only confined to that genre. The supernatural, by definition, have their roots in the natural. In the case of ghosts, they were once alive, now having transcended from the natural (i.e. worldly) existence, into the supernatural on an unknown plain. The best ghost stories (my opinion only!) are the ones which unite the natural and the supernatural, looking at the shadows and imprints left on the natural world by those now occupying the supernatural one. In essence, when I read through the submissions for the Crowvus Christmas Ghost Story Competition , I'm looking for the human aspect of the story. I love the idea of ghosts trapped in time, I love the idea of ghosts trying to commune with ...