Crowvus Book Blog

Today's blog is a heads-up on an Historical Fiction competition which is being run by Globe Soup. If you want more details, head over to their website here . At Crowvus, our competition season is in full swing: entries for our Ghost Story Competition have been coming in for the past couple of months and the deadline is 30 September. We’re looking forward to reading the stories which always form a key part of our autumn reading. If you’re looking for inspiration, look no further than Those Experiences , which is available as a free eBook from our website. This should give you a good idea of the kind of stories the Crowvus team find particularly chilling and, as we make up most (but not all!) of the judging team, that’s a pretty good place to start! This week, another competition was announced which is of particular interest to historical fiction writers: the Globe Soup Historical Fiction Challenge. It doesn’t give you much time to write your stories but, with six great historical p...

Written by Michael Wray Illustrations by Anne Marshall Edited by Chris Firth ☆☆☆ I was born in Orkney, but I grew up in Lincolnshire. I went to primary school there and only moved back to Scotland after I had started at John Leggott College. As a result, I feel a certain connection with the place. Growing up in a village on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, I was very aware of the ghost stories around where I lived. My mum grew up in Epworth, so I was well accustomed to the tale of  Old Jeffery  that is featured in this book. Our house, itself, was very old and I'm pretty sure it was haunted. It talked - creepy floorboards when no-one was there, doors closing when I couldn't feel a draught - that sort of thing. Close to our house there used to be a wood where apparently someone hanged themselves. We were also down the road from Thornton Abbey with its headless ghost who sometimes runs across the road. (The story, as I heard it, was that someone was fishi...