Bad Love: The Return of Sandra’s First Pony!

February 14, 2016 greydogtales 1 Comment

The story so far: Plucky young Sandra and her prizewinning pony Mr Bubbles have survived the mostly unspeakable horrors of the winter solstice with the help of her cousin Mary (and his dog Bottles). But the shadow of Whateley Wood still lies over the area, and ancient folk customs now threaten the village’s stability in…

The St Valentine’s Day Mascarpone

PART ONE

(Posted for the Bad Love/Bloody Valentine fb Event)

Sandra was nervous. February already, and soon it would be… That Day.

In the weak morning sunshine, she toiled alone in the barn, cleaning out after Mr Bubbles. Her beloved pony had been put out to pasture on Frenchman’s Meadow, where the grass was too lazy to grow straight and even the corncrakes sat around looking exhausted. A few hours up there usually calmed Mr Bubbles down.

Dutifully she shovelled straw, dung and other things into a heap by the barn door. Attempts to sell the pony’s droppings for garden manure had been disappointing. Daisy Frobisher had bought a bag last August, and now her front garden was overgrown with a particularly vicious type of ground-elder which bit back when you took the secateurs to it. Sandra kicked a couple of bleached penguin beaks into the corner.

February the fourteenth tomorrow, then. She always made Valentine cards, of course. One for Mr Bubbles, and one for her mother, which was supposedly from Father. He never remembered, and besides, he was currently exploring the Great Western Desert in Australia. The Whimereroo Mound People had invited him to go walkabout with them, partly in the hope that he could find out where they left their mounds. The Whimereroo were notoriously bad trackers. Their full aboriginal name meant “Where the hell are we now, and didn’t we just come this way?” in seventeen different languages.

This wasn’t about her, though. It was about the impact of St Valentine’s Day on the village. The day when passions rose, lovers did things which Sandra didn’t quite understand, and a lot of people got sick eating too much chocolate. The day when things got, well, a bit messy.

She put down her shovel and went into the farmhouse to clean herself up. Her mother, who was scrubbing a lamb in the kitchen sink, smiled at her.

“Hello, dear. Look, this one has four legs.”

The lamb coughed up soap bubbles and gave a malevolent bleat.

“Super. Mother, is it true, about Mr Pickman?”

Sandra’s mother wrapped the lamb in an old newpaper and put it on the floor next to the others, who eyed it suspiciously. Four legs and all your own ears in the right place was just showing off, as far as they were concerned.

“Ah. Yes, he and Agnes Peaslee are going head-to-head again.” She took a swig from the bottle by the sink, realised that it was milk for the lambs, and spat it out. Sandra handed her the Old Suzy, which was half-empty anyway.

“Thank you, darling. Oh, that’s better.”

“Do you think it will get… nasty?”

“I imagine so, dear.” Her mother threw a Wellington boot at a passing rat, but gin and exhaustion saved the rat for another day. “They say that Mr Pickman’s determined to win with his special tiramisu recipe this year.”

“I suppose I’ll have to be prepared.”

“Yes, dear. Very wise.”

Sandra sighed. It was time to check the gun cabinet. Again.

####

That afternoon she went down to the village green to watch the erection of the trestle tables and marquees. Mr Bubbles clopped along behind her, looking fine in his ribbons. His coat gleamed after an hour of brushing, and the psychotic look had gone from his big dark eyes. For now, anyway.

“Feeling better?” asked Sandra.

The pony had been involved in a fracas above the moor, fighting something tenuous and vile which moved among the crags there. The Tenuous Vile Thing in the Crags, the villagers called it, having run out of interesting adjectives around the time that it appeared.

“Wasn’t as tenuous as it thought.” said Mr Bubbles. “If it had balls once, it doesn’t now.”

Sandra laughed. Mr Bubbles was such fun, even though he did get a touch aggressive at times.

“It’ll be the usual disaster, you know.” He glanced at two members of the Women’s Institute, who had tangled themselves up in a folding chair.

“Probably.”

No-one quite knew when the Valentine’s Day baking competition had begun. The oldest person in the area, Mrs Pettifer (who claimed to have thrown a tomato at Disraeli), said that it went back into the mists of time, possibly even as far back as the early nineteen seventies. This observation always drew hooded glances, and a general muttering in the background. The villagers did not like to think of the seventies.

That was the decade when you could be put in the stocks for using Fablon or listening to Joni Mitchell. An extensive witch-hunt, organised with enthusiasm by the local witches, had finally purged the village of tangerine patterned wall-paper, and anything else deemed culturally unacceptable, but many families had lost loved ones. Sandra’s grandfather himself had avoided being staked out on Grimspike Moor only by surrendering his flared trousers before trial.

Every year since then, the Women’s Institute and the Esoteric Order of Dagon had competed to win Best Scones and Best Fancy Dessert on Valentine’s Day. Throughout the village and the scattered hamlets around Whateley Wood, the sound of Jerusalem sung in a minor chord competed with the pre-human chanting of the Esoteric Order.

It had originally been a friendly bit of rivalry, but the current hierarch of the Dagonites and the chairwoman of the WI hated each other. Sandra could see Mrs Peaslee over by the duck pond, warning the ducks about their behaviour.

“You take one cake, one scone, and you’re pate.” she hissed, pointing at one of the more aggressive members of the flock. The duck in question shuffled his feet, and decided that he would explore the far side of the pond. Mrs Peaslee, though small and round, was just a bit too much for him.

“Daft old cow.” said Mr Bubbles.

Sandra had to agree. There, a few yards behind Mrs Peaslee, was Celandine, the village bake-off mascot. Celandine was to other cattle what watered-down cordial was to an aged burgundy. Far too thin and not quite right, that is.

“She is forty seven.” Sandra pointed out. “Jolly good age for a cow.”
Mr Bubbles snorted and wandered off, muttering “corned beef” to himself.

Sandra decided to face up to tomorrow’s problems. She walked across the green and stood next to the hierarch, who was arranging plastic plates on a table. It was a mild, sunny day and she could see his scalp through a rather unsuccessful comb-over.

“Mr Pickman?”

Tall, austere, and with no hint whatsoever of forbidden inbreeding or sunken reefs, Arthur Pickman glanced around and smiled.

“Ah, Sandra, my dear. Looking forward to tomorrow?”

She bit at her lower lip. “Will it be… like last year?”

His smile faded. “If That Woman seeks to outdo my Italian desserts, then…”

Other Dagonites, clad in an assortment of outfits stolen from the church vestry, edged closer. Some of them had patches sewn on their robes, displaying various abominations of the Esoteric Order, though it was hard to ignore the fact that Ernest Willis’s largest patch was actually a cub scout badge for home-shopping. Mr Willis had drawn tentacles coming out of the cross-stitched carrier-bag, but it still didn’t work. She shook her head sadly.

“I can’t let it get out of hand, Mr Pickman. Not this time.”

“You’re too young to understand. Making tiramisu is an art, and…” The hierarch paused as a blast of hay-heavy breath rustled his robes.

“Bored now.” said Mr Bubbles from behind him. The Dagonites instinctively moved back a few paces. Sandra herself could be quite a handful, but she was still a teenage girl. Mr Bubbles, however, was an unpredictable force of nature. Or ab-nature. None of them were sure.

Mr Pickman tried to look taller and more austere, which was difficult.

“I, for my part, shall endeavour to be a model citizen, young lady. If That Woman starts something, however…”

After further exchanges of a similar nature, and a quiet talk with some of the less dedicated Dagonites, Sandra could see that this was the best she was going to get. Despondent, she and Mr Bubbles watched the rest of the tables and stalls being prepared.

What was she going to do?

####

Preliminary discussions with Mrs Peaslee during the afternoon proved just as fruitless as the discussion with the hierarch. The WI were as determined as the Esoteric Order to pursue their feud . Desperate times called for somewhat unsavoury measures. After a hurried tea at home, when her mother gave one of the lambs a steak pie and Sandra was left with milk-formula in a grubby bottle, she went out again.

With Mr Bubbles out on his nightly rounds, patrolling the borders of Whateley Wood, Sandra took a lantern and made her way to the other side of the village, where the Girl Guides had their meeting hut. Although they were an odd lot, it would not be the first time she had sought an alliance with them. More than one cthonian horror had altered the route of its burrow away from the village as a result of the guides’ playful experiments with steam-hammers, steel rods and battery acid.

Sandra entered the large wooden hut quietly and stood by the door. Emily Pethwick, almost nine years old, stood in the circle of guides, reciting her good deeds for the day.

“An’ then I did not shooted Mr Bulstrode’s cat. An’ then I did not tell thems police officers about what is under my brother’s bed.”

Flushed and pleased with herself, she ended her recital. The seated guides clapped unenthusiastically and went back to playing dice, cutting out letters from newspapers (usually for ransom demands) and heating up enamel mugs full of Old Suzy gin. Sandra coughed. Thirteen pairs of eyes, most of them set firmly in little heads, turned to stare at her.

“About tomorrow.” she said.

The guides looked uncomfortable.

“We doesn’t mess with the WI. Them’s mean.” said a small girl with camouflage paint across her face.

“All I want you to do is to come out tonight and cut down on the cheating.”

Murmurs of interest met this suggestion. Adelaide Cleggins, the oldest guide, stood up. She was a big girl, with three badges for unarmed combat and one for advanced police driving, which was unusual for a twelve year old.

“We could manage that.” she said, a note of caution in her voice. “What’s in it for us?”

Sandra thought of her mother’s secret stash of Old Suzy. Gin was always a reliable currency in the area. It was also good for shining uniform buttons.

“Two full bottles…”

“Three.” said Adelaide.

Sandra nodded. There was no way she could cover the whole village on her own, after all.

When all the guides had been equipped with torches, flareguns or lanterns, Sandra despatched her patrols into the darkness. One to keep an eye on the main east road, others to watch the alleys for illicit cake-swopping, and one to guard the doors of the Gayamurthi All-Night Wholefoods store. Mrs Gayamurthi was notorious for profiteering at this time of year. Some of those lentils had never seen the Punjab, Sandra was sure about that.

She and Adelaide shared a ginger beer in the doorway of the hut. Adelaide’s ginger beer smelled slightly of Brasso, but Sandra was not a snob. The guides were a cut-throat organisation, and everyone had their own way of relaxing.

Emily was the first back, with news that a Tesco delivery van had been halted by caltrops on the east road. The driver was being held for questioning by the Murphy twins.

“An’ he had them delucks range scones, what is s’pposed to be like an farmhouseses is. An’ he were going to go to Mr Mildrew’s place.”

Sandra doubted that the supermarket buyers had ever tasted her mother’s scones. They were ‘farmhouse’ only in the sense that there was quite a lot of whitewash, straw and plaster in them. So, a prominent Dagonite was trying to introduce bought-in baking. That would have to be held back in case she needed to use it later in court.

“Thanks, Emily. Good show.”

Not long after that, Mary-Sue Perkins arrived breathlessly to say that two of the WI members had been trying to exchange stuffed cannoli across their garden fences. Mary-Sue, who had been brought up to believe she was American, drawled out a list of suspect ingredients, including the use of tinned custard for the fillings. Sandra wrote it all down in the back of her Pony Club diary. The bloodier the confrontation at the bake-off, the more evidence she would need for threatening the combatants.

At half-past eleven, she decided they had done what they could, and let the guides wander off. She would have to go home herself. Mr Bubbles would be back around midnight, and usually needed a good brush down after his encounters in the woods. You didn’t win second prize at the Knaresborough Spring Pony Show by having bits of dismembered monstrosity in your mane.

And she would have to throw a blanket over her mother and pick up the empty gin bottles. Lambing was a difficult time, particularly when you weren’t actually sheep farmers. With the moors being rather hostile this winter, the animals would keep collecting at the farmhouse for protection. That last ewe really was too large for the coal shed…

Sandra finished her ginger beer, said goodnight to a semi-conscious Adelaide and headed back to the farmhouse.

It was a clear, sharp night, and the stars shone down coldly like specks of vodka-infused frosting. Almost absent-mindedly she walked by the southern edge of Whateley Wood and renewed some of the warding signs there. There would enough trouble in the village soon without something trying out its non-Euclidean geometry on the locals.

A few whip-poor-wills called out, hopeful that some innocent soul was about to enter the woods and be dragged screaming from this plane of existence. They shut up when they saw it was Sandra. No point in asking for it.

Somewhere in the darkness a badger threw up noisily. As usual.

At least all was normal here. She had done her best.

Tomorrow would no doubt do its worst.

Next Time: The St Valentine’s Day Mascarpone Part Two!

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Whale-road, Widow-maker

February 12, 2016 greydogtales 2 Comments

A bit of personal history today.

I grew up by the North Sea. It’s a cruel one, known for its cold, treacherous waters and its storm tides. It watches you, from Thule and the narrow fjords in the north, all the way down to those low English coastlines being dragged back into the deeps with every tide.

“The northern Ocean, it seemed to the Romans, stood at a forbidding remove from everything that made life bearable: sunshine, wine, olive oil. Its slate-grey waters, icy and teeming with monsters, marked the boundaries of the world itself”. (writer Tom Holland)

The North Sea strand reeks of fishing-boats and longships, storm-tossed kelp and bladderwrack. It is littered with the dead and the abandoned. And it defines you as a child, gives you a mythology from which to start a long journey into fantasy literature, horror and anything basically weird. It’s a repository of the strange, from the Danes driving their ships into Yorkshire rivermouths to the far-off threat of finfolk from the Orkneys and Shetlands.

My great-grandfather was master of a Hull packet, taking passenger and mail ships up the Humber or out to the Belgian and Dutch ports. I still have his captain’s chair. His wife smuggled tobacco in pouches sewn inside her crinoline dress. They say that the custom-officers would smile and help her off the ship before they checked elsewhere for contraband.

My father was a lighthouse keeper, mostly at Flamborough or Longstone Rock. The two lighthouses couldn’t be more different. The first is on the headland, easily accessible by road. He could do a shift and drive home – when you could see the road.

foglight — flamborough light with the fog closing in, by our editor-in-chief, sarah

The second is in the North Sea on one of the Outer Farne Islands. At Longstone the waves could overwhelm the living quarters and drive the keepers into the upper tower, hoping their supplies would hold out. The regime there was a month on, a month off – thirty days stuck on Longstone Rock with one other man for company. As he loved the sea, it didn’t bother my father at all.

longstone_lighthouse_by_hold_steady-d313ftb — longstone, copyright by hold-steady, deviantart

It was a good start to life for me. That coast is famous for its fishing cobles, clinker-built like longships from oak and larch, high-bowed to deal with the rough seas and flat-bottomed so they can be dragged up the landings in the coves. Small ships going a-viking with every high tide.

The coble-men traditionally wore ganseys (probably a corruption of the word guernsey), garments made with tightly-spun wool and closely knitted to turn water. Weatherproof, though not waterproof. It used to be said that each village had its own pattern so that if there were an accident at sea, the bodies could be sent back to the correct village. Thus there was a Staithes pattern, a Flamborough pattern and a Filey one. If the face was gone, no longer recognisable, then the gansey was witness as to who exactly had passed.

staithesloseby — staithes, copyright by chris harland

There was always that question when my father went away to the Farnes or the fishermen went out. Would they come back? The sound of the rescue helicopter was part of my childhood soundtrack, and because I was an impressionable pup, my favourite piece of verse was from Rudyard Kipling:

The Harp Song of the Dane Women

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in —
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you —
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

The old grey Widow-maker. The North Sea. Also called the Whale-road, where leviathans as slatey-dark as the sea surged up to blow and peer at the thin sunlight.

For a different feel of the power in these words, try this performance by Sedayne, from Peter Bellamy‘s setting of the poem to music.

(Bellamy produced two albums, Oak Ash and Thorn and Merlyn’s Isle of Gramarye, based on Kipling’s verse from Puck of Pook’s Hill, a very evocative tale of early England, and Rewards and Fairies. Bellamy was a founder member of the Young Tradition folk group, but sadly committed suidice in 1991.)

And even if the sword-point and the waves missed you, you never knew about the finfolk. Remember them? We’re not talking pretty, long-haired mermaids here, or selkies. I don’t remember a single mermaid story from my youth, only suggestions of much darker things. Cold and fey, the finfolk dwell in their city of Finfolkaheem. Their boats are driven by sorcery, and they are a gloomy people, given to collecting silver and long grudges.

Sunken Finfolkaheem is their winter city, for when when the storms rage, and in these days it’s all that’s left to them. Once upon a time they rose from there in the summer and dwelled on the island of Eynhallow, but no more – it it said to have been taken from them in the end by Christians. As the Orcadian rhyme goes:

Eynhallow fair, Eynhallow free
Eynhallow sits in the middle o’ the sea
A roaring roost on every side,
Eynhallow sits in the middle o’ the tide.

The finfolk don’t have massive fish tails to encumber them. They are masters of sea or land, able to live on both with ease, and sail better than any human. I say masters, because the finmen are dominant and cruel. Only the Gospel and the mark of the True Cross are certain to stop them. Humans are taken as slaves – finwifes are used for drudgery or to entrap further mortals. If a finwife can find no normal man to marry, she is forced into the service of a finman and degenerates into a hag, gnarled and ugly.

But back to home. There were stories all around in those days. The North York Moors behind us, and the sea before us. Flamborough Head is cut by a huge earthwork known as Dane’s Dyke, though it’s far earlier than the Danes, and God knows how so few people go over the cliffs. I’ve been there on days where it was impossible to see where the land stopped and a sheer drop began, mornings when the sea fret was so thick that you were lucky if your hands were visible. Caves have been eaten into the chalk of the headland, wondrous dripping caves in which your imagination can get quite lost.

Out on the headland is an old chalk-pit, though some call it a well. It was here where a young woman called Jenny Gallows killed herself, throwing herself into its depths. It is said that if you run around it a certain number of times, her ghost will come to taunt and haunt you.

The most famous story surrounding Jenny tells of a farmer who rode around the well nine times on his horse. On the last round, the girl’s spirit appeared and chased him mercilessly to the village, biting a piece out of the horse’s flank and leaving a white patch that didn’t fade until the animal died. In other versions, eight circuits raises Jenny, but nine circuits brings the fey themselves to speak with you.

We even found a song about her by folk-singer David Swann:

Below the chalk headland, the tides have eroded the sweep of the coastline down to the Humber, and many villages lie under the sea now. Many, not just the odd one. Believe it or not, the following had all gone by the time Thomas Sheppard wrote his book The Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast, published in 1912:

Wilsthorpe, Auburn, Hartburn, Hyde, Withow, Cleton, Northorpe, Hornsea Burton, Hornsea Beck, Southorpe, Great Colden, Colden Parva, Old Aldborough, Ringborough, Monkwell, Monkwike, Sand-le-Mere, Waxhole, Owthorne by Sisterkirk, Newsome, Old Withernsea, Out Newton, Dimlington, Turmarr, Northorp, Hoton, Old Kilnsea, Ravenspurn, Ravenser Odd.

We still go to Auburn now and then, where a farm or two remains. We run the dogs on the sands, and stare out, wondering if anything lies down there under the lead-coloured waves.

auburndogs — searching for auburn, by sarah

Flamborough Head and the village where I grew up lie within the Wold Newton Triangle. With its drowned villages, haunts, barrows, Ley Lines and the Gypsey Race river, which rises from dry earth to prophesy doom, the area has everything – and it points towards the North Sea.

A grand place to be a child.

####

Sigurd Towrie‘s site Orkneyjar has some more wonderful legends and tales from the north for those who want to know more:

orkneyjar

We are the Lords of Trivia here, so for those of you wanting a book for the evening, it would be unfair not to point out that Whale Road is also the title of the first in a set of historical Viking novels by Robert Low. But we haven’t read it. So it’s up to you.

There are too many editions of Puck of Pook’s Hill to recommend a particular one, but if you are interested in English lore, it’s a fascinating read.

More Stranger Seas and lighthouses later in the month. On and around Valentines Day, we join up with sundry other writers for Anita Stewart’s Bad Love event on Facebook. Which means that we’d better write something quick. So we’ll see you on the fourteenth…

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Nautical Horror Ahoy! It’s Stranger Seas At Last

February 9, 2016 greydogtales 2 Comments

Not strange seas, not strangest seas, but Stranger Seas. Yes, our Nautical Weird Theme leaves port, sailing cheerfully towards the Iceberg of Exhaustion over the next five or six weeks. What’s on board this wondrous vessel? Let us give you a taste, before we get short of really bad sea-based similes and metaphors, like a sailor who’s run out of tar for his jolly jacks:

Brand new interviews with authors such as Steve Vernon, Ray Cluley, Matt Willis and Cameron Trost.
Classic supernatural fiction set on and under the briny – ghost ships and things which come through the porthole.
Dagon and his denizens of the Deep, for the H P Lovecraft folk, plus graphic Phoenician-0n-Phoenician action as they complain about their god being nicked.
Lurchers for Beginners all at sea (or pretty damned wet, anyway).
Sea-faring fantasy novels.
Sea monsters! We have to have them. And sea-peoples. Not everyone with a tail is a monster.
Writer on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson, the master of the maritime, returns.
And maybe even aquatic superhero comics – Prince Namor and Aquaman dry out together in a seedy Arizona clinic?

If we get desperate, we’ll add pictures of fish who look stupid. We have no pride, as you learned long ago. If you are oceanophobic, there will be non-wet articles in between these, by the way.

More launch-time adventures at the end of the week, but for now we go straight to Steve Vernon, Nova Scotian and author of, amongst other things, the Sea Tales series of strange stories. Here’s the man himself to tell you all about it…

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Steve, and thanks for joining us. Let’s start with what brought us together, our nautical horror theme, Stranger Seas. We saw you as an ideal guest for this theme – despite your wide range, you’ve returned to maritime myth and horror many times. Is this because of your personal roots in Nova Scotia, or did something else draw you in this direction?

steve: About forty years ago I came to Nova Scotia to visit my mother. I fell in love with the ocean and I have stayed here ever since. I’ve hitchhiked right across this country and stood in the Pacific Ocean, but my heart has always belonged here in Nova Scotia – here by the strong deep water of the Atlantic Ocean.

greydog: Do you sail, scuba or anything like that?

steve: Nope. I am a land-lubber. All of my sailing and deep-sea adventures take place in the imagination.

greydog: That is the safest, and driest, way. Tell us a little about the mythic side of our theme, and your 2006 book Haunted Harbours: Ghost Stories from Nova Scotia. These are traditional ghostly legends which you collected, and in some cases re-told, is that right?

steve: I’ve been writing short fiction for about thirty-five years. In 2004 I attended the VERY first “Pitch the Publisher” event at Halifax’s annual Word On The Street festival. Pitch the Publisher is a little bit like Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank in that a group of want-to-be authors stand up and pitch a novel submission to a trio of local publishers. That first year over thirty books were pitched and Haunted Harbours: Ghost Stories From Nova Scotia was the ONLY book to actually be published. Each of the stories in the book are tales that I have taken from Nova Scotia folklore. I painstakingly tracked them down in the archives and in the pages of old newspapers and I wrote them with a strong storyteller voice.

greydog: And because we are grey-dog-tales, after all, what was the Black Dog of Antigonish Harbour?

steve: The Black Dog of Antigonish Harbour is also known as Old Shug or Old Shuck. He is a legend that spans all the way back to the highlands of Scotland. The Black Dog is said to be able to foretell death. When you see the Black Dog you know without a trace of doubt that there is going to be a death in your family. The Black Dog is basically a tone-deaf banshee in dog tags.

greydog: We’ll add him to our list of spectral hounds. A couple of years later you wrote Maritime Monsters, for younger children, and then a Young Adult book Sinking Deeper. What interested you in writing for younger audiences?

steve: For many years I have worked as a Writer in the School, thanks to a local program backed by our local Writers Federation. As a Writer in the School I go to schools all over the Maritimes and I teach the kids about storytelling and the art of writing. I got tired of younger kids asking me if I had written anything for them to read – so I decided to write Maritime Monsters – a children’s picture book with fifteen individual short stories and fifteen wicked-cool kid-friendly illustrations. After that, as you say, came the young adult novel Sinking Deeper: My Questionable (sometimes heroic) Decision to Invent a Sea Monster.

greydog: But you moved on to create maritime myths of your own with your Sea Tales series, far darker and more adult in nature. Some of these are quite brutal, not always in the sense of gore but in facing aspects of life and death without a comfy get-out clause. Was this an intentional move for the series?

steve: You have to realize that when I started writing back in the mid-80’s I wrote an awful lot of short horror stories for such magazines as Cemetery Dance, The Horror Show, Flesh & Blood, as well as horror anthologies such as Karl Edward Wagner’s Year’s Best Horror and the Hot Blood series – so I have been writing dark adult horror stories for a lot more years than I wrote for children. So Sea Tales wasn’t REALLY all that out of the ordinary for me.

greydog: One Sea Tales story stands out both for its emotive nature and its viewpoint – I Know Why the Waters of the Sea Taste of Salt. A young kamikaze pilot of mixed-Chinese/Japanese descent flies into the hell of the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. It’s a striking, sympathetic and very original tale which we would recommend. Where on earth did this come from?

steve: My imagination is a gigantic stew pot that I have been chopping up bits of meat and vegetables for every year that I have walked upon this earth. A story like I Know Why… is just a bit of strange meat that I stirred up out of the deepest end of the stew pot. I’d say that the roots of the story lie in an early fascination of mine with World War II in general and the Pacific island campaigns in specific. There was also a touch of an article that I read a very long time ago in a Fine Woodworking magazine that dealt with the carving of netsuke. A writer is like a crazy quilt maker – somebody who gathers up scraps of rags and creates beautiful blankets from these scraps and rags.

greydog: Will you be continuing with Sea Tales, or is that a ‘chapter’ in your career that’s largely done with?

steve: Oh I have no doubt that like the tide I will continue to return to the sea. In fact the latest novel I just completed is entitled Kelpie Dreams, involving a mermaid, a kelpie, a Sea Hag and a two hundred year old ghost. I don’t think I am ever going to get over my fascination with the ocean. You have to remember, after all, that our blood is basically nothing more than sea water.

greydog: Let’s escape the briny. As we said earlier you have a wide range, and you’re quite prolific. We get the feeling that you admire the pulp writers of old who could turn out a story in almost any genre, an age of slamming the typewriter keyboard as long as the bourbon held out. Is that true?

steve: Well, aside from the bourbon part you have got it dead right. Unfortunately bourbon always gives me heartburn as well as making me kind of cranky. I am more of a dark beer kind of a fellow – and I never drink anything stronger than good black coffee while I am writing. But there is nothing that I like better than sitting in my writing cave banging out a good old fashioned story.

greydog: We were interested in the Tatterdemon trilogy, all three of which are now available to buy in a single volume (see sidebar on right). Is this series inspired by actual legend, given that in the books the roots of Tatterdemon go back to the 17th century, or did you conjure this one up out of the air?

steve: Tatterdemon has to be one of my favorite novels – and definitely my best selling independent novel. I wrote the novel thinking about Stephen King’s Salems Lot. I have always loved using small towns as a setting for my horror novels. I grew up in a small town, way up in the Northern Ontario attic, about twenty miles north of Sudbury. I have always been fascinated by the isolation you can find in certain small towns. The scarecrows of Tatterdemon are definitely my own invention – although I sewed it strands of voodoo and the paranormal all through it.

greydog: Is there any aspect of horror that you’d like to write but haven’t got round to, any secret authorial dream that you’ve still to fulfil?

steve: I have got the makings of a Nova Scotia zombie novel that has been kicking around my workspace for an awfully time now. One of these days I am going to have to sit down and write it out.

greydog: Sounds fun. Finally, we like to keep in touch with anyone who appears on greydogtales to see what happens next, so what can we expect to see from you in 2016?

steve: As I mentioned, I have just completed a novel that I am intending will be the first in a series of at least three books, entitled Kelpie Dreams. It is a kind of a paranormal action-packed shoot-em-up-supernatural romance novel written for folks who truly hate reading romance. I have submitted that book to the Kindle Scout publishing program and over the month of February I will be actively campaigning and seeking out Kindle Scout nominations to hopefully get that book selected by Kindle Scout. I really feel that if I can get Kelpie Dreams picked up by Kindle Scout and get the weight of the mighty Amazon promotional team behind it that I will raise my indie author profile in a way that helps a lot more people find out what a truly mind-warping experience a Steve Vernon novel can actually be.

greydog: Many thanks again, Steve Vernon.

As it would be churlish to have Steve here and not support his Kindle Scout campaign, here’s the link where you can back him:

kelpie dreams kindle scout bid

You can find out lots more about his writing at his site here:

steve vernon – yours in storytelling

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As we’re heading back into William Hope Hodgson territory later on, this would also be a good time to remind listeners of Sam Gafford‘s great site on Hodgson. We say this because greydogtales is a compendium of weird things but an authority on none. Sam is the most dedicated scholar and collector of Hodgsoniana we’ve ever encountered, and there’s loads of interesting stuff there. Go browse.

whh william hope hodgson

And don’t forget that the new Carnacki audio from Big Finish should now be available. Six of Hodgson’s original stories, lovingly and faithfully rendered for your ears in a high quality production:

carnacki on audio

That’s it for today, we fear. Back to hauling longdogs and writing for a living. More greydogtales on Friday, if we remember where we put the fishing spears…

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Carnacki Lives!

February 7, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

Joyous news, dear listeners (except for the lack of longdogs today, boo!). We return to our William Hope Hodgson roots, with a super exclusive. Producer Scott Handcock talks about his brand new Carnacki production, what Sontarans think of Hope Hodgson, and what Mark Gatiss will be doing next. Yes, we’re back on The Voice of Horror. Be still, our ex-sanguinated hearts.

Some will already know Big Finish Productions because of their Dr Who audio stories, but the company’s range expands every year, and includes Dark Shadows, The Avengers (no, not Thor & Iron Man – the proper UK ones, silly) and many others. We’ve long been fond of The Scarifyers series, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at occult mysteries with the renowned David Warner and Terry Molloy (the early episodes also starred the late Nicholas Courtney, the renowned Brigadier from Dr Who’s UNIT).

With both direct adaptations and adventures inspired by original stories, the Big Finish catalogue already includes Sherlock Holmes (with Nicholas Briggs and Richard Earl), the Confessions of Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein. To our delight they are now adding Carnacki to their range, covering six tales of the Ghost Finder:

The Gateway of the Monster
The House Among the Laurels
The Whistling Room
The Horse of the Invisible
The Searcher of the End House
The Thing Invisible

The collection stars Dan Starkey (Thomas Carnacki) and Joseph Kloska (Dodgson), with music by Ioan Morris & Rhys Downing. Let’s turn to the producer, Scott Handcock, to explain things in more detail…

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Scott, and thanks for putting time aside for us. We’ll get straight down to it. You’ve chosen six of the nine Carnacki stories for this collection. We can understand you not using The Find, which is a bit of a throwaway, but that leaves The Hog and the Haunted Jarvee. These two are rather strange and disturbing tales. Any plans for them?

scott: No plans at the moment – but never say never. I’d love to tackle the remaining tales at some point, but for the initial release, it made sense to stick with the six core stories that act as a foundation for the character and his world.

audio clip from “the gateway of the monster”

greydog: Did you find you could take the stories and translate them easily to audio needs, or did you have to re-interpret the original text to achieve the effect you wanted?

scott: The Carnacki stories work so well because of Hodgson’s original style – they’re direct, intimately told, and filled to the brim with glorious language. Yes, we could have had a stab at translating them into something akin to a full-cast audio, with guest characters popping up, but you’d have needed to invent so much new dialogue for those characters, it would have detracted from Hodgson’s writing.

In that sense, no work at all was needed. Hodgson’s work serves as a perfect monologue, performed in character, with an occasional external commentator in the form of Dodgson. We toyed with a bit of sound design, but again, that weirdly undermined the beautiful language that makes the original stories so unique, so even that was pared back. The result is that Carnacki is unlike most Big Finish ranges, in that it’s really stripped back to the text and performance alone, supported by a lovely, brooding musical score from Ioan Morris and Rhys Downing.

greydog: Someone once described the setting of the Ghost Finder stories as akin to M R James’ tales, to be told around a roaring fire in a safe place. It sounds like that’s the result here.

scott: As I say, the Big Finish Carnacki stories are more straightforward productions than adaptations – we take no liberties with the text at all – and I like that fact. Hodgson’s format is, after all, why people love the Carnacki stories, and why they still serve as the ideal introduction to the character over a century later. The stories themselves are so dependent on mood, and the thought processes of Carnacki himself, I think you’d have lost a great deal by trying to extrapolate a larger world from these original stories.

So yes, these feel very much like fireside reminiscences, as each case is recounted and relived by Carnacki himself, taking us through the events of each mystery, blow by blow. And because we let the writing take centre-stage, each and every listener will experience the stories differently depending on how they interpret the words and temper the scares to suit them. I love that!

dan_starky_biopic-1 — the talented dan starkey

greydog: Dan Starkey, who’s rathered cornered the market in Sontarans (sorry, Dan, you’re great in other roles as well!), is playing Carnacki. We have to say that he really sounds the part. Are we right in thinking that Dan was already familiar with the Carnacki stories?

scott: Dan Starkey is a brilliant, brilliant actor. I’ve worked with him a few times at BBC Wales, where he appeared frequently on Doctor Who, and as a regular in Wizards vs Aliens, as well as Big Finish’s production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He’s simply delightful to have around – utterly professional, fun and hugely talented. Plus, his radio training with the BBC’s Radio Drama Company means you can throw all manner of characters, accents or voices at him, and he’ll tackle it with aplomb!

How he came to be Carnacki was slightly strange. I’d recommended Dan to another Big Finish producer, James Goss, who was pulling together some DVD extras for BBC America about the Daleks and Cybermen and needed a presenter. I knew Dan was the man, and thankfully we got him, which meant a very enjoyable if hard day’s work at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, filming with all manner of sets and props – including a Dalek voice coaching session with Big Finish’s executive producer Nicholas Briggs.

Quite by chance, over lunch, Nick and I were chatting about some of the things I had coming up on the Big Finish slate – one of which was the series of Carnacki audiobook readings – and Dan’s ears pricked up at the very mention of his name. Suddenly, he was gushing about the stories and the character, and was clearly very familiar with Hodgson’s work, so I couldn’t resist asking him if he wanted to actually be our Carnacki on audio. Thankfully, there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation, and he inhabits the character splendidly. I mean, Dan’s a terrific audiobook reader at the best of times, but his pre-existing familiarity and enthusiasm for the stories really has brought a lot of nuance and charm to the character. I can’t praise him highly enough!

greydog: You yourself have produced other horror for Big Finish, including The Confessions of Dorian Gray. Are you cautious about dipping your toe into this genre market, or do you think there is room for a much wider range of horror and weird fiction audio adaptations?

scott: You’re always cautious whenever you tackle something new, as you never know quite how an audience is going to respond, and if they’ll embrace it. I do, however, think that horror is ideally suited to audio. Fear is such a personal thing, as is listening to audio drama in a lot of ways, you’re able to really get into people’s heads and imaginations. With horror films, for instance, what you see if what you get – for some people it will be far too explicit, for others the same sequence can be incredibly tame. It all depends on who you are, and what you respond to.

On audio, everyone reacts differently. How you perceive the same effects and words and vary wildly, depending on how scary you want things to be. It’s what appeals to me so much about the medium. Not only can you do anything, and tell all manner of tales, but no one listener will ever see it in exactly the same way. The Carnacki tales are no different in that regard, and we deliberately hold back on any effects so as not to detract from the tale you’re being told. Carnacki is telling his stories to you and you alone, and that should hopefully make for something very special.

greydog: And are there other classic horror works of the same era which you would like to produce if you had the chance?

scott: It’s no secret that I adore horror, and I’ve been quite lucky to have tackled the big three gothic horror novels for Big Finish Productions. In 2013, we produced The Picture of Dorian Gray with Alexander Vlahos as a tie-in to our Confessions range. Then, in 2014, I lured the brilliant Arthur Darvill into studio to play my Frankenstein, with voice maestro Nicholas Briggs as his Creature. And of course, even as we speak, I’m pulling together a dream project, as Mark Gatiss plays Dracula himself in a new three-hour production for May 2016! It’s hard to think where you go after that.

If the Carnacki readings prove popular, and there’s an appetite for more, I’d love to tell some original stories with the character – stories that could be more full-cast mysteries with an element of narration to frame them, rather than full-length monologues. And there are obviously so many hinted-at cases and references from Hodgson’s own stories that we could pick up on and explore in the Big Finish universe. But we’ll see what the response is like.

greydog: As positive as we can make it. Many thanks, Scott Handcock.

This is one of those rare moments where we throw caution to the wind and say – buy, buy this now. Not only does it sound good, but every time someone purchases the new Carnacki, a little accountant angel in Heaven smiles and whispers “Produce more Carnacki. Now!” Which would be a Good Thing. You can click below to pre-order your own copy, out any day now:

carnacki the ghost finder

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We were also quite interested to see that Big Finish have recently released a new dramatisation of Ray Bradbury‘s The Martian Chronicles (December 2015), starring major players Derek Jacobi and Hayley Atwell. We haven’t had a chance to listen to this one, so can’t tell you much more, but we thought you might like to know.

b7-slides_015-1024x658 — the martian chronicles

The full range of their productions can be found here:

big finish productions

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Next time on greydogtales – Strangers Seas! The storm is rising, and we start with writer Steve Vernon, who tells us all about his own nautical myths and legends. Sou’westers on, everybody…

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The St Valentine’s Day Mascarpone

Literature, lurchers and life