Today's post brought me a treat: my eagerly-awaited author copies of The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows! The book is the result of a competition run by the M.R.James Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter, to write a prequel or sequel to one of M.R.James' ghost stories. The number and quality of entries was considered to be sufficiently good that a book was proposed.
I'm very busy these days working on my novels so I rarely get time to write short fiction any more. However, I really couldn't resist this competition! I've loved the ghost stories of M.R.James since I was a child and my father used to retell them to us to amuse us on boring journeys and long walks. I've also written a number of non-fiction articles about M.R.James, some of which I have republished on this blog, and some of which are available online at the excellent Ghosts and Scholars website: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GSNewsIndex.html
I have a particular interest in the foreign locations of M.R.James' stories and have visited and written about Steinfeld abbey, St. Bertrand de Comminges, Viborg and Marcilly-le-Hayer. Perhaps for this reason, I chose to make my entry a prequel to Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, which is set in Comminges. Location is very important to me when I'm writing and I like to use real places (sometimes disguised and renamed) as my settings. Two of my first three novels are set in Bad Münstereifel, the German town where we lived from 2001 to 2008, and my upcoming novel Silent Saturday is set in Flanders, where we lived from 2008 until 2011. I spent nothing like as long as that in Comminges - just a day and a night - but the town and particularly the environs of the cathedral are very clear and vivid in my memory.
Above: the cathedral of Notre-Dame, St. Bertrand de Comminges.
Above: interior of the cathedral showing the amazing carved wooden chancel and organ.
I've always liked Canon Alberic's Scrap-book a lot anyway - there are so many unanswered questions such as what exactly was the much-desired thing about which the Canon asked on the night of December 12th 1694? My story aims to answer some of those questions.
I haven't read the other stories yet but am very much looking forward to doing so. If I can possibly bear to, I may try to save at least one of them up for Hallowe'en!
The book is very much for M.R.James fans; as the tales are prequels and sequels you need to have read the original stories!
If you are interested in ordering the book, which is a limited edition hardcover, here are the details: http://sarobpress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/ghosts-scholars-book-of-shadows.html
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