Urban Legends

Urban legends. Modern fairy tales. Whatever you like to call them, I love them. The Hook. The Hippy Babysitter. The Spider in the Beehive Hairdo. Shudder. Frisson!
Over the past few days I have been investigating Belgian urban legends for the third book in my upcoming Forbidden Spaces trilogy, set in Flanders. I finished the first draft of the second book, The Demons of Ghent, earlier this month, and it was my intention to plunge straight into book three whilst the writing engine was nicely warmed up, so to speak. The third book, appropriately enough entitled Urban Legends, is partly inspired by those gruesome modern myths, hence the research. However, as David Byrne wisely observed of Washington D.C. in Twisting in the Wind, "the further you look into it, the further things stick out";  the more research I do, the more I decide I need to do. The material is too fascinating. Let's find another online article. Let's order a book. No, let's go one better: let's decide on an out-of-print book by a Flemish academic that will require days of searching on second hand book sites and an extortionate bank transfer charge.
Well, I've ordered the book - at least I think I have. Waiting to see whether the bank transfer has worked properly and hasn't sent Thai baht by accident or something. (Drop-down boxes in online banking: asking for trouble.)
Meanwhile, if you are interested in Belgian urban legends, there is a great article about them here, by Aurore Van De Winkel, and translated by Jane Corrigan:
http://www.brusselsstudies.be/medias/publications/BruS54EN.pdf
My great favourite is the one about coin-operated toilets in the Brussels Metro. Supposedly women were vanishing inside them, sucked into a huge pipe and down into the sewers to meet some appalling unspecified fate. Investigation showed that the pipes in the toilets were too small for a human body to fit down them. It was then concluded that maybe the kidnappers had replaced the big pipes with small ones, because they had enough women...

Above: the Brussels sewers. Is something unspeakable going on down here? 

"Why ghost stories?"

I'm delighted to say that my ghost story collection, which has been available for pre-order since before Christmas, will be out shortly! The collection comprises seven supernatural tales.

Here's what publisher Swan River Press has to say about it: "In her first collection, award-winning author Helen Grant plumbs the depths of the uncanny: Ten fathoms down, where the light filtering through the salt water turns everything grey-green, something awaits unwary divers. A self-aggrandising art critic travelling in rural Slovakia finds love with a beauty half his age — and pays the price. In a small German town, a nocturnal visitor preys upon children; there is a way to keep it off — but the ritual must be perfect. A rock climber dares to scale a local crag with a diabolical reputation, and makes a shocking discovery at the top. In each of these seven tales, unpleasantries and grotesqueries abound — and Grant reminds us with each one that there can be fates even worse than death." 

(On that last point, my daughter says that one of them is "running out of chocolate"...)

I'm also pleased to say that Jason E. Rolfe has interviewed me about the new collection and asked lots of interesting questions such as "Why ghost stories?" which is a good question because my novels are not ghostly, although they often include apparently supernatural elements. You can read the interview on Swan River's website here: http://www.brianjshowers.com/interview_seachange.html 

Gravestones in the snow

I haven't blogged recently because I have been frantically trying to complete the first draft of The Demons of Ghent. In early November it was going so well, and I was convinced that I would have the book finished by early December, leaving me ample time to do a few edits of my own before sending it off to my editor in time for Christmas. It didn't really work out like that! Just before Christmas there are always a lot of things that eat into working time (like buying presents, bah humbug), and even worse, I realised towards the end of November that the ending of the book wasn't working. I deleted 9,600 words and wrote it all again, and I hope that the new version is much better, but better or not, it was certainly later.

I am pleased to say however that last Thursday I sent off the MS to my editor. Whilst she is reading it I am catching up on everything else. There is always the spectre of the horrible possibility that she may hate some aspect of it and I may need to do high-speed extensive rewrites, so I thought as well as catching up on admin etc this week I would also do a few things for myself whilst I have the free time. Which is a very long winded excuse for taking a morning off and visiting a cemetery (yes, I know how to have a good time...).

It is probably an appalling admission, but up until yesterday I had no idea that there was a very large cemetery in Crieff. It's on Ford Road, which is a dead end road on the other side of town, and I have never had any reason to go down there, which is why I had never stumbled on it. However, this week there was an article about it in the Strathearn Herald. I don't normally read the Herald either, but as it happens there was a photo in it this week of my recent visit to Morrison's Academy to run story writing workshops, so I bought it for that. I was intrigued to see a front page headline reading "The strangeness that is Crieff." Who could resist that?!

The article is all about local man David Cowan's research into ley lines, which the Herald is publishing in that issue (18th January) and the next one. Whether you are into ley lines and Masonic symbolism or not, it makes interesting and entertaining reading. My main reaction was, wow, there is a huge cemetery and I haven't seen it! I couldn't resist going down to visit it as soon as possible.

As you can see, it looks splendidly sombre, especially in the current deep snow. This more than made up for the fact that many of inscriptions on the gravestones were obscured with snow and ice. I shall have to make a visit in warmer dryer weather to take a proper look at them. I did see one belonging to a lady whose first name was Hughina! I've never come across that before.

I don't know whether the cemetery will ever feature in any of my future writings, but as I may have mentioned before, I love to visit atmospheric places - old castles, churches, graveyards - as often they do provide inspiration. I still have another book set in Flanders to write (Urban Legends, the final book in my upcoming trilogy set in Belgium), but after that I shall be looking for new locations, so you never know...!

If you are interested in reading the story from the Herald but are not in the Strathearn area, you can read it on their website here:
David Cowan article in the Strathearn Herald

Silent Saturday launch event

If you've dropped by this blog before, you might have seen some of my previous posts about my new novel Silent Saturday, the first in a trilogy set in Belgium. The book is being published in the UK at the beginning of April 2013.
As I've mentioned before, the idea for the trilogy started with a tradition which I heard about at my Dutch class whilst I was living in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). "Stille Zaterdag" ("Silent Saturday") is the day after Good Friday and on that day the church bells are not rung. Flemish children are told that the bells have flown away to Rome to collect Easter eggs from the Pope. I was both enchanted and intrigued by this tradition and immediately thought that if I were a Flemish child, I would want to climb the church belfry on Silent Saturday and see for myself whether the bells had really gone or not! This is what happens in the opening scene of the book - only the children who climb the tower look out and see something truly horrific happening below them in the village.
It wasn't until very recently that I started to wonder when Silent Saturday would fall in 2013. I knew the book was coming out in early April and wondered whether its publication might dovetail with the real Silent Saturday. In fact they are very close together, as Silent Saturday falls on 30th March 2013.
I am therefore delighted to say that after some careful enquiries about logistics I am going to be in Brussels on 30th March to do some interviews and book signings. I will post exact times and locations once they are finalised, along with details of UK-based launch events. If you are one of my Belgium-based readers, I'd love it if you would come along on Silent Saturday, to get your signed copy of the book, or just to chat and perhaps ask questions if you have any. You may recognise many of the locations, such as Tervuren park(!) and some other features of life in Belgium, such as the 44 tram, frangipane and bessenjenever. The symbiosis of local Belgian and expat lives also plays a major role in the plot. Also importantly, there are some gruesome deaths! It is a thriller, after all...

A party and a museum!

This week I am sorry to say I wrote 0 words of my current work-in-progress. I haven't been idle though. I've been reading through the suggested revisions to my short stories for my forthcoming collection The Sea Change and having a few amicable wrangles with editor Brian J. Showers about semi-colons and other unruly bits of punctuation.
I also went to the Random House Children's Books Christmas party, which was great fun; being an author is lonely work since you spend most days closeted alone with your laptop, so it is very nice to see some flesh-and-blood colleagues for once. However, the party was in London and I live in Perthshire, so getting there was a bit of a challenge. I couldn't afford to spend a fortune on travel and I couldn't be away overnight without my long-suffering husband taking two days off work to be with the kids, so I opted for flying up and down on the same day with a budget airline. This meant getting up at 3.30 a.m. to drive to Edinburgh airport, and getting home at 10.30 p.m.(!) I knew I would be exhausted afterwards and that I wouldn't get anything done the following day (Friday) at all, and I was right. All the same, my 4 a.m. drive through the dark, deserted and snowy Perthshire countryside was rather enjoyable. I saw a pair of eyes gleaming at me from the undergrowth (probably a fox), saw a large white bird (probably an owl) swoop across the road, and on one lonely stretch of road a whole herd of deer were crossing.
Once I actually got to London I had a bit of time to kill so I decided to do a lightning raid on the Victoria and Albert Museum. I mainly went to pay my respects to the Steinfeld glass in room 64 again. Since I take such a personal interest in the glass (whose history inspired my book The Glass Demon), I am always a bit surprised to see the panels on display sitting there in a corner of the room with no-one taking any particular notice of them. I am mortally tempted to grab passers-by and tell them all about it, but I suspect I would come across as some kind of crazy female Ancient Mariner.
Anyway, I went to look at the glass, and after that I popped into the Japanese section. My daughter is a big fan of manga and anime so I thought I would have a look and see if there was anything I could photograph for her - some Japanese paintings, perhaps. In fact, there was something better, and it was pretty clearly signposted by the group of teenage girls sitting on the floor in the middle of the gallery, admiring the exhibits: a whole series of Japanese "Lolita" costumes, which looked as though they had come straight from the pages of a manga.

I thought I'd post some of the pics here because I think the costumes are amazing. I especially like the male one - I'm not really into frills myself...

I'm not going to spend ages describing the party because a party is a party! I was amazed however by a conversation I had with another female author, who had been asked at an interview what clothes, handbag, etc. she had on (hard to imagine a male author being asked this). If this ever happens to me, I shall be in big trouble as I do not think I own a single designer item! Also, my handbag is from the Shelter shop in Crieff. (You heard it here first...)

After such a long day, Friday was a write-off, as expected. I couldn't seem to concentrate on anything: my brain felt like an albatross that cannot take off because its wings are waterlogged. I imagined all the characters in my current WIP, The Demons of Ghent, falling into a slumber like the Sleeping Beauty! Hopefully all of us will be well rested in time for Monday morning; as I'm onto the last few chapters of the book we have a busy week ahead of us, and not everyone is going to make it to Friday alive...