Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?


I’m a middle-aged American living in Canada, a father of two, and an author of thriller and horror fiction, with notable works including Suffer the Children, One of Us, Our War, The Children of Red Peak, and my newest from Hachette, Episode Thirteen.


Which of your books best represents you?


Probably Suffer the Children. In this horror novel from Simon & Schuster, a parasite kills the world’s children only to bring them back to life three days later. The parents learn if they give their kids human blood, the children will reanimate exactly as they were before death, but only for an hour or two; and then they need more, and more, and more. So the question for the parents becomes: How far would you go for someone you love? The children are basically vampires, but the monsters in the novel are the parents who go all the way, willing to do evil out of the purest love in the world.

I think this novel best represents me for several reasons. One, a lot of the horror is psychological, and the reader is placed in the story by being invited to confront the premise: What would you do? And possibly learn something new about themselves in the process. I certainly did, writing it.

Two, it’s pretty grimdark and shocking at times, as my stories find their own identities that tend to shy away from the familiar and challenge the reader, often in a disturbing and uncomfortable but always visceral way.

And lastly, a lot of my own blood is in that book, as in the writing I confronted my midlife crisis and existential fears as a father. It’s a brutal read, and it was brutal for me to write it. Almost a decade after its publication, I’m still proud of it, and it is still producing consistent sales.


Can you tell us about your latest book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?


My latest horror novel is Episode Thirteen, published by Hachette and now available in bookstores, libraries, and online booksellers. A “found footage” novel made up of documents like journal entries and video transcripts, it tells the story of a ghost-hunting reality TV show crew that investigates a notoriously haunted house, only to discover way, way more than they bargained for—things that not only challenge what they know about ghosts but their concept of reality itself. The result is what starts as an entertaining reality TV episode about hunting ghosts becomes a nightmarish documentary of obsession, madness, and terror.

I’d never done an epistolary novel before, as I think it’s a challenging format for hooking the reader, but I’d watched enough found footage movies to develop a sense of what worked and didn’t for me in the form, and so when my editor expressed interest, I really went for it. I’m happy I did, as I love how it turned out. At its heart, Episode Thirteen is a found footage horror story, but it goes much farther with an inside look at how reality TV shows get made, how ghost hunting is done, and how science regards the paranormal. Emotionally, I played a ton of Phasmophobia, a really amazing ghost hunting game, with my son, and bottled the dread.

As for my next, I just signed a deal with Hachette for How to Make a Horror Movie. In this story set in horror’s slasher era in the 80s, a director makes a horror movie with a cursed camera that kills anyone he cares about. The scream queen he loves wants to survive the night. Together, director and Final Girl, they’re about to make movie history. This novel really dives deep into horror as a genre and what makes it tick, and how movies get made. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for readers, especially for fans of horror movies and in particular 80s horror. A book reviewer once said I never travel the same ground twice as an author, and I hope other readers agree with that. While my work has particular trademarks, for me, every novel I write must have its own distinct voice, style, and flavor.


The term horror, especially when applied to fiction, always carries such heavy connotations. What is your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions?

When I tell people I write horror, there is sometimes an awkward moment, and I can picture them saying, as if they’d just discovered while watching the news that I turned out to be a serial killer: “Craig is such a nice, quiet guy, I would never have guessed he wrote horror.”

I think the problem is that for many people, horror is a place you might visit, not where you should live. Another is that horror is a big tent, and the genre’s most notorious representatives involve torture or extreme gross-outs. As a result, when it comes to movies for example, critics tend to judge horror based on preconceived notions. If they don’t like the genre but like a particular work, they simply call it something else. I know people who say they’d never read horror, but they love Stephen King.

I’m not sure anything really needs to change. If you’re an author and want to try to be more mainstream, you might brand your book a “paranormal thriller” instead of horror, for example, and write a mainstream story with horror elements rather than the other way around. Thematically, you can explore metaphor or hit on a social trend to elevate the work’s impact. But in the end, there is a fundamental human emotion that is horror, there are many people who love it, and there is a community of creatives who serve them. How far horror permeates into the mainstream comes and goes and depends on a lot of things, but there must always be that passionate core to keep the genre alive and evolving.


Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?


Back to my zombie fiction days, I’ve always been fascinated by the psychology of humans in crisis. Ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations where we see what they’re really made of. The potential to hold up a fractured mirror to humanity to reveal some dark truth. This led me as a horror author to explore the psychology of what freaks people out, so I could maybe gain insight into how to do it better.

When I started Suffer the Children, for example, I asked myself what scared the absolute shit out of me. The answer was if something bad ever happened to my kids, and so the novel was born out from the classic parental brag they’d put their arm in a thresher for their children. I thought, okay, good, but would you put someone else’s arm in a thresher for them? How many arms, exactly?

Similarly, when I started The Children of Red Peak, which is about the survivors of an apocalyptic cult that committed mass suicide, I started with the Biblical story of Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, only to stay his hand at the last moment. I thought, okay, good, but what if God didn’t stop him? And: What was it like to be Isaac that day and all the days that followed? What followed was a deep dive for me into the psychology of grief, trauma, memory, and how even conventional religion contains aspects of cosmic horror.

So looking at what makes horror and why people would want to literally suffer it, I started with the fundamental desires of sex and death and its deep human drives of lust and fear. Out of all human fears, the biggest two are fear of the unknown and the fear of something preying on them. Really, it’s all about fear of dying. I think people are attracted to confronting this in fiction for the same reason they go on roller coasters; to gain a momentary, reassuring feeling of importance. To symbolically face death and vanquish it, experiencing a cathartic sense of immortality. And that all of this has rules, a sense of moral justice: The good survive, and the bad ones get what’s coming to them. These unconscious ideas are primal and archetypal, and they’re embedded in story.

A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years?

While storytelling has enduring forms and elements that go back to the first story, its expression is often a reflection of the times we live in, which is great. It makes the story resonant and relevant. Horror is no exception, keeping in mind it’s an emotion, not a rigid set of rules defining what it must be.

In the next ten years, I think we’re going to see more horror elements expressed as metaphor, for starters. We’ll definitely see more tech horror such as AI, smart homes, synthetic biology, and the like. As social justice has a lot of energy behind it, we will likely see more horror around these themes, and as the horror community is becoming more inclusive, we’ll likely see many more works from a diverse range of perspectives. As income inequality worsens and becomes more visible, we may see more horror around economic justice themes.

One thing that is particularly worrying is artificial intelligence, which is currently impacting book cover designers in a big way. In the next few years, we may see many tools that empower writers to be more efficient and prolific. I could see publishers replacing slush readers with an algorithm to automatically vet incoming works as being worthwhile for an acquisitions editor to review. In the long term, however, AI may wind up good enough to compete directly against us as writers. The future may bring basically the equivalent of social media influencers—very likeable manufactured personalities—as human brands fronting AI-generated works. As an author, I can tell you this is my idea of horror!


What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?


In my view, the big thing that is missing is confidence among bookstores that horror is a well-defined, profitable genre and that it has a big enough fan base for it to warrant its own dedicated section with many diverse authors, including the best of small presses. In many stores, you go in and if it even has a horror section, there’s Stephen King and Dean Koontz on half the shelves and a few titles on the rest. Then you have works that are arguably horror not even placed in the horror section but instead in general fiction. For horror to grow, it should be defined, understood, and promoted as a sought-out category at the bookstore level. We can’t rely on Halloween as that one time of the year horror gets its due attention.


Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative, that have stayed with you?


Reviews are funny things, and they’re dangerous for authors. Nietzsche once said a single sentence can change your whole world. Similarly, a single review can invigorate an author to write another book or consider giving up. The conventional wisdom authors like to preach insistently and loudly at each other about trolling reviews is to grow a thick skin, and they’re right, it’s just a part of the business, but we’ve all been there at the end of a horrible review, hating life.

I recently saw a review of one of my works where the reader got a free advance copy, read 10% of it, hated the approach, and then pronounced it objectively unfit to read with a one-star. I could hear Ralph Fiennes in The Menu, not a chef now but an author, saying, “People like you have sucked all the joy out of reading and writing books.”
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Then I read another review, a good review, not just good but that one perfect review where the reader completely got exactly what I was trying to convey, and I thought, okay, I’m going to go through all this again, I’m going to give hundreds of hours of hard creative lifting, I’m going to write another book, and this one’s just for you.

Craig DiLouie is an American-Canadian author of thriller, horror, dark fantasy, and other speculative fiction. Notable works include Episode Thirteen (Redhook, 2022), The Children of Red Peak (Redhook, 2020), Our War (Orbit, 2019), One of Us (Orbit, 2018), and Suffer the Children (Gallery Books, 2014). He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and International Thriller Writers.

OH NO I’M STUCK IN A HORROR MOVIE




This is a new, hopefully fun short interview template, where you imagine you are trapped in a series of horror books and films, it’s meant to be a lighthearted way to talk about the thing you want to promote without directly talking about it.  As with all of the other templates, please include a biography, the product you want to promote, any social media links or links to purchase your stuff at the end of the article and please attach a profile picture that we can use in the article.


You wake up and find yourself in a horror franchise, what franchise would you prefer to wake up in and why?
I’d have to go with The Conjuring, simply because it’s such a frightening franchise. The first installment about the infestation in the Peron house is the scariest of the three so far – and has one of the best “opens” of any horror movie I’ve ever seen – the Annabelle story. Plus, Ed and Lorraine Warren were just fascinating people (and were based not far from where I grew up in Connecticut) who had such a mastery of their chosen field, demonology.

You find yourself as the “Final One”. Which monster / villain would you most like to go up against and why do you think you would survive?
I’d like to go up against a xenomorph from the Alien franchise, but only if I’m armed with a Colonial Marines pulse rifle, flamethrower and motion tracker. Why? Because they’re at the top of the food chain in terms of lethality and the ability to induce terror. And they’re super smart. They’re the “perfect” organism.

And which creature would you least like to go up against?
Easy. Pazuzu. Why? The Exorcist is the scariest movie ever made, in my humble opinion, that’s why. There’s something profoundly terrifying about the idea of a foreign, malevolent force invading and taking over my mind and body. I’ve had recurring Exorcist-themed dreams ever since I first saw the movie in my college dormitory at the age of 19. A short, funny side story: That same summer, I was working in a small restaurant in Cannondale, Connecticut, and a woman and her friend sat down in my section for lunch. She was so familiar to me, yet I could NOT place her. When I went back into the kitchen, my boss said to me, “You know who you’re waiting on? That’s Linda Blair!” Then, he whispered, “Don’t put too many croutons on her chicken Caesar salad, I don’t want her head to start spinning around!” TRUE STORY!



You find yourself in Scooby Doo, which character are you, and who would most like to have as the other members of Mystery Inc?

Oh, good one! I’d probably want to be Velma. She was the brains of the outfit. She always remained calm, cool and collected. I have to believe she was always thinking, “Hey, guys – we’ve seen this before. It’s not really a ghost / vampire / werewolf / monster! It’s an old guy in a suit who’s gonna curse us out around minute 18 of this telecast!”


Not sure who I’d want in the group with me. Can we pick someone NOT in the Mystery Machine group? I’d have to go with Batman (he is, after all, the World’s Greatest Detective, and he actually was a frequent guest star on the show) and the Harlem Globetrotters, who I also think made guest appearances on Scooby Doo.

Pinhead pops round for an evening of fun, what are you pains and pleasures?
Pains:

The sound of people eating or talking with their mouths full of food – mastication.


The sound of people with a stuffy nose.


Pleasures:


Two fingers of Glenfiddich 12-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch


Pinhead plops down on the couch with me to watch the latest season of Evil.

The Wishmaster gives you three wishes:

1. You can wish to write in any franchise
2. You can wipe on franchise from the minds of everyone
3. You can date your horror crush

What do you chose?

I choose door no. 3 – date my horror crush, which would have to be Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Who else could it be?
Biography: Ambrose Stolliker lives in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States with his wife, son and their family dog. His new supernatural horror novel, The Strange Nighttime Journey of Father Stephen Marlowe, was released in May 2022 by indie publishing house Muddy Paw Press and is available in paperback and eBook format now on Amazon.


Mr. Stolliker is the author of two previous horror novellas – Old Hollow (2017) and The Death Chute (2019), both from indie publisher Aurelia Leo. His short stories have been published in Stupefying Stories Magazine, WEIRD CITY, the Tales to Terrify podcast from District of Wonders, Creepy Campfire Quarterly, Ghostlight Magazine, Sex and Murder Magazine, Hungur Magazine, Sanitarium Magazine, The Tincture Journal, Charon Coin Press’ State of Horror: Louisiana, Volume II anthology and DAOwen Publications’ horror anthology Muffled Scream I: Corner of the Eye. Mr. Stolliker is a former newspaper reporter and magazine journalist.


Social Media Links:


Blog: Strange Nighttime Journeys
Instagram
Twitter
Amazon Author Page
Goodreads

Today Ginger Nuts of Horror, and The Fantasy Book Nerd interview Mark Stay author of the brilliant Witches of Woodville series of novels, and one of the two minds behind the excellent  horror movie Unwelcome out in cinemas now.  

One of the things I wanted to ask about the film is the title, Unwelcome. The title works on multiple levels for me, not just to describe the Unwelcome attention of the Redcaps for Maya & Jamie. How did you come up with the title?
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We didn’t! We started with Redcaps, but there was a TV show with a similar title a while ago about the military police and we thought there might be some confusion. Then we had The Little People for the longest time, but we discovered that didn’t travel beyond UK/Eire in that no one knew what it meant in a folk horror context. I wanted to call it Mother Redcap, but people felt that was a bit of a spoiler. So Warner Bros. sent us a list of alternates and Unwelcome was the one that stood out, and they have a good track record with horror movies with one or two word titles, so who were we to argue?

The Celtic nations seem to have a far different relationship with the Fae Folk than many other countries, in that we are more fearful of them, or at least less trusting of them; why do you think that is?

I’ve been reading a book called Meeting the other Crowd which is full of testimonies from Irish people who claim to have encountered Fae Folk and it’s fascinating stuff. With any interaction with the Fae there’s always a price to pay and I think that’s where the fear and unease comes from. In my experience, Celtic folk have a very generous spirit and are quick to offer hospitality and a laugh (the craic!), so maybe the Fae are the dark side to that kindness?

When did fairies and the such become cuddly lovely people, and why did they all become a bunch of Tinkerbells?

Disney. Always blame Disney.

The Redcaps in the film are different from the Redcaps I know from my Scottish roots. Ours like to kill you by throwing stones at you and bathing in our blood, is this version based on a real Irish version of them, or did you come up with your version?

Ours are a mashup of different cultures. I think they’re closest to the ones you find in Northern England if I recall. But it was important to me that we make these Redcaps our own because once you start researching this stuff you soon discover that no one can actually agree on a single mythology, and every culture has their own version of them with minor variations on how they kill and behave. Believe it or not, I think some of these monsters might not actually exist...

So, for the parts of Maya and Jamie, did you have anyone in particular in mind when you were writing the film, and then how did you get the lead actors involved?

We didn’t write those roles with anyone in particular in mind. Jamie is based very much on Jon and I being complete wusses when it comes to confrontations and violence, and Maya is an amalgam of all the no-nonsense women in our lives. Our casting director, Kelly Valentine Henry, did a brilliant job of bringing the ensemble together and I love the chemistry between Douglas and Hannah. They feel like a real couple to me.

The cast is fantastic (including yourself, of course). Did you manage to catch any of them on set? And did you have any embarrassing fanboy moments?

Ah, yes, I play the key role of “Man in Pub”, completely essential to the plot I assure you. You’ve blown my scam wide open. I only write these films to boost my flagging acting career!

I wasn’t on set much, but as a Star Trek fan it was great to chat with Colm Meaney, and I somehow managed to remain professional and not ask about warp drives. My first encounter with Niamh Cusack was a lovely one because when I was starting out as an actor my aunt wrote to Niamh asking her for advice. Niamh replied with a wonderful letter of encouragement. It was great to finally thank her in person for it.

Why Ireland? Was there a specific reason that you chose Ireland as a setting?

Jon Wright, the film’s director, might not sound Irish, but he was born and bred there. And my mum’s side of the family are from Limerick and Cork, and we’ve grown up hearing stories from Celtic mythology and, with the exception of the Cartoon Saloon animations (which I adore), they haven’t really been done on film. We didn’t want this to be just another US/Brit folk horror.

How has the film been received in Ireland?

No idea. I’m too scared to look! We gave the script to Irish writer friends and asked them to highlight anything egregious that would get us barred from Eire. My biggest mistake in the script was putting a fruit machine in the pub. The writer Caimh McDonnell was quick to point out that Irish pubs don’t have fruit machines! I’m also proud that we set a scene in an Irish pub and no one started singing or playing a fiddle or a bodhrán.

Did you always have the idea that the Redcaps would be more of a physical presence rather than being computer generated?

Ever since seeing Spike Jones’s Where the Wild Things Are, Jon and I have wanted to have creatures in a film that have the physical presence of an actor combined with the kind of expressive faces you get with CG, and this was the perfect opportunity to use every tool in the box to bring them to life. I don’t want to say too much about how they were created, but I think they’re incredibly effective... and they’re not puppets!

When I was watching the film, I got different kinds of feels from horror films of the seventies and eighties, but there also seemed to be a whole range of other eras. Were any of these things in your mind when writing the film, like any specific movies?

Jon and I grew up in that era, so we’re steeped in those films and there are tons of little references and moments, but the one specific reference that Jon brought to me was the final story in Lewis Teague’s Cat’s Eye where a little goblin torments Drew Barrymore and her cat. We loved that combination of mischief and danger.

You play with the audience's expectations constantly. Was that something Jon and you decided on early in writing, or was it organic in its development?

Playing with expectations is my job as writer. I’ll often present the reader/viewer with a situation they think they know and then try and surprise and delight them. I think a writer should live in fear of boring their audience.

The film's original release date was February last year, but, unfortunately, it kept getting pushed back. What happened?

Omicron happened. Cinema is still coming to terms with a post-Covid world and the old marketing strategies aren’t always working. People are going to see the tentpole blockbusters in big numbers, but anything that’s not a big franchise is a very risky proposition for the distributors.

And the chains have figured out that they can make more money showing classic movies. My kids went to see the first two Shrek movies recently and they were packed out. I’ve recently seen The Godfather and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan at my local cinema and it was full of people like me who never got to see them on the big screen the first time around. The cinemas get a much better share of the ticket revenue from these golden oldies than they will showing a new film. In a time when attendances are down, why not go with a sure bet?

Releasing new films is expensive, and marketing them often costs more than the production budget. I’m still amazed we got a theatrical release, especially as it’s not been backed by any significant marketing spend. There are no TV ads or posters, so I’m gobsmacked that anyone’s seen it!

So, as I understand, the film came about with Jon Wright and yourself having a conversation about pacifism and what it would take to push you to violence. The protection of family came up, but was it a conscious decision to have Maya pregnant rather than have them already have a family?

Jon and I hate violence and fighting. We love it in films, but in real life it gives me the shakes and whenever I’ve succumbed to violence (not since I was a kid in a playground scrap, I hasten to add!) I never liked how it changed me and what it brought out in me. We wanted to take a really progressive couple and confront them with gleeful malevolence that can’t be reasoned with to see what it would take for them to snap. And when peaceful people snap, they really go nuts. A big influence on this story wasn’t a horror film, but Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May. Roger Sloman brilliantly plays a man who keeps his voice and temper even when his peaceful camping holiday is ruined by others, until he can’t hold it in any longer and he ends up screaming and waving a stick around like a prehistoric savage. It’s really affecting and disturbing.

And pregnancy’s combination of vulnerability and strength was fascinating to me. As Maya says in the film, “Don’t fuck with Mama Bear.”

Did Unwelcome always have a more serious tone to the narrative? Is there a version where the humour comes more to the fore?

It’s interesting you say that, because I think it’s a funny film, but that doesn’t mean it’s not serious. Laughing and screaming are close cousins. The conversation near the end where two people argue whether the Redcap is a monkey escaped from a zoo is a case in point. When we’re scared we’ll make a joke. But there does come a time towards the end of a script’s development where you wheedle out the self-indulgent stuff, and humour is often the first victim of that cull. Gags might not seem funny after a few drafts and they’re often extraneous and easy to cut. Sometimes that might be a mistake. But I think we have a good balance in this one.

I loved how the script dealt with the concept of masculinity; it is unusual to have the male protagonist be such an ineffectual and, at times, toxic element in the film. Was this a conscious decision to make?

Absolutely. Jon and I both come from working class families where you’re expected to be handy in a fight. We had lots of frank conversations about fears and our childhoods, and we discovered that both our fathers bought us boxing gloves as gifts. Jon refused to wear his and told his father he was a pacifist. I sparred with friends just once with mine and was knocked unconscious. As much as we might fantasise about being James Bond or Indiana Jones, the truth is we’re closer to Mr Bean. It’s about time that Wimpy Masculinity was explored in cinema!

As I have said, I loved how the film pushed the expectations, particularly the utterly horrifying beginning. You don't ease the audience in, do you 😂? Did you want to make the boundaries from the beginning consciously?

We knew it would take time to reveal the Redcaps in the story, so it was important to reassure the horror fans that there would be blood and terror, and there’s nothing more terrifying than a home invasion when you’re on the loo. And we knew this wasn’t going to be your typical Quiet-Bang! jump scare horror. We wanted to get under people’s skin and we started by exploring the things that made us uneasy, starting with the kind of people who relish violence and can’t be reasoned with. If you’re a pacifist, how do you cope with someone kicking your door down?

The Witches of Woodville has been an enormous success; its magnificent mixture of whimsy and darkness speaks to many of us. Do you know what the age demographics are for the readership, are many adults of our age captivated by the same feel the books evoke while watching and reading such classics as the Stone Tapes, Come Back Lucy, and Worzel Gummidge?

Thank you! I did a reader survey just before Christmas and I’ve got readers aged from 10 to 70+, so in terms of a demographic... who knows? Gorgeous people with exquisite taste and a sense of humour.

I often pitch the series as “The last ten minutes of Bedknobs and Broomsticks meets Dad’s Army.” It’s light and frothy, but there are Nazis and demonic forces and death. This might feel like an odd combination, but I grew up watching Bagpuss, Salem’s Lot, The Omen and horrifying public information films where kids were regularly bumped off. I was reading the Usborne World of the Unknown, Stephen King, and When the Wind Blows. On the radio we had 99 Red Balloons and Two Tribes. It’s a miracle I’m sane.

What was the initial audience for The Witches of Woodville when you first started to write the series?

Me. My first draft is always for me as I scratch various writing itches. For subsequent drafts I focus on trying to delight the reader. I’ve had great fun hearing from Woodville readers and the things they love about the series, and the knack now is to deliver what they want while still surprising them. It’s a challenge every time, but stops it from being boring.

Could you ever see a crossover between Woodville and Unwelcome?

Ha! Redcaps versus the Witches of Woodville? The Redcaps wouldn’t stand a chance.

It must be a great feeling to see the film out in the world finally, but are you taking a break, or can you tell us what you are working on now?

It’s an amazing feeling and a relief to have the film finally out there. I can’t afford to take a break, though. I’m skint! I’ve just delivered the fourth Witches of Woodville book to my publisher. It’s called The Holly King and it’s a Christmas story about secrets and trauma, and I really put poor Faye and the witches through the wringer. Nothing will be the same after this one.
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Jon and I have been working on various film and TV projects, and I’ve got a musical romcom (yes, really!) feature film in development with another writer. There’s a Disney+ TV show coming that will have a “Based on an idea by” credit from me. Sadly, I didn’t get to write on it. Maybe they didn’t like my non-Disney take on fairies and goblins? And I think I’ve just written the first draft of a middle grade fantasy novella that I’m not sure what to do with... I’ll figure it out eventually, I suppose. But I write every day now. I love it. And it’s a privilege and I’d be daft to waste it.

​Mark Stay got a part-time Christmas job at Waterstone’s in the nineties (back when it still had an apostrophe) and, despite being working class and quite lippy, somehow ended up working in publishing for over 25 years. He would write in his spare time and sometimes those writings would get turned into books and films, including the Witches of Woodville series from Simon & Schuster, and the 2023 Warner Bros. horror movie Unwelcome.
Mark is also co-presenter of the Bestseller Experiment podcast, which has inspired writers all over the world to finish and publish their books. Born in London, he lives in Kent with Youtube gardener and writer Claire Burgess and a declining assortment of retired chickens.

'Beautiful and engaging and clever and what more could you ask for in a book?'--Manda Scott, bestselling author of A Treachery of Spies

'A story that is full of magic and delight that will thrill readers of any age'--Rowan Coleman, author of The Girl at the Window

'Extremely funny, full of imagination, verve and typical English ‘home counties’ wit'--Irish Independent 

As Spitfires roar overhead and a dark figure stalks the village of Woodville, a young woman will discover her destiny . . .

Faye Bright always felt a little bit different. And today she’s found out why. She’s just stumbled across her late mother’s diary which includes not only a spiffing recipe for jam roly-poly, but spells, incantations, runes and recitations . . . a witch's notebook.

And Faye has inherited her mother’s abilities. 

Just in time, too. The Crow Folk are coming. Led by the charismatic Pumpkinhead, their strange magic threatens Faye and the villagers. Armed with little more than her mum's words, her trusty bicycle, the grudging help of two bickering old ladies, and some aggressive church bellringing, Faye will find herself on the front lines of a war nobody expected.

For fans of Lev Grossman and Terry Pratchett comes this delightful novel of war, mystery and a little bit of magic . . .

Don't miss the other magical books in the WITCHES OF WOODVILLE series!
#1 The Crow Folk
#2 Babes in the Wood
#3 The Ghost of Ivy Barn ​