Just wanted to say hi
Hi, I’m based in Bristol, UK, and mainly write creepy fantasy and women’s fiction and sometimes fantasy fiction about creepy women but never NEVER creepy fiction about fantasy women.
I’ve been published online, in magazines, won a few competitions, lost a lot more. I’ve written four novels so far – a supernatural mystery that’s out to agents at the moment (four form rejections, two personalised lovely ones and counting), a YA time slip (roundly rejected by all who read it) and one middle grade fantasy and a murder mystery that never made it off the hard drive. I’m about to embark on a supernatural mystery set in a rundown coastal town in the early 1970s.
Do pop along and say hi if you like Sarah Waters, Neil Gaiman, Susan Hill, Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, David Mitchell, Susan Cooper, Michelle Paver… You get the idea. Looking forward to chat about all things book.
HI Lynn, love the sound of your profile and your work. We share fav authors in Susan Hill, Sarah Waters and Michelle Paver.
That dolly pic is giving me the creeps -which I guess was your intention 😉
Ha! Yes, I found her a few years ago and she pops up every now and then – no controlling her! Ooh, glad you love these very gifted women writers too. Sarah Waters is so terrifically talented – love everything she’s written – and all three are so good at creating atmosphere. Still getting to know the Townhouse – feels a little bumpy to navigate but I’ll get there. And I loved the excerpt you shared on Ocean of Jewels. Is that a finished piece or are you still working on it?
Yes, nice we share a love of their work. The piece I posted is finished and has been accepted for publication in a lit journal!
I too am having problems now and then navigating this site!
Hi Lynn, very much enjoyed reading your profile and the new book sounds fantastic. My book is set in 1987. It’s been fun casting my mind back to those days. Love Michelle Paver, Margaret Atwood and Sarah Waters. Look forward to reading your posts and hearing more about your current WIP.
Thanks Angela, nice to hook up. Yes, I hope my story’s an interesting idea, set during the three day week, all those power cuts and unrest. Hopefully a good seeing for a ghost story
Well, I’m sure I could dredge up some memories from the late eighties – I am that vintage! Though I was into Souxsie and the banshees, the cure etc rather than Bros and house music. What genre is your book? Those women writers are and amazing. I’d I could write half as good as any one of them is be happy. Look forward to seeing you in town house
Yes, I remember revising for my exams and doing homework by candlelight during those times!
My book is a crime thriller. It’s about a woman working in the headhunting business who wants and deserved promotion but it seems everyone around her wants to stand in her way.
Good luck with everything and hope to catch up with you on here again soon.
Ooh, sounds interesting. Very competitive time to be a woman in business. Guessing it all turns very nasty! Hope that all goes well and see you around on here soon hopefully
Lynn,
Your stories sound great… do all of them take place before the 2000s? Personally, I find it difficult to get into a story with supernatural elements that involve a ton of technology/more recent history loke after the 2000s. (not a critique of anyone’s book, just a personal preference)
I do, however, enjoy when a book takes place in modern time, but they leave either that world for a more magical one void of technology (i.e., Harry Potter) or, they go to a place where technology doesn’t work, and it’s as if they went back in time (i.e., Bag of Bones – Stephen King)
I was wondering as I read your blurb, is there a particular book that scared you so much that you were not able to sleep?
Thanks so much for the nice comment AJ. In a way it’s easier to write these things in the past – if you need your MC to be isolated/unable to get help, you don’t have to have their phone signal mysteriously fail! But then you so have to do a lot of research. I think Dark Matter by Michelle Paver is the closest I’ve come to losing sleep. Susan Hills Woman in Black is creepy, of course. And actually I find the ghost stories of MR James unsettling, not gory, just unsettling. If you can get over the early twentieth century manners and slightly stilted language. 😊
That doll picture is fantastic. Your stories sound wonderful. My first novel, “The Garden Key,” is set in 1997, in Southern California. My protagonist is a goth girl who is fan of Peter Murphy, Kate Bush, and Concrete Blonde. Fun stuff. Nice to meet you!
Nice to meet you too Angela. My little doll friend has been around s few years on and off – she comes out of the cupboard from time to time – can’t stop her. I was a Goth girl long ago, though being the other side of the Atlantic (and older) I listened to Souxsie Souix and the Cure 😊. Love Kate Bush. What genre do you write in?
Hi Lynn,
What an introduction! It’s the combination of the doll and the headline that really does it. We have some things in common – David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas), Margaret Atwood (Negotiating with the Dead), Kate Bush! Mostly early KB but I did buy the snowy one. One of my (many) works in progress is a collection of what I call slightly creepy short stories. I doubt they’d feel very creepy to you – apart from one or two, perhaps. And the supernatural does seem to crop up in several of my (also unfinished) longer fiction too.
Hi Alex, nice to hear from you. Always enjoy a creepy tale – since I was a kid they were always my favourite! I like Cloud Atlas, but Bone Clocks is my favourite David Mitchell, Slade House is great too. Only read Margaret Atwood s fiction but the woman is a genius. And Kate Bush – what an artist! The Man with the child in his eyes never fails to make me cry.
Where are you on your publishing journey? Are you subbing to agents, self publishing?
Planning to self-pub. Drip-feeding the novel to betas one chapter at a time, which I think is a bit unorthodox. It started out as a Nano-novel years ago and so much has changed with it in that time!