Writing Inspiration From Cornwall

I love my caravan holidays in Britain. I try to get away at least twice a year. Coastal getaways in cute little caravans are my idea of vacation heaven. No fighting in queues at airports or long delays. I enjoy foreign holidays, but the hassle of getting there means I only go away if I REALLY REALLY want to see that country.

Anyway, last week we jumped in the car and headed to Cornwall, a county I have never visited before so was excited with anticipation of what to expect and I wasn't disappointed. We stayed near a tiny fishing town of Perranporth. The locals were very friendly and the beaches were spectacular, in particular Cartock beach, although I did end up with third degree burns. Damn my fair skin!

The Highlights:

TRERICE: This was a beautifully preserved Elizabethan Manor house. I arrived whilst it was still daylight and the gardens were outstanding, but the real tour of the house began as it turned to dusk. We were guided through the Orchards where they had candles hanging from the trees, which gave a romantic atmosphere. Then the tour turned to the great Hall with a roaring fire, mulled wine and savoury biscuits. To add to the ambiance foliage from the gardens had been scattered over the stone floors and candles dotted around the room and in the Minstrels gallery.



Once dusk had fallen to night, we were instructed not to utter a single word from there on. The whole house was lit only by candles and we were led to a drawing room and what I found so hypnotic were the paintings as the candles flickered I could have sworn one painting of a female smiled at me and another of a man winked at me! Spooky!

We were then led to the minstrels gallery and as I looked over into the hall we had just been sat in, two women dressed in Tudor clothes were giggling as they swept the floors by the fire. Now I found this bizarre because I felt like I was the Voyeur, none more so as we entered a bathroom. The bath filled with bubble bath and clothes and towels strewn on the floor we then entered a bedroom and as my eyes became accustomed to the light I looked at this body in the bed and thought"is this a dummy or real" so me being the curious creature I am walked towards the bed. I was seriously considering poking the bulk under the covers with my finger when the whole thing moved and began snoring! I nearly jumped out of my skin, then had to stifle an attack of one my famous giggling fits. I LOVE BEING SCARED. Whatever floats your boat right?




What I loved about this tour was the attention to detail the staff had put into this night time tour and instead of it being another Most Haunted style ghost hunt they had cleverly flipped it on it's head so that we were to experience what it must be like for a spirit to watch the living going about their daily lives without anyone being able to see or hear them. Fantastic!

Book Review Come Closer by Sara Gran

Afternoon All,

Today I have a book review of a demon thriller called Come Closer by Sara Gran. The book begins with the narrator having trouble with tapping pipes and she seems to be quite a suppressed character, always doing things to please other people instead. Creepily all these strange perverse behaviours like stubbing cigarettes out on her husbands leg and blacking out only to find the local shopkeeper dead and the narrator has blood spots on her blouse.

The strange behaviours become increasing disturbing and violent until it reaches a terrifying climax.

I really enjoyed this book as there is something very sinister about demon possession and the thought of not being in complete control of your own body and knowing that some else is taking you over must be really frightening. Anyway there were a couple of questions that left me thinking that either the author had forgotten to tidy up a few loose ends or that she has purposely left it open ended so that you the reader can draw your own conclusions (personally I don't like this, if your going to tell a story then tell the whole story please.)

The loose ends were as follows:
1, Did her husband have the affair with her family doctor and was the shrink in cahoots with them? (as he tried to persuade her to leave her husband and he knew things about her that only her husband should know.) OR

2, Were the shrink and family doctor fellow demons, who were persuading her to eat more salt because this would speed up the possession process.
This was all too ambiguous for me.

3, If Naamah is this all powerful demon as was hinted throughout the book then why didn't she use her power and strength to bump off a few psychiatric nurses and escape the lunatic asylum? OR

4, Maybe the author plans to bring out a sequel that will continue Naamahs mischief further.
I hope so, this book was short and snappy and easy to read.

First Part of Sample Chapter to Vampire Sorceress Third Book in The Beyond Series

He sat staring, hypnotised by the only light in his room. The light of a single candle, he watched it flicker sporadically as a cool breeze, from a balcony door which was slightly ajar, it swirled around the hotel bedroom. The heavy, gold velour curtains, rustled gently by the window. The décor was very dark and oppressive, with wall to wall dark pine cladding, brown bedding sheets and worn paisley patterned carpets. He was staying in a very old ski lodge in the bowels of the once Eastern Block country of Romania, though thankfully the citizens were now free of the tyranny of the communist years, it was still very obvious to the westerners eye that a lot of work still needed to be done to the country to bring it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

He blinked for the first time in what seemed like an age, as the howl of a solitary wolf drifted over the pine covered ski slopes that engulfed the tiny village of Piona Brasov. He smiled as he was stirred from his melancholy stare, as he thought to himself “What a perfect place for him to find himself, being what he was and now the obligatory wolf resounding its sad chorus outside, how cliché.”
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling in a mock gesture of boredom. As he did so he stopped as his hearing began to tune in to a very different song now.

“Great.Euro-trash pop, that’s all I need.” He cursed under his breath.

He had heard youngsters call the music as such and he honed in his hearing to route out the source. A discotech from the basement of the hotel next door. He pushed his senses further, through the building and he could now hear the voice of young adults chatting about clothes, music and the opposite sex. He smiled again.

“Youth, they never change. And the 20th Century think they invented the teenager.”

He shook his head reminiscently. He sat staring at the candle once more, trying desperately to ignore the party next door, but it was no use, tracking the sources of the music and voices had also inadvertently woken his other great sense. Smell. He could smell the alcohol on their breaths as they spoke to one another in the disco and now the faint smell of human wafted under his nose, teasing his next great sense. Taste.
Young blood, his heart pounded. No, I mustn’t, his brain screamed, the old and evil only.

“That’s it.”

He slammed both hands on the desk in frustration and pushed himself up from his seat. The chair fell backwards onto the floor, but he didn’t even bother to set it straight again. He grabbed his black raincoat from the bed and paused for a second to admire his adorable chiselled features in the mirror. His black hair was dishevelled as it fell over his shoulders, but that was how the trendy youths of today wore it. His skin was pale, but perfectly flawless. He jutted out his jaw and ran a finger over his eyebrows, to ensure every hair was perfectly in place and his deep brown eyes shimmered with a flicker of gold in his pupils that no human could resist. The peacock was preened and ready to go out prowling. He shot out of the balcony door with invisible lightening speed.

The smell of young fresh flesh drove him insane as he leapt from the balcony of the fourth floor and landed with such precise agility he would have earned a perfect 6.0 in Olympic Gymnastics. He walked as slowly as he could so he could pass for human if anyone was watching from their windows. Why? He wasn’t too sure, seeing as anyone could easily have seen him throwing himself off a balcony.

“Must be more careful,” he thought, “don’t want a repeat episode of St Petersburg a century ago.” If it hadn’t been for his travelling companion he could have been burnt at the stake. “Well almost, slight exaggeration,” he smiled ruefully at the memory.

Any guilt or sense of morality was lost to him now, the lure of blood was too strong and the hunt was now on.

“Just a little nibble of the tiniest hors d'oeuvre,“ He mumbled to himself, then flashed a wicked smile. “Must not do that when I get in there,” he thought. “Don’t want them seeing my pearly whites now.”

He continued down the steep driveway to the hotel Lavka next door to the one he was temporarily residing in.

The smell of pine and cedar were strong now he was out in the open, but the smell of human was even stronger and certainly more alluring. He took one last look on to the ski slopes and saw the mist from the Carpathian mountains weave its way through the trees, when he caught out of the corner of his eye the flash of a wolfs red eye. “I hope you’re not spying on me?” He growled softly as he flashed a soft Gold glittery eye too the wolf. The Red she wolf watched him for only a second then scoffed loudly and sauntered off back into the woods.

Although this was a ski resort, it was September, the end of the summer season was yet not cold enough for snow. This meant there were hardly any tourists milling around the resort and this was just how he liked it. He entered the nightclub around the back of the hotel. The Disco was decorated from floor to ceiling with mirrors and the disco ball in the centre of the ceiling twinkled and flashed and bounced off every mirror. The place was relatively dark, but that didn’t bother his eyesight. He didn’t even need to adjust to night vision as his sight was permanently in night vision mode. He had to adjust his eyesight to light vision, if artificial light was switched on. The rest of the club was furnished in dark blue velour and the seats were set out in little dens. It was the perfect 1980’s roller disco/euro trash disco scene.

Didikai Witch - Second Instalment of Rock World Chapter

Michael was trapped in a corner of the bar with a woman slowly and malevolently approaching him, whose temper was as fiery as her hair. He threw his last desolation spell, coupled with a few charmed words for added effect. This time it hit Lily square in the chest. She yelped like a wounded dog rather than a woman screaming in pain. She hit the floor hard like a rock.
“Bingo!” he yelled in triumph. “You’re a hard bitch to kill!” He smiled in a self indulgent manner that was short lived. Her supposedly lifeless body began to shake and convulse.

He heard a ripping sound as if her clothes were tearing. No. He corrected his hearing as he watched in horror and tilted his head in morbid fascination. It was more like flesh tearing, muscles and sinews stretching and was that…. No it couldn’t be, the sound of bones twisting and cracking.
He was brought back to the situation in a flash as he heard Alex yell over the now empty club.
“Michael over here quickly.” He looked up and behind him to see Alex’s head thrust itself out of the men’s toilet doors.
“Hurry up! We can get out this way. The toilet window!” He implored.” The Police are coming.”

He looked away to the front doors as he saw the blue flashing lights before the sirens even registered. He glanced back at his worthy fighting opponent he still expected to be lying on the floor in a post seizure posture. His eyes widened as what was actually in front of him was a very large amber haired dog. Correction wolf. Drooling and growling for his blood.
“Shit!” He didn’t dare turn his back on the beast. “Alex you get yourselves out of here. I will meet you back at the house. Trust me.” He suddenly felt something warm and wet trickle down his left leg.
“Crap!” he said under his breath. “I’ve actually pissed my pants!”
He could have sworn at this point that the wolf was actually letting out a doggy snicker.

She then growled again. This time she meant it as she bared her teeth. The fangs looked enormous to Michael and all he could do was stand there frozen to the spot, which was actually the best thing he could have done in such a situation. Wolves enjoy nothing more than to play on the fear of their victims in a hunt.
Not by bolting, they just both stood frozen to the spot glaring one another out in and staring stand off that would make any spaghetti western film producer proud.

Michael quickly realised that his best chance of survival was not to scram like the fretting rabbit he actually did feel like right now.
“Lily! LILY!” They both looked up towards the VIP balcony. Jason was leaning over.
“Get your ginger wolf butt up here. NOW!” He spoke with an American accent that was almost indistinguishable due to his panicked shouting of trying to command his subordinate sister back into rank.

Lily ignored him as she turned back to her nemesis and growled again. He had just knocked this warrior down with a desolation spell and she wasn’t best pleased.
He sent out as much telepathic thought he could muster to the angry hound.
“Listen to him! Cops are here. We will both die!”
She looked back at Jason as he let out a very loud, but deep guttural growl of warning to her, like an adult dog chastising an out of control puppy.

She looked menacingly once more at Michael with her iridescent yellow eyes and let out a lasting growl of warning. As she turned away she gave a gruff snort of not just defeat, but annoyance at not being given the chance for a real hunt.

Michael watched her slope off up the stairs towards her commandeering chief.
He let his head drop back in sheer relief then remembered the wet patch on his trouser leg that was now turning cold. He looked down at the darkened patch and shook his trouser leg as if it would magically dry.

“Ooh that’s not a bad idea.” He thought as he spoke a Romanian Gypsy incantation for desert dry pants again. He felt the warmth and tingling of the energy force as his pants dried leaving a stained patch that looked something like a basic science class chromatography experiment.

He groaned at the mess as he looked around then he headed up the stairs following wolf girl as the armed police surrounded the front and back of the building in strategic formation.

My First Book in My Supernatural Thriller Novel Series - The Beyond - Didikai Witch

Rock World - Sample Chapter of Didikai Witch

All hell let loose now as clubbers began screaming in blind panic as they thought they were trapped in a fire fuelled building. The sirens were deafening as the music stopped and everyone ran to a door to get out. All except Michael, Alex and Kate ran onto the dance floor area fighting against the crowds pushing and crushing them from every direction.
George pulled himself off the floor as Michael dragged him out of another onslaught of panicked clubbers, he cast a protection spell around him and he huffed in amazement as he felt the tepid tingling sensation of the spell penetrate every fibre of his body.

“George are you alright?” Alex put his hand on his back.
“Yeah, fine”. George was breathless, with worry and disbelief at what was transpiring before them.
“Where’s Carla?” Alex shouted over the din.
“She bolted and set off these bloody fire alarms”. George rubbed the back of his head where he knocked it against someone’s flailing elbow, during the stampede.
“Have you seen Amethyst?” Kate asked in earnest.
“Yeah”. He pointed to the stairs, “She went up there with two men”. Michael ran to the stairs to hear George shout.
“Be careful, there are werewolves up there!”

Michael turned back to look at the three Daryavaush clairvoyants, mediums, necromancers, call them what you like, but these guys were serious. They actually believed in Werewolves!
“I have never heard of anything so ridiculous!” Michael scoffed. Alex, George and Kate glared at him in utter disbelief.

“You’re a powerful witch from the Romanov clan, who can use telepathy, read auras and manipulate the Universal life energy to your own advantage yet you cannot believe that a human can manipulate the same universal life energy to shift shapes into a beast whose gene lies dormant within a person until it is infected by another shape shifter?” Alex was incredulous. “Does this mean that you do not believe that I can see into the realms of other dimensions? Or that Kate can converse with the spirit world. Is this really all too much for you Michael?” Alex was now simmering at Michael’s total lack of comprehension and his shear arrogance that his family could possibly be the only humans in the world to possess any kind of power. He made no allowances to try and hide his condemnation. Michael cocked his head to one side as a theatrical gesture to listen to Alex’s mind.

“My, my Alex we are very intolerant today aren’t we.” Michael was about to continue, when he was rudely interrupted by Kate.
“Oh put your testosterone away both of you, I think we have a more pressing matters at hand.” She nodded towards the staircase. “It’s just a minuscule problem of the non existent art of Lycanthropy!” They all turned around to watch in horror as both the mousy haired Mr Olympia man known to Alex’s records as one Jason Brannigan and his fiery haired sister Lily march purposefully down the stairs.

“Alex.” Jason glimmered as his eyes shone deep amber, clearly trying to keep the wolf in him under control.
“You know them?” Kate whispered as they all began to back off towards the front door where most of the crowds had passed through and were spilling out onto the city streets.
Michael reached slowly into his jacket pocket and lifted out a pouch he had stashed in his pocket from the Pyramid vaults. He flicked his hand out in front of him as he gabbled an incantation in Romany Gypsy dialect. Both Jason and Lily fell backwards to the floor as the full force of Michaels debilitation spell hit them square in the chest as the sound of what could have been mistaken as a gun shot ricocheted around the now eerily quiet nightclub.

Jason growled in annoyance at his inability to move and was fighting hard to transmutate. Lily looked over to Michael menacingly as Lucas bound down the stairs knocked Michael clean off his feet and sent him sliding backwards across the dance floor crashing at the bar and then stopping sprawled into a table of empty glasses. Kate and George hid behind the DJ’s Record decks as Alex tried to run to Michael to help him up.

“You okay?” Alex tried to pull on his arm as he was lifted off his feet and thrust two extra feet into the air. He managed to see through the corner of his eye that it was Jason who had hold of him.
“Jason please, all we want is to make sure Amethyst is fine and well.” Alex stuttered.
“She is. Don’t interfere into things you don’t understand and never will, Alex.” Jason had no need to use any of his strength to push Alex into a corner close to Kate and George. Then all three scurried in a crouching position towards a door with a little stick man picture stuck to it.

“Jason, Lily. Galle has nearly finished. Come on back up stairs.” Lucas leant over the banister and nervously twitched with anticipation and slight irritation. Jason looked up at him and waved his acknowledgement. He turned and ran four steps at a time before vaulting over the banister and disappearing into VIP area above Michaels head.

He looked across the dance floor as Lily approached baring her teeth as she growled. Michael stood up and put a hand out towards her as if to let her sniff his hand.
“Sit, S…stay. Nice Doggy!” Michael put his other hand in his pocket. “I’m sure I have a Choccy Drop in here somewhere.”
Lily had had quite enough of doggy humour to last her a lifetime. She crunched her knuckles into fists and Michael and the others, who were now hiding behind the men’s toilet door, all heard her knuckles crack. As she let out a loud growl Michael threw a desolation spell this time. The noise was deafening as Lily covered her highly sensitive auditory senses, before picking Michael up high into the air and throwing him high over her shoulder.

Michael let out a yell as he flew through the air, backwards before landing winded behind the bar as bottles and cans came crashing down around his head. He crouched there for an age covering his head with his hands to protect his head from shards of glass

First Ghost Hunt - The Beyond Series Books Research

A while back I decided to do some research for a book I was writing that featured ghosts and the paranormal.

I worked in an old mill converted into offices and I was hearing stories from some of the tenants who claimed they had heard noises such as factory machinery, people shouting when no-one else was in the building and two people told me they had seen a man in a brown foreman’s uniform on the stairs and in the corridor of the fourth floor then just disappeared in front of them. Both descriptions were almost identical and neither had told anyone else of the sightings.

Another claim was hearing voices of ladies chattering and laughing on the second floor. When I researched it I discovered that the foreman had died there and the loudest lady was known as Kathy who was the supervisor in the sewing room on the second floor. (This was all when the mill was a shoe factory that closed in the early eighties.)

I had a night vision camera so I decided to stay late one night when I knew a psychic was having a meeting with my boss.

I went wandering around the building in the dark armed only with my camera and began calling out for any spirits to make themselves known. I wasn’t in the least bit frightened of the dark, until I stood in the corridor on the second floor and began goading Kathy the loud and larger than life seamstress to show herself to me, saying things like “Come on I know you like playing jokes on people, show yourself unless your chicken.” Just then she appeared right at the side of my face, just for a brief second, but long enough to spook me so much I ran back up to the room where my boss was having the meeting. It was a real Most Haunted moment. I told them what had happened and the psychic just smiled and said, “Yes the foreman’s been keeping an eye on you, just in case Kathy went go too far, although he is curious why you would want to frighten yourself like that.”

My boss nor I had told the psychic anything about what I was doing there so late at night and she knew nothing of the history or the spirits in the building as she was visiting from another part of the country. It was so cool I would love to do a professional ghost hunt.

Surrealist Master Eddie Izzard - My Kind Of Comedy Genius

In few other circumstances would an audience find itself being asked to follow the logic of a story that unites The Bible and The Hobbit or a Cat Burgling Dressage Horse!!!
In an Eddie Izzard show, this is entirely normal comic territory.
And it’s a literature mash up that, by the close of his latest Force Majeure show, gets a whole lot more complicated with everyone from Cleopatra to Darth Vader taking a much needed tea break in the Death Star Canteen, God and Izzard’s long standing imaginary friend 'Steve'.

It has always been Eddie’s repertoire on stage to bumble his way into a surrealist grand finale that gathers together the crazy characters that occupy the show’s entire gag reel and for me the weirder the better, like his genius with Trouser Mountain..."The musical" and singing the lines delivered by Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman in Die Hard... "The Musical!"
"Give me my Detonators!!!" He sings low and menacingly. Then turns to himself as Bruce... "Yippee Ki Yay Mother F*****" Brilliant!!!

 Izzard’s comic skill has never really had anything to do with timing; instead he relies on a childlike charm that transports us all back to the experience of telling fantastical half truths in the playground.
His latest show is loosely based on the gods and monsters.Both, argues Izzard, being ludicrous.

His whimsical delivery has always been his tool and as a physical comic, he’s still the master especially when he’s pretending to be an unfit lion, a dressage performing horse, or a destructive kraken left me crying with laughter.