A Christmas Message from Mr Snaggle & Mr Snuffle

 

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“Christmas… can be rather hard.

“Those friends and relatives that have ignored you all year suddenly crawl out of the woodwork and smile their way into your lives. They eat all your food, drink all your wine and eat all the caramels in your box of Quality Street!

“And what do you get in return? A pair of socks, a knitted jumper with mismatching arms or an out-of-date voucher for Marks & Spencer… brilliant.

“All you can do is sit there with a rictus grin plastered across your face as you glance up at the clock and wonder if the local D.I.Y shop is still open and whether they have a special on caskets…

“But this is not a message of gloom and despair… not at all! In fact, this is a message of hope. Embrace the spirit of the season. Get yourself down the pub for a pint or three, indulge yourself with that extra slice of cake and have a knees up with your loved ones.

“Carpe Diem, ladies and gentlemen! After all, you never know when it will be your last… Merry Christmas!”

Mr Snaggle & Mr Snuffle – Arbitrators to The Quick & The Dead (Est. 1275)

Tunes in the Night – my writing playlist for “A Bump in the Night”

Those of you that know me or have stumbled across this blog (or some other social media outlet) will know that I like music. A lot.

As with quite a few things, I have varied taste when it comes to music. It’s not always the lyrics that I’m interested in, but the melody. Sometimes, it can even be the memory or emotion that a particular song evokes in me. In these cases, I might not really like the artist at all, but that one song just happened to be playing at a particular point in my life and it got wrapped up inside the memory. The song becomes the trigger or key to unlocking it.

I’m sure this happens to you as well.

For those of you accustomed to these pages, I’ve mentioned some of my musical influences under the page entitled ‘Influences’ (fancy that). That doesn’t mean I listen to all those artists all the time. I often find that, whenever I sit down to start writing a scene or a poem, I just seem to land on the track I want. It’s almost uncanny.

As I continue, I tend to skip tracks unconsciously without interrupting my flow. It’s just the way I work. When I finally pause for a tea-break or whatever I’ll jot down the tracks that stuck with me or any that I just know I need to hear when I’m going to be writing a particular story/scene. Later, I’ll create a playlist for them on my iPod (an old classic click-wheel model) and add to it during the course of writing. To be honest, I prefer vinyl over digital (much how I prefer books to ebooks), but I probably wouldn’t get much writing done if I had to get up and change the record every three or for minutes. I suppose I need to become wealthy enough where I can hire my very own Jeeves… a ‘vinyl-turner’ of sorts… someone to flip the records at a moments notice!

So, since I’ve finished writing A Bump in the Night I’ve decided to reveal the playlist that I listened to whilst writing it. You might not like some of the tracks/artists; you might even wonder how in the hell I can mix them. You might even wonder at my taste in music, but it might also let you catch a glimpse of what was going on inside my head (for those of you that are bored – the YouTube playlist is at the very end of the post).

Pins in the Night – Inspirational Pins for “A Bump in the Night”

Short and sweet. I like Pinterest. Having somewhere I can keep track of all the images I stumble across that serve as inspiration is great. In some cases, it’s not so much that a particular image inspires, but rather it realises the thoughts I already had in my head.

So, here is my Pinterest board for my recent novella, A Bump in the Night. A few images that I created and uploaded or those that I pulled from the dark waters of the internet as I trawled its river on Mr Bump’s old skiff.

Enjoy!

A Bump in the Night is now available in ebook and print via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and iBooks. The paperback can also be purchased via the Wyldwood Books eStore.

A Bump in the Night – book trailer!

Here it is… A Bump in the Night… the book trailer!

Enjoy…

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A Bump in the Night is now available in ebook and print via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and iBooks. The paperback can also be purchased via the Wyldwood Books eStore.

A Bump in the Night – book release

After much ado, I can finally say that A Bump in the Night is now available!

So… what’s it about?

Despite the title, A Bump in the Night is not a horror story. It’s not going to scare you (it really isn’t – but it might make you laugh). It is not even a ghost story, but rather a story about ghosts and death…

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“Being dead can be hard.

In the past, it was all rattling chains and white sheets. Now, it is all mortgages and unpaid bills.

Mr Snaggle and Mr Snuffle, Arbitrators for the Quick and the Dead, find themselves coming to the aid of an old friend, Mr Bump, formerly known as Mr Grym, Lurker-under-the-Bed-and-Frequenter-of-Wardrobes (or just Charon to his close friends).

Together, they must come up with a plan to prevent Mr Bump from fading. Of course, a cunning plan is never easy to come up with, but with the help of a few beers, a young girl, and an unfortunate victim, they might just pull it off… or will they?

Not everything that goes bump in the night is the stuff of nightmare… sometimes, the dead have nightmares themselves!”

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I originally wrote A Bump in the Night back in 2000 for a UK-based magazine. The magazine was going to print the novella in 3-parts but then passed it up for something else and so the story ended up in the rejected pile at the bottom of my drawer. Until now.

A Bump in the Night – cover reveal

Good things come to those that wait… or so I’m told. If so, there is a rather large van speeding its way towards me as I write with a logo plastered on the side displaying the words ‘Good Things’. Of course, the driver has never heard of GPS, Google Maps, or even roadmaps in general. They will drive said van stuffed with good things around the countryside, eyes locked upon the road, looking for something that resembles a giant letter ‘B’ (having already confirmed the existence of ‘A’ at the coffee machine back at the depot).

Yes, I’m still kicking my heels as I wait for things to arrive. I’m starting to wonder if G.R.R. Martin has taken on a part-time job as a courier agent in between writing the next sentence for Game of Thrones.

In the meantime… here’s the cover for my ‘soon-to-be-released’ novella – A Bump in the Night…

 

A Bump in the Night – coming to stores… almost, nearly, perhaps, in this lifetime…

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