Death and Fromage

(A Follet Valley Mystery, Book 2)

Ian Moore

PRAISE FOR IAN MOORE AND THE FOLLET VALLEY SERIES

‘Joyous’ ALAN CARR

‘Fantastique!’ ADAM KAY

‘A writer of immense wit and charm’ PAUL SINHA

‘Ian is one of my favourite writers’ JANEY GODLEY

‘Ian Moore is a brilliant, funny writer’ JOSH WIDDICOMBE

‘Very funny indeed’ MILES JUPP

‘Ian is a master of wit on stage, and he has translated that to the page brilliantly’ ZOE LYONS

‘Good food and a laugh-out-loud mystery. What more could anyone want in these dark times?’ MARK BILLINGHAM

‘Like going on a joyous romp through the Loire valley with Agatha Christie, PG Woodhouse and MC Beaton. A delight’ C. K. MCDONNELL

‘A relentless rollercoaster ride of laughs and twists’ MATT FORDE

‘Sharp, slick and surprising – like the author himself – Loire Valley’s answer to Murder on the Orient Express‘ CALLY BEATON

‘Funny, pacy and very entertaining’ ROBIN INCE

‘In Richard, Ian Moore has created the perfect hero for our times – a man who just wants to be left alone, but life has other, stranger, funnier ideas’ EDDIE ROBSON

In space, no one can hear you scream…with laughter

Chris McCrudden

A few serious reasons why you should have more funny science fiction in your life

A lot of people I know struggle to see the funny side of space. Maybe it’s because they’re afraid of aliens, or dark and distant planets. Perhaps they’ve never seen Elon Musk’s hair plugs up close. Yet when it comes to science fiction, many of us seem to think dark and serious books and films are ‘proper’ works of the imagination and anything set in space that contains jokes is a tentacle’s breadth from being Jar Jar Binks.

I’d challenge people to reconsider this and embrace funny science fiction – and this isn’t only because I write it. This is because, as the OG daddy of psychology, Sigmund Freud, pointed out, there’s little trivial about making someone laugh. Humour can do far more than bring us happiness (which is obviously important when we’re looking for our next read). Used in the right way it can also help us to confront and work through the things we repress in ourselves and stigmatise in others. As such it’s an immensely powerful tool for science fiction authors like me because it lets us manoeuvre readers into a place where we can explore dense and difficult ideas in a way that feels lighter than the atomic weight of helium.

Including for Kindle

This is what I set out to do when I started writing my Battlestar Suburbia series, the third of which, Sashay to the Centre of the Earth is out now. Yes, I wanted to use these books as a means of writing jokes about Internet culture and what might happen if smartphones ever worked our they were smarter than their owners. Yet I also wanted to explore how we, as people, struggle against and hopefully overcome forces like social inequality, environmental disaster and the threat of war. (If this is sounding a bit like the news, this was intentional).

I’m far from alone in this, however. For decades, authors of science fiction have used the way that laughter can also make us look at things differently to say something profound about the way we live now. And quite a few of them have also been far more successful than writers of so-called serious fiction in guessing the direction that the future might take.

So if you’re convinced that maybe it’s time to take put more comic science fiction on your TBR pile, here are a few suggestions that will make you think as much as they make you laugh.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams’ book follows Arthur Dent as he and the people around him search for the answer as to why the meaning of life was “42”. Yet as enjoyable as the plot is, the star of this novel is the book within the book.

As an infinite repository of knowledge (much of which is apocryphal) that you can hold in your hand the Hitchhiker’s Guide is an eerily accurate prediction of the Internet, right down the sense of possibility and panic it instils in every reader.

Ubik

Philip K. Dick

We mainly know Philip K. Dick from the gorgeous but ultra-serious Bladerunner, which was adapted from his novel, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. But Dick’s humorous work is also entertaining, offering a roaring critique of how technology would strip us of power by offering convenience.

In this book, the hero is trapped in his own apartment by a ‘smart’ door who refuses to open until it gets paid three cents. It’s a frothy, often absurd read but, if you’ve ever stood there in the dark for minutes at a time pleading for Alexa to turn on the lights, you will also know that making a home smart just means giving Jeff Bezos the key to your front door.

Space Opera

Catherynne M. Valente

Pop music is a political business. Just ask all those people who upset K Pop fans on the Internet last year. Or the British public, who have sent everyone from Bonnie Tyler to Engelbert Humperdinck to bat for them at the Eurovision Song Contest only to limp home with little more than ‘nil’ points year after year.

In this book, Valente explores the healing power of art, the self-loathing that lies at the heart of every artist and the heady ridiculousness of geopolitics through the lens of an intergalactic song contest that may or may not be based loosely on Eurovision. Read it with Steps in your head and Brexit in your heart.

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson must be pissed. In this 1994 dystopia he was decades ahead of technology in imagining a world in which people increasingly lived most of their lives in a virtual online space as ‘meatspace’ outside descends into a hell of anarchy and hyper-capitalism. The name he gave to this world: the Metaverse.

I sincerely hope Mark Zuckerberg is paying Stephenson royalties for the embarrassment he’s causing, both to him and his work. In any event, however, this is a great book and well worth your time.

Chris McCrudden was born in South Shields (no, he doesn’t know Cheryl) and has been, at various points in his life, a butcher’s boy, a burlesque dancer and a hand model for a giant V for Victory sign on Canary Wharf. He now lives in London and, when not writing books, works in PR, so in many ways you could describe his life as a full-time fiction.

Follow Chris on Twitter.

More Chris McCrudden

Battlestar Suburbia
(Book 1)

“Festooned with cunning punnery, sharp turn of phrase”

Financial Times

Including for Kindle

Battle Beyond the Dolestars
(Book 2)

“A comic novel of our times”

James Lovegrove

Including for Kindle

Myths about New Year reading resolutions

Isabel Rogers

Isabel Rogers, author of the wonderfully bonkers Stockwell Park Orchestra series, debunks the myth of the January urge to purge and provides us with an alternative New Year’s resolution list – a reading one!

***“All those ads for ‘New Body, New You’ start to niggle”***

We’ve all done it.

After you’ve hoovered the last crushed Terry’s chocolate orange segment from under the sofa before the dog gets to it and you all have to traipse to the vet for his special charcoal vomiting cocktail (sorry — I’m having a flashback to Christmas Past), your January mind turns to self-improvement.

All those ads for ‘New Body, New You’ start to niggle. It’s no matter those same ad pushers were, a mere fortnight earlier, telling you “MORE CHOCOLATE NEEDED”. Hush. They don’t want us to remember.

“So, you buy a gym membership”

So, you buy a gym membership.

You nearly dislocate a shoulder trying to get your juicer out of the twirly kitchen corner cupboard where you shoved it last February.

Yoga classes, but with meerkats. Goats are so last year darling.

This year, your Apple watch shall think you worthy.

This year will be different.

The January urge to purge sometimes extends to your mind.

A detox for a syrupy winter diet of cosy mysteries (another yacht, Mr Osman?) or escapist crime.

Surely this is the year when you finally master philosophy, putting the can into Kant and nailing down with certainty exactly which consonant comes next in Nietzsche’s name.

“I’m here to tell you — stop. Relax.”

I’m here to tell you — stop. Relax.

We’ve made it through the scariest couple of years any of us can probably remember.

By all means do mental crunches on weighty academic tomes, but you are allowed to leaven it with stuff you enjoy.

Here are my ten reading resolutions.

EXPLORE: The Prize Racket, a new Stockwell Park Orchestra adventure, is coming 28 January 2022

Ten reading resolutions:

1. Never be tempted into calling them ‘bookish’ resolutions.

2. If your To Be Read pile is teetering with stern hardbacks, sneak a cheeky Farrago paperback in there too (why yes I’m biased).

3. Ask your friends what the last book was that made them laugh. If you’ve already read it and agree, laugh with them. If not, buy or borrow it and cultivate new laughter lines.

4. Tell your friends what the most recent book is that made you laugh. Insist they read it too.

5. Always believe reviews that tell you to put hot drinks down before you read that book. Nobody wants bedtime hot chocolate all over your duvet just because of uncontrollable giggling.

6. If you prefer Netflix, that’s ok.

7. If you think you prefer Netflix, imagine who would be cast in the film of your current book. (I have lost hours to this daydream and have no regrets.)

8. Eschew guilt about not reading enough. There is no point. I love my online friends and wouldn’t be without them for the world. Books will always wait for you.

9. Re-read. Find comfort in the familiar. What you think are the same words may take you by surprise.

10. Get yourself a wind-up torch. Appreciate the reliability of a paper book. Even in a January storm’s power cut, there will be a story for company.

I hope 2022 will be better for all of us.

Looking for a new, funny read? Check out Farrago’s Top 20 Funny Must Read Books

Isabel Rogers writes poetry and fiction, but never on the same day. She won the 2014 Cardiff International Poetry Competition, was Hampshire Poet Laureate 2016, and her debut collection, Don’t Ask, came out in 2017 (Eyewear). Life, Death and Cellos is her first novel to be published.

She had a proper City job before a decade in the Scottish Highlands, writing and working in the NHS. She now lives in Hampshire, laughs a lot, and neglects her cello. She is on Twitter @Isabelwriter.

The Stockwell Park Orchestra series

Including for Kindle

Life, Death and Cellos

The Stockwell Park Orchestra is in trouble – could this be their final performance?

Including for Kindle

Bold as Brass

An orchestral project to spread community harmony threatens to do quite the opposite…

Including for Kindle

Continental Riff

An orchestral tour of Europe doesn’t go quite as planned!

Including for Kindle

The Prize Racket

With a huge reward on the line, the Stockwell Park Orchestra will need to play on a whole new scale to win.

Including for Kindle

In Conversation with Ian Moore at Wolverhampton Literary Festival

Join Wolverhampton Literature Festival for a conversation with leading stand-up comedian Ian Moore to discuss the inspiration behind his funny Murder Mystery series set in the Loire Valley.

Hear from the author himself about his new book Death and Croissants and be transported to France through this hilarious whodunnit story?

Performer: Ian Moore

Date: 4 February 2022

Time: 16:00-17:00

Venue: Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Price: Free (booking required)

Death and Croissants
(A Follet Valley Mystery 1)

Unputdownable mystery set in rural France – perfect for fans of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, Julia Chapman, or M.C. Beaton.

Including for Kindle

Death and Papa Noël
(A Follet Valley Short Story)

A NEW CHRISTMAS SHORT STORY by TV/radio regular and bestselling author Ian Moore

Including for Kindle

The Unlawful Birth of Rick Shannon

Bill Fitzhugh

How do you write a crime story? Commit a crime yourself, apparently! Well, that’s what award-winning author of eleven or so comic and satiric crime novels Bill Fitzhugh is saying. Hear how committing a crime inspired his Rick Shannon series, which includes Radio Activity and Highway 61 Resurfaced.

DISCLAIMER: neither Farrago nor Bill Fitzhugh actually condone criminal activity as a means of inspiring comical books, nor criminal activity for any reason, for that matter.

“Sometimes you have to commit a crime to write a crime story”

Sometimes you have to commit a crime to write a crime story.

Many years ago I was working at an FM rock radio station in a small market, the sort of market where you are required to wear multiple hats. In this case I was not only on-the-air talent (DJ), I was also the Music Director and the Program Director. So I was at the station a lot.

The General Manager of the station (let’s call him Dick) was a big-fish-in-a-small-pond sort of guy who nurtured his status as an upstanding Civic Leader. Dick had spent his life carefully grooming a reputation as an All-American Male, conspicuous member of local service organizations, a lay-deacon in his church, and all that.

Some of us who worked for him sensed this wasn’t entirely the case.

“…well, it may be too salacious to repeat verbatim in this forum”

Including for Kindle

“Fast, funny, and fabulous. This is Fitzhugh’s finest – and that’s saying a lot!”

Jill Conner Browne

At any rate, one afternoon I was walking down the upstairs hallway when I heard Dick’s voice coming over the speakers in the production room. This was surprising for two reasons: First, Dick never did production. Second was what I heard him say which was… well, it may be too salacious to repeat verbatim in this forum.

But suffice to say that Dick was bragging about having received an invitation to engage in a rather sordid activity (with a woman who wasn’t his wife) and which – how do I say this delicately – involved micturition.

Well, well, I thought.

I knew immediately what had happened. The station’s engineer had just installed a phone patch into the sound board so that we could record phone interviews. He had tested the connection on one of the five phone lines and when he finished, he inadvertently left that line engaged and running through the sound board.

Later that day, downstairs at the other end of the building, Dick made a phone call on that line and the entire conversation flowed though the sound board and straight out of the speakers.

Well, I did what any enterprising young employee would do after hearing their upstanding general manager brag about his invitation to participate in a vulgar bit of extramarital activity: I grabbed a blank reel of tape, put it on the nearest recorder, and hit “RECORD.”

WATCH: Bill Fitzhugh on Finding Satire in the Serious
From the Video Series Authors in the Tent, Hosted by Ona Russell

“I grabbed a blank reel of tape, put it on the nearest recorder, and hit RECORD”

This, it turned out, was both a State and a Federal crime. Oops.

In any event, I hit “RECORD” and prayed there was more to come.

I needn’t have worried.

What followed was a wildly entertaining six-and-a-half minutes as Dick regaled an unidentified man with one sordid tale after another involving a veritable parade of degenerates and criminals all of whom were a part of this small town’s business class.

For what it’s worth, the guy on the other end was a wormy sounding fellow, and possibly a virgin, who hung breathlessly on Dick’s every word, giggling like a titillated teenager at every mention of sexual activity.

In the course of things, Dick accused his fellow Chamber of Commerce pals of major insurance fraud, arson for profit, and a serious breach of fiduciary duty to his banking partners. And that’s before we get to the strap-on vibrator bits.

But none of the stories were told for the story’s sake; each one was merely a sidebar to Dick bragging about having had sex with a string of women to whom he wasn’t married.

Including for Kindle

“Fitzhugh’s satire isn’t subtle, but it’s hilarious and dead on”

New York Times

“This, it turned out, was both a State and a Federal crime. Oops”

When it ended, I transferred the recording to a cassette and went back to work oblivious of the fact that I was carrying evidence of a Federal crime. Compounding matters was the fact that every time I played the illegal recording to entertain friends (which was not infrequently), I was committing another crime (though one with a shorter statute of limitations).

Flash forwards many years… I’m out of radio and have become a novelist looking for my next story when it dawns on me that I’m sitting on the perfect blackmail plot. Not only that, but I now have a protagonist for a private eye series.

Thus was born Rick Shannon, disillusioned FM rock DJ who become a private investigator in Radio Activity. The book uses every word on the tape (with the exception of names) as Rick investigates the fate of a missing DJ at the radio station where he has landed a job.

As the song goes, it’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but I like it. I think you’ll like it too.

“Thus was born Rick Shannon, disillusioned FM rock DJ who become a private investigator”

Bill Fitzhugh is the author of eleven satiric novels, including Pest Control which has been translated into half a dozen languages, produced as a stage musical, and a German radio show; Warner Brothers owns the film rights. He lives in Los Angeles.

More Bill Fitzhugh

Pest Control
(Assassin Bugs 1)

“This is one roach motel you’ll gladly check into”

Time Out New York

Including for Kindle

The Exterminators
(Assassin Bugs 2)

“A crystal-clear snapshot of the absurd times in which we live”

Steve Brewer

Including for Kindle

Cross Dressing

“Fitzhugh tightens his grip on a reputation for absurdist black comedy”

Bookpage

Including for Kindle

Fender Benders

“A satisfying murder mystery and spoof of life in the country music industry”

USA Today

Including for Kindle

Heart Seizure
(Transplant Tetralogy 1)

“A sick, funny book… for a sick, funny world”

Kinky Friedman

Including for Kindle

Human Resources
(Transplant Tetralogy 2)

“Human Resources is humdinger, a darkly comic gem”

Paul Levine

Including for Kindle

The Organ Grinders
(Transplant Tetralogy 3)

“Entertaining and thought-provoking… laugh-out-loud funny”

CNN.com

Including for Kindle

A Perfect Harvest
(Transplant Tetralogy 4)

“Bill Fitzhugh is a seriously funny guy”

Molly Ivins

Including for Kindle

The Truth About Writing and Comedy

Jonathan Pinnock

Author of the Mathematical Mystery series

If you find reading comedy difficult, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t easy. You just haven’t found the right funny book for you. But what about writing comedy? We asked the author of the witty Mathematical Mystery series, Jonathan Pinnock.

So how are things going, Jonathan? Glad you asked. As it happens, I’m currently in the early stages of writing Book Five in the Mathematical Mystery series of novels that started back in 2019 with The Truth About Archie and Pye.

Writing the fifth book in an open-ended series is very, very different from writing the first one. When you’re writing the first book in a series, you’re not really writing for anyone at all. You have no idea if anyone’s ever going to publish the thing, even less idea if anyone’s going to actually read the thing and in fact you spend a lot of your time wondering ‘Oh God, what is the point of it all?’

“When you’re writing the first book in a series, you’re not really writing for anyone at all”

However, somehow you finish it and after a search that goes on slightly longer than the hunt for Lord Lucan, you eventually locate a lovely editor at Farrago who thinks you might have something worthy of a wider audience. Even better than that, she wants another book and then the ball keeps rolling on and eventually you get to the point where you suddenly seem to have four books out there with gorgeous matching covers and a signed contract for two more.

By this point, you have established a cast of characters and a rough idea of how they will behave and interact with each other. Some of them are, sadly, dead by now and are therefore of little use to you, but the live ones still have needs to fulfil, slights to avenge and wrongs to right. Somewhere in a trading estate off the M25 there is also an entire warehouse of McGuffins, parcelled up, labelled and waiting to be picked out and forklifted onto the back of a lorry only to be lost in transit a few miles short of Rickmansworth.

So you have plenty of material to play with going into Book Five. You may have a half-decent idea for the overall concept of the book and even a title – which will be revealed in due course, but not quite yet. A couple of new characters have also been knocking on your door, although they’re a bit shy and they haven’t quite got round to introducing themselves properly yet.

“What, then, is the point of writing?”

But you still don’t actually get down to writing it, because deep down there is that existential fear known to all writers that as soon as the words make the leap from brain to screen, the wave form will collapse and you’ll find yourself the proud owner of the literary equivalent of Erwin Schrödinger’s dead cat. So by the time you finally do pluck up the courage to dive in, your delight in discovering that the cat is in fact still alive – albeit on life support – is tempered by the knowledge that you have made a commitment to deliver the entire thing by a point in the future that is rapidly advancing towards you over the horizon. Moreover, past experience tells you that it won’t be long until most of your waking life (and a fair bit of your unconscious life too) is taken up with thinking about the damn thing, while the rest of your time will be spent wondering ‘Oh God, what is the point of it all?’

So perhaps there’s not that much difference between writing book one and book five after all.

“To me, there is no nobler calling than trying to make people laugh”

What, then, is the point of writing? More importantly, what is the point of writing a book like the one I’m currently working on – a daft, implausible mystery full of preposterous characters and absurd situations? Surely the very act of sitting down and devoting time to something like that is as close as I can get to pure self-indulgence? Given the state of the world, is that really the best way to spend my time? Even accepting that I’m going to be spending my time writing, is that really the most appropriate thing to be working on?

The thing is, a lot of genres have got a bit tricky to work in recently. Satire pretty much died a few years ago, and today’s dystopian fiction is looking increasingly like tomorrow’s reportage. This is why I think Farrago are really onto something by highlighting humour. Perhaps it’s escapism, but is that really so bad? We need humour for our mental health and to sustain us in these weird, unsettling times. And if that humour takes care to punch in the right, upwards, direction, so much the better.

“We need humour for our mental health and to sustain us in these weird, unsettling times”

This is basically why I write books like The Truth About Archie and Pye. To me, there is no nobler calling than trying to make people laugh. And if they end up spending five or six hours reading a funny book that shows a bunch of little people taking on the bad guys and winning, I don’t think I’ll have entirely wasted my time.

So maybe there is some point to it, after all.

Jonathan Pinnock is the author of the four books in the Mathematical Mystery series: The Truth About Archie and Pye, A Question of Trust, The Riddle of the Fractal Monks and Bad Day in Minsk. He also hosts the podcast It’s Lit But Is It Funny? which you can find in all the usual places. His website is at www.jonathanpinnock.com and he tweets as @jonpinnock.

A Mathematical Mystery series

Including for Kindle

The Truth About Archie and Pye

What connects the mysterious deaths of twin mathematical geniuses with the Belarusian mafia and a cat called µ?

Including for Kindle

A Question of Trust

Tom Winscombe begins another hair-raising adventure as Dorothy vanishes along with all the company’s equipment (and its money).

Including for Kindle

The Riddle of the Fractal Monks

Tom and Dorothy’s date night is ruined by a mysterious falling figure: another mathematical mystery begins…

Including for Kindle

Bad Day in Minsk

A witty, fast-paced thriller set in Belarus, with a dash of mathematics and a large dose of danger.

Including for Kindle

The Stockwell Park Orchestra Interviews: Two

Guest posts
16/11/2021 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding

In January 2022, The Prize Racket is published: the fourth novel in my Stockwell Park Orchestra series. Over the summer I had a chance to interview some characters from the series.

Isabel Rogers

Author of the fabulous Stockwell Park Orchestra series

Interview Two – Pearl

I should have expected nothing less. Pearl, viola player and Queen of the Urn, smiled, leaning round an enormous three-tier cake stand. Each layer was so crammed with a mismatched assortment of biscuits and cakes, it looked like the Tower of Babel had been reimagined as a sugary game of Jenga.

P: Milk?

IR: Yes, please. This is amazing, Pearl! You didn’t have to.

P: Oh, it’s just a few little somethings to keep us going.

IR: You are a marvel. Now – tell me about this European tour. What are you most looking forward to?

P: Well, I know David has booked our usual coach company, and they have lovely facilities on their vehicles. I think we’ve even got a little kitchenette in this one, so I can do emergency teas and coffees if we need them!

IR: Never has an orchestra been so plentifully supplied with beverages. Which reminds me, a reader has asked if you’ll be taking your tea urn on the trip, or have you been assured there will be an urn in each venue?

P: I don’t think there’s room on the coach. I’m sure David will have sorted everything out. And anyway, we might be in more of a cold juice situation, weather-wise.

IR: Do you think this heatwave will make it feel more like a holiday?

P: It’s a bit much for me, to be honest. I do like to wear a nice cardigan. The pockets are so useful. But as long as I can keep our players fully refreshed, I’ll be satisfied.

IR: A professional beverager to the last. I applaud you. And how’s the music going?

P: Eliot’s got us working hard, as usual! The quavers in the Figaro overture are a challenge, but at least it’s quite short. Pete’s probably – well. Yes.

IR: Pete’s what?

P: Oh nothing. He’ll be fine with them. Probably. Mini Battenberg?

IR: Thanks. I spoke to Eliot last week, and he seemed concerned about one particular bar of the Bruckner. Do you know why?

P: Concerned? Did he say he was concerned? Oh dear. I’m not going to – I mean – Pete and I are … oh dear.

IR: What’s going on, Pearl? Do you and Pete have something to do with that bar?

P: No! We’ll be fine. Do have a custard cream.

IR: OK. A few quick-fire questions, if you’re up for it? Bourbons or Jaffa cakes?

P: Well, it’s always nice to provide a choice, and some people really don’t like orangey bits, so –

IR: Mozart or Bruckner?

P: The violas do have gorgeous tunes in the Bruckner. But then if the Mozart weren’t so fast we might enjoy it more.

IR: Tea or coffee?

P: Would you like a top-up?

IR: No, I meant if you had to choose, which would it be?

P: What an odd question. I’m happy to make another pot?

IR: Never mind. Very best of luck for your tour. And with whatever this mystery Bruckner bar is.

P: Thank you. Golly, look at all this. Shall I pop some cake in a Tupperware for you to take home?

_________________

If you have a question for any other Stockwell Park Orchestra musician, please send it to me and I’ll ask on your behalf. Find me on Twitter @Isabelwriter, or drop me a line using the contact page on my site isabelrogers.org.

Miss Interview One? Read it here!

Guest posts
30/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding

The Unlawful Birth of Rick Shannon

How do you write a crime story? Commit a crime yourself, apparently! Well, that’s what award-winning author of eleven or…

Guest posts
22/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding

The Truth About Writing and Comedy

Jonathan Pinnock, author of the Mathematical Mystery series, reveals the truths about writing and comedy.

The haunting British seaside spots that inspired Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Guest posts
01/11/2021 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding

On the wonderful, sorely missed Writers’ Jolly (by which I mean, ‘very business-like industry conference’) Craft of Comedy at Llandudno, I would regularly annoy fellow writers by pointing at the Hydro Hotel and loudly declaring ‘that’s haunted’. In my defence, it’s a very haunted-looking building. The Victorian gothic grandness adorned with Edwardian and 20th-century modernist additions gives it a feeling of not quite belonging to any one time. Add to the fact that, like so many grand Victorian hotels, it faces out to sea and you have got yourself a building that fills my mind’s eye with creeping ghosts.

Hydro Hotel, Llandudno, Wales

I love spaces that don’t feel quite right. ‘Liminal’, as the kids say, and seaside towns, to my mind, usually have that vibe, especially in the winter, when only a few ice cream kiosks are still open, when eating chips is a race against heat loss and seagull gang violence, when the ‘stroll along the prom prom prom’ is an act of attrition against the weather, being taken by brave dog walkers, joggers, and the sheer bloody wilful. This is a silly little archipelago with coastlines full of these slightly faded Victorian seaside resorts.

I’ve wanted to write a story about a haunted island resort for ages, so when Farrago finally gave me the chance with Wish You Weren’t Here, I took inspiration from some of my favourite real-life seaside spots that make me go ‘that’s haunted.’

Anglesey, as seen from Caernarfon

I lived in North West Wales as a young girl, and we used to go sailing on the Menai Strait. At night, there’s something about the disparity between the lights of Caernarfon’s streets and castle, right on the water’s edge, and the comparative darkness of the stretch of Anglesey’s coastline on the other side of the black water that I always found in equal parts disturbing and comforting. The idea of a dark island sitting, waiting across the water from bright, busy streets gives me a pleasant, ASMR-like shiver even now. Also, while it doesn’t have the dilapidated Victorian vibe I went with for Coldbay, the tidal island of Ynys Llanddwyn – where we used to sail – has a desolate, limbo-like beauty. I could cross dark water to that place in sleep or death and find a cold, windswept peace.

View to Anglesey from Caernarfon Castle. Credit: Wander Your Way

Herne Bay, Kent

Even though Coldbay is set near Skegness, it’s much more based on Kent, Sussex, and Wales than it is Lincolnshire. Herne Bay, like Coldbay, lost the majority of its pier to fire and now has a desolate, crumbling zombie of a pierhead left all alone out at sea like a sad little dead wooden island. Sometimes in Herne Bay, you can hear ghostly, echoey explosions from an MoD site on the other side of the estuary, in Essex. This would be creepy enough, but the eeriness is added to by the Maunsell Forts – the rusting, abandoned husks of WW2 gun turrets jutting out of the water on thin legs like alien fighting machines, dead and rotting and the colour of Mars.

Herne Bay Pier, Kent

Hastings, East Sussex

My husband’s home town, still home to my in-laws and therefore the seaside town I visit the most. A good, haunted-atmosphere British seaside town is like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard – kinda crumbly now but by GOD, you should have seen her in her heyday when the moving pictures were silent. Hastings is like that. It’s actually kind of cool and artsy, a slightly more affordable Brighton, but the seafront itself is all once stunningly grand buildings with little bucket & spade kiosks on the ground floor. Occasionally big chunks of the cliff just collapse and there’s nothing you can do about it. One of the main car parks is underneath said cliffs. Good luck with that. Like Herne Bay, it was cursed with a curiously flammable pier and now has a perfectly nice, very cold little new pier with fairy lights and huts selling nick-nacks, which I based Coldbay’s new pier off. ‘The Ship’ pub is based on the wooden fishing huts on the seafront, which remind me of a shipwreck.

Looking eastward along the promenade towards Hastings Pier

Honorable Mention

Cold Harbour in Canterbury. Coldbay was named after a set of boarded up council flats in Canterbury, near a bus stop I used to use. They have since been knocked down for a fancy new retail estate. They looked almost certainly like what you’re picturing right now.

–––––

Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Want some useless trivia? Well, you’re getting some anyway

Skegness: It has been rumoured that the name ‘Skegness’ means either “Skeggi’s headland” or “beard-shaped headland”. This is because the Old East Norse word “skeg” meaning beard, or “skeggi” meaning bearded one, is thought to have come from the Viking who established the original settlement. As if you needed more of an excuse to let that goatee loose in the bracing winds. Man buns are not acceptable however – put it away.

Llandudno: During lockdown, the wild goats of Llandudno took the town by storm causing chaos as they deemed neighbourhood gardens fair game for a spot of lunch. The randy Great Orme’s missed out on their annual contraceptive programme due to lockdown restrictions and their numbers have continued to rise. Locals remain hopeful that the herd heads for the hills soon and tire of their adolescent lovemaking.

Hastings: If the Hastings Direct jingle is the first thing to pop into your head when we say ‘1066’ you’ll relish in this nugget of myth-busting goodness. The Battle of Hastings – which arguably takes second place following this summer’s Gurning Competition as the greatest event to grace the southern shores – did not actually take place in Hastings. It in fact took place in a field seven miles away, which is now the appropriately named village of Battle…

Guest posts
30/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding

The Unlawful Birth of Rick Shannon

How do you write a crime story? Commit a crime yourself, apparently! Well, that’s what award-winning author of eleven or…

Guest posts
22/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding

The Truth About Writing and Comedy

Jonathan Pinnock, author of the Mathematical Mystery series, reveals the truths about writing and comedy.

Mandy Morton in conversation with Book Hoots Podcast

Humorous Mystery and Crime
20/08/2021 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding

Book Hoots – the all things books and authors podcast from Cambridgeshire Libraries – talk to Mandy Morton about The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency series, her background in broadcasting and, of course, cats and food….

Give it a listen on Spotify.

Give it a listen on Anchor.fm.