Here are three poems I wrote recently and shared on Medium. I hope you like them! They were all a mix of found poetry and ‘normal’ poetry – by that I mean they all contain some things I overheard such as songs, news, people talking, and they all contain things I was thinking or feeling or seeing at the time, but they also all contain some lines I made up to help it all fit.
Stupid Poetry
Early morning a two-tier sky a world of dead grass sun in our eyes we’ll get there in the end if you really wanna go what we need we can’t have unreality — we know we just dance ourselves free until we feel all right say we can change, we can change and dance on through the night and we’ll write stupid poetry that no one will ever read to make life better in the moment stupid you and stupid me
The Stag and the Orange Moon
my Converse on the dash, your hands on the wheel deep down into the cold shadows we travel with echoes of past us in every song, alongside rivers and across mountains, we were there but now we are here and one day, we will both disappear do you remember when we were lost? but it didn’t matter? and I was sad about the dead deer and the stiff badgers until a giant stag stepped out in front of an orange moon? I’m falling like the leaves and the trees will swallow you what if I keep sinking? what if we both just fade away? time slips away, anyway because we both know nothing matters my bones ache — am I even alive? lost, never coming home but bound together, I take you everywhere with me, you say; let it go before it kills you the time we had is lost but I will always remember the stag and the orange moon
In The Dark
In the dark, I know death is always closer than you think something in my eye something in my teeth there’s bits and pieces of me everywhere a world underground a weapon drawn
I just let it go I sneak past hawthorn trees hunched, deformed a figure in black shaking back hair something bored through hell something in my throat something in my skin
the stench of decay mayflower blossom some ancient magic, mine’s broken as I climb to find the waiting forest I see a green giant bloated corpses, mangled deer dead trees, in the dark
When I first starting writing Black Hare Valley, I had no idea it would become a series. However, by the time I reached the end of the first book, set in 1996, I knew I also had to set one in 1966 to help explain some of the events.
My heroic group of misfit teenagers in the first book are dealing with a missing friend in 1996, but along the way they discover that children have gone missing from Black Hare Valley before, and their own parents were once involved in trying to solve one such case.
In fact, the strange events and missing children occur every thirty years…
Writing the 1966 book was a lot of fun, as I got to go back in time and revisit adult characters from book one when they were teens in the sixties. I think it gives readers an interesting insight into why certain adults in book one behave and live the way they do. It also answers a few of the mysteries along the way.
By the time I got to the end of that book I was thinking about 2026 because thirty years on, my teen characters from 1996 would now be middle-aged and would potentially have children themselves. I wondered what the town would look like by then. Would it be any different? Would children still be going missing on May Day?
So, the series starts in 1996, jumps back to 1966, then jumps forward to 2026. But it doesn’t end there.
My next idea was a diary form book from Jesse Archer’s POV. I don’t want to go into too much detail as it will give you spoilers, but there is a thirty year period where Jesse is essentially cursed and totally alone. I was curious about how he spent those three decades and decided a sporadic diary written by him would provide the answers. It would also answer even more of the mysteries surrounding this strange town.
This therefore means that after the 2026 book, we go back to 1996 to fill in those thirty years…
I honestly thought it was all over with four books but while in the middle of editing and reworking bits of them, another idea hit me. I had one of those really satisfying ‘click’ moments when I realised a fantastic way to end the series and have almost everything explained. (I am also writing a selection of short stories that will fill in even more blanks.)
Book Five, therefore, is also set in 2026, but it makes sense to read it after the diary book. It starts with my heroes thinking they have ‘won’ but in truth, they have no idea what they have unleashed…
Black Hare Valley Book One: 1996 is out this Thursday 25th June (my birthday!) and you can preorder the ebook and/or the paperback on this link: https://books2read.com/u/4EO5DE
When I first had the idea for Black Hare Valley (take a look at last week’s post to get the gist of the inspiration behind it…) I had no idea it would grow into a series, or a universe. I also had no idea how much folklore would come to shape it. My initial idea was an ‘IT’ style horror story about missing kids, ancient evil and a pretty little town that looks perfect but is anything but.
As I wrote the first book, and soon realised I had enough storylines for a second, and so on… I began to realise I was writing folk horror, a genre I’ve been obsessed with for a while. For anyone not sure about the term ‘folk horror’ it applies to a genre of literature film and TV with an emphasis on folklore and the culture of the outsider.
Folk horror is sub-genre of horror that explores mythology, urban legends, paranormal and supernatural beings usually in an urban or rural setting. It draws aspects from cultural traditions, rural life, small town life, connections to ancient evil and explorations of morality. I would argue that folk horror is a really important sub-genre as it explores tales of old and reframes them for modern readers and viewers, often tackling the big questions such as life, death, after-life, mortality, what it is to be human, community and sacrifice etc. It is also a more subtle and unsettling style of horror where threats are less obvious than in ghost or vampire stories, for example.
Common elements include: Paranoia, morality, superstition, tradition, religion dark aspects of nature, isolation. a foreboding atmosphere, outsiders, generational secrets, trauma, curses, nature, isolated communities, rural towns, old-fashioned ways, and dark forces.
The Black Hare Valley series ticks every box there is for folk horror!
As I wrote the books I found myself becoming increasingly immersed in British folklore and several aspects of it really came to dominate the series. I’m going to talk about them now.
May Day: May Day in Black Hare Valley is extremely important, some might say it is sacred. Schools and businesses close for the day. The May Queen, (usually a young girl decked out in white) sits upon a carriage pulled by a mule along the streets of the town. The townsfolk gather at the sides of the road to watch and wave and cheer. Just before she comes along, the hares are released. This is an old time tradition, with the hares racing away symbolising fertility and new life. Everyone follows the May Queen to the park where she is crowned upon her thrones with a garland of wildflowers. A community celebration follows, with children dancing around the Maypole, and plenty of food and drink to enjoy. Traditionally, people used to leave ‘May baskets’ on neighbours doorsteps, sometimes containing food or small gifts, often just posies of wildflowers. In Black Hare Valley May Day represents the shift into Spring and celebrates new life, resurrection and fertility.
Hares: Hares are integral to May Day in Black Hare Valley but they are also a hugely significant symbol of the town and what it represents. Through the ages and across cultures, hares have been associated with witchcraft and magic, as well as with madness, the moon, and bad luck. Equally, they have been associated with good luck, new life and fertility. It was once believed that witches could shape shift into hares to escape persecution. There are old folks tales about what it means to see a hare running through town (a house will catch fire) and people used to believe it was good luck to see hares jumping from the flames of a cornfield.
Fairy rings: Fairy rings are perfect circles of mushrooms/fungi that appear naturally by themselves. There are perfectly good scientific and biological reasons this happens, but go back far enough in time and people used to believe the rings were portals to the fairy realm. It was seen as a great crime to break or damage a fairy ring and doing so would invoke the wrath of the fae folk. They may put a curse on you or they may steal you into their own world. I’ve used fairy rings in the series, and they mostly pop up in book two: 1966.
The Green Man: The Green Man is a universal symbol of nature, fertility, and new life. There are countless folk tales and versions of him across the world and within different cultures. His gnarled old face is often carved into trees or posts, and can often be seen on churches and other old buildings. He symbolises nature, rebirth and the human connection to the natural world. He also symbolises the past…
I hope you’ve enjoyed a little journey through some of the folklore that shaped my next book!
Here is the preorder link if you are tempted to give Book One: 1996 a try!
My homage to Stephen King, echoes of ‘IT’ and bringing back maps and illustrations!
the paperback! Image is mine
It was about seven years ago when the idea for Black Hare Valley first presented itself to me, but back then, I only knew a few things about it. At the time, my eldest son was 12, and had recently dived into ‘IT’ by Stephen King. I was a similar age myself when I first discovered King. Having recently re-read the book (because it is one of my all time favourites), it became a topic of conversation between my son and I.
I told him I wanted to write a big chunk of a book set in a strange small town that seems quaint and peaceful on the surface but is anything but underneath… I wanted a group of misfit teenagers, a missing kid, and an undercurrent of fear and paranoia. That was about all I knew.
I think it was my son who suggested creating the town first and so one evening lying side by side on the lounge floor, we started creating a map on a long sheet of roll-out drawing paper. I’ve still got that map but it’s a bit scruffy these days. Years later I asked my son to recreate an A4 version and that is the neater one that appears at the front of the book.
We didn’t really have a plan. We added whatever felt natural: shops, schools, churches, petrol stations, hills, rivers, streams and woods… It was a lot of fun. Around that time I visited one of the iron age hill-forts we are lucky enough to have in our area and I was feeling very inspired by that too. I decided it should be a valley town, with one main road going through it and the town built up around that. On each side of the town would be sweeping hills and man-made hill-forts, or the remnants of. There would also be creepy woods, mysterious and ancient graves and ruins where the kids could hang out.
We had a lot of fun creating it and then that was it. I didn’t have anything else for the story yet but over the next three years, the characters started to grow in my head. Then in 2023 we had a five day power cut thanks to a storm, and even once the power came back on, we had two weeks without an internet connection.
It was on the first day of the power cut, sitting in the lounge with only the flames of the fire and some hastily strung up fairy lights to see by, that I suddenly knew how I would start the story of Black Hare Valley. A scene popped into my head. The group of teenagers were now fully formed and all had character bios in a notebook. I was working on loads of other books at the time, as I often am, and I wasn’t really meant to write it at all, but the power cut meant I couldn’t use my laptop, so I had no choice.
I picked up a notebook and started writing in longhand. That first scene was so real to me and had already played out in my head like a movie or an episode of a TV show. Jesse Archer, one of my main characters, lurking in an alley way waiting for his friends, who had agreed to help him set fire to the school. He would be interrupted and then arrested by Sergeant Aaron Mayfield and this scene would reveal a dark and mysterious relationship between the two of them.
Once I started writing I could not stop, and over the next three weeks the entire novel poured out of my pen and into several A4 notebooks. I wrote it every day, constantly. I’d be sitting in the car before work and writing. I’d be in the kitchen cooking dinner, and writing. And suddenly, it was done.
It then had to sit and be ignored while I went back to finishing off other projects.
Some time in 2024 I started typing it up and as I typed, I changed, deleted, and added to the book. I then knew there had to be another book, and before long I had a series on the go, which was not something I initially wanted! But the universe I had created just kept on growing and I could not have stopped it if I tried.
By this point I was fully in love with my main characters and heroes: Jesse, Willow, Jaime, Ralph and Paddy. And as I wrote each next book, more answers revealed themselves to me until one day I knew how it all ended, how it all tied up and who or what would ‘win’ in the end.
This book is a true labour of love, a homage to Stephen King’s ‘IT’ and a story about friendship, love, revenge and youth. It’s also a story steeped in folklore, from fairy rings and realms, to May Day traditions, shape-shifters, the green man, the hare, and much, more more.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the inspiration behind it and don’t forget that at the moment the ebook is 99p to preorder from this link: https://books2read.com/u/4EO5DE
I will be back next Friday and the paperback link should be live by then!
The Glorious Outsiders 