The digital home of author, artist & photographer Chris Elphick | All content, unless otherwise stated, is copyrighted © Chris Elphick

Sunday, 16 February 2025

Indoor Gardening

With Sprin in sight at long last, my enthiasm for gardening, albeit indoor gardening, is burgeoning. 





Kalancho tubiflora 





Saturday, 15 February 2025

Ghost Stories for Boys

As I am writing my first ghost story since I was a young lad, I thought I"d put off writing by organising all my ghost story books and start recording them in my online library:

One of my favourite childhood Christmas present still sits on my bookshelf nearly 50 years later.



#Caturday

The first thing I saw when I woke up this morning.


Thursday, 13 February 2025

X2 More SCGS Books

x2 more books added to my Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories collection. Iam now just x3 books away from completing the current range now. Those remaining books are all in order - with x2 en route from Uxbridge and x1 from America!

Looking through my collection, I had an idea. I have a box of Lego kicking around doing nowt these days. Wouldn't making Lego creations of the Seth drawings featured in these books make for a rather cool project? Hmmmmmm.

Sunday, 9 February 2025

Mother-of-Millions

I used this week's Sunday indoor gardening slot to pot up a Mother-of-Millions plant tp take into the office:


Saturday, 8 February 2025

Friday, 7 February 2025

Another booty haul of goodies

I added a few more titles to my Seth's Christmas Stories book collection. I even managed to snag the rare and already out of print and very pricey The Apple Tree by Daphne du Maurier for a fiver from World of Books. 🙂


I have x3 more books on order, including the rarest SCGS book of all, A Visit by Shirley Jackson, which I sourced for only £12 from an American second hand bookshop. God only know if and when than will arrive though... 

Thursday, 6 February 2025

Tonight's Sunset

The GNS 1 Update Continues

 Continuing work on the updated first issue of my Guy N Smith zine...


Wednesday, 5 February 2025

Familiar for sale!


 Familiar, my 9th and final novel has just been published - you can get your early copy right now here.

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

GNS Zine Update

I will be start work compiling the second issue of the Guy N Smith zine in a couple of weeks. First though, I need to update this zine with a typo clear up, additional content from last year GNS convention and a matt cover to give the book more of a zine look. Watch this space, as I am hoping to get this title back on sale in the very near future...


Monday, 3 February 2025

Familar End.

 Well, I finally competed my 9th and final horror novel, Familiar yesterday. I just have some grafting to do on the typesetting, writing the book's blurb etc. to do now, but I am hoping to get the beast published before the dawning of next week.

Making the most of what spare time I have before heading home for the evening to work on the aforementioned, I manage to progress my Guy N Smith ghost story a little after I finished at the office for the day:

Sunday, 2 February 2025

Sunday Indoor Gardening

 My grandmother used to buy me a box of After Eights every Christmas. This was the last one she gave me before passing away.


Growing in it are various variations of Crassula ovata.

After brushing down the tin, giving the plath a thorough shower and soak, I raised the lower leaf lay so the cool rocks are displayed better.

Fox on a Cold Tin Rood

Saturday, 1 February 2025

Seth Update


Thanks to their cheap price, just a fiver a book, my Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories book collection is already building up nicely 🙂


Friday, 31 January 2025

Goodbye January

 Jeez. January took its toll on my Seasonal Affective Disorder. The upshot of which is I have resigned my position in PCS (if I can't help myself how can I help others). I have also decided to quit my cat volunteering, as I am anxious of bringing cat diseases home to my furry daughter. My only hope is that February is kinder to me and allows me to regain at least a little self respect and self belief. 🙁

Thursday, 30 January 2025

1/12


Well, after setting myself a more chilled goal for 2025, I have made some good progress during January.

Firstly, the first issue of Avalon ~ the Glastonbury zine is available again. Its had a bit of an update, correcting typos etc.  And I have given it more of a zine look by losing its glossy cover.

Secondly, I have virtually ploughed through the third and final edit/rewrite of Famiar. There are just a couple of chapers and a foreward to sort now and then my 9th and final novel will be available to buy and read. Expect to see it on sale sometime around the middle of February.

Also, I have a short ghost story making good progress on my Scribe 2. And believe it not, Pyewacket now has a whole 1st chapter finally written. Though that wont see the light of day for another year or so...

Targets for February 2025 then are:

Update and publish Explore Gower's Verry Volk and Gower Ghosts

Get my Guy N Smith fanzine on sale again in its slightly amended and updated zine-look format look

Publish my 9th novel, Familiar

Well, that's a bit of a tough target I've set myself for the month ahead.

Still, it'll keep me out of trouble...

A loooong January nears a close


Here is a pic of me, tired after a day at the office but still plugging away at my short story for the upcoming second edition of the GuyN Smith zine, which this year will be called 51 Years of Pulp Horror...

Monday, 27 January 2025

Avalon 1 re-issued

Issue 1 of Avalon ~ The Glastonbury Zine is back on sale in a new tweaked zine format. Look out for Issue 2 coming out this comming summer...

Sunday, 26 January 2025

Seth's Ghost Stories Update

The current state of my Seth Ghost Stories Collection

After a few Amazon returns, I spent my Amazon funds on adding a few more titles to my Seth's Chrismas Ghost Stories collection. 



 

One gripe has emerged already. Take a look at The Open Door book pictured above. See anything different about this book compared to the others? It is published by Penguin, not Biblioasis, and is also a larger book than the others in my collection. There is annoyingly little info out there on this book series, so I have no idea why certain editions are only available in the Puffin version. It is annoying though...

Anyway, you can see more about my progress collecting this series of books on my dedicated SCGS page here

Sunday Morning Indoor Gardening

Sunday morning = Indoor gardening in 2025. This morning, I thought I would turn my attention to my 6-month-old Kanna seedlings, my Glastonbury Crassula ovata, grown from a single leaf from the excellent specimen that lives upstairs in The Speaking Tree bookshop in Glastonbury in 2010, and my small cacti pads, which are in need of some major TLC:


Saturday, 25 January 2025

Starting work on GNS2

I completed the final edit Part 2 of my next novel early and so I got to start work on the second issue of the Guy N. Smith zine a little before its scheduled time:


🙂

Tuesday, 21 January 2025

Conjuring ghosts from the page

 Sometimes all I want to do during these cold, dark and miserable winter months is to hibernate until the clocks go forward an hour and the warm of spring awakens the countryside. For now, my best escape from the harsh inconviences of earning a crust and battling the afflictions and ailments of increasing age and ill health as to sit in a quiet place, away from the bustle of every life and create places, people and circumstances of my own. Let an imagined protagonist face a happenstance far more worthy of anxiety than my own petty concerns and lose myself in his actions and thoughts for awhile. And so I take a second sojourn to a andventure I'd hope never to endure in the real world.

Continuing my ghost story for GNS Zine 2

Sunday, 19 January 2025

Mandrake & Money Tree

Sunday morning is my favourite time for indoor gardening. Today, I thought I'd share pics of my 4-year old Mandrake coming back to life and my new Crassula ovata project: