Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Deck the Halls
Started decorating the house with Winter/Yule/Christmas decorations. Just one new one a day as the season builds 🙂 
My Yule Goat Mug
I purchased this great little festive mug from IKEA a few weeks again. It features Santa feeding the Christmas Yule Goat and I have grown rather fond of it.
Christmas Morning 2019
God only knows what was kicking off outside my house on Christmas morning. The sound of screaming gulls, crows and barking dogs was enough to wake the dead and it certainly stirred me from my bed. Looking out from our bedroom window into the early morning darkness, I could not see any disturbance. Still, the kerfuffle went on long enough for me to capture a brief recording of it all:
Christmas Ghost Stories Review (2019)
With the writing of my novella, Berserk!, completed a short while ago, I have finally been afforded the opportunity to catch up on on some reading. To get into the festive spirit, whilst also accomplishing some prep work for my major writing project for 2020, I have been reading a fair few ghost stories in the build up to Christmas, concentrating on the books published in the Seth's range, by Bibliosis.
These are nicely designed books, with some decent graphic art by the cartoonist Seth. Unfortunately, they were not all the most inspiring of tales. For this Christmas, I read:
The Signalman by Charles Dickens
The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood
Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk by Frank Cowper
One Who Saw by A.M. Burrage
The Red Lodge by H. Russell Wakefield
Afterward by Edith Wharton
The Green Room by Walter de la Mare
Out of those fair few titles, only two were of any real worth and only one really struck a decent chord with me.
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| The final book in this Christmas' ghostly reading list |
Only Frank Cowper's Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk ticked all my boxes for a good ghost story and I thoroughly recommend that title to anyone looking for an interesting and out-of-the-ordinary read.
I had planned to buy more of the books in this series (more seem to be published to the list of titles each year), but given only one out of the seven of them raised any real frisson in me, I am unsure where I will actually stick to this plan.
I have a busy weekend now, as I need to typeset Berserk!, adjust its cover to fit the dimensions of the book and get the little beast published. Hopefully, the book will be available to purchase sometime during the coming week :) ...
Christmas Ghost Stories
Whiling away the days to Christmas with some festive reading:
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| The Green Room by Walter de la Mare |
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
Our Christmas tree went up today :) And feeling in the Christmas spirit, I spent the wee small of this night watching old BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas, whilst outside a gale and icy showers did their best to add to the atmosphere :)
Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk
I spent this afternoon reading Frank Cowper's 'Christmas Even on a Haunted Hulk'. This was definitely the best story out of my first batch of Christmas ghost stories to read, followed closely by M.R. James'classic 'The Signalman'. Out of the three books, only one disappointed, that being Algernon Blackwood's 'The Empty House'.
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| A Perfect Winter's Afternoon Read |
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| Feet Up, Reading 'Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk' |
These are great little books,which can be read in about half an hour each. The are feature some pretty cool graphic art by the cartoonist Seth. I will definitely be purchasing more of the titles in that range to read for Christmas 2020!
Christmas Ghost Stories...
My main writing project for 2020 will be a Christmas Story titled 'Solstice'. To get in the mood for writing that, as well as the festive season itself, I am going to start December off by reading these little fellas :) I think I know which book I'll read first...
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