The Pixie-Led Blog

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.

The final book in this Christmas' ghostly reading list

Dicken's short story was a good read, but I found both the play and the classic BBC version of the work vastly superior and more atmospheric to the original tale.

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 :) ...