The Real Life Mill

In 2011, Greyhart Press published my novelette The Mill as a stand-alone title.  It was originally published in the acclaimed Pendragon Press anthology We Fade To Grey in 2008, edited by Gary McMahon (who, in asking for it, succeeded in pulling me out of a writers block that had consumed me for two years).  A story about grief, guilt and coughing ghosts, Mark Morris in his introduction called it "one of the most moving pieces of writing I have read in a long time".

Almost everything about The Mill has a touch of autobiography, not least the key location and The Folly, as we called it, can be found at the end of Shotwell Mill Lane in Rothwell,  From above (thanks Google), it looks like a very small wooded area but within it are the ruins of the old mill.  When I was growing up, in the 70s and 80s, we often played down there (war games worked particularly well, with the old cellars and walls) and it wouldn't be unusual, during the summer holidays, to head down with your mates and discover four or five other groups of kids there.

The River Ise separates Rothwell and Desborough and The Folly is shown in the centre of the photograph

In 2012 (you can see the post here), I explored the site with Dude and found it extremely overgrown and difficult to navigate - it obviously wasn't used as a playground any more.

Dude, in 2012, standing in front of the right hand cellar

During the lockdown period, two things happened.  My wife and I, trying to find long walks in a relatively small town, followed an old footpath map and discovered several places I didn't even know existed, one of which led us to walk back by The Folly.  It was a lovely day, no-one was about and so I took the chance to grab a few photographs.

The same cellar Dude is standing in front of in the other photo - so those trees have sprouted well in the past 8 years...

Further around from the cellars, I wonder what the grave-shaped opening is for?

If you've read the story, I hope you found the Mill itself to be quite a scary place.  I've never been to the real location in the dark but, with its well out of the way location and the whispering trees, I can imagine it's quite eerie.  When I was researching the idea, in an attempt to lend as much truth to the descriptions as I could, I looked everywhere to try and find a photograph of the original mill.  I failed and so made the whole thing up (or, I suppose, did what a writer is supposed to do).  Then, quite by chance, my mum spotted a picture (she remembers the building before it was demolished) someone had posted on a Rothwell Facebook page.

This originally appeared in the Kettering Evening Telegraph in December 1939 and, to my delight, Shotwell Mill looks as creepy as I've always hoped it would.  What do you think?

Kettering Evening Telegraph, 22nd December 1939

Sometimes, it appears, real-life can be even more creepy than a horror story...

You can find more details about The Mill here

A Literary Festival and me...

The first Earls Barton Literary Festival, organised by Carolyn Palot-Watts, ran over this past weekend, the 10th and 11th of June and thanks to my good friend Sue Moorcroft, I was asked to participate - chuffed to be invited to my first ever Lit Fest, I readily agreed.

Reading from The Mill - picture by Sue

My talk, which began at 2.15, was called “How can you write what you know when you write horror?”.  At the time I suggested it, some months beforehand, I thought it was broad enough that I could think of something smart to say and, late last week, I finally figured out what that was going to be.  That didn’t help my nerves - and nor did the fact that I had all morning on Sunday to worry about it.  Using my novella The Mill as the basis, I worked through the idea of how using real life - elements of my own and locations that are local to me - within my horror story grounded the supernatural elements and made them seem (hopefully) more believeable.

Dude!

We - Alison, Dude and myself - arrived at the home of my event co-ordinator Mary Brown on time, we introduced ourselves and she took us up to the venue, the Parish Church Halls.  I was settled in the main area, a largish room with a small stage and Dude helped me figure out where I'd best be sat.  Mary & I chatted and she told me, in anticipation of our meeting, she'd read The Factory and, while it wasn't her normal thing, had enjoyed it (which was nice).  Even so, nerves started to eat at me, not just that I’d forget everything and spend the whole hour staring at my notes thinking “what the hell does that mean?” (assuming I could read my own hand-writing) but also that nobody would turn up.  Thankfully, they did.

Taken by Alison, this shows Sue taking the picture of me at the top of the post.  My co-ordinator, Mary, is sitting on the edge of the stage

At 2.15, Mary did her ‘house keeping’ duties (toilets are here, emergency exit is there, books are for sale on that table) and I set off.  I was lucky enough to have a decent sized audience, luckier still that they listened attentively (especially to my readings) and as the time wore on, my confidence grew and I even threw in some funny bits (which got laughs).  My timing of the speech was a bit off - I finished about thirty minutes into my scheduled hour - but there were some great questions and I loved them, especially since they allowed me to go off on tangents (which, if you've talked to me in real life, you'll know I tend to enjoy doing).  A question about the genre community got me talking about FantasyCon (I think the Grand Hotel in Scarborough gets more gothic every time I describe it) and I also managed to tell the story of the time I stood up at the book launch for Tourniquet Heart and read my short Up For Anything (and the disgusted groan that elicited from Paul Finch).  All too soon, it was 3.15 (I finished off the session with my Portugese ghost story, which you can read here) and that was it - people came up to thank me and chat, I sold and signed some books, Dude came and sat on the stage to help me and my paying audience seemed happy, which was wonderful.

We then retired to the Swan pub (where my writing group meets) with Neil & Donna Bond, for a chat and a drink and it was the perfect way to finish.

I wrote an afterword to The Mill, which you can read here.

Sue's event, held in the Methodist Church on Saturday morning, was a fascinating talk entitled "my route to number one".

The programme, featuring me and Sue.  I didn't grow up in Rushden...

It was a terrific afternoon and, for all my nerves, as soon as I finished I wanted to do it again.  Well done to Carolyn and her team and I hope this proves to be the first of many literary festivals in Earls Barton!

Horror at Desborough library...

Just a quick reminder that this is happening next week.

Three writers - Nicky Peacock, Paul Melhuish and myself - combine for a Horror Night at Desborough Library.

Readings by the three of us - I'm going to do a creepy section from "The Mill", the real-life location of which is about a mile or so from the library - and followed by a Q&A session, our books will also be available and it promises to be a great evening.

Tickets are on-sale now (for the princely sum of £2) so, if you're local, why not pop along?

To promote the event, I made my debut appearance on radio as a guest of John Griff at BBC Radio Northampton and had a great time.  The show is available as listen-again until next Monday so if you want to hear my thoughts on horror, you can listen to the whole thing or jump to 1hr 45m when I appear.

The John Griff show - listen-again until Monday 13th October


Update:
Unfortunately this event has been postponed due to "circumstances beyond our control" and will now take place in 2015.

Reading and Q&A Session at Desborough Library

Coming up next month, I will be involved in a Horror Night event at Desborough Library, along with fellow writers Nicky Peacock and Paul Melhuish.  Starting with readings by the three of us - I'm going to do a creepy section from "The Mill", the real-life location of which is about a mile or so from the library - and followed by a Q&A session, our books will also be available and it promises to be a great evening.

Tickets are on-sale now so, if you're local, why not pop along?

More visits to "The Mill"

As a writer, it's always nice when readers connect to a piece of your work - especially when it's enough for them to either leave a review or drop you a line.  There's also a real thrill when something that is quite a way in the past for you seems to cycle itself back to the surface, gaining new attention, reviews and fans along the way.

When I wrote "The Mill", I had no real expectations of its life beyond it appearing in "We Fade To Grey", the Pendragon Press anthology edited by Gary McMahon that it was written for.  To say it exceeded those expectations is an understatement - it was well received and well reviewed and then Tim C. Taylor at Greyhart Press picked it up to publish in a single volume.  I thought it might sell a handful of copies and fade away quietly but to my great surprise, that didn't happen either - it picked up more good reviews and some of the best comments I've ever received.

Well, it's cycled around again.  Yesterday, my friend James Everington pointed me to a Goodreads group that has highlighted the novelette as one of their reading recommendations and commendations for 2014.  Considering the company I'm keeping, I can only say I'm honoured to be included.

You can find the list here.

"The Mill" has also led me to being interviewed online again, this time by izombiheartzoey at the Interrogating Ideology With a Chainsaw website.  Some great questions, some hopefully half decent answers and hey, it's always nice to get interviewed.

The interview can be found at this link.

Following these two incidents, I had a look at the Amazon page and discovered that the book is no. 59 in the Amazon Bestsellers chart - for Books > Fiction > Horror > Short Stories.  For a novelette that was published in September 2011, that's not bad is it (I know, I'm fairly easily impressed)?

And just in case this has piqued your interest, here's the blurb (and purchase details)

Michael struggles to come to terms with the death of his wife. He has visions of her calling to him, inviting him to the beyond.

At the Bereaved Partners’ Group, he learns that he is not the only one left behind who can hear the departed beckon them… to the Mill.

Available now

Paperback from amazon.com ($4.99) | amazon.co.uk (£3.75)

eBook (list price 99c / 77p) from amazon.com | amazon.co.uk | Barnes&Noble 

| iTunes US UK  CA |  Smashwords | diesel | Kobo

The story behind "The Mill"

I got an email yesterday from Tim C Taylor, my publisher at Greyhart Press (and also my friend from the Northampton SF Writers Group), that my novelette “The Mill” had crept back into the Amazon Top 20 list.   Naturally - even though those statistics are only snapshots and don’t really mean much, bearing in mind the volumes - I was thrilled and I thought that rather than put together a post extolling the virtues of the book, I’d explain something of its genesis (and then extol its virtues!).

Michael struggles to come to terms with the death of his wife. He has visions of her calling to him, inviting him to the beyond.

At the Bereaved Partners’ Group, he learns that he is not the only one left behind who can hear the departed beckon them… to the Mill.

I’ve been writing fiction for a long time and discovered the world of the small press in 1998, with my first publication following the next year.   I enjoyed writing, I sold a few stories, my novel “In The Rain With The Dead” came out from Pendragon Press, all was good.

In 2005, my son was born and I was whacked by a writers block that took me a long while to climb over.   What helped was a friend of mine, Gary McMahon, asking me to contribute a story to a forthcoming anthology he was editing (I later found out that it was all lies - he felt bad for me, asked for a story, then realised he was going to have to put something together).  I wrote “The Mill” (which ran to approximately 15,000 words) and it duly appeared in Gary’s “We Fade To Grey”, which featured four other cracking stories and was short-listed for the BFS Best Anthology in 2009 - and my block had started to fall.  Things still aren’t right, all this time later, but I’m writing again and enjoying it and publishing, 

In August 2011, Tim asked me if I’d be interesting in publishing “The Mill” as a standalone piece and - very proud of the book and what it represents - I agreed.  It appeared in a new edition at the end of September 2011 and has been selling fairly consistently ever since, picking up some very nice reviews along the way and I remain very proud of it, especially because of the boost it gave my confidence.

So where did “The Mill” come from? I'm a strong believer in the school of 'write-what-you-know', in so much as you can place your characters in the most outlandish situations but they should always react how you - or your friends - would.  I first started getting building blocks of ideas for the tale in the early noughties, the concept of a ghost story that wasn't really about ghosts but more about the place though it didn't matter what I did, I couldn't get the story to fly.

It took a while, after Gary’s request, to realise that what I actually wanted to write about was something that I did indeed know, that had been rattling around in my head for a long time.  In 2003, after six months of illness, my younger sister passed away (my novel “Conjure” is dedicated to her) and I was still - four years later - trying to process my thoughts and feelings.  So why not exorcise it all in a story, get down on the page what I thought and how I felt? And that’s what I did, though for the sake of dramatic licence I changed the bereavement to the lead characters wife.

“The Mill” was a difficult story to write, as you can imagine.  Although there are moments of brevity in it and some flashbacks to a more pleasant time, it’s about bereaved partners who would do anything to spend more time with their departed loved ones.  I ploughed a lot of my thoughts into Michael, the lead character and conversations he and his peers have are ones that I had with friends.

The story was a big departure for me - whereas before, in my short stories and my novel, I used gore as a tool and used it gladly, my sensibilities had changed considerably (this is also noticeable in “Conjure”).  I didn’t want to gross people out, I wanted to scare them and make them think and make them cry.  In that sense, I think “The Mill” marks a step-change in my writing career - I’m still a horror writer, make no mistake about that at all, but I now want to move the reader without splashing blood and body parts around.  I will still spill blood, I will still lop off limbs, but that hopefully won’t be the bit that chills the reader.

Dude, standing on the "walkway" between the middle and right cellar

As with most of my work, a lot of the places in the story are real.  I grew up in a small town called Rothwell and if you take a walk down Shotwell Mill Lane (which we always called 'The Folly'), you’ll see in real life exactly what’s described in the book.  There was a mill at the bottom of it, though only the cellar areas now remain and when we were kids, we’d go there in the summer holidays to play war and a variety of other games.  The cellars are still there now, but massively overgrown. 

The hall where the group meets is based on the community centre in Melton Street in Kettering.  By day it was a nursery, whilst in the evenings the side room was hired out by various different parties.  I attended my first writing group there (and met Sue Moorcroft).

The cafe is based on the Fuller Coffee Shop in Newland Street, which my parents like to frequent (and my son loves it too).

The story is set in Gaffney, which is the location for most of my stories.  It’s an amalgamation of Rothwell and Kettering (where we lived when I started publishing) and other places - Northampton and Leicester - pop up as and when required.  I started using the town in the early days because I didn’t want to inadvertently kill someone in a particular street and then discover that someone of that name did actually live there.  Once I’d started publishing the stories, I realised I had to create a reality of the town, so there is a basic layout - in my head - to Gaffney.  To that end, it doesn’t matter if you read a short, the novel or this, the main streets are the same, the town has the same layout and the cinema is always on Russell Street (though I added a railway line to the town in “What Gets Left Behind”, my chapbook from Spectral Press).

“…An amazing novellette that is packed with more emotion and feeling than you could imagine would be possible in a story of this length.  The Mill cements Mark West's place in the ranks of the new wave of quality UK horror authors, who are turning out intelligent, thought provoking and extremely well written stories.” - Jim Mcleod, Ginger Nuts Of Horror

"West treats what could be difficult subject matter with a delicate, reverential touch and it shows. Subtle and affecting, this is a captivating read." - Paul Holmes, The Eloquent Page

"THE MILL is a haunting tale about loss and grief and the lengths people might go to just to spend one more minute with their dearly departed. A ghost story in the Susan Hill mould, THE MILL is gentle in its writing, offering respect for the subject matter as opposed to continuosly heading for the gullet." - Shaun Hamilton, The Horrifically,Horrifying Horror Blog

"The Mill is a heartbreaking ghost story that has a freshness to it that raises it above the recognisable genre tropes that are inevitable in a gothic story of guilt and loss. The prose is a delight but ultimately it is the well developed characters which enable this story to tug at the heart-strings and ensure its place amongst the very best in the ghost story tradition." - Ross Warren, This Is Horror

Available from Amazon.co.uk here
Available from Amazon.com here

Available from iTunes (UK) here
Available from iTunes (US) here

Available from Barnes & Noble here

Available from Smashwords here

"The Mill" picks up another mention!

It's that time of the year again (my round-up is coming soon), when people reflect back on the books they've read over the past year and pass judgement on them (who doesn't love a 'best of'?).

This time it's the turn of Peter Mark May, my friend and occasional partner-in-crime and his list (including all the books he's read which formed the voting pool) can be found on this link.  You really should go and read it but I'll just say that he's declared "The Mill" as his favourite short story/novella.

Thanks Peter, I really appreciate it.  And if you're intrigued, the ebook is still available from Amazon on this link.

The Next Big Thing

THE NEXT BIG THING is a chain of book and author recommendations. The way it works is this, one author tags up to five others, who then each tag five others until the Elder Gods are satisfied that we are all hard at work telling their stories and you're all hard at work reading them. 

Stephen Bacon tagged me on his blog and now it's my turn.

1) What is the working title of your next book?

It doesn’t really have one, though I’ve referred to it as “Never Tear Us Apart” a few times (I’m a big INXS fan).

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
As with most of my projects, it’s been rattling around in my head for years and was originally two completely separate stories before they started to entwine with each other.  It deals with a lot of things that I’ve been exploring over the past few years - an out-of-season British seaside town, grief, ghosts and a haunted place.  And love, always love.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Horror!

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I haven’t thought about it, to be honest.  I very rarely do, for me the lead characters are more often than not me and my friends.  Though Isabel Mundy, in Conjure, was definitely Monica Bellucci and Saskia, in The Mill, was Esther Hall.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A couple of lost, lonely people try to connect at an out-of-season seaside town and there’s a house that eats people.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I haven’t even started it yet, though I can say with a good degree of certainty that it won’t be self-published.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

See the answer to question six.  If I’m looking at a full-length novel, the first draft would probably be written anywhere between six months and a year.  Hopefully quicker.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

There isn’t anything in particular that I’m using as a touchstone for this, to be honest, though that might change once I start writing.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It was a desire to write another novel, to be honest.  I started publishing in the small press in 1999 and worked my way up from short stories to a novel (In The Rain With TheDead) and a short novel (Conjure) and then I hit a writers block that took me out of action for a couple of years.  Since then, I’ve been slowly getting back into things, publishing short stories and novelettes and working my way up to novellas (two are due from Pendragon Press next year).  The next logical step seemed to be another novel and I wanted to write something dark and personal and bleak and scary and now seemed as good a time as any.  I’ve stripped back the premise of my novelette The Mill and used the spine of that for this, plus added in a ghoulish landlord, a man who has ‘the gift’ and a house that’s always hungry.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

If you like haunted house stories, ghosts and frightening things, I would hope you’d like this.  If, like me, you have a thing about sad coastal towns, this could work for you and I hope the relationship angle would touch people too.

And now for the tagging... You can read their answers to the same questions on Wednesday 28th November.

Go for it, Andrew Murray, Neil Williams, Jay Eales, Steve Harris and David Price

The Mill - now available in paperback

"The Mill", my little 'story-that-could' moves into another phase of its life today, as it's released in paperback by those fine folks at Greyhart Press. I'm thrilled, as you can imagine - it's always nice to hold a book with your name on the cover, doubly so when you know that people have really connected with the story.

We have a signing session lined up in July, at Market Harborough Waterstones and more are likely to happen beyond that, mostly - I think - in conjunction with other Greyhart writers.

In the meantime, however, if you fancied getting hold of this wonderful print edition, those very nice people at Greyhart are running a competition that's free to enter, with three copies of the book on offer. To check it out, click the link below:

The Greyhart Press competition to win a free copy of "The Mill"

If you're unlucky, it can also be purchased from Amazon in the UK here and in the US here.

If you're one of those odd people who doesn't like paper books, you can always go the ebook route.

Available from Amazon.co.uk here
Available from Amazon.com here
Available from iTunes (UK) here
Available from iTunes (US) here
Available from Barnes & Noble here
Available from Smashwords here

More love for "The Mill"

A new review, from Gary Swindley at The Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog, for "The Mill".

"This story of loss and longing doesn’t just tug at the heart strings, it reaches deep inside and gives the old ticker a good yanking."

The Mill

With print publication due very soon for "The Mill", it occured to me that there wasn't a book trailer for it. So that's now rectified...




A signing has been arranged at Market Harborough Waterstones, which I'll post more details for when I have them. In the meantime, if the trailer takes your fancy, here are some purchasing details....

Available from Amazon.co.uk here
Available from Amazon.com here

Available from iTunes (UK) here
Available from iTunes (US) here

Available from Barnes & Noble here

Available from Smashwords here

BFS Awards longlist

Following on from my previous post, the BFS have now published their longlists.

I didn't realise this, but I was at a meeting of the Northampton Speculative Fiction Writers Group tonight in Earls Barton and my fellow NSFWG-er Tim C Taylor (also my publisher, through Greyhart Press) told me I was listed for "The Mill".

I checked and he's absolutely right - "The Mill" is listed in Best Novella. What's as nice is that "ill at ease", the collection I co-created and co-edited with Stephen Bacon and Neil Williams is also listed (as is Neil's story, "Closer Than You Think").

I may not have made the long-list, but I'm pretty damned chuffed to get onto the longlist and thanks to whoever voted/nominated me.


In other news, I finished the 1st draft of a nunsploitation story today - a cheerful, gruesome 70s throwback. I like it, I just hope the editor who asked me for it does.

Real-life locations - "The Mill"

Something I like to utilise a lot in my fiction is a sense of place - I believe that if you can make the location as realistic as possible, you can do pretty much whatever else you want and still keep the reader onside. To that end, most places in my stories are based extensively on real life.

Take “The Mill”, as an example (because I have photographs to illustrate this point - my mother didn’t raise a complete idiot). It’s all set in Gaffney, but the locations used are spread over Rothwell and Kettering, from the bereavement group meeting house (the Melton Road Community Centre, where my first writers group met), the café (on Newland Street) and Saskia’s house (my friend Pauline’s house) - all in Kettering, with Rothwell represented by The Mill itself (and if you take a walk down Shotwell Mill Lane, to the north of the town, there you will find the remains as described in the story). I don’t know what the mill was used for originally, or when it closed down, but it was long gone when I was kid, back in the late 70s/early 80s and we used to play war down there.

We went out for a walk on Sunday afternoon and followed some footpaths and ended up there. The last time I’d been down, a couple of years before I wrote the story, it was all overgrown and virtually impossible to get into. It’s still overgrown in parts now, but much more accessible so I took some pictures of the cellars as they are today. The memory I wrote from had no trees growing through the cellar floors, or grass to the brick edgings, which is why they don’t appear in “The Mill”.

So here they are, with Dude in place to give a sense of scale.

Matthew, standing on the "walkway" between the middle and right cellar.

Matthew, standing in front of the right cellar. The cellar on the far left was virtually impossible to reach.

Writing round-up

“The Mill” continues to gather good notices, the latest appearing at The Book Den, where I also contributed a guest blog post on where the story came from.

The Review can be found here, whilst my guest blog can be found here.

I was also thrilled to discover that the story came at number 8 in the Top 15 Reads of the year, as compiled by Jim MacLeod at the Ginger Nuts Of Horror website.

In other news, “Fogbound From 5” is starting to roll out - it’s available in print and digital editions over in the USA, with the print edition due here very early in the new year, though you can get it from Amazon on Kindle. Really proud of this collection - not only does it contain my story “Last Train Home”, by Neil Williams & I were responsible for the cover artwork.

More reviews for "The Mill"

The great Pablo Cheesecake reviews "The Mill" at The Eloquent Page where, amongst other things, he writes, "West treats what could be difficult subject matter with a delicate, reverential touch and it shows. Subtle and affecting, this is a captivating read."

The brilliant Shaun Hamilton, over at the Horrifically, Horrifying blog, had this to say, "THE MILL is a haunting tale about loss and grief and the lengths people might go to just to spend one more minute with their dearly departed. A ghost story in the Susan Hill mould, THE MILL is gentle in its writing, offering respect for the subject matter as opposed to continuosly heading for the gullet."

On Goodreads.com, G.R. Yeates says, "The theme of losing a loved one is visited with rare sensitivity and once again showcases Mark West's skill at realistically portraying interpersonal relationships with dialogue that shines."

Alessa Dark on Twitter wrote "Bold mix of real and supernatural horror, often difficult to pull off, but well-handled in this case."

I can't tell you how heart-warming this is to read. If anyone wants a PDF review copy, email me or the publisher for details.

Available from Amazon.co.uk here
Available from Amazon.com here

Available from iTunes (UK) here
Available from iTunes (US) here

Available from Barnes & Noble here

Available from Smashwords here

Some love for "The Mill"

Anthony Watson has posted a review of "The Mill" at his website and, as a writer, it makes for very pleasant reading.

He says, "The emotional content genuinely is moving and is never mawkish or sentimental and the conclusion fits in perfectly with - and is as moving as - everything that's gone before."

Can't ask for better than that, can you?

Available from Amazon.co.uk here

Available from Amazon.com here

Available from Smashwords here

The Mill

"The Mill" is now available as an eBook, from Tim C Taylor's Greyhart Press.

Previously published in the acclaimed Pendragon Press anthology "We Fade To Grey" (edited by Gary McMahon), "The Mill" is a story about grief, guilt and coughing ghosts and, according to Mark Morris, "is one of the most moving pieces of writing I have read in a long time".

If you choose to give it a chance - and I hope you do - I hope you enjoy it.

Pick it up from Amazon.co.uk here

"The Mill" in the Greyhart Press catalogue