10 or 11 years old, scared, bedraggled, glimpsed from the corner of your eye before vanishing into the shadows; the lost boy of York is one of the more enduring legends of my favourite city, which is kind of strange when you realise the details are actually quite sparse.

There is no name, no agreed upon location, very few stories even of how the ghost came to be. People tend to love a good “origin story” for a ghostly visitor (usually steeped in tragedy) but there is next to nothing for the lost boy. One report suggests he may have drowned in the river Ouse during a dare gone wrong but that’s about as far as we can get.

For some of the ghosts in The Book and the Blade I was able to dig into old census records, biographies of famous people, or the exceptional Criminal and Execution Records and make some interesting connections (more on that in future posts) but for the lost boy there was very little.

Don’t get me wrong, a quick online search throws up a hundred blog posts, newspaper articles, and magazine entries about this mysterious inhabitant but they all pretty much say the same thing… there’s a ghost of a boy and he’s scared. That’s not much to play with.

So, I made it up.

I started with what we did have… he’s young, he’s afraid, he runs away or vanishes as soon as anyone sees him.

Arthur stepped forward, and their eyes met, the boy’s widening in fright, the whites showing against the grime of his face. Then, with a barely perceptible shake of the head and a gasp, he was gone, turning to flee up the stairs.

I believe we are hardwired to care for the innocent (most of us anyway) and there is something about a scared and bedraggled child that should pull at all our heart strings. This is what happened to Arthur. In fact, it’s what starts him on the whole adventure in the first place. Admittedly, there was also a cat doing some pretty impressive David-Bowie-in-Labyrinth-parkour to catch his attention (and get him out of the pub), but it was the vision of the lost boy that really set the wheels in motion.

Arthur is a drunk. He is not a particularly good man. But he is trying.

“Are you okay?” he shouted into the evening, a hint of pleading on the edge of his voice. “I just want to know you’re okay. I’m not chasing you,” he added, knowing as he did so that this was the calling cry of perverts and stalkers the world over. The night replied with judgemental silence and a cool breeze.

The lost boy of York has no specified location so I decided early on he was going to appear all over the city. I started him here at Micklegate Bar and peppered him throughout Arthur’s journey home. Originally, I was just going to use him as a bit of a jump-scare device or even comic-relief, but as I went on I realised I wanted to know more. I figured there must be some reason why the few agreed upon points for this legend were that the boy was scared and ran if anyone made eye contact.

To me, that spoke of loneliness, and what do lonely children want other than to be seen?

Arthur can see ghosts… and he has a heart. Every time the boy appeared I seemed to discover more about him and this came about largely because Arthur asked questions… and he listened.

Details emerged about the boy’s life that I never planned. He grew as the story grew, and by the time I’d finished the first draft, “Tom” was an integral part of the whole thing. But of course there’s a twist…

Arthur had seen something as the boy turned his back and ran, something familiar that should not have been. He needed to get up. He needed to get it together and go after the spirit—he needed to talk to him again. The ghost of the boy wearing a grey Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt.

Find out more in The Book and the Blade!

Thanks for reading,

Alex

In the build up to the release of The Saint and the Shadowman – the third novel in the Arthur Crazy series – Parliament House Press have made The Book and the Blade available for free on Amazon!

As it turns out, listing my books for free seems to work quite well

_{Remember when I put Reindeer Games on for free at Christmas and ‘sold’ 600 copies? – and then wished I’d at least asked for a dollar! 🙂}

In the last few days, The Book and the Blade has reached #1 in Ghost Horror in the Australian Kindle market

#7 in Occult Horror (and #34 in Humour) in the UK market

And #23 in Humorous Fantasy in the US market

I find it very interesting that the number of ratings doesn’t match up. I’m not sure what that’s about. I’m also pretty chuffed that my debut novel is standing strong with its hard earned 40-odd reviews against much more popular competition

Thank you muchly to everyone who has bought and read any of my books, I really do appreciate it. If you’re yet to dip your toe into the murky waters of the Arthur Crazy series, now is a perfect time!

Follow this universal link and it will take you to the Amazon store of your country: books2read.com/thebookandtheblade

Much love and thanks for reading,

Al

The Saint and the Shadowman – 22nd of July!

My little comedy/horror indie novel, Rock Zombie, has been shuffling along quite well lately. It was a finalist for the Aurealis Awards ‘best horror novel’ and garnered a little bit of attention around the block. Sadly, this didn’t really equate to sales but we can’t have everything can we? My favourite outcome from this small moment beneath the streetlamp was appearing on The Spooky Shed podcast where I got to chat to Liam about my writing and about our hometown. That’s right, our. The Spooky Shed podcast is based in Redcar where I’m from… and where Rock Zombie is set.

So, a few weeks ago, I got up at 5am on a Saturday morning, perched myself on a cold and dusty drumkit at the far end of the house, and talked to someone with a proper accent for a good hour or so. It was class!

Here is a snippet…

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and another one (with a thumbnail that certainly raises a few questions!)

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and this one, in which I talk about my own reluctant reading journey (which I’ve since found out may or may not be true!)

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If you fancy listening to the whole shebang (and I don’t make too much of a nob of myself) you can do so here…

And like all things with indie creators like myself and Liam, if you like it, please leave a review, or a comment, or share it around. Seriously, that sort of thing makes a massive difference!

Cheers everyone,

Alex

(1 month and 1 day until the next novel comes out!)

A few months ago I had a bit of an author’s nightmare. I lost a manuscript. It wasn’t just a first draft, either. It was the full shebang… a completely edited version of a story I really love. To make matters worse, it turns out I had been sending the first draft manuscript to publishers. An absolute rookie error and entirely my own fault.

Still, I couldn’t figure out where I had gone wrong. I have a lot of files and I am (usually) meticulous about saving everything. I even send emails to myself every 5k words after I hit the 50k mark. So, where the hell was this book?

I only noticed my error after a publisher sent me a (lovely) rejection letter. I had decided they were going to be my last shot at traditional publication for this story and I was really hopeful… because they were freaking awesome and I’m a daydreaming romantic. They were based in the north of England so they’d get all my jokes, they had some really great authors, they seemed totally involved in every stage of the process, and their covers were pretty bloody good. I was excited about the prospect of potentially working with them. When they opened for submissions, I sent the first 10k words, which is standard, and made sure it was as polished as polished could be. And I was absolutely thrilled when they sent a message back a few weeks later saying they loved it and wanted to read the full manuscript.

A full request is a huge deal for a little indie author like me. I was chuffed to bits.

I checked the full manuscript and sent it away and then tried not to get too excited every time my phone buzzed for the next few months.

Eventually, the rejection came. They were lovely. Genuinely lovely. It was clearly a personal email and not a form rejection, so I took the hit and chalked it up to one more nail on the wall (that’s a reference for the Stephen King fans). But I was still pretty excited for this story so decided I’d read it through again with fresh eyes and see what needed to be done for potential self-publication.

And that’s when I noticed the errors. Everything after the 10k word mark hadn’t been touched. When I ‘checked the manuscript’ I had clearly just glanced over the first few chapters. Yep, it was polished. Yep, I remember making that change. Happy days. Send it off, Alex!

It was pretty bad, hey. Some really basic issues. And not just line edits but content edits as well. I found myself making changes I was certain I’d already made. I began to doubt myself, and genuinely got pretty wound up about the whole thing. It just kept happening. I would make changes that I knew I’d made before, so I spent hours looking through my files for the ‘real’ document. To my distress, I couldn’t find it anywhere and seriously began to doubt myself.

Today, I found it.

I got the rejection about two months ago. I have spent the last two months editing the story (again). Today, I finished my edits on Word.

Now, I have a bit of process when it comes to self-publication. I use a program called Reedsy to typeset my manuscripts. I do a few versions, because I like to make my book look like a book and then do another round of edits. I find I can pick errors more easily when it is typeset like a novel. If I have the means, I’ll even print it out. So, today I uploaded Orcs to Reedsy in order to send it to my Kindle. Something I had already done… 6 months ago!

It was right there. Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Orcs? Right there on Reedsy. That’s where I edited it last. And then I set it to download as a Word document so I could reformat it and send it off to publishers. Apparently, however, I had some sort of total brain fart and just completely forgot.

I wish I could contact the publisher and explain but that would be pretty lame. “Hey, remember that story you rejected, well I accidentally sent the wrong version, would you mind having another look?” I’m a high school teacher. I know that excuse. I also know exactly how it would be received.

To say I’m gutted is an understatement, and look, I know they might have rejected the story anyway, but I didn’t give myself the best chance and that really pisses me off.

But at least you know that if I ever do self-publish this story, it will be edited to within an inch of its life (or, chances are, be the wrong bloody story!)

Thanks for reading. I figured I’d write one last post about Orcs before the whole Saint and the Shadowman thing kicks off. That one has a publisher and is due for release next month – the 22nd of July. Stay tuned for ghost post spam!

Cheers,

Al (that’s short for Alex, not Artificial Intelligence)

The art work for this post is from a story called The Three Fingered Ogre as part of Zero, Ghost Detective. It was written by Toni Blum. Pen and Ink by Dan Zolnerowich (signed Arthur Hamon Doyle). It was published in Feature Comics 32, May 1940 and is accessible here https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=74665

Rock Zombie will be shuffling into the streets this Halloween. To avoid the horde, please consider placing a pre-order from any of the fine establishments listed on my Book2Read page… the link is below…

https://books2read.com/Rockzombie

Unfortunately, the Amazon link isn’t entirely accurate… it says ‘kindle’ but only the paperback is available for pre-order from Amazon at this time. The ebook will be available on the day of release… the 31st of October, 2024 (Yes, Halloween!)

All other non-Bezos companies have the ebook ready for pre-order. Go figure.

And to whet your whistle, why not check out this exceptional review from the wonderful Dave Musson (he of, Dave Reads King fame!)

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6907859797

CLICK TO READ MORE

I made a mistake.

When I designed the original cover for Reindeer Games 2 I had an idea that I wanted it to look like the poster for Die Hard. I took a number of stock images and put them together on a certain well-known program and got it as close as I could. But it wasn’t close enough and I didn’t have the expertise to add the extra tweaks I had in mind. The program, however, had recently introduced a feature that allowed the user to enter text prompts in order to create certain effects. I read up on it and discovered that these effects were all modeled on the program’s own stock images. In my ignorance, I cracked on and thought nothing of it. I genuinely believed it behaved more like a search engine than what it turned out to be… an A.I. generative fill.

Since then, I have found out that the company might not have been entirely honest in their assertions and there is no guarantee that the effects weren’t generated from artists without permission. I have deleted the original cover and I’m taking steps to make amends for my mistake.

I firmly believe there is no place for generative A.I. in the creative arts, be it in writing or cover design, and I’m gutted that I ignorantly used it.

The new cover… the one on this copy of Reindeer Games 2… uses art from a 1948 edition of Ha Ha Comics (American Comics Group, 1943 series) No. 49 January 1948 by Creston Publications Corporation. The panel is taken from a story called Blitzen Jr. by H.R. Karp. Pencils and Ink by Jack Bradbury. Letters by Melvin Millar. Editor: Richard Hughes.

You may be familiar with Jack Bradbury. He was an exceptional artist who worked for Disney and Warner Bros. in the ‘30s and ‘40s before moving on to illustrate comics. His son, Joel, has created a website of his father’s work, all of which exists in the public domain.

You can visit it here https://jbrad.org/

Sorry folks.

Al (not A.I.)