Dark Garret

Hello all!

Well, that was a bit of a trial. I had a lot of my social media sites potentially get affected by a virus, but everything seems safe. Its been a while since that happened and nothing bad has happened. So there's nothing to worry about there.

So, welcome to my new blog! Take a look around. There's a little bit about me on  the pages listed down the side. Something that Steven King once said about me which was lovely and there are two short stories as well. Both were done quite a while ago and had been published in the Derby Evening Telegraph to accompany an art exhibition I took part in in 2013. I hope you enjoy them. I went through them once again while uploading them to this blog. Though they aren't my best pieces, I found myself being pleasantly surprised by their content. Can you spot all the references?

Well, what have I been up to otherwise. Well, I now have a new Instagram account and a new Twitter account and you can easily find links to them at the top of the blog or in the About. I recently finished a first draft for a story inspired by a series that I'd long given up on. I think I might take that series up again. Its based on Derby history and folklore. Once I've had it edited, I'll see what's to be done with it.

I am also working on another short story at the moment and I don't want to say too much about it just yet without permission as its for someone. I don't want to put my foot in my mouth about it and say the wrong thing, but more news about it should be let out about it as this month progresses. So watch out for that.

Other things that I've been up to are my involvement with Northworthy Sagas and Stories. It's a YouTube channel specialising in the telling of Dark Age folktales, so that's primarily Vikings and Anglo-Saxons. But they also talk about Dark Age culture and fighting styles as well, so that's all very fun. I've been helping them sort out a blog - more on that to come - and also helping them out with a couple of twitter accounts. They have a YouTube twitter account and a Blog twitter account to check out. They also have an Instagram account as well.

But other than that, I have been exploring a lot of magically processes. There's a lot of meditation involved as well as fiddling around with crystals, pendulums, tarot cards and oracle cards. I even made my own Black Mirror for scrying - just like John Dee hey? though I bet a lot of you will think it's all airy and fairy (lovely beings). I've really got into the concepts of Alchemy and Gnosticism. I may even start up my own blog about it. But I've not properly decided. You'll here about that here first.

But back to more writing based things. I have been mulling over taking up a proper Steampunk persona and have been mulling starting up my own YouTube channel. How I go about doing that and what exactly my content will be, I have made no firm decision whatsoever. But any decision with be updated here.

One last thing. My old blog had a couple of extra pages. Would people like to see their return? One was about curious sections of Thomas of Newburgh's History of English Affairs - a very good history by all accounts, very accurate for its day that also had some acknowledged weirdness included. There was also a section about Derbyshire folklore, history and ghost tales as well that I'd found. And lastly, there was a potted history of my favourite detective book series, Sexton Blake - he is mostly forgotten about but more prolific than Sherlock Holmes ever was. What do people think?

Anyway, that's it for now. I hope to be updating this at least semi-regularly. I'll keep in touch.

Farewell