Category Archives: Blog entries

Alice and the Broken Dead – out now!

It’s release day!!

The latest Ghosts of Alice novel, Alice and the Broken Dead, is out now!

I’d been planning to get it out at the start of October, well in time for Halloween – and thankfully, despite a few set backs, I’ve made it!

So what’s in store for our intrepid ghost-whisperer Alice next?

Well, it starts with Alice happy – very happy – standing in the Himalayas watching the sunrise over the mountains. Of course, as you’d expect, things can only go downhill – literally 😊 – from there, but at least she gets her moment of perfection. (I sometimes wonder about writers, locking themselves away all day, dreaming up torturous scenarios for their characters…)

Here’s the full blurb to whet your appetite:

She realised the emotion on his face was something else altogether…Fear.
Nicholas lifted his arm and pointed at her.
‘What?’ said his mother. ‘What is it, Nicholas?’
‘Her,’ he said. ‘It was her.’

Having lost her job at the Trust for England, Alice heads to India via Nepal to help a wealthy family beset by disturbing paranormal phenomena. She is soon embroiled in a strange and terrifying mystery. Who – or rather what – is bringing the family to breaking point, smashing things in their state-of-the-art house and threatening the couple and their two children?

Increasingly thwarted in her attempts to understand the destructive entity, Alice resorts to a wild scheme – one that threatens to bring more tragedy in its wake.

Has she made a terrible mistake?

Perfect to get you in the mood for Spooky Season!

Click here to view it on Amazon – and if you do read it please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews make a huge difference in getting the books you love in front of other readers – which helps me to keep writing books. 😉

Thanks – and happy (?!) reading! 😱

My ‘Marmite’ Book

Leave a Reply

I’ve decided to do a few general posts about my books. Obviously every time you speak or post about something it’s promotion, but these are not going to be the usual my book is great please buy it sort of thing.

I want to give a feel for things that I think are interesting about each book, maybe why I wrote it, what I was hoping to achieve, how I tried to promote it, or just something leftfield about it.

I’m going to start with my ‘Marmite’ book.

Who is the Man in the Woods - the perfect book for Halloween

I’ve got two novellas out, the second of which is The Man in the Woods. This is my ‘Love it or Hate it’ book, because it’s the only one that’s had a wide range of responses. In terms of reviews, most are 4 and 5 star – but it’s also got the highest number of 3, 2 and 1 star reviews of any of my books.

Some people love it:

Some people don’t get it:

And some people… well, check out possibly my most succinct review ever:

No one says it’s badly written, or unsuspenseful, or the characters are bad (thankfully).

I think things that might cause some readers not to like it include:

It’s a novella. People generally prefer longer stories, IMHO.
Whilst it’s dark like all my books, it has an unreliable first person narrator, which is different to the others.
It’s a ‘high concept’ story with a distinctive twist that turns the whole story on its head. Not many people guess it (only one person I know worked it out before the ending). Some people do not like the twist because of the way it changes everything (and just to add, no, it’s not one of those ‘it was all a dream’ stories, which I don’t like either).
I think some people might be expecting it to remain within the mainstream psychological thriller genre – and when the twist pushes it into a subcategory of that genre they’re not always happy (and no, it’s not mucking around with time slip / time travel – I don’t like those much either!)
After the twist it ends on a note where some have said they would like it to continue

Addressing the last point, I have to admit, I can see why. I had always conceived of this as a standalone long short story / novella. For me, it was a piece hinged on its short sharp shock, which would always end where it ended. Although now I do have the start of an idea for a sequel – whether I will ever write it, I’m unsure!

Have I wondered about The Man in the Woods getting lower reviews than my other books and whether I should have published it? Yes.

Would I consider unpublishing it? No.

Some books we write just for ourselves knowing that, within those readers whose interests and passions cross over with ours, there will always be a few who like the twisted path you sometimes choose to take.

Next up, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood – a book I was very unsure about when I published it…

The Secret of the Tirthas Summer Sale!

Leave a Reply

The Secret of the Tirthas Summer Sale is here!

Going somewhere nice this summer? How about if you could avoid all the hassle of travel just by stepping out your backdoor and going to fantastic places through portals hidden in your own garden?

Sounds good, huh? BUT… what if you then found a killer was using those same portals to evade capture?

That’s what happens to Lizzie Jones in The Secret of the Tirthas adventure series. After inheriting her great-uncle’s cottage and ‘garden of rooms’ she discovers mysterious portals, or tirthas, to exotic places all over the world. The tirthas take Lizzie to Kashi, the Indian City of Light, the eerie swamplands of Louisiana, and the treacherous jungle of Cameroon – and many more amazing places.

But soon she finds the power of the tirthas is being exploited by hideous demons and their servants, trying to prevent their summons to the shadowy Unknown Realms. Can Lizzie and her new friends – the elephant rider, Pandu, and police inspector, Raj Faruwallah – stop them before they achieve their evil ends?

Now, hot on the heels of my Ghosts of Alice series promo, I’m holding a Summer Sale on the WHOLE series! The first book, The City of Light, is FREE on Kindle, and all other books – The Book of Life, The Dreamer Falls, The Lady in the Moon Moth Mask and The Unknown Realms – are just 99p / 99c!

That means you can get the whole series for just £3.96 or $3.96! Perfect binge reading for lovers of His Dark Materials and Harry Potter on those hot (🤞) summer days…

‘Entertaining and exciting… I can’t wait to read the next adventure’ The Guardian.

Click here to visit the series page on Amazon US, or here on Amazon UK.

The Ghosts of Alice – Book 4

Leave a Reply

A few people have been asking whether there’s going to be another Ghosts of Alice book – so I’ll start by saying… yes there is!

Having written two standalone horror stories last year – The Man in the Woods and Black Beacon – I’ve returned to the fourth instalment of Alice’s story. I recently finished the first draft and am now going through, marking up changes. I’d give you the title but unfortunately I haven’t settled on it yet – which is unusual for me, because I usually know the title early on.

Here’s a little of what to expect:

Having lost her job at the Trust for England, Alice heads out to India via Nepal to help a wealthy family experiencing disturbing paranormal phenomena. She is soon embroiled in a strange and terrifying mystery. Who – or rather what – is bringing the family to breaking point, smashing things up in their state-of-the-art house and frightening the couple and their two children? Increasingly thwarted in her attempts to understand the entity, Alice resorts to a wild scheme – one that threatens to bring more tragedy in its wake. Has she made a terrible mistake?

Book 4 in The Ghosts of Alice will be out later this summer – if I can just work out that title… 😉

If you’re wondering about the pics BTW, they’re of beautiful Machapuchare, which I took when I was a young man trekking through Nepal. I thought Alice deserved at least a little reward for all she’s been through, so the book starts with her enjoying this stunning view.

Start of Summer Sale on The Ghosts of Alice!

Leave a Reply

Just to let you know I’m holding a Start of Summer Sale on the Ghosts of Alice series!

For the first time ever, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood, the first book in the series, is absolutely FREE on Kindle! If you haven’t already read it, now’s your chance to discover the plight of Alice Deaton, a young woman with a mysterious connection to the dead, as she prepares the opening of medieval Bramley Manor for a heritage trust. What will she do when the ghosts start appearing – the boy in the burgundy hood and the woman with the wounded hand? The secrets of Bramley are darker and more grisly than she would ever have imagined…

PLUS… the other two books in The Ghosts of Alice series are in the Start of Summer Sale too – The Girl in the Ivory Dress is just 99p / 99c, and Alice and the Devil £1.99 / $1.99! That’s the whole series reduced from £7.97 / $9.97 to £2.98 / $2.98!

Click here to go to the series page on Amazon.

In other news, I’ve just finished the first draft of the next book in the series. It hasn’t got a title yet, but I can tell you it’s set far from (Alice’s) home in Nepal and India, where Alice has a very different type of mystery to solve. More soon!

Favourite books – a little self indulgence…

Leave a Reply

OK, this post is a bit indulgent, but have any of you writers out there ever thought about which of your own books you like most? I spent half an hour the other night thinking about just that. I ended up rating them for ‘Best Beginning’, ‘Best Ending’ and ‘Overall Favourite’. And here’s what came out tops:

Best Beginning: The Girl in the Ivory Dress – after the relatively slow build of the mystery in The Boy in the Burgundy Hood, I wanted to hit the ground running in the second book. In the opening scenes, Alice finds herself having to deal with a woman on fire, rescue a priceless heritage collection, and handle not one but two ghosts!

Best Ending: The Unknown Realms – the conclusion to my 5-book Secret of the Tirthas series gets pretty high stakes at the end, with a final battle involving demons, Lizzie and her friends and – yep, an elephant! If it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye – well, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to.

Overall Favourite: Black Beacon – close to my heart because of its inspiration from my family history – but still I reckon a neat plotline and taut supernatural thriller.

This was a difficult selection and even now I find I’m changing my mind – but you have to stop somewhere!

If you’ve read my books, do you agree with my selection? And if you’re a writer, which of your own books do you like most and why?

Click here to find out more about these books on Amazon.

The Ghosts of Alice series sells 5000 copies!

Leave a Reply

The Ghosts of Alice series – three of my books starting with The Boy in the Burgundy Hood – chalked up 5000 sales this week!

I never thought when I began indie publishing my stories that I’d sell anything like that number. I was always happy just to know people were able to find and read (and hopefully enjoy!) what I’d written. So this has been the icing on the cake, especially during the couple of periods when The Boy in the Burgundy Hood hit bestseller status on Amazon.

If you like ghost stories, and want to read about an unusual hero with a mysterious connection to the dead, why not give the series a go?

What readers say about The Boy in the Burgundy Hood:

***** ‘The perfect modern day ghost story with a grisly twist’
***** ‘Impossible to put down’
***** ‘Creepy and satisfying’
***** ‘A compelling and spinetingling read’
***** ‘Too scared to sleep… extremely good book, I read it in one day!’
***** ‘Turn the screw it does, right up to its terrifyingly dark finale.’

Check out the books on Amazon here.

The Ultimate Ending

Leave a Reply

I’ve been thinking recently, how often does the ending of a film, book or TV series exceed your expectations? How many times have you been blown away – either devastated or thrilled – in those closing moments?

(Alert – there are plenty of spoilers in this post, so proceed with caution…)

For me, there tend to be two, linked things that lift a story above and beyond the norm. Sadly, one of them is the death of the main character. As a young boy, I was forever imprinted by watching The Alamo with John Wayne, filled with feelings of horror, loss, admiration, and above all disbelief as Davy Crockett pitched himself into the magazine store with a torch in one last act of defiance. I felt similarly about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Saving Private Ryan (such a horrifyingly impersonal but cinematically astute way to pick off a character we’ve come to cherish), The Green Mile, Million Dollar Baby, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The ending of Night of the Living Dead is horrific, on both an intimate and a broader, social level. (Incidentally, that film was released a month before the US MPAA film rating system came into place, so was first watched by stunned kids and teenagers in a Saturday matinee in Pittsburgh). Everyone remembers the final episode of the First World War series of Blackadder, in which the sharp-as-a-tack Captain Blackadder is sent over the trenches with his hapless brothers-in-arms to certain death.

I think the ultimate story ending can also be linked to death, but doesn’t need to be. It’s more to do with a surprise twist that transforms or reframes all that’s gone before. The Wicker Man is one of these – what, no, it can’t all have been… and what’s going on now… surely he’s going to get out of there… Other films with great twists include The Others, The Usual Suspects, Get Out. But I think the best of all, and thus without doubt my favourite film, is The Sixth Sense. How many stories require you to retrace the whole course of an already gripping narrative right from the start?

I was thinking about all this because I’ve strived for those big twists that turn the whole story around in some of my own books. Particularly The Boy in the Burgundy Hood, The Girl in the Ivory Dress, Black Beacon and, probably most dramatically, The Man in the Woods. Because I love it. And want to do more of it. And most of all, because I want to make sure it works for you, the reader!

Tell me a book, film or TV show that’s made you sit up in your seat or burst out into tears. Endings that were devastating or breathtakingly thrilling, that took you somewhere above and beyond all the rest. I’m looking out for my next watch, and my next read.

2023 – A Year in Writing

Leave a Reply

As it’s that time for reflection, I thought I’d give an overview of my year from a writing perspective. First of all, the good. As most of you will know, I’ve been concentrating on my supernatural thrillers for the past five years. I’ve written three books in The Ghosts of Alice series, but this year I wanted to publish two standalone horror books that I’ve had in the pipeline for a while and which I’m glad to say I managed to do.

The first, The Man in the Woods, I started several years ago but was interrupted by life and never finished. I realised when I re-read it earlier this year that I really liked it, it felt very different to my other writing and I loved the final twist.

Thanks to reader Linda Oliphant for this great photo!

Why was it so different to my other supernatural books? Well, several reasons.

it’s the only one told in the first person
it’s a novella
it’s the only one of my supernatural thrillers not to feature ghosts (hope that’s not a spoiler… 😉)
it’s about a teenage boy
some people would even argue it’s not a supernatural thriller at all but… you’ll have to read it to decide whether it is or isn’t yourself!

I love this story. I thought it might well get mixed reviews – and possibly some negative reviews – but they’ve been (almost all!) positive so far.

The second book I published this year I actually finished as a first draft last Christmas – but decided to leave until November before I brought it out, for obvious reasons. It’s Black Beacon, a festive ghost story set on the snow-swept South Downs. I’ve loved writing this book as it’s by far the most personal of my stories, inspired by my grandparents, who met when my grandad was a German Prisoner of War and my grandma a young woman in Eastbourne. All my books tend to have a significant element or two inspired by real life incidents – but this is by far the most personal.

What about the bad? Well, whilst life outside of writing has had its ups and downs this year (with a few more downs than usual, including my mum breaking her hip in the summer) the writing has been pretty steady. I miss the excellent independent bookshop we had near us in Leatherhead: Barton’s Bookshop, where I used to go for signing sessions at least once a year, usually during the festive season. I miss the owner, Peter Snell, with his penchant for dressing up as Santa Claus, and I miss the staff – I’ve done signings at other events over the years, but nothing is as satisfying as going to a local bookstore, where everyone has a passion for books and reading.

That’s it for me – next up for my writing is the fourth Ghosts of Alice story, which has a completely different feel and setting – but more of that later in the year!

I wish you a Happy New Year, and hope it brings you what you want – or at least what you need!

Steve

The Haunted House

Leave a Reply

What image comes to mind for you when you think of a haunted house?

I’ve been writing ghost stories for 5 years now and I’ve realised that the houses I have haunted have become progressively more ‘everyday’ with each successive story. As if you don’t need heightened melodrama of a setting to chill – fear can come to you in the most mundane of places.

In The Boy in the Burgundy Hood, the red-hooded boy and the wounded woman haunt an old medieval manor with sprawling grounds and a creepy stumpery. Bramley Manor is a stately medieval hall with a grand fireplace and a Tudor section.

The haunting in The Girl in the Ivory Dress takes place in a Victorian guest house in a remote spot on the Welsh coast. The house is quite old, but it’s been completely renovated and has all modcons.

Alice and the Devil focuses on a rundown Victorian rectory on the moors in the Peak District, although much of the action takes place on a curious set of giant, wooded rocks nearby that are filled with caves and strange features.

My latest ghost story Black Beacon, however, is set in an ordinary 1930s house – although it is isolated from civilisation up on the Sussex Downs. And even more so, after a rare Christmas snowfall.

Do you prefer your ghost stories set in a classic, decaying country house – or do you think the spook can happen anywhere?

You can check out all my books on my Amazon page – perfect for the festive season!

Steve Griffin

Author of The Boy in the Burgundy Hood

Category Archives: Blog entries

Alice and the Broken Dead – out now!

My ‘Marmite’ Book

The Secret of the Tirthas Summer Sale!

The Ghosts of Alice – Book 4

Start of Summer Sale on The Ghosts of Alice!

Favourite books – a little self indulgence…

The Ghosts of Alice series sells 5000 copies!

The Ultimate Ending

2023 – A Year in Writing

The Haunted House