Category Archives: The Boy in the Burgundy Hood

Flattery, not force

I asked Copilot how my first ghost story, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood, compared to other ghost stories (it suggested I ask it that). Here’s what it said:

“The Boy in the Burgundy Hood by Steve Griffin stands out in the realm of ghost stories for a few reasons:

1. **Atmospheric Setting**: The ancient English manor house in the book is richly described, creating a haunting and immersive backdrop that is essential for a compelling ghost story.
2. **Character Development**: The protagonist, Alice Deaton, is well-developed and relatable, making readers more invested in her journey and the eerie experiences she encounters.
3. **Subtle Suspense**: The story builds suspense gradually, with mysterious occurrences that keep readers on edge without relying on overt scares or gore.
4. **Historical Elements**: The book weaves in historical elements that add depth and authenticity to the ghostly tale, enhancing the overall reading experience.

When compared to other ghost stories, such as Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black or Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Griffin’s work offers a unique blend of suspense, character development, and atmospheric detail. While it may not have the same level of psychological horror as Jackson’s work or the gothic intensity of Hill’s novel, it provides a satisfying and engaging ghost story experience that fans of the genre are likely to enjoy.

Have you read any of these other ghost stories? I’d love to hear how you think The Boy in the Burgundy Hood compares! 📖👻”

I was flattered by such comparisons, of course. And then I realised this is all part of the grand scheme, isn’t it? I don’t know whether it knew I was the author (I wasn’t logged in), but even so, I’ve always been impressed by how polite and friendly the responses from AI are, how they lead you into more questions from which they learn more. They won’t be taking over by force, but flattery…😱

Ten Years of Publishing!

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This has been an amazing year for me. I’ve been writing since I worked out which way up to hold a pencil but my publishing journey didn’t begin until 2014 – ten years ago. Since then I’ve published 10 novels, 2 novellas, and 2 books of poetry!

It’s been a blast. Whilst it’s not my main income source (I also work part-time for a neighbourhood charity in London), reading and writing have always been at the core of who I am. I wrote stories as a boy for my friends, published poetry in literary magazines in my twenties and thirties, and began writing full-length novels in my forties.

Traditional vs. Indie

Like most writers, I attempted the traditional route of publishing with my first book, The City of Light, via queries to agents and publishers. I had a good deal of encouragement – agents requesting full manuscripts, asking for edits, having a Children’s Rights manager at Random House championing the book through editorial teams – but ultimately, it didn’t come off. After all that emotional investment, I gave up thinking I’d ever be published. Then a family member suggested publishing independently. I looked into Amazon and, to be honest, never looked back. Amazon may have its faults, but without it I would never have published all these books.

Books for Young Adults

10 years of publishing The Secret of the Tirthas

The first novels I brought out were for young adults. The Secret of the Tirthas is a five-book adventure mystery series with a novella prequel, Swift: The Story of a Witch. It’s based on a magical ‘garden of rooms’ that my wife’s parents owned in Herefordshire, where I imagined each garden containing a portal to the place in the world it represented. When I’d finished that series, I collected the poems I’d had published in poetry magazines together with a few new ones into two poetry books, Up in the Air and The Things We Thought Were Beautiful.

The Things We Thought Were Beautiful Poetry Book

Ghost Stories for Adults

Encouraged by good reviews and reasonable sales, I decided to branch out into writing for adults. I’d always loved horror films and books and so began The Ghosts of Alice series, starting with The Boy in the Burgundy Hood (2019). The story was inspired by an interview my wife had with a heritage agency to be a property manager in an old house where the previous owners still lived in a private wing. I was initially uncertain about changing genre, but The Ghosts of Alice found a bigger market than my young adult series – The Boy in the Burgundy Hood even became an international bestseller in Ghost Stories on Amazon! So I wrote more books in the series, and published two standalone supernatural thrillers. The Man in the Woods and Black Beacon, a Christmas ghost story, both came out in 2023.

10 years of publishing Discover The Ghosts of Alice

Sales and Reviews

I’m now approaching 10,000 copies sold. I know it’s not a huge amount when compared to big name authors, but I keep motivated by considering the average independent novel sells 250 copies, and traditionally published one 3000. Most of mine have significantly exceeded the first, and The Boy in the Burgundy Hood has sold over 3600 copies. My books have gained over 900 reviews on Amazon, averaging around 4.5 stars – with only my Marmite book a bit lower!

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

What’s next?

I’m working on the next Ghosts of Alice story – I have a story arc that will mean two or three more books in the series. I have a second standalone Christmas ghost story nearing completion of first draft – but I won’t be bringing that out until next Christmas. I also have an idea for a sequel to The Man in the Woods, but it’s not fully fleshed out. And then a germ of an idea for another series of supernatural thrillers. Watch this space!

So that’s the story of my ten years of publishing. Every bit of it has been exciting – with the exception of some hardcore editing and marketing (although signing up to Irish book marketer David Gaughran‘s mail list has removed some of the latter’s pain)! There’s never a day when I don’t appreciate that people I’ve never met, from all over the world, are buying, reading and (mostly!) enjoying my books. And it’s not just the sales. As a writer, I’ve got to know some fantastic readers and writers on social media, and I’ve done talks in schools and libraries, signings in bookshops, and read and talked at festivals. Meeting readers is always a real privilege.

So thank you to all of you who have made – and continue to make – my dream a reality. Thank you, really.

Alice and the Broken Dead: A Reading

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Today, a short reading from my new ghost story, Alice and the Broken Dead, perfect to get you in the mood for Halloween!

It’s the latest in my bestselling series The Ghosts of Alice, about a young woman who discovers she has a strange ability to connect with the dead.

Each book is a standalone ghost story, but connections run between them. So you can read them in any order, although it’s probably best to start with the first, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood.

Check out Alice and the Broken Dead on Amazon here.

The Ghosts of Alice series sells 5000 copies!

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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

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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.

The Haunted House

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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!

“Ghost Stories” reading event – Saturday 13 May

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Really looking forward to this event organised by the fantastic people at Ghost Walks Surrey and Explorers Events Ltd!

If you’re nearby, why not come along and join us? A spooky ghost tour of the town will be followed by me doing a reading and Q&A. Plus there’ll be an opportunity to buy signed copies of my books.

See below for more details, reposted from Ghost Walks Surrey Facebook page:

A new and exclusive event in collaboration with local author Steve Griffin.

Steve is the author of the bestselling ghost stories of the Ghosts of Alice series, beginning with ‘The Boy in the Burgundy Hood’.

Following a one hour Ghost Walk visiting the most haunted hotspots in the town, we will meet Steve in The Narnia Room within the Old House on West Street where he will read to you some excerpts from his novels. You will have chance to ask him questions and to buy signed copies of his books.

Tickets are VERY limited. This really is an exclusive event.

Saturday 13th May 2023
Meet 7.15pm for a 7.30pm start outside Dorking Halls on Reigate Road RH4 1SG.

Tickets cost £15.

The event will last for approx 2 hours and will finish at the Narnia Room.

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/explorers-events-ltd

The Best Ghost Mystery Stories

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So you don’t want to sleep tonight, do you?

My final list of books that I’ve prepared for Shepherd.com is the best ghost mystery stories.

Why I love horror stories

We try and pretend the world is not mysterious, in the vague hope of exerting some control over our lives. But that’s a doomed endeavour. Everything will always slip away from our grasp, plummeting into a chasm that we can only fill with two human responses: awe or terror. Sometimes – perhaps most often – both.

This is why I’ve always preferred the gothic and sublime to the classical and ordered. Both are necessary, but the gothic like the church spire always points to the infinite, to the profound mystery that envelops us. That’s why I’ve liked horror movies and books ever since I was a kid. You’re forever clutching at a cushion, guessing – or rather fearing – what lies ahead, just around that corner…

And that’s why I started writing ghost stories, books that major in suspense and make you realise, as Stephen King’s narrator says in Bag of Bones, that “reality is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.”

My favourite ghost mystery stories

So if you’re hankering after a shot of terror (often with a smidgeon of awe thrown in), check out my best ghost mystery stories here. And if you think I’ve missed a treat, let me know your favourite ghost story in the comments below. (You can also check out my other book lists for Shepherd, the best books with portals for children and young adults, and the best books with nature poems to make you think and feel.)

And while you’re here, why not take a look at my own ghost mystery stories, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood and The Girl in the Ivory Dress – the two standalone novels in The Ghosts of Alice series, about a young women who has a very strange connection to the dead:

Photos that Inspired Books

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Alice and the Devil

Photos have a big impact on my writing. Often, they can inspire a scene that inspires a whole book. This picture of my son looking across a landscape has morphed into the opening scene of my current work in progress, Alice and the Devil, the third book in The Ghosts of Alice series.

Shortly after I took it, I set it as my wallpaper on my laptop. It was a few weeks before it began working its magic on me. Initially I had an idea for a wholly different book, a piece of speculative fiction, but then I realised it could fit with a ghost story. Who is the boy? Why is he on his own? What’s with the sheep in his backpack? And that barn to the right – doesn’t it look a bit like a pair of eyes, the dark, disembodied eyes of the farm? Just add a torrential rainstorm and the whole Alice and the Devil story came to life…

Here’s a few more photos that have worked their way deep into my imagination for other books:

#picsthatinspiredbooks – The Boy in The Burgundy Hood

This is the fabulous Ightham Mote, the fourteenth-century house that inspired Bramley Manor in the first Ghosts of Alice novel, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood.

As soon as I saw it, I knew that this medieval house was the perfect setting for my ghost story. I’d already been inspired by the strange story of a job interview that my wife had gone to at another old house (see here). It wasn’t long before I overlaid the two elements and started to evolve my plot.

The Boy in the Burgundy Hood photo inspiration

Pics that inspired The Secret of the Tirthas

Now here’s some photos of the amazing garden of hedged ‘rooms’ in Herefordshire that inspired my young adult adventure mystery series, The Secret of the Tirthas.

Many of the rooms had sculptures or statues, often from different religions. I thought it would be great if they were all secret portals to related sites across the world. Imagine just having to step outside your back door to go to all these fabulous places!

The discovery of these new places through the portals by Lizzie Jones became a ‘fantasy’ element in itself. That, plus the demonic killer also using the portals to prey on street children in the first place Lizzie discovers, Kashi, the Indian City of Light…?

The Secret of the Tirthas garden inspiration

The Secret of the Tirthas garden of rooms

Photos that inspired The City of Light

Finally, here’s the incredible city of Varanasi, or Kashi, in India, which inspired the first novel in The Secret of the Tirthas, The City of Light. I went backpacking in my twenties and came down into India from Nepal. This was the second place I stayed and I was stunned.

I kind of knew straight away that this would inspire my writing. But it was only many years later, after discovering the hidden gem of a garden in Herefordshire, that I had the idea for The Secret of the Tirthas. And I decided on Kashi as the first place our hero Lizzie Jones would come after discovering the garden’s magical portals.

Here’s a taster from The City of Light, when Lizzie emerges from the portal:

“[She] stopped, stunned, finding herself looking at the most extraordinary sight she’d ever seen.

An ancient sun-bleached city sprawled before her, stretched along the bank of an enormous river. The city’s buildings were a bright, exotic mix of colours – red, ochre, sand, and white – and many had domes or intricate beehive towers. Some sat at the top of broad flights of steps that ran down into the water, whilst others were perched on the river’s edge. A few tilted forward precariously, appearing as if they were about to collapse into the swirling waters and be lost forever. And everywhere, on the steps and in the buildings and out in small boats, the city’s inhabitants went about their business in the soft, hazy sunlight.

Lizzie stood in awe, absorbing the view. If only all her dreams were as impressive as this…”

Kashi, inspiration for The Secret of the Tirthas

Varanasi, inspiration for The Secret of the Tirthas

My Year in Writing

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So where am I at with the writing, you ask? (You didn’t? Click away now, no one will notice.)

2021 Review

2021 has been a big year for my writing. It was the first year I had a bestseller and the first year I sold over 2,000 copies of one book (nearing 2,500 now). The average book sells 250 copies according to my Gurus, Prophets and Market Analysts (Google), so I’m very happy.

The Boy in the Burgundy Hood #1 Bestseller

So what was the book? It was the first in my Ghosts of Alice series, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood. It’s been a strong seller since November 2019 when I published it. But it really took off in February 2021 after a promotion on Bookbub, which led to the #1 spot in Amazon’s Ghost Story categories in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. (If you’re a keen ebook reader and like good deals, I recommend signing up for Bookbub.) The reviews that followed were good so the sales continued. When you’ve been writing for a few years, getting that level of reader response is a real joy!

My next writing achievement in 2021 was publishing the second book in the Ghosts of Alice series, The Girl in the Ivory Dress. It follows on from the first, developing the relationship between Alice and one of her old school friends. The reviews have been almost all good so far (there’s always one…), with some saying they like it even more than the first. It reminded me of how enjoyable it was to write the second book in my young adult series, The Secret of the Tirthas. Whilst the first, The City of Life, was mostly fun, learning how to plot and integrate storylines, as well as setting up a whole new fantasy scenario, was challenging. There were many rewrites. It felt so much easier when the groundwork was done, when everything was already established. The Book of Life flew from the keyboard.

The Girl in the Ivory Dress - a year in writing

My third writing milestone just missed the end of the year. I finished a draft of the latest Ghosts of Alice book on the 3rd January. It’s working title is Alice and the Devil. It has a distinctive atmosphere and setting and I’m pleased with it. However, it’s going to need a few stiff edits because I wrote it without a plot, with only a few key scenes and characters in my head. It was my first time writing like this but it seems to have turned out well. I’ll probably find a lot of holes when I reread it, but for now I’m just pleased to have completed it.

2022 Writing Goals

My main writing goal for 2022 is to publish this third Ghosts of Alice book. I’m aiming for it to be out in the spring.

I’m also finalising a novella prequel to The Secret of the Tirthas. It focuses on the discovery of the tirthas and the creation of the magical garden of rooms at the turn of the 19th century. It’s called Swift: The Story of a Witch (I’m fairly sure that one’s going to stick). It might become a freebie to my email subscribers.

And finally, I’m going to start and – hopefully – complete another book! I’ve got a few ideas bubbling away already…

Whatever you’re reading, enjoy!