The Watch House: A Ghost Story for Christmas

It was Angie – or ‘Angelique’ as she now styled herself – who first figured out that the old watch house on the Spit would make a great venue for a Christmas party. An early adapter to acid house, she loved beach parties in the summer and warehouse parties in the winter. This year, she…

The 2021 Olga Sinclair Prize for Short Fiction – Judge’s Comments

It was with great pleasure, not to say humility, that I was asked to judge the 2021 Olga Sinclair Prize for Short Fiction, the results of which were announced this evening. The theme of this year’s competition was ‘Lost’, to be interpreted in any way by the submitting authors, the only limit being the number…

A little place just outside Diss

A ghost story for Halloween... ‘If there is an afterlife,’ I remember my mother saying one day, ‘then how come people always look so sad when they die?’ Back then, I wasn’t in a position to answer. To be honest, I didn’t want to know. I was already regretting raising the issue with her at…

In Conversation with Novelist Audrey Chin

Extract of an interview on the 'Essence of the Gothic' with Singaporean novelist Audrey Chin What is Gothic literature? Is there a difference between the modern and Victorian variety? Or the Asian and European ones? And why is it considered part of the literature of subversion? I’m a neophyte to the genre. Indeed, I would…

New Blog Project

I’m launching a new blog today called Tales from a Rat Biker. This is a project that’s very close to my heart and long overdue. Lockdown has given me the time to actually do it. This isn’t a blog about mechanics, or a particular brand. It’s more of a lifestyle/cultural history project, with articles on…

‘A man at the top of his game’ – Interview

Nice piece in my hometown paper, the Eastern Daily Press, by Derek James. My mum would have loved this... Norfolk author Stephen Carver is a man at the top of his game. Some say you can’t stick your arm out in the street in Norwich without knocking over a writer. Derek James talks to one…

Sunk in Shark Alley

Historian on the incredible bravery and terrible tragedy when 450 on stricken ship died at Danger Point Sunday Post feature on yours truly, Shark Alley and the wreck of the Birkenhead by Sally McDonald They call it Shark Alley – an area of water off chillingly named Danger Point and the hunting ground for the world’s densest…

Calling all New Year’s Resolution Writers

So, you want to write a book. You’ve wanted to write a book for a while now, and this is the year you’re going to do it. While others have sworn off the drink, the cigs, and the chocolate, your New Year’s resolution is to write. Go you. You can do this. I have to…

How to Write the Perfect Christmas Ghost Story

My latest for the Wordsworth Blog, on writing tips from M.R. James... ‘There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas,’ wrote Jerome K. Jerome in the introduction to his darkly comic collection Told After Supper (1891), ‘something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer…

G.W.M. Reynolds & Me

A new post for the G.W.M. Reynolds Society... As a child, I possessed a morbid passion for nineteenth century gothic literature. I had inherited this trait from my mother, a Catholic turned Spiritualist with a taste for true crime and horror film and fiction. My parents had me late in life and my grandparents were…