I have just posted a new chapter of Linnet's Tour Guide, 'Grass Isle', on the Unpublished Material page. Linnet takes her auspicious young ladies to the island off the Cobalt Coast in an attempt to engage them with a sense of adventure and the quaint customs of the locals.

Ata's tower on Grass Isle: click for full size

I have added a new section to the Unpublished Material page, called Linnet's Tourguide for Young Ladies of Awia. They are pages from a guidebook published in the Fourlands in 2024, for upper crust young women to take on the Grand Tour. The guide indicates curious places, people to meet and items of artistic or historical interest.

The first excerpt is 'The Vertigo Spur' and I will add others over the coming months. I am very grateful to Linnet, Art Director of Bunting Press, Rachis Town, for allowing the extracts to appear online.

The video of my interview with John Berlyne at the BSFA meeting in August is now available.

In this thirteen minute clip we talk about my latest Castle book, The Modern World. I tell John about how the apartheid imposed on my school in Bradford shaped my ideas about the Fourlands and how the Circle grew from my own observations of the lack of a meritocracy in this world.

My thanks to John for arranging this and to Russell Wilcox for filming.

When the banshees wail
And the werewolves howl
And the dead in the churchyard sigh
When the witches scream
And their daemons hiss
When you hear the song of the Lorelei
When the goblins shout
And the boggarts yell
And the shades call out
From the depths of Hell!
When the phantom drummer
Drums his drum
And the midnight wraith
Whispers 'Come... oh, come...'
Then who will go?

...Not I.



This is a poem we used to recite when trick-or-treating - with yells and screams which left us quite hoarse, but rich in the way of sweets and filthy lucre. I don't know who wrote it, but if anyone out there does, I'd be grateful to know.

Title says it all - read it here:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/swainston_interview.html