Ei8ght Cranleigh Gardens, by Michael J Richardson (Aka, me). Self promotion Sunday.

More self-promotion for today’s post then and with Hallowe’en last week I thought, what better than a haunted house to chill one’s bones.
Don't worry, I'll still be posting reviews on the many books that I read and I'll do my best to keep them as eclectic as possible so you don't get bored, but in the meantime, I thought it only right to share some of my writing with you - this is Mad Mike's Writing Blog after all!
Most of my writing has a similar theme - be they short stories, poems or novels - and that theme being: reality interspliced with a little something out of the ordinary. This could be a haunting (as is the case here), a vampire, magic or werewolves, but I like the unreality just touched upon, hinted at, rather than dominating the narrative so, over the next few months you'll see a few more posts like this; posts about what I write and what might be coming.
I hope you enjoy these and I look forward to any feedback too, so without further ado, Ei8ht Cranleigh Gardens, the subject of this post, which is one of my longest short stories (oxymoron alert) and has been inspired by all the times I've ‘felt’ something, in the many empty houses I’ve visited over the last thirty years.
Amidst the death and infidelity here, you’ll find passion and infatuation, so have fun and next time I'll introduce you to a vampire, or some good old-fashioned magic.
Ei8ht Cranleigh Gardens can be downloaded for free from:

https://www.amazon.in/Ei8ht-Cranleigh-Gardens-infatuation-haunting-ebook/dp/B00FL56IYG

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, message me with your recommendations.

Pine, book review. (Francine Toon)

Cold, dark, lonely and foreboding with a dash of the spirit world, pretty much sums up, Pine by Francine Toon; a debut novel that garnered much press on its release last year but, what are you really in for?
Lauren (Oren) lives alone with her father, Niall - who drinks too much – in a rundown house on the edge of a pine forest. Being only ten, she relies on her father to not only feed and clothe her but get her to school, love her and keep her safe, which he falls short on some of the time.
It's Halloween and she and her father are driving through the snow to go trick or treating, when a woman runs fleetingly in front of them, or so she thinks, but it isn't until they return and it happens again that Niall pulls over and offers assistance - taking the frail looking woman home with them.
By morning the woman is gone and Niall has forgotten the incident but Lauren has not, and so she starts asking questions, questions her father doesn't like, so Lauren turns to her tarot cards.
Her mother, Christine walked out when she was tiny, never to be seen again, and we learn about her bohemian nature, how she lived (or tried to), free of the burdens and constraints of materialistic life, spiritually, and start to question what might have happened to her. Did she just up and leave, or was there something more sinister going on?
There are those in town that know more than they're letting on, those that suspect Niall of killing her, after all, there's no shortage of places to hide a body in the forest, and then there's the strange goings on: Lauren’s bedroom is completely tidied one day, people see a woman in white but hours later have no recollection of the event – Lauren’s father, her friend from school and a local in the pub all experience that illusion. Then, Ann-Marie, a girl from the village, disappears; a girl who babysat Lauren and was last seen in her father's truck!
Toon’s writing is very descriptive and equally convincing and leaves you cold, lonely, suspicious and on edge; it is also smooth - a strange word ‘smooth’ but accurate all the same, because ninety percent of the book has just the one tempo; which is not a bad thing.

Whether it's Lauren getting lost in the woods, Niall inebriated, the woman in white appearing or the police arriving after Ann-Marie’s disappearance, the tempo remains much the same, and as much as I like the fast, furious action packed spikes and slow plateaus of some books, I think here - whether intentional or not - smooth suited the quiet, empty, haunting-ness of the story, reminding me of Gabriel Tallent's, My Absolute Darling in its descriptive nature (although that one’s far too repetitive), and Eowyn Ivey's, The Snow Child, for its sense of isolation.
Will Ann-Marie and Lauren’s mum be found? Will Niall stop drinking? Who or what is the woman in white? are all questions you’ll have to read the book to find out, but Pine is a good first novel, one I can recommend, so grab a copy and enjoy, especially as it's only getting colder here in England with snow already falling.

Three stars.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, message me your recommendations.

In celebration of my two hundredth blog post and All Hallows' Eve, a dark tale of woe.

He was fifty minutes in, hot, sweaty, but he was fit. He could run for hours but not today – today he had other things on his mind. Her!

The root was a trip hazard, looping from the ground like an old Victorian boot-scraper. I’ll get you one day, it said. I’ll get you when you’re daydreaming.

He’d run the path a hundred times, maybe more, but the caw of a crow distracted him.

He flew for a second, landing gently, free from injury, but sliding, the wet leaves giving little purchase and the barrier (some old wooden posts) did nothing to arrest him.

The impact was brief, the posts giving way, and his cry rang out shrill like the birds. He was flying, free-falling, branches slapping his face, snapping beneath his weight.

The ground was soft but it broke him all the same. He tasted blood. It hurt to breathe. He couldn’t feel his legs. Something other than the branches had snapped on the way down.

He blinked and his vision blurred.

He wept and there was pain.

Darkness came. In and out of consciousness he fell, dreaming, thinking of her. What she’d said, what he’d done! Would he ever see her again? Hold her, comfort her? Would she ever forgive him?

He called, he shouted, screamed until he was hoarse but no one came: no dog walkers, no search parties, just animals. Nervous at first they crawled, hopped and slithered: a crow with a taste for eyes, a badger, sniffing but bolder over time, and then, as the moon rose and his breath clouded, they feasted.

He felt the tug on his arm, shooed a bird from his face, blew bugs from his lips, but it was no use; it was over. The creatures would gorge, they would have their meal, and as steam rose from exposed flesh, as they buried into him, the pain would take him beyond this life until he was nothing but a memory.

As dawn broke and cast mottled shadow across broken bough, a bird – the crow – the one with a taste for eyes, perched on a root that looped from the ground like an old Victorian boot-scrapper, and having supped, it listened and waited patiently.

Dracula, book review. (Bram Stoker)

Dracula, one of the best and most influential books I have ever read!

Quite a statement that, so let’s look at it in a little more detail.

The book is written as a series of diary and journal entries in the first person, and from several different perspectives. The characters are both male and female, one being a solicitor, one, a Doctor who runs a lunatic Asylum, and then there's Dr Val Helsing from Amsterdam.

Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra's diary entries, add both intrigue and passion, we have the somewhat delicious English language, (as it was in late Victorian England), a love quadrangle, rather than a love triangle, desperation, sadness and remorse, but above all, we have Count Dracula.

We all know the story of course, or do we?

I first read this book over twenty years ago and in that time I'd forgotten most it, remembering just the bare bones.

I had a vague recollection of Renfield and the asylum, the predicament in which Johnathan Harker found himself in, in the depth of the unforgiving Carpathian mountains, but I'd forgotten the pace of the book, the shear depth of fear the poor souls experienced, as they battled their way to Carfax Abbey, and then across Europe, to confront what must be, one of literature's most revered villains.

And let us not forget one of the all-time best chapters in literary history, chapter 7, where the description of the storm and the landing of the Demeter, (Dracula's ship), at Whitby Harbour, is told as a news article in a local newspaper.

Reading this book again, got me thinking about how many stories, films, television programs, cartoons, and comics there must be out there, that have been influenced by this book? Hundred, thousands maybe, who knows! From the obvious like, Salam's Lot and the Twilight saga, through Richard Matheson's sublime, I am Legend, to Justin Cronin's less obvious but equally exquisite, The Passage, to count (pun intended) but a few. (My own short story, Lycanthrope, would never have materialised without this book).

So, a solid five stars for Bram Stoker's Dracula then, and what a better time to start reading it, than on All Hallows’ Eve.

Enjoy my fiendish friend, read deep.