Herts & Minds anthology is launching on Wednesday 11th December 2019

If you like ghosts, ghouls, and Werewolves, the beauty of the English/Hertfordshire countryside, a wandering cat cast in bronze, that comes alive by night, historical fiction, death by dangerous driving, poetry, or a good old fashioned crime drama, then you're going to love the Hertford Writers' Circle 2019 anthology, Herts & Minds.

From our home town of Hertford to New York, from the slave trade to murder, from Welwyn to the remotest corner of Ireland, this book will take you there and further.

Packed with dramatic stories about snakes, flowers, aliens, bullying, a dystopian Hertford, and finding a corpse in the boot of your car, we've got it all, and you could too if you are in Hertford on the night of the 11th December (Wednesday) and would like to join us at the books official launch (7:30 pm, Courtyard Arts, Port Vale, Hertford, SG14 3AA) but if you are not, if you hail from further afield but would like to purchase a copy - for yourself, a friend or for Christmas - just message me in the comments or via my Amazon author account and I'll make sure a copy wings its way over to you as soon as possible.
For an exclusive extract from this anthology, visit my blog again on Christmas Eve, for I will be posting, The Sprout that Ruined Christmas, which I may also read at the launch if I feel brave enough.
Enjoy.

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.

Heart of Herts, book review. (Hertford Writers' Circle)

I have to admit, I read very little non-fiction, but a couple of my favourites in this collection fell into that category, which is what reading is all about I think: discovering something new.

From medieval Hertford, to time travelling spaceships, fiction to non; from teen romance, through a Saxon invasion, to the end of the world, this collection of short stories has the lot.

Where would we be, I wonder, without a place to scatter loved ones ashes, Charlotte Holmes excavating bones and a squeaky hospital door?

This volume contains works from eighteen different writers, with styles so eclectic, that you'll never be lost for something new. We have the plague, we have ghosts, we have historic and science fiction, there is death, (obviously) but there is life too, and love, lots and lots of love.

With such strong writing, vivid pictures of ancient lands and ghostly schools are conjured with aplomb, and one’s imagination runs wild; wild like the Meads that separate Hertford from Ware, wild like the storms that surge across open fields, wild like the Pageant fever that gripped Hertford in 1914.

To single out any particular author or story for merit here, would be wrong for two reasons: one, because I enjoyed them all in different ways - some were historic, factual, some were not, some were humorous, whilst others were sad, and having made Hertford my home for the last decade or so, I have had the honour of meeting some of these authors, which brings me to the second reason for keeping my opinions to myself: I'm too gutless to praise one of them over the others!

Oh, sod it, we're all adults here. This is, Mad Mike’s Writing Blog after all. Since when have I shied away from an opinion?

Ken Boyter: if you'd like to stand and receive your prize. Your depiction of what must have been a very difficult time in your life, honours those involved beautifully, and as I said at the beginning, non-fiction isn't something I dabble in much, but now, thanks to you, my eyes have been opened.

If anyone reading this post would like a copy of this collection, please message me or, head to: http://www.hertfordwriterscircle.org/anthologies.html, where you can contact the Hertford Writers' Circle for a copy.

Enjoy.