Tag Archives: Paranormal

In which the Author takes part in the Creative Process Blog Tour…

The Creative Process Blog Tour

My thanks to Hilary McGrath for nominating me for this round of the Creative Process Blog Tour, where writers get to answer four questions and whitter on about their innermost creative processes.

Note: every word below is the absolute unvarnished truth.

Except for the lies.

What am I working on?

1) VAMPIRES. 

I’m sending my completed iconoclastic vampire novel Palefaces out to literary agents. The tagline:

Cops – vampires – vampire cops.

There will, almost certainly, be some blood.

 

There will, almost certainly, be some rejections.

the vampire

2) CRIME. 

I’m half way through the writing of Sex, Lies and Croissants, a softboiled crime novel set in southwest France,

featuring a handsome but irredeemably grumpy British detective mixed up with porn stars, religious maniacs and

drunk Frenchmen with guns. First in a series, if the gods be kind.

3796019-gun-and-blood-splatter-murder-scene 5875090-fresh-croissants

3) BLOODY HISTORY. 

I’m working through the proofs for The Bloody History of Britain, which will be published by The History Press in September. This will be my 31st non-fiction book. Expect:

Cannibals from the Dawn of Time

Anarchy in the UK (12th century style)

Pirate Monks

The Six Executions of Henry VIII

Plus Norman genocide, Nazis, Zeppelins, Jacobites, and a surfeit of lampreys.

All this and murders, torture, massacres, punishments, castrations and executions galore. You’ve got to laugh,

haven’t you?

16833yovdsxdqbr

4) SEX.

 I’m using allure, coquetry and a packet of powerful pheromones in the hope of attracting agents or publishers to a non-fiction book on some of the stranger but universal aspects of sex and sexual culture.

 

5) SHERBERT LEMONS.

Notes are being made and ideas corralled for a YA fantasy involving cryptozoology, time travel and sherbert

lemons. There may also be a fantasy/high-tech film screenplay incarcerated in the oubliette.

Book Collage for Site

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My natural tendency when I am writing is to upset the apple cart of expectations.

When writing about vampires, I want to destroy the entire accepted vampiric mythology and create a completely

new take on their origins, behaviour and sexuality.

If I’m setting a crime novel in rural Gascony – beloved by Terry Wogan and other Brits – my hero has to loathe

other expats and everything they stand for.

In The Bloody History of Britain I avoid the clichés of history and tell stories from the shadows: how Scotland

invented the concentration camp, the reason the Wars of the Roses were like a football match, and why King John was marginally better than that narcissistic psychopath Richard the Lionheart.

My ghost books are sceptical about ghosts. My paranormal books interrogate the paranormal rather than just

going ‘Woooh!’ Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, it is my pleasure to tamper with accepted ideas and default genre preoccupations. Punk iconoclasm, that’s what we need.

 Zombie-Geoff_MONOThe Guide to Mysterious PerthshirePoltergeist Over Scotland

Why do I write what I do?

I wrote my very first book, The Guide to Mysterious Perthshire, because I was living in Perthshire and it was

something I wanted to read – but there was simply nothing like it on the market. I write non-fiction on the weird and the strange because of a longstanding conviction that the world is weirder and stranger than most people think,

and that some of the data gathered may actually lead, one day, to a paradigm change.

And I write fiction because it is a socially acceptable way to kill people.

Zombie workshop the Arches Glasgow 30 Jan 2012 18-61

How does my writing process work?

I don’t actually have any ideas myself. I pay a subscription to an ideas-generating company based in the Cayman

Islands and they send me ten creative suggestions a month.

 

Who I nominate next…

I now pass the baton to those fine individuals and writers Kirstie Swain and Moore & Reppion. Good luck, chaps.

In which the author appears in Le Canard Gascon…

Canard Gascon p
Le Canard Gascon
is a monthly magazine that covers food, culture, business, politics, history and events in this

part of southwest France (Gascony). Edition 54, January-February 2014, has a full page feature on me and my

work, under the title of ‘British Zombies’.

 

Described as ‘Le spécialiste de l’étrange’ (specialist in the strange) who writes about the paranormal, witchcraft,

ghosts and zombies, I am credited with including in my work a ‘certain British humour’ that ‘our neighbours across the Channel practice with such excellence.’ Merci.  The article also claims that the Holder household is ‘a veritable

chaos of books’. Oh, such lies – the other day I managed to find the sofa without having to move more than fifty

volumes. Pfff!

 

You can read the article online (in French, of course) here. My thanks to Monsieur Jean-Louis le Breton, leading

light of Le Canard Gascon. 

 

In which the author publishes another book (this one’s on witchcraft)…

‘Maggie Wall – The Witch Who Never Was’ is out on December 1st. Telling the story of my investigations into the

famous Maggie Wall Witchcraft Monument in Perthshire, Scotland – the only historic monument to a named witch

in the whole of the UK – it is a non-fiction detective historical story, leading to some very surprising conclusions

about this most enigmatic of monuments. Here’s the blurb:

A remarkable and striking B-listed roadside cross in Perthshire is painted with the words

‘MAGGIE WALL

BURNT HERE

AS A WITCH 1657′

Maggie Wall has subsequently become the most famous witch in Scotland, featuring in folklore, folk history and

modern pagan belief alike.
Which is strange, seeing as she never existed.
This is the story of the Witch Who Never Was.

 

‘Maggie Wall – The Witch Who Never Was’ is  published as an ebook by The New Curiosity Shop out of Edinburgh. It is currently available on Amazon/Kindle, and will soon be downloadable for Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and the Apple iBookstore. The cost is around £2.80 or $3.60. 

Maggie-Wall938x1500

In which the Author is the guest of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research…

This Saturday (9th November) I’m talking at the National Conference of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research (SSPR), a fine institution if ever there was.

The day long event promises to be a belter, with talks including:

Anthony Peake ‘Cheating the Ferryman: A New Blueprint for Post Mortem Survival’

P.G. Maxwell-Stuart ‘Poltergeists and Witches: Unruly Sisters’

Brian Allan ‘The Dark Messiah: Magick, Gnosis and Religion’

And a guest panel featuring Joan Charles.

As for your humble author, he’ll be waffling on about ‘Sex, Lies and Paranormal Glasgow’ – expect the usual coalescence of vampires, poltergeists, zombies and scepticism. Plus sex and lies of course.

sspr copy

The event is at the Hilton Glasgow Grosvenor Hotel in Glasgow’s West End, and runs from 10am to 5pm. Tickets and more details here.

In which the Author is on le French TV…

Sacré bleu! On Saturday 2nd November the popular mid-evening French TV magazine

programme “50 Minutes Inside” broadcast a piece called “Légendes d’Ecosse” (Legends

of Scotland), on the Scottish predilection for all things supernatural and spooky, especially at Halloween.

Amidst the Harry Pottering and the actors in ghost paint, some beardy bloke in a Doctor

Who scarf waffled on about ghosts and bodysnatching:

geofftf1You can see my contributions in the full replay here and also at “le document d’Inside: Légendes d’Ecosse”.

“50 Minutes Inside” (or “50mn Inside”) is broadcast on TF1, the French equivalent of

BBC1. My thanks to reporter Tania Meppiel and cameraman Pierre for an enjoyable two

days’ filming at Scone Palace and St Andrews.

legendes d'ecosse

 

In which the Author digs up some bodysnatchers at Scone Palace (and gets filmed by le French TV)…

TALK: ‘THE BODYSNATCHERS OF SCONE (plus the puma, the witch and the severed head)’

On Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th I’m talking about bodysnatchers at Scone Palace near Perth, as part of the palace’s ‘Spooky Halloween’ Weekend. Both talks start at 1pm and will include a question and answer session and book signing.

Bodysnatchers CVR

On the Saturday a TV crew from TF1, the French equivalent of BBC1, will film both the talk and me mooching about in the nearby Old Scone graveyard, talking more about bodysnatching. They’re filming a ‘Halloween in Scotland’ special for the early evening magazine show ‘50 MInutes Inside‘, to be broadcast on 2 November.

Here’s the press release for the Scone Palace event:

“Renowned Perthshire author Geoff Holder is set to bring a chill to the spine of visitors to Scone Palace, with a special illustrated talk during this year’s Spooky Hallowe’en Weekend, from 26th to 27th October.

In 1820, under the darkness of a winter’s night, a group of bodysnatchers sneaked into Scone churchyard and dug up a corpse, a corpse that they would later sell for a good price. Unfortunately for them, the body had belonged in life to a much-loved 80- year-old retainer at Scone Palace. The Earl of Mansfield was not best pleased, and went on the warpath…

Join Geoff as he delves into the dark world of the Resurrectionists, the strange collaboration of hardened criminals and respectable medical men who broke into coffins and stole bodies for the dissecting tables of the anatomists. What happened to the Scone corpse? Which Perth doctor was a member of the gang? And why did one of the bodysnatchers end up in South America?

And if such skulduggery wasn’t enough, this unique talk also covers other historical mysteries of Scone  – sightings of big cats, the Scone witch and her black book, and the enigma of the missing preserved head of a saint.

Talks will be held daily at 1.00pm in our Murray Room Suite here at Scone Palace.

Tickets are £10.00 per person including Grounds Admission. Places are limited and we adivise early booking to avoid disappointment.

To book your place, please call 01738 552300.”

Scone palace