Mark Charan Newton

So it seems that most people loved, though some hated, the new artwork. I’ll be amazed when something appears online and receives a harmonious response. There’s a vague plan to alter the cover of Nights of Villjamur for the paperback, too. The current idea was feature the character Randur as a cover model, and I [...]

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I love a good monster. I love books about monsters just as much. I’ve mentioned in a few places how much I dig Borges’ Book Of Imaginary Beings, and have used it as inspiration for some of the creatures in the Red Sun series: notably garudas and banshees in the first book, and more to [...]

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Stolen shamelessly from Velcro City, with a nod to Darren for flagging it up for me, check out Twenty Abandoned Cities, Towns and Places. The Kowloon Walled City was located just outside Hong Kong, China during British rule. A former watchpost to protect the area against pirates, it was occupied by Japan during World War [...]

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I stole this shamlessly from Cheryl Morgan’s blog. Artificial Owl is so many types of awesome, a blog with photographs of the bizarre and once-decadent decaying man-made structures littering the Earth. What Artificial Owl also does is provide a concise summary – where possible – of function and history. What I love about these kinds of [...]

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The texture of her world is suddenly different. Remembering that the weather hasn’t been this much fun in years, she walks through the snow-strewn lanes as if she’s discovered motion for the very first time, taking tentative steps. Then suddenly she lets go fully, and takes a proper stride. Pulling at the edges of her [...]

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As the sun rose lazily over Villjamur, Investigator Jeryd left his house in the Kaiho district. He walked past Gulya Gata, down alongside the markets near Gata du Oak, Hotel Villjamur, and the inn called the Dryad’s Saddle. There were a few eccentric shops down this way, high end purveyors of drugs and erotica, where [...]

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Two young men talked in some local hand-language, their sentences needing a gesture and a glance for completion. Kids were sliding on patches of ice in horizontal freefall. A couple walked by, the blonde woman much younger than the man, and he judged them ‘respectable’ by the quality of their clothing. He was tempted to [...]

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He looked around at the clutter of junk filling the bedroom. It was all hers, of course. He was one of those who didn’t care to accumulate anything much. As soon as he’d finished with it, it was gone. His rooms had been bare, before she was around. She’d filled the void systematically, buying steadily [...]

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Pretty much what it says in the header. I’m a big fan of Hopper’s paintings. They share a similar quality to a Hemingway short story in their laconic style, and the narrative between the line (or brushstroke, I guess). There’s such energy in the restraint used by each of them, a desperation for the stories [...]

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This month’s National Geographic displayed a picture of a huge ziggurat in the city of Dur Untash, built in the 13th Century B.C., a a vast stepped-temple tower that rose above the landscape, dominating the foreground and horizon. I wonder what the builders of that structure would think if they knew it was there, still [...]

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Driving slowly through the rush hour traffic, sun leaking through thick clouds, a little humid and the kind of weather where fumes don’t seem to go anywhere. I paused to let a car pull out in front of me. The woman driving must have been seventy years old, easily, in a clean little red sports [...]

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Two very fine ruins, Rievaulx Abbey (the more complete ruin) and Byland Abbey (with the remains of a circular window now looking totally fantastical). Both in North Yorkshire, both victims of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Henry VIII was getting frisky and needed a little divorce action. Share:

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