Gloomer

I have a new book out. I would ideally like to print it off, DIY fanzine-style, as it would more spiritually at home in such a format, but I also know what I'm like. It's called Gloomer. It is very spare, and very bleak. It can be found here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gloomer-David-Senior-ebook/dp/B01GY24CVK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466239292&sr=8-1&keywords=gloomer

The East Anglian Perambulator: MR James' 'Suffolk and Norfolk'

I live and wander in East Anglia. None of these are new, but these pictures are all of locations visited by ghost story master M R James in his ‘Suffolk and Norfolk: A Perambulation of the Two Counties with Notices of Their History and Their Ancient Buildings.’

Perhaps no overtly supernatural leanings, but hopefully a vibe of the landscape that impacted him so. All captions are taken from James’ wonderful guide.

"Aldeburgh...has a special charm for those who, like myself, have known it since childhood; but I do not find it easy to put that charm into words."

"The good town of Aylsham would make a convenient centre for exploring much of the country with which I have been dealing."

"The vast dead inland flats from Yarmouth are very impressive."

(Castle Acre): "...no finer ruin is to be found in Norfolk."

(Attleborough): "Here legend says that St. Edmund resided for a year, and learnt the Psalter..."

(Dunwich): "How much of this once populous city with ''fifty-two churches' is left at the moment I will not undertake to say."

"Of the many modern attractions of Lowestoft I need not speak."

(Norwich): "...I imagine that both this [panel] and the other at St Peter Mancroft belong to a Last Judgement."

"A merman was caught at Orford in the thirteenth century, and kept for some time."

"Walberswick, a haunt of artists, also had a very large church."

(Watton): "Undistinguished except that near it the death of the Babes in the Wood is located, in Wayland or Wailing Wood."

'The Sinners of Crowsmere' - Shameless Self-Promotion Time!

A couple of days ago I published a short novel via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service. As a former bookseller I will always choose the beauty and sensuality of a physical book if given the chance: however, I do like the potential ebook publishing offers. Arty chapbooks aside, literature doesn't quite have its equivalent of the DIY culture of music and film: self-published works produced by dodgy vanity press companies often feel and look cheap and nasty. There's rarely the thrill of looking through the undiscovered: something I have actually experienced whilst browsing through listings of ebooks online. The market is still dominated by established authors and established publishing houses, and I can't see that changing any time soon, but it's cool to have the possibility of having mad, bizarre, original content up there in easy reach.



My book is called 'The Sinners of Crowsmere.' It's trim - about 13300 words - and I include about a dozen photographs, some from EastScapes and re-edited, some seeing the light for the first time. The blurb reads thus:

"A man is released from prison and returns to his coastal home town. Broken figures inhabit a decaying landscape. Curses and crows haunt the air.

As influenced by the transgressive writings of Dennis Cooper and Derek McCormack as the East Anglian ghost stories of M R James, The Sinners of Crowsmere is a bleakly skeletal novel about erosion, misogyny, folklore, old photographs, and half-remembered films."

The book's relationship to EastScapes is actually fairly strong - it started life as me attempting to put my photography into words, and sort of remained that way. As a reader, I'm not terribly interested in page-turning thrillers with complex plot and character interactions: I prefer things that are stranger, follow their own pace, wander off the track into the wilderness, sometimes returning, sometimes not. If this sounds like a preemptive defense of any criticism, well, I guess it kind of is - but it's also true. Authors I have found massively inspirational include the likes of Dennis Cooper, Derek McCormack, and Harmony Korine - all of whom dance to the beat of their own drum, and all of whom have crafted beautiful pieces of writings that at times seem so spare and slight they could at any moment fade into the nothingness.

'The Sinners of Crowsmere' is also, of course, about the East Anglian landscape, my usual obsessions all correct and present - coastal erosion, darkness beneath the surface of the landscape, M R Jamesian folklore, broken things. Its subtitle is 'A Fractured Novella,' and that's how I like to think of it: broken, oddly-shaped, a bit freaky. Hopefully like some of the images I stick up here.

'The Sinners of Crowsmere' can be seen here:

Buy The Sinners of Crowsmere here

A Slice of (Haunted) Birthday Cake

Late by a few days - I should really have posted this on the 1st - but hey. Happy 150th birthday, MR James. I have mentioned James elsewhere in this blog, so shall try not to repeat myself, but James is one of the most celebrated writers of the traditional ghost story. As many of his works (including two of his most famous stories: 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad, and 'A Warning to the Curious') are set in bleak and lonely stretches of East Anglia, his writings have a particular power over me. Whether successful or not, most of the pictures on this blog do attempt something inherently Jamesian: to hint at the ghosts and forgotten fragments beneath the region's surface.

Jamie Oliver Presents: Death of a Bookshop

Located within the Royal Arcade for the past 15 years or so, and round the corner on London Street for the decade prior, Norwich's original Waterstone's bookshop closed its doors to the public for the final time on October 8th, 2011.

I admit to a bias straight off: I was one of the lucky fifteen members of staff to be employed there when the store finally closed, and had been for five and a half years. I'm well aware of the effects Waterstone's as a chain has had on the independent bookshop trade over the years, so bemoaning the shift in buying patterns away from brick and mortar stores towards the big bad Internet wouldn't sit quite comfortably with me - and, in the end, isn't quite what did us in, anyway. Instead, I'm going to simply say that, over the years, the store has employed a truly remarkable variety of bookselling talent: the city has benefited from some truly formidable expertise. Furthermore, it felt like a 'proper' bookshop. It was not a coffee shop. We tried our hardest to avoid badgering and pestering you into buying 'impulse' purchases or 'related' product, even when official protocol insisted. Despite the occasional inevitable gripes, those of us who worked at the Royal Arcade did love it: at least a few of our customers loved it, too.

So, apologies if the next few entries to Eastscapes reek of sentimentality or naval gazing: I DID warn you to expect bias, after all.

Oh, and the reason we closed? Waterstone's allowed Jamie's Italian - yes, the Italian restaurant chain of celeb-chef Jamie Oliver, whose books we have sold by the crate-load each Yuletide - to buy out our lease. If there's one thing Norwich doesn't seem to lack , it's restaurants: if there's another, it's empty city centre stores. So closing down a bookshop, of all things, to sell yet more inauthentic, overpriced food..?

Pukka.

Did I mention I was biased..?

Death of a Bookshop: Waterstone's Norwich Royal Arcade, Behind the Scenes