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b"A man driving home on a winter's night thinks he sees a big cat stalking the moor. He crashes his car and then the weirdness really begins. An original story by Northumberland author Rowan Bowman.#audiobook #horror #northumberland #blanchlandFurther notes sent me by Rowan after our discussion:Influences in my writing:Raymond Chandler. He writes as a film director, intent on the reader seeing the view clearly in front of them.Daphne du Maurier. Partly because of her sense of place, but also because of the subtlety of the ghosts in some of her stories,\\xa0Rebecca\\xa0in particular, the writing is haunted by the melancholy of the nameless narrator, and the actual haunting, the influence that Rebecca has from beyond the grave, is superbly handled. Mandalay was based on du Maurier's own house. I often set books in or around houses I have known intimately.Shirley Jackson. The best writer of mad protagonists and unreliable witnesses in my opinion.Favourite authorsThe first proper ghost story I ever read was A Christmas Carol, I think that's where a lot of people start. As a teenager I suffered from terrible nightmares and took solace in Poe and Lovecraft and progressed to Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes\\xa0still gives me the shudders). Then I went on to James Herbert, Shirley Jackson and lots of crime stories and thrillers, anything that confirmed it's normal to be scared and okay not to be okay.\\xa0Life sorted itself out and I was busy raising my children. The nightmares eased and I read anything I could reach while doing something else. Danielewski's\\xa0The House of Leaves\\xa0was the first book in years to actually scare me.\\xa0I still enjoy Robert Harris thrillers and the Cormoran Strike novels, but I'm back in this stage of my life to seeking out the weird and scary.Dan Simmons is always a good read, I recommend\\xa0Drood. The atmosphere is intense and like most of his stories the landscapes suck you in. I enjoyed Michelle Paver's\\xa0Thin Air, but prefer\\xa0Dark Matter\\xa0as a supernatural horror, again the landscape is one of the characters, the real horror in\\xa0Thin Air\\xa0comes from mundane self-interested cruelty which rather overshadows the supernatural element for me. The landscape in\\xa0The Loney\\xa0is brilliantly evoked. There have been several novels since set around the area, but none capture it in the same way.My favourite China Meiville novel is\\xa0The City and The City, its\\xa0fantastical landscape is so well drawn that it seems more real than room you are sitting in.The best book I've read since the start of Lockdown has been\\xa0Piranesi. I loved\\xa0Johnathon Strange and Mr Norrell; this is very different, but equally good. The reader understands what is going on just before it is revealed, set in a fantasy world that is so well drawn that it's utterly convincing.\\xa0If you've ever been asked, 'What is wrong with you?' when admitting to a love of the macabre or frightening, then I recommend Noel Carroll's accessible\\xa0The Philosophy of Horror\\xa0(1990) and Lovecraft's collection of essays\\xa0Supernatural Horror in Literature.\\xa0Hope this may be of some interest.Thank you for reading\\xa0The Beast of Blanchland.\\xa0All the best,RowanSupport the showVisit us here: www.ghostpod.orgBuy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerIf you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcudMusic by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices"