Scottish Horror – Clan Witch & Word Refinery

Brazen Folk Horror Check in

Beltane rolled in with storms, humidity, hot and cold fronts colliding, fires, droughts, floods, and even a sinkhole! Literal and metaphorical …
Brazen Folk Horror Check in

eBook Sale

LIMITED TIME

Thank you to everyone who has supported my work this year.

And especially to those who have never read me before and taken a bite of my brand of macabre, magic and mayhem. I hope you enjoyed what you’ve tasted.

With much more on the dark horizon, I am offering Clan Witch ebooks for just £1 each.

If you fancy getting your e-readers (or reading apps) stuffed by me, just PayPal £1 (per book) to natashasinclairauthor@gmail.com , along with your chosen title(s) and email address, and I will deliver.

The Cast of Delevan House #12

Mauve is introduced in Delevan House in the chapter ‘Ripples’, during Caoimhe Liùsaidh Delevan’s birth. Mauve, along with Fraoch, are the only two of…
The Cast of Delevan House #12

Art Inspires Art: Incesticide

I was asked recently about the cover for Incesticide: Collected Horror, so I’m sharing a wee bit about it here.

Music is a massive part of my life, inspiring me when I work. It helps me find grounding when the the Earth has fallen from my feet, and I can’t find anything else to tether onto. Art is a wonderful way of distracting us from pain or helping us face and conquer the demons taking up space. The title was chosen in homage to Nirvana — I am a huge grunge fan, and it is one of my comfort-food genres, so it felt natural to fall into that.

The artwork followed the title. What’s more grunge, punk and indie than doing it all myself? I love to paint too. I guess the creative streak is profoundly ingrained in my wheelhouse, even when I suppressed those urges in years gone by. I took this idea and continued my homage to the title. I didn’t overthink it and just went with the flow, inspired by and creating my spin on Kurt Cobain’s cover art for Nirvana’s Incesticide.

Dandelions (dandelion wishes) are my favourite flower. The invasive weed wields healing properties. Her seed is carried in the sweep of a breeze, and she’ll resist suppression, taking deep root wherever seeds land. She’ll bloom through cracks in the concrete — nature dominating and cleaning the disaster of man. I replaced Kurt’s poppies with dandelion seed heads. Though this element is scarcely visible on the Incesticide: Collected Horror book cover, as the figures took central focus on the wraps.

Those two forms: I switched the small figure to the opposite arm and painted them with only a loose nod to Cobain’s originals. I fleshed out my forms but maintained a skeletal accent to the larger figure. For the small child figure, I wanted to recreate that mannequin/doll base but with a dance that quietly echoed the larger one. I think they quickly transformed into ‘mother’ and ‘child’ when painting them, more so when I stepped back and saw a ghost of my daughter’s face in that child form. My ‘koala baby’. With that, it made sense that’s where my paintbrush went. That revelation then paints more sense onto the wide-eyed, dishevelled ‘mother’. The art for Incesticide became personal. Perhaps a bit of a mirror to PND. A little horror of life that has nothing to do with the collection’s contents.

As well as the Ts and Hoodies on my Etsy, prints of the Incesticide artwork are available if you find me skulking in the shadows with my books and other entwined wares at some cool events this year.

The Cast of Delevan House #10

The Green Stones It’s always interesting when we can assign a personality or humanize the importance of inanimate objects in a story. There are …
The Cast of Delevan House #10

The Cast of Delevan House #7

Mairi Pivona (Voni) McQueeney was born under a crescent moon on a Wednesday. At the time, no one celebrating the birth of the screaming girl knew …
The Cast of Delevan House #7

Jenna McCray’s Taste of Scotland

Jenna McCray’s first drink in Scotland. When the New Yorker find herself in the coastal village of Anand is a pint of Scottish-brewed heather ale, …
Jenna McCray’s Taste of Scotland

The Cast of Delevan House #1

Delevan House: Part 1 We’ve enjoyed sharing ‘The Making of Delevan House’ with you in a series of posts on Brazen Folk Horror before our release on …
The Cast of Delevan House #1

Mid Year Update

Talk about curveball 2022! Another year of madness! There were plans. Big beautiful plans! And while those plans still exist, there has been movement because of those unexpected transitions life has her way of throwing. Personally, I’ve had some family upsets which I predominantly have to deal with and process alone (my partner, of course, has supported as much as one can). I’ve angered, been frustrated, hurt, grieved, run myself in circles, hurt some more, and accepted. Because sometimes that’s all we can do. Accept to find crumbs of peace and carry on. It just takes a little time. It’s a process many are familiar with. It’s been heavy.

Following the acceptances of a triple-pronged hit, I’ve another unexpected ‘bump’, who made himself known in a dream. My kids are excited about another sibling to teach and get up to extra mischief with. Since I have complicated pregnancies, and this one has already given us some wobbles, I’m (again) doing everything within my control to keep this little one inside until late 2022, ideally early 2023. My cervix needs a mantra, and this is the last! The instant physical hit means I’ve been heavily fatigued, and as of that wasn’t enough, I’ve been hammered with mine and the kids’ second bout of Covid of 2022. Because I wasn’t wiped enough by the heavy graft underway in my uterus, I am zapped because my lungs are in battle, and my body feels like it’s been used as a punchbag.

Moving in from all of that, onto the writing front update:

My novella, Asylum Daughter, released on 8th May 2022.

Redesigned the cover art for Murmur: Collected Horror.

Launched Clan Witch Etsy store for book related merchandise and signed copies.

My short story collection Incesticide: Collected Horror is available for preorder, releasing on 14th December 2022.

My sassy, immensely talented, and inspiring co-author, Ruthann Jagge and I launched our website, BrazenFolkHorror.com, for our upcoming 2022 release, Delevan House and future projects. Ruthann also released her fantastic solo debut novella in January 2022, The New Girls’ Patient; if you haven’t read her, this is an excellent example of her extraordinary work that should be on any horror fan’s reading list.

I’ve still been editing work for other writers and publishers via Word Refinery and also published poet Rafik Romdhani’s collection, The Crash of Verses.

I am working on my degree course too.

The latest developments has zapped my study schedule. I hope to recover enough to make up for that soon. Deadlines are looming! Anthology wise, unlike in the previous two years, I have not responded to any open calls. My dance card has been packed. I have gratefully received several invite opportunities but unfortunately had to decline several. One that I was able to submit a piece to was with KJK Publishing’s The Horror Collection: Nightmare Edition, which has just been released. It’s the biggest collection of the twelve-book series and worth picking up for a good flavour of many popular independent horror authors currently putting our new materiel.

More still to come for 2022, and 2023 is also beginning to fill up with a couple of accepted invites, continued work with my brazen co-author in crime and at least one (hopefully two) solo release(s). One of which will be a collection of poetry and drabbles, Clan Witch: Found Shadows.

Writing to Music

Music is such a profound part of my writing process and always has been. With the imminent release of my novella, Asylum Daughter, I wanted to share the music that formed the soundtrack to the writing of this piece.

Art influences art, and I couldn’t create without music. Every piece I write has its own playlist. Sometimes, those playlists are unexpected and not my taste, but the characters have their styles. I can’t argue. The soundtrack to Asylum Daughter was ‘80s heavy and all good by me.

I can’t wait to hear what you think! And feel free to check out some of the early readers thoughts on Goodreads.

Soundtrack to writing Asylum Daughter:

Tears for Fears – Head Over Heels

Tears For Fears – Shout

Tears For Fears – Mad World

Tears For Fears – Sowing The Seeds Of Love

Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights

Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill

Placebo – Without You I’m Nothing

The Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

The Jam – Going Underground

The Jam – Town Called Malice