A #horror story (sort of) for ##FridayThirteenth
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/fog-and-st...
13.03.2026 12:00
👍 0
🔁 1
💬 0
📌 0
A #horror story (sort of) for ##FridayThirteenth
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/fog-and-st...
One of my favourite views in King’s Lynn, looking up the cobbled College Lane at the 15th C Trinity Guildhall, now the Town Hall. College Lane is named for the 16th C Thoresby College, founded for the chantry priests that served Trinity Guildhall.
Common gulls and black-headeds, greylags and Canadas on the lake; siskin and goldfinches and chaffinches in the trees; robins and wrens in the undergrowth. Old sandpits, dug for sand to make glass, now a peaceful lake beside a road that’s been there since Saxon times.
Including a couple of mine - but #books for all ages and tastes. ✍️
canadianindieauthors.substack.com/p/books-with...
A square castle keep high on a hill with bare tree branches framing it.
Norwich Castle, built at the order of William the Conquerer. where I spent a good chunk of today in the rebuilt Great Chamber, and at the Medieval Life gallery — research for detail in An Unwise Prince.
Decorative tile, gargoyle head, and decorated columns at the top of a flying buttress (a support wall perpendicular to the building) at Ely Cathedral.
Medieval detail at the top of a flying buttress, Ely Cathedral.
A section of Ely cathedral wall, showing a blue door, turquoise and yellow staining on some sections, the puprle-brown of some bricks and the golden tone of others.
The light in Ely yesterday was extraordinary, so clear that details of the cathedral I’ve never noticed before stood out, like these colours on the side facing the town. The whole building almost glowed.
Grassy field with evergreen trees and flowering blackthorn in the background, and a vivid blue sky.
I sat this morning on a bench at Roydon Common. The sky was a cloudless blue. Two buzzards circled and cried. The air was full of lark song, and I saw my first butterfly of the year, a peacock.
The fifteenth #TheHollowFlame story is now live on my Patreon and ko-fi:
ko-fi.com/post/The-Hol...
www.patreon.com/posts/hollow...
Includes audio version read by me.
A one-off $3 donation gets you access to all stories so far!
The Norman (12th C) font at St Laurence’s, Castle Rising, Norfolk. Those are cats’ heads adorning it: the font was moved from the original Norman church dedicated to St. Felix, the saint I wrote about (not very piously) in the link below.
#writing
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/st-felix-a...
‘Out on the mudflats oystercatchers and curlew feed in large groups; closer in are redshank and ringed plover. Something puts the golden plover up, and they wheel and glitter in the sun.’ #birds #nature #walking #Norfolk #writing
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/this-write...
Camellia flowering in the village today.
"I want you to teach us to dance." ✍️
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/play-for-m...
This May sees the release of Our Land - a feature length documentary film about the Right to Roam campaign, directed by Orban Wallace.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=est-...
The 15th century rood screen (chancel screen) at St Nicholas’s, Dersingham. I walked in the moss-and-mole-softened churchyard for a while today, looking for my great-grandparents’ graves. One I could find again, just; the other is now lost to time and lichen.
'Lark song accompanies us through most of the walk; in the woodland sections, tits — long-tailed, blue, great — call. A lone fieldfare is perched in an oak tree... We talk sporadically, about plot tangles, about the birds, about what we can see.'✍️
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/this-write...
#bookreview!
'Irish and Norse mythologies, reinterpreted into something new and wonderful.'
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/the-darkes...
Either side of the Peddars’ Way, an ancient trackway/Roman road crossing Norfolk, fields hold Bronze Age round barrows. One, in a small woodland, Anmer Minque, might be the site of a Roman - Iceni battle. A barrow further west is reputedly an Anglo-Saxon moot hill. No wonder my writing flows here.✍️
The fourteenth #TheHollowFlame story is now live on my Patreon and ko-fi:
www.patreon.com/posts/hollow...
ko-fi.com/post/The-Hol...
Includes audio version read by me.
A one-off $3 donation gets you access to all stories so far!
Footpath through a grassy field with a hedge to the right and trees in the far background. The sky is blue.
How's this for a place to walk and sort out plot tangles? #writing
🔹Keeper of the Sphere trilogy: contemporary fantasy with magic, trolls, and ancient gods; available at Amazon www.amazon.com/dp/B088FGNKTP
🔹Current project: first draft of historical fantasy series about the Oracle of Delphi; expected to be 8 books, ~1450 BCE to ~400 CE; currently on Book 8
Marsh - reeds and open water, with a few clumps of trees, and blue sky with a few wispy clouds.
Sky and marsh on the northwest Norfolk coast - and the landscape, too, of Torrey, home of the character Audun in An Unwise Prince.
‘the arching sky at Torrey, the saltmarsh, the birds feeding at the tide’s edge. The thought that he was leaving it for many years, perhaps forever, stabbed at him.’✍️
Over the years of coming here, the stories told by my father . . . have blended with my own memories and knowledge.
#PlaceWriting
mlthorpeauthor.substack.com/p/this-write...
'When gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of season'
Happy Valentine’s Day for those who note it.
A map of Ely Cathedral and its secondary buildings, showing their position in relation to the catherdral and its grounds.
A map of Ely’s cathedral precinct (and King’s Ely school) which is the model for Berncastre, the university in An Unwise Prince. It's strange now coming to Ely, because in my mind Berncastre is overlaid on it, and it almost has two existences, the real and the imaginary. ✍️
A 14th century merchant's office: a high backed chair with a seat cushion, a standing lamp with three candles; a round table bearing a writing desk, scales for weighing coins, and a candle.
The 14th C merchant's office at Barley Hall, York: the model for Cenric's small office at his house in An Unwise Prince. I like the fact that 700 years ago, it appeared to be clear that using angled surface to write was better (for back and shoulders? eyesight?) than writing flat. ✍️
The thirteenth #TheHollowFlame story is now live on my Patreon and ko-fi:
www.patreon.com/posts/hollow...
ko-fi.com/post/The-Hol...
Includes audio version read by me.
A one-off $3 donation gets you access to all stories so far!
A medieval church, seen from the side, with large plain glass windows. The curve of the windows and the gravestones in the foreground are echoed in the curved branches of a bare tree.
Curves and traceries, King's Lynn Minster. While there is no organized religion in my books, the imagined architecture of the Great Hall at Berncastre, in the WIP An Unwise Prince, is influenced by medieval church architecture.✍️
A very old chest, with a domed lip and metal strapping.
A ‘Danzig’ chest from the 1400s, of the type carried by Hanseatic ships. Chests like these have a small (but important) role in An Unwise Prince. On display at King’s Lynn Minster.
#writing
