Five things we learnt from Winter Haunts 2024 - Part one

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31 January 2025
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Winter Haunts ran on the 16th November 2024, and for the third year in a row served up a loaded day of events for writers and readers of ghost stories and the Gothic. Having had time to reflect on the day, there are plenty of valuable lessons to be taken away – and I’ll be looking today at some of the key takeaways from the interview thread… 

 1) You can always pivot – it’s never too late! 
 
If you’ve never had a go at a ghost story, there’s absolutely nothing to say you can’t come to it having written other things! James Oswald’s Broken Ghosts comes on the back of great success in crime and fantasy fiction, Laura Purcell’s first novels were historical fiction, while Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s debut Signal to Noise is generally considered an urban fantasy. It can sometimes take authors time to come to the darker side of fiction – and once you take that step you might decide to never leave… 
 
2) Traditions can always be broken 
 
With both the Gothic and ghost stories, we might think back to authors such as Charles Dickens, MR James, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson and more – and no doubt they are great authors one and all. But a common thread was of taking old traditions in new directions – be it the Victorian asylum on the moon in Nathan Ballingrud’s Crypt of the Moon Spider, the strange locations of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic or the Italian village of Christopher Golden’s House of Last Resort, new locations and new flavours can always be brought to the table. 
 
3) The importance of place – even real ones… 
 
Setting has always been essential to great Gothic fiction and ghost stories, but one thing that grabbed me throughout the day was just how many books we discussed were based on real places! There might have been a little artistic licence here and there, but many of our authors reflected how their original inspirations had come from places they had visited, or in some cases even lived! So if you’re looking for inspiration, it might be worth getting out there and finding some of those more haunting locations – because that new ideas might just be waiting there for you to discover… 
 
4) Variety and acknowledging differences 
 
We were lucky to have so much talent taking part in the day, and not only did we have great novelists but also in the very same people great short story writers, great anthology editors, great writers of comics and graphic novels, great scriptwriters… and there was a lot of interest and discussion about writing in those very varied formats. And even though the genre might often be the same, the skillset required in each cases takes plenty of practice – it’s not simply a matter of doing what you do in novels in another arena. And it’s also pivotal to get involved in the fresh form you want to write in and really engage with it.  
 
5) Call upon your formative experience 
 
A striking feature of both Anna Bogutskaya’s interview and the Bound in Blood panel was just how much people were able to draw from their formative experiences with horror. Some of that was on screen, of course, and plenty was also found on the page. But understanding what drew you to horror in the first place can help you gain a better vision of the type of horror writer that you ultimately want to be – don’t forget the roots of what drew you to the genre in the first place… 
 
That’s all from me for the interview thread of Winter Haunts, and if you missed out this year hopefully we’ll see you at Spring Haunts 2025! 

About Spring Haunts

Spring Haunts returns to York for a second year in 2025, serving up a weekend of Gothic Fiction and ghost stories in one of the UK’s spookiest cities! We’ll be presenting two days of unmissable and immersive workshops with a range of guest authors, led and hosted by acclaimed writing tutor and Writing Magazine regular contributor Alex Davis. We’ll also have booksales throughout the event, and a special author event with Andrew Michael Hurley for Saturday night.

The event will be held at the York Explore and facilitated by lecturer, workshopper and Writing Magazine regular contributor Alex Davis.

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Plus, join one of this generation’s most acclaimed folk horror authors for an evening interview, Q+A and booksales in the haunted city of York!

Andrew Michael Hurley burst onto the scene with his first novel The Loney in 2014, which won The Costa First Novel Award as well as the British Book Industry award for best debut. Since then he has written Devil’s Day and Starve Acre, recently adapted into a film starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. His latest book, Barrowbeck, is a collection of short stories.

Book your space now!