@cultauthor.bsky.social
The narrow, high-banked path that carves a channel through the boneyard of St. Urian’s at Wormford is notoriously ghost-soaked. We would expect nothing less for a old wraith way, yet it has a pleasing diversity of phantoms: giant spiders made of smoke; flaming wheels; floating pillars of blue light.
“All writers are making maps of the cicatrix of their lives, disturbing the ghost soil, unearthing artefacts of unreliable memory. Being an English child of the 1970s, there is possibly a little more need than usual for exorcism. For there’s no getting away from the fact it was a bloody weird time.”
Goodnight from Beryl Brewer, wishing the cleaning supplies for the County Museum weren’t stored in the basement next to a room labelled Bone Depository. Goodnight from the cloud pond on Weland Hill, where a Harrowhound pack has come to slake their thirst. Goodnight from Hookland.
We drive darkening, ghosted roads. In these last minutes of solar alchemy, every turn is towards folklore. We become one with the land's long memory. One with a hodology where every traveller is another time's temporal shade. We become high strangeness. – #DAKilroy, 1982
I think it is meant to be a compliment when friends say you've aged into a 'one-eyed Alan Moore'.
Those feral churches – beyond diocesan office, enjoying green communion – call the imagination. Even before visiting, we've a knowing their ivy-blinded windows, their ghost-congregation cooled interiors, refuse this barbarous heat. Offer spirit-shaded sanctuary. – #DAKilroy
Some stone pilgrims come to connect to the energy they feel. Some to make communion with the dead, to sit with the stones' stories. In this brutal heat, I slump in the shadow of the Long Neolithic, grateful for bothi it shade and ongoing mysteries. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday
A defining problem of living in Hookland is so many of its buildings refuse to stand still. It has wandering pubs, chapels stone circles and even castles. I find those the most perplexing not only because they seem overly sprightly for ruins, but for the question: where do they go? – #CLNolan
Above us were omen skies with clouds for the telling of tomorrow. Above were the wires carrying The Hum, telling us the electric ley of the land, giving us our directions of march. The media called us a lost generation, but we had found our way. – Tattoo Labyrinth Dave, ex-Pylon Person
Ridiculously kind-worded piffle from this award-winning writer.
Owen Booth@owenbooth.bsky.social · 7d agoYou will, of course, already have your copy of this lovely thing from @hookland.bsky.social - but if by any chance *you haven’t* then you need to sort that out right away. I would happily give up whatever remnants of a literary career i have left to read another nine volumes of this instead…
Back to Essex as my mother is in a state - largely due to my brother being severely injured in the Kumamoto earthquake (broken back, wrist, decision on whether to amputate a leg on Monday. I feel yet again like a phantom in my own life, full of regret and dread.
I write for myself and in doing that and refusing to pander to the middle class and the market, I am writing for the marginalised, the bruised and the weary. And as one of those folk, I can tell you, we bloody well need some re-enchantment.
Church porch as excommunicate outreach. Church porch as corpse pause, corpse watch. Church porch as threshold, as site of loosing and binding. Half-consecrated, beyond the blessing of water, wine, salt and ash. Neither in nor out and therefore a place of magics. – #CLNolan
Some structures demand stories. Given that Hookland was stripped of what tin and lead it once had before the Saxons and has never had any significant reserves of coal, it doesn't feel unreasonable to ask just what was being mined at Kitling Tor. – Chris Whitelock #VOH
For it is St. Lazarus Eve or as we Hooklanders call it, Pale Harvest Eve. It is a night when the dead twitch and the living worry about restless spirits. Some say it is like most nights in the county, but this is more than a little unfair. – #CLNolan
I have been into @treadwells-books.bsky.social and signed a huge pile of ‘Hookland Fragments’ and inserted dozens of Right To Reside cards, so there are definitely back in stock if you want a copy from one of my favourite bookshops.
We tread the green-walled lane towards Tingle Hill. Our boots scuffing up stories, waking a folklore of Moss Maidens, Headless Bears. Every step deepens our conversation with place. We've moved beyond wristwatch time into the deep calendar count of the land. – #DAKilroy, 1982
Bringers of feral magic, foxes have made their den in the collective imagination of the county. From Fox Brides to Ruffled Foxes, the midwinter mercies of the fox to cunning paths they carve, they live not only beside us, but within our folkloric thinking. – Dr. M. Benn
Mrs. S. is away in Warwick where I get reports such as: “Saw what was meant to be a hobby horse. It was shit.”
Authors watch out for Agent scams. Thanks to @cultauthor.bsky.social I managed to dodge this one. Still left me feeling a bit blue though. writerbeware.blog/2026/03/27/w...
Watch Out For This Scam Impersonating Editors at Major Publishing Houses - Writer Beware
I’ve recently gotten a slew of reports of emails purporting to be from editors at Big 5 and other large publishers, in which the supposed editor expresses interest in the writer’s work and asks whethe...
writerbeware.blog
The uncurated churches of Hookland are a lithic Book of Saints. Old carvings of disciples of the younger god. Old carvings as masks for gods much more ancient than any Norman church. Stone intercessors for whichever god you fear might not hear your direct prayer. – Dr. M. Benn
There are two chained libraries in Weychester Cathedral - the Lower Library Library and the Tower Library. Whilst both are considered impressively haunted, they pale before the alleged phantoms of the cathedral's Black Library. – George Kindred, 'Haunted Hookland', 1970
For those wanting a signed copy of the book, a Right To Reside card or to buy from one the best esoteric bookshops around, here is the promised link to Hookland at @treadwells-books.bsky.social. www.treadwells-london.com/product-page...
Hookland Fragments Volume One - David Southwell | Treadwells
Discover the Fortean mysteries and folkloric history of Hookland, England's lost county. Created by David Southwell and documented extensively on social media for many years, the fictional Hookland ha...
treadwells-london.com
Fears reduce us to inaction. A turning inward. Fears reduce us to seeking comfort - the rewatch, the reread. We know this and ignore our knowing out of a sense of self-care. Often we can only feel confident about our culture when it rediscovers a total joy in novelty.
The unvisited dead take feral flowers now no-one leaves posies upon their stones. Whisper to themselves as their neighbours have had a century-fill of repeated stories. Each footfall wakes them in hope of a remembering caller. Each disappointment an erasing. – #DAKilroy, 1982
My talk about David McKee, Mr Benn and Elmer the patchwork elephant, relating to the exhibition at St Barbe Museum + Art Gallery, is now up on YouTube if that might be of interest: m.youtube.com/watch?v=Htxq...
St Barbe Friday Friends Talk - The David McKee Sketchbook
YouTube video by St Barbe Museum + Art Gallery
m.youtube.com
