Tag: Witch House

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My 2025 writing round-up

 

© Schlock! Webzine

 

All in all, 2025 was a horrible year: one in which an unholy alliance of authoritarians, kleptocrats, fascists, media tycoons, tech bros and oil barons worked hard at stripping freedoms from those of us living in societies that have, until now, retained some freedoms; at transferring another huge chunk of wealth from our dwindling coffers to their swelling coffers; and at burning and poisoning the planet we live on in their quest for profits whilst aggressively pushing the line that any science questioning this policy is a ‘hoax’.  But you’ve probably noticed that.  You don’t need me to tell you.

 

On a personal level, and regarding my writing career, 2025 for a time looked like it would be horrible too.  The previous year, 2024, had been my most successful one ever, with its twelve months seeing 17 of my short stories published.  However, in my writing round-up for 2024, I noted warily that “I will be hard-pressed to equal or better that record in 2025…  That’s because of the recent disappearances of certain magazines (like The Sirens Call) and publishers (like Midnight Street Press) who have published my stuff regularly in the past.”  Yes, those closures impacted on me this year.  But for a period of four of five months in the middle of 2025, I really felt that, submissions-wise, I couldn’t get myself arrested.  I sent story after story to publication after publication and, relentlessly, rejection after rejection came back.

 

For a while, my efforts at fiction seemed about as popular as a Cybertruck in a Tesla showroom in a district of Washington DC heavily populated by ex-government employees.

 

But…  “If at first you don’t succeed, Mr Kidd…”  “…Try, try again, Mr Wint.”

 

In keeping with the philosophy of Mr Kidd and Mr Wint, the two camp assassins in Diamonds are Forever (1971) who indefatigably persevere in their efforts to dispose of Sean Connery, I tried and tried again.  And unexpectedly, I had a breakthrough near the end of the year.  Half-a-dozen of my stories got into print in November and December.  Also surprising – since I’ve never considered myself a particularly Christmassy person – was the fact that three of these stories appeared in anthologies or magazine issues dedicated to the festive season.

 

Anyway, here’s a summary of the fiction I’ve had published in 2025.  It includes details of where they were published, which pseudonym they were published under and how they can be accessed today.

 

As Jim Mountfield:

  • Jim Mountfield, the penname under which I write horror stories, had his first 2025 success with a story that appeared in Issue 22 of the Stygian Lepus magazine.  It was entitled Beach Bodies, was set in Bali, and was about an older man coming into conflict with an extreme manifestation of the foreign backpacker and influencer culture that overruns the island’s tourist spots.  Issue 22 of the Stygian Lepus can be purchased here.
  • In July, a Mountfield story called Slot Boy was featured in Volume 19, Issue 6 of Schlock! Webzine.  At the time I described Slot Boy, which was set in Scotland and not wholly serious in tone, as having a “Scottish backdrop of parochial wee towns, middle-aged neds, cranky auld wifies, mobility scooters, and terrible football.”  You can buy that particular issue of Schlock! Webzine here.

 

© Spiral Tower Press

 

  • My next two Mountfield stories were also set in Scotland. Halloween 2025 saw the release of Issue 5 of Witch House Magazine, whose contents included The Bustle in the Hedgerow.  This story drew on a number of inspirations: a historian who once visited my family’s farm while hunting for the remains of a Roman fort; a hedge my father once planted on the farm after receiving an environmental grant; and the supposedly true story of two ancient Celtic stone heads, known as the Hexham Heads, which caused terrifying paranormal activity to assail anyone who came into ownership of them.  The Hexham Heads traumatized a generation of kids in the UK in the 1970s when the BBC current-affairs show Nationwide broadcast a report about them.  Issue 5 of Witch House can be downloaded here.
  • Early in December, a Mountfield story called The Dark Crooked One appeared in a seasonal anthology from Black Hare Press, Eerie Christmas 4. This combined a legend about Scottish bogeyman who supposedly appears during the shortest days of the year, including December 25th, with the real-life tensions that can arise at Christmas – namely, when you stick a not-particularly-happy family together in a room all day, make them eat and drink too much, and pressurise them into acting like they’re having a good time when, in fact, they’re not.  Go here to buy a copy of Eerie Christmas 4.
  • And later in December, Jim Mountfield was responsible for the first part of a science-fictional horror story, entitled Appopolis Now and set in an imaginary Asian country in the near-future, that turned up in Issue 30 of the Stygian Lepus.  Appopolis Now is currently available to read here.  Its second and final part should appear in the 31st issue of the Stygian Lepus next month.

 

As Rab Foster:

  • Meanwhile, my fantasy-writing alter-ego Rab Foster had his first 2025 story published in April when one called The Cats and the Crimson was accepted for Issue 159 of the monthly webzine Swords and Sorcery Magazine. The first half of the title reflects the fact that the story contains cats – both domestic cats and some ghoulish, demonic variations on the feline species.  The second half of it indicates the presence in its cast of Cranna the Crimson, a fearless and rather incorrigible swordswoman who’s already been a character in two of my earlier published stories.  You can read the story in Swords and Sorcery Magazine’s archive, here.
  • The next month, a Foster story called The Shrine on the Moor appeared in Volume 19, Issue 4 of Schlock! Webzine. This featured another recurring character of mine, the mercenary Drayak Shathsprey, and was a sequel to a story called Pit of the Orybadak, which had been published in the magazine Savage Realms Monthly at the start of the previous year.  Volume 19, Issue 4 can be purchased here.

 

© Cloaked Press, LLC

 

  • September saw the publication of another instalment in the yearly Fall into Fantasy anthology series published by Cloaked Press.  Fall into Fantasy 2025’s line-up of stories included a Rab Foster one called From Out the Boundless Deep.  Its main character, Kayra, had previously featured in a story called The Trap Master, published in the webzine Aphelion in 2018.  As I wrote on this blog: “The premise of both stories is that Kayra inhabits a world where all the creatures of myth and legend – griffins, hydras, harpies, kelpies, minotaurs, etc. – are real and she makes a living by hunting and trapping them.”  In From Out the Boundless Deep, Karya gets summoned to a remote beach where something large and mysterious has just been washed up.  Fall into Fantasy 2025 is on sale here.
  • The year ended with Rab Foster getting another story placed in Swords and Sorcery Magazine, this time one entitled The Palanquin. It’s an attempt to tell a fantasy story set within the confines of a very limited space – the interior of the conveyance of the title.  It features yet another recurring character in the Foster universe, the swordswoman and mercenary Keeshan, who appears sometimes as a partner to Drayak Shathsprey and sometimes as a lone agent.  Shathsprey has a role in The Palanquin too, but it’s a minor one.  Currently, the story can be read here.

 

As Steve Cashel:

  • I usually write non-horror and non-fantasy fiction that’s set in Scotland under the pseudonym Steve Cashel. This year, atypically, he had a story turn up in another anthology of supernatural Christmas tales, White Witch’s Hat and Other Yuletide Ghost Stories from Heavenly Flower Publishing.  The reason for this was because the story in question, Southbound Traveller, was set in a Scottish household on Christmas Day in the early 1990s and for most of its length was realistic in tone.  Only near the end does something strange happen – and it’s more a ‘paranormal incident’ than a manifestation by a ghost or other supernatural entity.  (An inspiration for the story was actually Hans Christian Anderson’s 1845 fairy tale The Little Match Girl.)  It seemed more like a Steve Cashel story than a Jim Mountfield one, so Cashel got the credit.  To purchase a copy of White Witch’s Hat and Other Yuletide Ghost Stories, please click here.

 

© Heavenly Flower Publishing

 

As Paul McAllister

  • Finally, I managed to get two short stories published in December 2025 under the penname of Paul McAllister, which I use for non-scary, non-fantastical fiction set in Ireland.  This felt like scoring two goals in injury time at the end of a football match.  The first of the stories was called That Time and was based on a memory of a brief but harrowing incident that happened to me when I was about eight years old and living in Northern Ireland.  That Time was included in Issue 2 of the digital magazine Still Here, whose title and theme was Ghosts of our Pasts.  A pdf of Issue 2 can be downloaded here.
  • And the team behind Still Here also decided to put out a mini-issue to coincide with Christmas Day, entitled A Light in December.  I managed to get a Paul McAllister story selected for that as well.  Called The Recovery, it’s another one that takes place in Northern Ireland.  It involves a funeral, during the run-up to Christmas, and a case of mistaken identity.  Again, you can download a pdf of the mini-issue here.

 

In the end, despite my pessimistic predictions, I managed to get twelve short stories published during 2025.  Prior to the bumper year of 2024, a dozen published stories was my average total each year.  So, I didn’t fare so badly after all.  From this experience, I would give budding writers two pieces of advice: (1) never give up (which is the advice all writers give aspiring writers); and (2) have lots of Christmas stories ready in your arsenal for the next round of seasonal anthologies.  I’ve already started writing a couple for Christmas 2026.

 

Meanwhile… A Happy New Year to you all.

 

© Stygian Lepus

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Jim Mountfield hedges his bets

 

© Spiral Tower Press

 

I’m pleased to say that at the end of last month – appropriately in time for Halloween – I had a new short story published in Issue 5 of Witch House Magazine.  Witch House is devoted to “the pulp fiction tradition of a modern gothic literature called ‘cosmic horror.’  Writers in this tradition include (but are not limited to) the following: Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and many more.  ‘Cosmic horror’ emphasizes helpless protagonists, unexplainable monstrous menaces, and fictional occult themes such as forbidden lore and evil conspiracy.”  My story is entitled The Bustle in the Hedgerow and, because it’s macabre in tone, it’s attributed to Jim Mountfield, the penname I use for such fiction.

 

Yes, the title was inspired by a lyric (“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now”) in Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven (1971), a song that a very long time ago I thought was great but now, having heard it a million times, I’m heartily sick of.  Other songs that fall into this unfortunate category include the Beatles’ Hey Jude (1968), Derek and the Dominos’ Layla (1970) and the Eagles’ Hotel California (1977).  But that’s the only Zeppelin-esque influence on the story.  The Bustle in the Hedgerow owes its existence to three different ideas I had at three different times, which I duly recorded in my ideas notebook.  All published writers and aspiring writers of an elderly disposition, like me, carry a notebook into which they scribble the ideas that occur to them.  Though I suppose these days younger writers may record their ideas using a notes app on their smartphones.

 

The story’s main character was based on the historian, writer and poet Walter Elliot, who’s written extensively about the Scottish Borders, especially the lovely Ettrick and Yarrow part of it.  My family own a small farm near the Borders town of Peebles.  One day Walter showed up on our doorstep, asking if he could take a look around one of our fields in the cause of historical and archaeological research.  My dad happily told him to go ahead and, as a thank you, Walter presented him with free copies of couple of his books.  “A historian doing research in a remote farm field,” I thought.  “That’d make a good premise for a story.”  I wrote the idea down.

 

I should say that Walter Elliot is still on the go.  His work was acknowledged and lauded in the Scottish Parliament in 2021.  So please, don’t anyone tell him I’ve turned him into a character in a horror story.

 

© Deerpark Press

 

The second idea came when my dad got a grant from the European Union – oh, how long ago that seems now – to improve the natural environment of the farm and planted half-a-mile of hedgerow along the side of its biggest field.  One of the reasons why the hedge got approval was because it’d act as a ‘wildlife corridor’, allowing wild animals to move from habitat to habitat without having to cross roads or cultivated land.  Because the hedge started at a site where the local burn widened into a pool, and it ended at a shelterbelt of trees adjacent to our farmstead, I had a typically horror-writer-ish thought: “Hey, if something nasty lived in that pool, it could now use the hedge, the wildlife corridor, as a way of getting access to our house!”   And another idea was scribbled down.

 

Thirdly, I’d made notes about, and always wanted to write a story connected with, the Hexham Heads.  These were two little stone heads, alleged by some to be Celtic in origin, discovered in the northeast English town of Hexham in 1971.  They reputedly caused unwelcome and frightening paranormal activity in the homes of whoever had custody of them.  Infamously, Nationwide (1969-83) – a normally easy-going, family-friendly TV current-affairs programme that the BBC aired every weekday evening around six o’clock – featured a report on the story in 1976.  For some reason, the makers of the report saw fit to throw in images of severed human heads on tree-branches, screams and an unexpected jump-cut of Oliver Reed from 1961’s Curse of the Werewolf amid the creepy interviews, traumatising every young kid who happened to be watching.  It certainly scared the shit out of me.  (Long believed lost, footage of that legendary 1976 report has now been discovered and restored.  See here and here.)

 

From wikipedia.org / © Archaeology Data Service / Dr Anne Ross

 

I don’t normally dispense advice to other writers.  For me, personally, this has always felt a bit pompous.  But based on my experiences here, I’d recommend them to (1) make notes of their ideas before they forget them, and (2) avoid regarding each idea as having a linear correlation with a story.  Rather than thinking ‘one idea equals one story’, they should keep studying all their ideas, however random, and keep looking for ways that two, three or more ideas could be combined in a single work.  This cross-fertilisation allowed me to come up with The Bustle in the Hedgerow.

 

Containing eleven pieces of fiction and five poems, Issue 5 of Witch House Magazine can be downloaded here.

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My 2023 writing round-up

 

© Aphelion

 

2023 was not a great year for me personally or professionally.  And for the sake of my sanity, I’d prefer not to think of what went on in the wider world during the past year.  Mind you, with Lord Sauron’s orange twin looking likely to retake the White House in November and all that could ensue from that – the USA plunging into authoritarianism, civil disorder and even civil war, the emboldening of other fascists around the world, Ukraine being handed over to Trump’s buddy and idol Vladimir Putin, the end of humanity’s chances to do anything to alleviate the unfolding climate catastrophe – I have a feeling 2023 might retrospectively seem a nice year compared to the one that’s coming.

 

But on the other hand, 2023 was a successful one in terms of my writing.  In fact, it was my best-ever year and I managed to have 15 short stories published.  Usually, in a year, about a dozen of my pieces of fiction make it into print.

 

Here’s a round-up of my stories that were published in 2023, with details of who published them, which pseudonym they were published under, and where you can find them.

 

As Jim Mountfield:

  • Jim Mountfield, the penname under which I write macabre fiction, made his first 2023 appearance at the start of January.  Temple Street, a cosmic-horror story involving strangely-animate shadows in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna, was published in Schlock! Webzine Volume 17, Issue 6.  The issue can be purchased here.
  • March saw the publication of my story Wool – the first of three I had published in 2023 that were set on a farm in southern Scotland and informed by my experiences of living on one in my youth – in Issue 61 of The Sirens Call. This one had a futuristic setting and explored what livestock-farming might be like a few years from now.  Possibly better for ‘real’ animals.  Not good for the genetically-engineered, supposedly-mindless ones that take their place in the production of meat, wool and other animal products.  And fatal for human beings if those genetically-engineered surrogates decide to rebel one day.  Issue 61 can be downloaded here.
  • I wasn’t sure if my story The Lost Stones would ever see the light of day, as its ingredients could best be described as ‘eclectic’.  At worst, they could be described as ‘barmy’.  It featured a Rolling Stones cover band, the Lost Stones of the title.  It also incorporated some folklore from the Rif Mountains of Morocco.  And it was set in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo during its snowbound wintertime.  However, in May, The Lost Stones was accepted for the Long Fiction section of Aphelion.  Furthermore, the story was one of the Long Fiction editor’s best-of-the-year picks of 2023 and is featured again in the current December 2023 / January 2024 issue of Aphelion.  For the next month, it can be read here.

 

© The Sirens Call

 

  • Issue 63 of The Sirens Call, published in June, had a special theme – cryptids, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “an animal (such as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster) that has been claimed to exist but never proven to exist.” I penned a short story about cryptids entitled The Watchers in the Forest, which made the cut.  Issue 63 can be downloaded here.
  • October 2023 was a bumper month for Jim Mountfield, as his name appeared on three short stories published in the run-up to Halloween. Actually, Halloween figured heavily in the first of these, The Turnip Thieves, about a Scottish hill farmer who takes umbrage at what he believes are kids from the local town stealing his ‘neeps’ (turnips) to make Halloween lanterns.  This being a scary story, the thieves aren’t really kids.  The Turnip Thieves was among the contents of Volume 17, Issue 15 of Schlock! Webzine, which can be purchased here.
  • Later that month, my story One for the Books was included in the anthology Nightmare Fuel: Mind Terrors 2023 from the publisher Cloaked Press.  One for the Books was a tale of madness set in a second-hand bookshop, the inspiration for which came from the real-life Armchair Books at 72-74 West Port in Edinburgh, which I remember as a place of wonderful clutter, chaos, nooks and crannies, and vertiginously-high shelves.  Nightmare Fuel: Mind Terrors 2023 can be obtained here.

 

© Cloaked Press

 

  • And another ‘farm-horror’ story, The Shelterbelt, made it to publication just before Halloween. As the title suggests, the story was about a belt of trees, adjacent to a farmstead, designed to protect it against the elements… and containing a dark secret.  The Shelterbelt was included in Issue 3 of Witch House, which can be downloaded here.
  • Finally on the Jim Mountfield front in 2023, November was when my story A Man about a Dog appeared in Issue 8 of The Stygian Lepus.  Superficially about a person with some inexplicable healing powers, it was really about how people mistreat dogs and, indeed, about how people mistreat other people.  Issue 8 can be accessed in the magazine’s back-catalogue section, here.

 

As Rab Foster:

  • In 2023, Rab Foster, the pseudonym I use when I write fantasy – and usually the sweaty, rowdy sub-genre of fantasy known as sword and sorcery – first surfaced in March.  This was when The Pyre of Larros, a tale inspired in part by the death of Queen Elizabeth II the previous year (and by how Britain reacted to her death), appeared in Issue 133 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine.  The story can now be read in the magazine’s archive, here.
  • And it was in Issue 138 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, in July, that the next Rab Foster story was published.  The Gibbeting of Azmyre not only appeared in the same magazine as The Pyre of Larros but it featured the same main character – the mercenary swordsman Drayak Shathsprey, who this time gets involved in a plot to steal the corpse of an executed criminal from its gibbet in a snowy city-square.  The setting was inspired by the old-town area of Edinburgh, which at one time was a hub for the nefarious practice of bodysnatching.  Again, The Gibbeting of Azmyre is now in Sword and Sorcery Magazine’s archive.  You can read it here.
  • A different Rab Foster character, Cranna the Crimson, was featured in the story Vision of the Reaper. This was among the items selected for the Cloaked Press anthology Fall into Fantasy 2023, which appeared in September.  It pitted Cranna against some supernatural and sorcerous skulduggery happening in a giant wheatfield.  A copy of Fall into Fantasy 2023 can be obtained here.

 

© Cloaked Press

 

  • The first instalment of my two-part opus The Boots of the Cat appeared in Volume 18, Issue 2 of Schlock! Webzine at the beginning of December.  Describing the events set in motion by a vain mercenary, nicknamed the Cat, trying to retrieve his lost boots, this story was inspired by a famous fairy tale – but not, as you might expect, Puss in Boots.  To read this issue of Schlock! Webzine, buy it here.
  • And mid-December saw the arrival of Issue 8 of the magazine Whetstone, which contained my story The Ghost Village – described by the editor as straddling ‘the line between folk horror and sword and sorcery’, and owing a little of its premise to the Thai tradition of spirit houses. The issue can be downloaded here.

 

As Steve Cashel:

  • Steve Cashel, a pseudonym I’d last used in 2011, was resurrected in 2023.  His name appeared at the top of The Folkie, a violent story about some young, would-be gangsters and a mysterious old folk-musician whom they encounter in a dingy, central-Edinburgh pub.  The Folkie was published in November in Close 2 the Bone, an ezine devoted largely to crime fiction, and can be accessed here.

 

As Paul McAllister:

  • Meanwhile, Paul McAllister was a penname I really hadn’t used for a long time.  He’d last appeared in the mid-1990s and I’d never expected to exhume him.  However, when my story The Magician’s Assistant, based on some experiences I’d had as a kid in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, was included in the collection Winter Wonderland 2023: Bindweed Anthology in December, it seemed right to attribute it to Paul McAllister.  This was the sort of fiction I’d written under his name in the past.   To buy your copy of Winter Wonderland 2023: Bindweed Anthology, go to Amazon UK here or Amazon US here.

 

So, to recap.  2023 was a vintage year for my writing, even though the year sucked in all other respects.  Indeed, it seems the more successful my writing career gets, the more the world turns to shit.  Could these two things be causally related?

 

If that’s the case…  Well, sorry folks.  I’m going to keep on writing.  You’ll have to keep on suffering.

 

© Schlock! Webzine

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Jim Mountfield takes to the trees

 

© Spiral Tower Press

 

Jim Mountfield, the pseudonym under which I write horror stories, has been on a roll this month – which, appropriately enough, is October, the month of Halloween.  Already in October 2023 he’s had short stories appear in the online publication Schlock! Webzine and in the collection Nightmare Fuel: Mind Terrors 2023.  Now he’s just had a third story, entitled The Shelterbelt, published in Issue 3 of the magazine Witch House.

 

As its title implies, The Shelterbelt concerns a plantation of trees grown next to a property to shield it against the elements.  In the story, the property is a farm in a remote part of southern Scotland.  I didn’t have to look far for inspiration for The Shelterbelt.  In 1977, my parents sold our farm in Northern Ireland and purchased and moved to a new farm in southern Scotland, near the town of Peebles.  But the steading we found ourselves living in was hardly ‘new’ – it was a dilapidated and bleak-looking place at the time, with scarcely a tree anywhere, which was unfortunate because the steading was in a north-south-running valley and in the pathway of any bad weather borne by the north wind.  Several times during our first few winters there, we had to dig our way out from our front door, so heavily had snow been piled against it.  How long ago that seems now in these globally-warmed times…

 

My Dad immediately decided to create a shelterbelt on the northern side of the steading.  I still remember the day when he, my Mum and a good friend from Northern Ireland, Hugh Buchanon, planted the saplings.  Maybe I remember it because I discovered then how seriously my Dad – who was normally relaxed and easy-going – took his work.  He was very exacting.  He was very particular about how far apart those saplings were placed – not too close, not too distant.  After an hour of listening to him, my Mum and Hugh looked ready to plant him along with the trees.

 

Meanwhile, a literary influence for The Shelterbelt is the 1914 short story Ancient Lights by the author, broadcaster and occultist Algernon Blackwood.  And I’d be lying if I said a certain 1973 movie, about an uptight, virginal, Free Presbyterian policeman investigating a possible case of human sacrifice on a remote Scottish island, didn’t provide a little inspiration too.

 

For more information about Witch House magazine, click here.  And Issue 3, containing my story and a dozen others, can be downloaded here for free.