A storyteller par excellence, Robert Holdstock wrote with considerable insight about the power of dreams, the unconscious and human desire. He began by writing science fiction, but although his early books were well received, they remain under-realised. Holdstock had yet to find his true subject and the mode that would allow him to write with passion and depth – this would occur in the Mythago Wood novels. You can find the setting of the novels on any map of England – almost. There’s Herefordshire, a peaceful little county, ‘Middle England’, as is said sometimes; looking westwards towards the Welsh border. The Ryhope estate might be approximately there, and Oak Lodge, and also the ancient forest – the primeval woodland of oak, ash, beech, and the like, with its untrodden dark interior – which gives the first novel in the sequence its magical name of Mythago Wood. Like Holdstock’s characters, we find ourselves lost in the vastness of that ancient eponymous forest when we enter the wildwood with its stench of ash, blood and animal. The Mythago Wood novels exist as a whole, and that whole is no ordinary fantasy story, with its extraordinary beauty. Rather it is about time, time solidified, death pickled, and that way we might have had to live, once upon a time.
Archive | June, 2017
The Inn at the Edge of the World
Click image to get the August 2016 issue of Bardic Tales and Sage Advice and read my short story 'The Inn at the Edge of the World'.
The Witch of Wicken Fen
Click image to read my short story 'The Witch of Wicken Fen' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
Snowfall
This is a story set in a possible dark future of our own planet. Click image to read an extract.
Hour of the Wolf
This is a modern day werewolf story set in the remote Scottish borders. Click image to read an extract.
The Chronicles of Merlin
This short story speculates that Merlin does in fact exist and is alive and well, residing somewhere in the British Isles. Click image to read an extract.
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