For reasons even I can’t fathom the (nearly) final draft of Ghosts of Time, the sequel to Alchemists of Time, sat on my computer for almost a year. Nor can I tell you what prompted me to get on with publishing it. I just started the process some time in November and once I’d started I kept going.
I suppose the process itself is daunting and may account for my reticence. As a one man band, with help from my wife, it takes ages to proofread what I’ve written and make corrections. Then I needed to design the cover, licence any images I use though in fact there’s only one stock image incorporated into the final design, the rest of the images coming from my own collection of old photographs. Formatting for publication has been a nightmare in the past and I’m still not happy with the results on my previous books. This time around I was able to use formatting software from Reedsy and I have to say it did a fantastic job and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again or recommend it to others.
Next I had to navigate through the Amazon/Kindle submission process, review previews and submit my cover design. Getting the cover approved took me most time as the submission requirements are exacting and even being out by a millimetre can cause it to be rejected. But eventually everything was approved and I was able to get the book into publication. (The Kindle cover had to be formatted differently and took more time to correct.)
So the first of December 2021 saw the publication of ghosts of time with the Kindle version coming a few days later and now I could relax couldn’t I? Well, no because now I have to publicise the book, write blog entries, update information on Goodreads and try to get the book noticed any way possible. To do this seriously I’m probably looking at doing something daily for the foreseeable future if I want to achieve any sales.
I suppose I’ve answered the question of why it took so long to get to publication. In one sense self- publishing on Amazon is easy and accessible to anyone. On the other hand it takes real effort to go through their processes and get everything right. Once you’ve published your book you have to put so much time and effort into marketing that it can easily become a full time endeavour. It looks easy but it isn’t. I’m not whinging by the way, I know what needs to be done but I’d much rather be writing the next book than learning to be a marketeer.
Tag: Victorian
The Sequel to Alchemists of Time is on the way
This year I have been working hard on the sequel to Alchemists of Time. I spent so much time on it that I delayed publishing Dressing the Dead for months because I didn’t want to leave Alchemists. I can now report that the first draft of the new book, provisionally titled Nine of Swords, is finished and I am now in the process of rewrites and editing with the intent of getting it out there before the end of the year.
This time around it’s 1869, ten years after Alex Harrison was transported from the future. Alex has learned to love his life as a Victorian and settled down and has lost his desire to return to the future. Meanwhile in 1969 Maxine Silver can barely remember Alex and is living a mundane life until some old friends and foes come back into her life.
Everyone thought that Bella Nightingale was dead and time was safe again but they were wrong on both counts. Bella’s acolytes have been working tirelessly to bring her back and this time Bella’s got a new body, that of a swinging sixties woman and she’s going to enjoy every minute of it.
Nine of Swords introduces several new characters and new locations. Expect to be plunged into the Victorian worlds of trains, sport, prisons and stage performances. Meet Isis, Queen of the Night, as she performs her daring magic act and puts her knowledge of creating illusions in the service of defeating Bella. Meet Ezekiel Lee, leader of a modern coven in thrall to Bella. Meet Lenora Barratt a young girl living in a house haunted by Bella. Find out about the true origins and purpose of the camera obscura.
Things have changed in the ten years since Alchemists of Time but some things have remained the same. Bella is still out there and the stability of time is still in doubt. Can she be stopped before it’s too late for everyone and what price are they willing to pay to stop her?
The Book of the Dead
Some time ago I attended a commercially organised “ghost hunt” which took place overnight. It was at the Grammar School I’d attended as a teenager so I was already familiar with the place and had not been aware of anything particularly spooky associated with it. As it turned out the whole event was rather silly with the facilitators trying hard to conjure up supernatural events, cold spots and the like. To put it kindly it was utter nonsense.
At one point in the night I found myself in a small room with several other participants trying to make contact with “spirits”. The organiser of this session gave out roles to each of us. She asked for a volunteer to sit with the “book of the dead.” As every one else was wary I volunteered only to find that the book was actually a Victorian album full of cabinet cards and CDVs. I was delighted of course and could see nothing negative about sitting with this album. My frustration was that because we were operating in very dim lighting I couldn’t see the contents properly. No spirits were contacted or harmed during the seance.
For the most part I find nothing creepy about my interest in old photographs. I see the process of collecting and preserving these photos as a valuable and worthwhile activity, hopefully ensuring that other people can see and appreciate these wonderful social documents. I am perplexed when my partner or other people think there is something creepy about my hobby and refer to it as collecting photographs of dead people. I think those people should be remembered and celebrated not discarded and forgotten.
On the other hand there are some creepy items in my collection though I suspect what I find creepy is not what everyone finds creepy. The photo at the head of this blog for instance is creepy to me as are all films and photos of ventriloquists and their dummies. I’m not sure if this is due to seeing the film Dead of Night when I was young or if it is something inherent in me. (I dislike all kinds of puppets and dummies).
Dolls are another thing that can be disturbing. I know I share this with many other people from the feedback I get but sometimes I see a photo featuring a girl and a doll is creepy whereas others find it delightful. The massed dolls with the girl at the centre is a good example. Creepy or endearing? Only you can decide.
Sometimes the subjects of photographs have a rather haunted look about them. This could be caused by the fact that early photographic techniques required the subjects to be still whilst the exposure was taken but sometimes the subjects look haunted anyway.
And sometimes there’s just something wrong or odd about a photograph that makes you wonder what was really going on.
And what about these two girls? Haunted or cute?
Considering most of these photographs come from the early nineteenth century it is almost certain that the subjects are all now dead but I prefer to think of these old photographs not as “The Book of the Dead” but as a celebration of people’s lives.
“Heretics” is now “Alchemists of Time”
Throughout its development my latest novel has been called Heretics. I had the title before I started writing because one of the central ideas was that the Victorian characters were all heretics in one way or another, non-believers in a Christian God in a supposedly pious time. Equally the characters in 1959 were all unconventional, thinking and acting differently to the rest of their contemporaries. In my own mind the book is still called Heretics but when it came to publishing I had to ask if it was a meaningful title. It sounded too much like a historical non-fiction and gave no flavour of genre or content.
After much discussion with my wife we eventually settled on Alchemists of Time, a title which had the virtue of including two major themes of the book – alchemy and time travel. It was my idea to have a strapline “A novel of the occult.” This strapline together with the title covered a lot of the bases and I think will appeal to the audience I am trying to attract. After all it’s difficult when your novel is a historical time-travel fantasy occult social history novel spanning a hundred years. It’s hard to classify and to market with all these aspects but Alchemists of Time and A novel of the Occult are the nearest I can get.
It’s worth saying something about the cover design for which I am also responsible. I wanted it to be eye-catching and give a flavour of the story. The final design is made up of three images licensed from Getty Images and one image from my personal collection of old photographs. I blended the woman’s face on the front of the book with a backdrop of clouds. In the original photo the woman has blue eyes but I changed them to black using Photoshop. On the back cover I blended more clouds with a drawing of esoteric circles and overlaid a photograph of four Victorian people who bear a similarity to some of the characters in the book. In fact their clothing isn’t quite right for the time period but it does the job.
So, Heretics is now Alchemists of Time, a novel of the occult which should not be read late at night or when you are alone!
When is a Post Mortem Photograph Really a Post Mortem Photograph?
Although many people now find post mortem photographs rather uncomfortable viewing there was a distinct period in Victorian times when they were not unusual. Whatever our view of them today it is perhaps understandable that in an era when families were large and child mortality common there was a desire to have a photographic memorial of a lost child or other relative.
There is a distinct interest amongst some collectors of cabinet cards and old photographs in general in this genre, so much so that a photograph claiming to be taken post mortem will usually sell for a high price, often well in excess of £100. Given the perceived values of these items it seems reasonable to expect to have a high level of confidence in their authenticity yet this is very hard to achieve. If you see a PM photo of Jessie James you can be pretty sure it’s real and it’s easy to find copies on the internet together with details of how and why it was taken. Similarly if a body is photographed in a coffin then it’s likely to be real.
More difficult are examples were a child (and it is normally a child) has been posed in a manner that imitates life. So they may be posed alongside living relatives in their everyday clothes. These photographs may be altered to paint in open eyes and make them look more lifelike. It is even claimed that bodies were propped up on stands to make them appear to be upright although such stands were commonly used for living subjects due to the long exposure times used in early photography. The internet is, of course, awash with articles on this subject and many of them are exaggerated or wrong. So viralnova.com has several examples of PM photographs, some probably real, some doubtful and some wrongly classified. A good counter to viralnova’s page is the essay to be found at incredulous on “Myths of Victorian Post-Mortem Photography.”
If you want to collect PM photographs you will often come across examples on ebay and elsewhere advertised as PM photographs or often as “probably post mortem” or “possibly post mortem.” A clear case of caveat emptor. The photograph at the head of this article is one that I bought (relatively cheaply) that was advertised as “possibly post mortem.” So how likely is really that this is a PM photograph?
There are several elements that might suggest a PM photograph, the most obvious being her eyes which appear to be painted on to the photograph. She’s posed in an everyday dress and clutching her doll so it fits the practice of posing a dead person this way. Her left hand looks very limp and her right hand supports her head in an awkward manner. You can easily see how her body could be propped up in this way (whether alive or dead).
On the other hand a closer inspection shows that this is a real photographic postcard and there are elements on both sides of the card which help us narrow down the time it was published and whether it fits the profile of a PM photograph. Kodak introduced photographic post cards, i.e. blank postcards onto which a personal photograph could be printed, in 1903. Divided backs to postcards, with one side for the address and the other for comments didn’t appear until 1907 and using a white border around the main subject to save on printing costs first began to be used in 1915. We can see that the stamp box tells us that the cost for inland postage is one halfpenny and the Great Britain Philatelic Society shows that the cost of sending a postcard was increased to one penny in 1918. These clues allow us to date the card with a fair degree of accuracy to being produced between 1915 and 1918. Most PM photographs were produced in the late nineteenth century so the time period makes it unlikely that this is a PM photograph.
There is certainly something odd about this photograph but I doubt that it is a genuine PM photograph. It’s much more likely that the photographic studio decided to paint the girl’s eyes this way to make it look better or possibly her eyes really did look like that!
Cats and Dogs
Pets have always been a favourite subject for amateur photographers and there are many interesting example to be found in old collections and albums. Often the proud owners are seen with their pets as the first photograph shows.
Women and their pet cats are frequently found. In fact I don’t recall any of men or boys with pet cats in my collection. The same goes for dogs – from my entirely unrepresentative collection I have far more women with dogs than men with dogs.
There are also many photographs of the pets by themselves as this set shows. It is particularly difficult for an amateur photographer to get a good shot of their pets. Even with modern cameras and a lot of patience it is a challenge to get a good likeness.
There is the usual problem with these photographs of knowing who we are looking at and when the photograph was taken. This group of three all have information written on the reverse. Top left is “Annie and Brownie, St Louis Ms Aug 1945.” Top right is Daisy, Teeny and Pedro Oct 21 1925.” You might have to look closely to see Teeny. Notes on the bottom picture read “Beaty, Teddy and his cat, see all the garden we have” but no date is given.
There are of course pet photographs to be found on Cabinet Cards and CDVs though these tend to be highly collectable and more expensive than the average. The CDV above is one of my favourites not only because it is a pet photograph but also because of its excellent condition and the fact that the dog is seated on a rare Art Nouveau chair (I suspect it’s Jugendstil but I can’t be certain). I paid £20 for this card and considered it to be a bargain.
If you want to know more about animals in vintage photography then I can recommend Beauty and the Beast by Arnold Arluke and Robert Bogdan. The book sticks to RPPCs as illustrations and ranges far and wide over the subject of our relationship with animals.
Heretics – latest blurb
Here’s my latest thinking on how to describe Heretics:
A novel of the occult set in 1959 and 1859
You know how the Victorians were very upright, very religious and so prudish that they even covered their table legs? Well it might have been true of a few upper middle class families but for most people the reality was different. Costume dramas perpetuate the idea of the proper Victorian but forget to mention the appalling social conditions, the high infant mortality rate, the prostitution, the violence, the squalor, the baby farms.
The Victorian characters in Heretics are different. They pretend to have the virtues expected of their class but they consider themselves to be heretics for a reason. For a start they practice the occult but they still go to church. They conjure demons but cover their tracks by doing good works. And they are involved in a very dangerous game which could have consequences for the fabric of time itself.
And all of this before Alexander Harrison finds a way to travel back in time from 1959 and join their ranks. Now the race is truly on to stop their common enemy, Bella Nightingale, before it’s too late and she destroys all of their lives…….
Find out more at: www.samsalt.com and darknessbegins.com
Notes
- It’s different to previous versions.
- It has the key points I want to promote but distorts the storyline somewhat.
- The photograph is designed to be eye-catching rather than accurate. The clothes the woman is wearing are more likely to be around 1900 than 1859.
- At the Wirksworth book fair the flyer with this photograph and this blurb attracted far more attention than the book I was actually selling.
Gertie Grace and Elsie – Before and After
Often Cabinet Cards and other old photographs are not in great condition when I acquire them. The question is then what to do with them. As far as the originals are concerned it’s just a matter of storing them in a suitable dry place out of direct sunlight but when it comes to displaying them digitally then I usually make some alterations to the scans. Most frequently I use Photoshop’s autotone feature as it usually brings out more detail and enhances the blacks in particular.
In the case of Gerty Grace and Elsie, a cabbinet card dated on the reverse as December 7th 1905, I went a little further. After autotoning the scan I opened it up in Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 and did some further tweaking. In this case I brightened a rough circle in the centre of the photograph over the girls’ dresses as there was some fading in this area on the original photograph.
Ideally I would like scans to be as near to the original as possible and that would include the sepia toning but, on the other hand, greater detail is revealed when the black and white conversion is viewed. I still have the card so nothing has been done to destroy the original.
For this cabinet card of a girl with a fan I have carried out more restoration on the scanned image. Often photographs of this age suffer from foxing – the appearance of brown patches as seen above left. I removed the foxing using the healing brush tool again though I could have spent more time on this to get even better results as a little of the detail on the dress has been lost during the process. I applied a high structure filter in Silver Efex to arrive at the finished image. You can see how much more detail this has revealed, especially in the background objects and furnishings. You could argue that this version has taken it too far but the beauty of doing this is that I can always go back to the original scan and produce a different version.
Writing in Period: 1859
(The photographs illustrating this post are both cartes-de-visite (CDVs) though clearly the one with three children is later than 1859 as you can see from the date of the “queen’s prize” of 1871 on the reverse. However, CDVs were produced from about 1854 onwards and would have been at their most popular in the 1860s.)
Many of us think that we have a good idea of what life was like in Victorian Britain. We are so used to seeing depictions on TV and in film that it is hard to not visualise the times as though they were as seen in a BBC costume drama. In setting Heretics in 1859 and 1860 it was necessary for me to research the period carefully to make sure I wasn’t wrong in my assumptions.
One of the things I realised fairly early on was that many of the things we associate with the Victorian period didn’t actually become widespread until later in the nineteenth century. I have scenes set at Christmas 1859 and was expecting to be writing about Christmas cards, presents and turkeys but the reality was different. It was too early for Christmas cards, presents if given were likely be handmade and Christmas dinner was more likely to be similar to our Sunday dinners, featuring beef or ham. The upper classes would adopt the things we think of as Victorian “traditions” first and they would only trickle down to the middle and lower classes only as the century went on.
Clothing was easier to research and there are many contemporary images that can be drawn upon. Still, I found many surprises. For instance, the wristwatch first made an appearance as something women wore and only became available for men much later. One of my main characters, Alex, has travelled back in time from 1959 and has a 1950s crew cut which would have looked quite out of place. Women’s dress went through many changes between 1859 and 1900 and I had to be careful about bustles and boots and the years they were fashionable. I have a young female character, Daisy, and when she first appears I describe her as wearing a grubby dress with bloomers poking out under the hem. Later I found that bloomers were actually a phenomena associated with women’s growing emancipation towards the end of the century and I had to settle for something similar called pantalettes.
The social conditions that existed in 1859 are heavily featured in the novel and I spent a lot of time trying to get these right. One of the most important works to document the lives of ordinary people is Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor and is an essential reference of the times. However, my work of fiction is set in the Midlands town of Derby and there is a certain amount of extrapolation. There are of course many locally published accounts of Victorian life which can used as references. The picture I draw of Derby in 1859 is one in which utter poverty exists in contrast to the wealth enjoyed by the upper classes. There is a growing middle class but their conditions are not yet much better than their poor neighbours and there is a growing class of industialists whose wealth will soon begin to rival that of those born to riches.
In Heretics you will find many poor people reduced to sleeping in netherskens, low boarding houses where you could share a room with many other people for a small amount of money, a huge criminal underclass and a burgeoning business in prostitution. In 1859 the age of consent was thirteen but was hardly policed at all. In any case the poorest families would often share their lodgings with several other families and children and adults would also share the sleeping space. The kind of rookeries that existed in London also existed in towns and cities across the country and the sanitary conditions in them were appalling.
In the matter of language, the fact that Alex is from 1959 aids explanations of the language used in the Victorian town. When Alex first hears a nethersken mentioned he can simply ask one of the characters, who know of his origins, what the word means. Similarly there are many other expressions peculiar to the time that he can either have explained to him or he can infer the likely meaning. When he first hears the expression “dollymop” it is obvious from the word itself and the context in which he hears it that it means prostitute. The need to explain the meaning of words cuts both ways – when Alex says “OK” or uses a modern word like “psychopath,” his Victorian friends have to ask him what he means. One phrase that surprised me was the use of “scorched earth” which I assumed came from twentieth century wars but was in use in Victorian times and was used when speaking of military tactics used, for instance, in South Africa.
This post just scratches the surface of the research necessary to make life in 1859 as close to reality as possible. The one thing that stands out for me is that the 1859 I thought I knew a great deal about turned out to be different in some surprising and unexpected ways.
Who are Alex and Maxine? Introducing Heretics.
All the posts in this blog have been attributed to “alexandmaxine”, but who are they? They are both characters in my forthcoming novel Heretics. Here’s a gentle introduction to them.
1959 – Alexander Harrison is a man of science working as Head of Department at a Derbyshire Grammar school. In his thirties, he is conventional in his outlook and his dress. He believes in logic, does not suffer fools and is an atheist in a time when that isn’t the norm. Maxine Silver, his girlfriend, professes to be a witch and earns her living as a photographic model. Together they move into an old house built early in the nineteenth century and they discover a camera obscura, a device which enables them to see all that is going on outside the house, hidden in an attic room. Alex becomes obsessed with restoring the camera. He starts to have visions of an old man who tells him that he has “to come back.” But come back where?
1859 – Alexander wakes to find himself transported back in time to the industrial town of Derby. He is shocked by the terrible social conditions he encounters there. He eventually finds his way to the house he will live in one hundred years in the future. The old man takes him in and begins to teach him alchemy and occultism, telling Alex it’s the only way he can find his way back to 1959. Sceptical at first, he begins to learn….
1959 – Maxine eventually learns that Alex is now in the past (could old photographs be involved?) But someone else, Bella Nightingale, has come out of the past and she’s a killer. The only way Bella can be stopped is for Maxine to find a way to work with Alex in the past and for them to pool their resources. But how can that be possible?
As for the family in the photograph, could they actually be some of the characters in Heretics?