A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ...

The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows Volume Two was just as successful as volume one, so we have agreed to go ahead with a third volume to complete the sequence and include prequels and sequels to some (hopefully all) of those M.R. James stories which were not covered in the first two collections.  

The deadline for submissions to the third Book of Shadows is 31 December 2015.  Send them to Rosemary Pardoe (dandrpardoe@gmail.com) preferably in the form of a Word or RichText e-mail attachment, or in the body of an e-mail (or on a CD-ROM: snail mail address on request).  The current plan is for the book to be published around the middle(ish) of 2016.

Here is the full list of remaining stories for you to take your pick from:

“Lost Hearts” (prequels only)
“The Ash-tree”
“Number 13”
“The Rose Garden”
“The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral”
“Martin’s Close”
“An Episode of Cathedral History”
“A View from a Hill”
“A Warning to the Curious”
“An Evening’s Entertainment”
“There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard”
“The Fenstanton Witch”

You may be wondering why we have specified prequels only for “Lost Hearts”: this is because Rosemary has already accepted sequels to that story (very different). You might also wonder about the inclusion of “The Fenstanton Witch”.  This isn’t among the stories published in, or just after, MRJ’s lifetime, and is sometimes listed with the unfinished drafts.  But unlike the rest of those (with the exception of the comic “A Night in King’s College Chapel”) it is a completed story, just one which MRJ never really polished to his own satisfaction.   Rosemary has also not ruled out the possibility of including prequels and sequels inspired by some of MRJ’s other works such as The Five Jars, Abbeys, The Apocryphal New Testament and Suffolk and Norfolk.  So if you have something you’d like to do along these lines, contact her to discuss it.

Cheers, Robert.