The Midnight Man video

Vincent Van Gogh lived in London for a while in his youth. His experiences there in that turbulent, and sometimes mysterious city, one that Van Gogh likened to a ravenous beast, became the inspiration for THE MIDNIGHT MAN, published by Severn House. It's a story of murder, madness and ghosts. Blending fact and fiction, it imagines the dramatic events that engulfed the artist in 1888.

Here is the link to THE MIDNIGHT MAN video that features the extraordinary maze of streets that Van Gogh would have known - and which would become the haunt of Jack the Ripper.

It's been a busy few months. There will be an update on THE MIDNIGHT MAN before too long. In the meantime, here's copy of my mailer. Where do the months go!
What's New on "Nailed by the Heart" / 22 October 2008
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"Nailed by the Heart"


HORROR ROCKS! MUSIC, FILM, FICTION, NOVELS & SHOOTING STARS

This time there are some unusual extra items to report, come to that
they are probably unique.

First off: Severn House has just released the paperback of LUCIFER'S
ARK. This is a hard-hitting horror-thriller about psychopaths being
secretly shipped to an overseas jail. The book was inspired by my
conversations with real-life mass-murderers in maximum security jails.

Secondly: Leisure have reprinted a number of paperbacks that haven't
been available for a while. These are my first novel NAILED BY THE
HEART, the Zombie-esque STRANGER, and DARKNESS DEMANDS, a
phenomenally popular story of supernatural suspense.

Thirdly: This is where we journey through the unusual into the
downright unique. The visionary publisher Steve Clark of Tasmaniac
has boldly created some fantastic items. He has published a novella
of mine, STONE COLD CALLING (Introduction: Kealan Patrick Burke; art:
Vince Natale). The story involves a group of treasure hunters in
search of a valuable meteorite. The downside for them -- it has been
located in a remote valley that is the site of a new dam. They must
race against the clock to find this chunk of cosmic rock before the
entire countryside is flooded. There is, however, much more to this
meteorite than meets the eye. The book is in two formats: a
paperback, and a special limited edition, which comes with a fragment
of real meteorite. The special edition has already sold out but the
paperback is still available from Tasmaniac and other outlets.

The VIP room at the Tasmaniac website is also playing host to a
unique e-package, THE CALLING & OTHER WRAITHS. Priced at just 99c
this comprises THE CALLING, a 9,000 word short story, set in the same
stretch of wilderness as STONE COLD CALLING. With that comes MAKE ME
FRIGHTFUL, an article containing some secrets for writing horror. And
finally THE HAUNTED PAGE. This is a short film I made which
illustrates some of the tips in the article. The film has a rocking
soundtrack courtesy of John B. Ford and Steve Lines -- you'll be
humming it for days.

For more about these special Tasmaniac publications and the e-package
visit: http://www.tasmaniacpublications.com

To order the STONE COLD CALLING novella in the UK drop in here:
http://www.jeffnjoys.co.uk/

With longer hours of darkness in the Northern Hemisphere it's a good
time to spot shooting stars of your own. So keep watching the skies!
And if you do see a meteorite fall, go grab it. Some are literally
worth their weight in gold!

Simon Clark
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'Nailed by the Heart' - the official Simon Clark website
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ALL ABOARD THE FIREBALL EXPRESS!

This is a hugely belated entry. A looming deadline for a new novel meant I had to devote every working (and waking) moment to completing it. Now that's done I can catch up on e-mailing, gardening, car-washing, blogging - you name it.

A few weeks ago I needed to take a trip from my home here in Yorkshire to London. Usually it's a straightforward ninety minutes or so by train. Only this time the huge express train was just half an hour from London when suddenly it went from thundering through the countryside at 120 mph to stopping, juddering, brakes screaming in the middle of fields, miles from the nearest town.

Then stuff happened. I noticed passengers were looking out of the window asking things like 'Why is the train driver running along the track?' 'Why do the conductors look so worried?' 'Why has one jumped off the train with a fire extinguisher in his hands?' Then the train driver returned to his cab to announce over the PA, 'There's going to be a delay, I'm afraid, because the rear motor unit has caught fire. Staff are evacuating the end carriage.' Foul black smoke rolled up into the sky. 'We're off-duty firefighters,' said two men in the seat in front of mine. They collected more fire extinguishers from the carriage and went to battle the flames. Not that I saw any from my carriage. Black smoke, however, was still rolling spectacularly across the meadows.
Instead of pandemonium the passengers sighed stoically, pulled out their phones and: 'Jeff, inform the boss I'll be late.' And from others: 'Can you tell the people in my office the meeting will be this afternoon?'And a woeful: 'I'll be late for the wedding, Laura. No, I'm not calling the wedding off. The train's on fire. No, it's not just an excuse. I love you. I really do love you...' And so on.
It's what the British call 'the Dunkirk spirit.' Plenty of jokes, and quiet gumbling, but we'll get there in the end. After an hour there were cheers when we were told over the PA that the firefighters were almost here. Ten minutes after that there were groans when we were told the fire engines had got bogged down in soft mud. Then more cheers moments later when, from our carriage, we saw a dozen firefighters in full kit, helmets and respirators gamely jogging through meadows, climbing fences, leaping over streams to reach us and put out the flames. Once the fire was out the remaining engine doggedly got the train to London. Where I was spectacularly late for my meeting.

But later in the day I managed to drop in at the National Gallery and see the Van Gogh paintings they have there. The most famous is Sunflowers. To see an original is nothing less than awe-inspiring. It blazes from the frame like the summer sun. However, my favorite is the little-known Long Grass With Butterflies. It's a deceptively simple composition of grass, the bottoms of tree trunks, insects. It's almost like looking through a window into a field. But there's a sense you're are looking back through time; you could almost step through the frame into the summer meadow of more than a century ago. A glimpse of path looks as if it wants to lead you to a mysterious destination.

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After that I had to rush to catch my train. As I neared the Tube station that would take me back to Kings Cross Station I first noticed lots of broken glass in the road, then the sounds of hundreds shouting. An anxious guy in spectacles called out to me, 'Whatever you do, don't go any further down that road. Football fans are rioting. It's carnage.' Fiery locomotives, raging riots. Thankfully, I knew another route. Half an hour later I was on my train homeward bound. My only problem now was deciding what kind of cake to have with my coffee. 'I'll have chocolate cake, please?' The steward flinched as if I'd uttered something dreadful. 'Ah, sir, we've had a problem with the chocolate cake. Can I let you into a little secret?'

Let me tell you, it was lovely to get home...

Take care, whether traveling or taking it easy at home.

Simon

Severn House Publishers - How to find that elusive tome

I've been getting some e-mails from people who are finding it difficult to get hold of THE MIDNIGHT MAN. It should be available through book-sellers on the web but if it's still proving elusive you should be able to obtain copies direct from the publisher, Severn House here:
Severn House Publishers

Until next time,

Simon Clark

Van Gogh in London

This post is mainly to tidy up the link to the raw footage I took when I went to London to explore in the footsteps of Van Gogh. This photograph shows one of the Whitechapel houses of the Victorian era. Back then, there might well have been a family of anything up to a dozen or more living in EACH room.
Here's the footage link: www.youtube.com/user/Vampyrrhic If you copy and paste to your browser bar it will take you there.

The area you'll see is Whitechapel, a buzzing cosmopolitian community. This was also the place that Jack the Ripper stalked in the 1880s.
In recent years the places Van Gogh stayed in London have become the focus of something of a treasure hunt. Recently a hymn copied by Van Gogh onto a scrap of paper was auctioned on e-bay.
The writer Ken Wilkie discovered an original drawing by Van Gogh. This was of the house at 87 Hackford Road, where he briefly lodged, and fell in love with the landlady's daughter. This was another incident of unrequited love that caused Van Gogh much heartache.

Van Gogh In London

When I researched Vincent van Gogh's stays in London in the 1870s I did what always works best for me. Get out there on the ground and visit the place, walk through it, smell the air, look at the buildings, savour its atmosphere. It always surprises me that when I visit a location for a book that's when the inspiration starts to flow.

So I headed for London and walked around the areas that Van Gogh had visited when he worked for Goupil's London Art Gallery and later as an assistant at a school. When Van Gogh was 23 he wrote from London to his parents, describing his own experience of the city. Here's an extract of the letter, 'Tomorrow I must be in the remotest parts of London: in Whitechapel - that very poor part of London which you have read about in Dickens... then to Lewisham.' He wrote part of the letter as he undertook this long trip on foot, even resting in a cabbage field to complete his account!

When I explored Whitechapel, with its surprisingly quiet maze of narrow streets, and buildings that still bear violent gouge marks in the brickwork from bombs that fell in WW2 I took some camera footage. This came in useful for describing buidlings and so on. Here's a clip of fairly raw video, which gives you an idea of Whitechapel (Jack the Ripper territory) and how it is today, but most of the buidlings you see will have existed when Van Gogh explored those backstreets.

The Midnight Man Journal

Van Gogh, ghosts, murder and madness...

THE MIDNIGHT MAN is the title of my novel due out in hardback from Severn House in April in the UK and July in the US. THE MIDNIGHT MAN is set in 1888, the most turbulent year of Van Gogh's life when he lives in the Yellow House in Arles. Here, his fragile health collapsed and he cut away part of his ear just before the Christmas of that year.

During the research for the novel I found a wealth of material about Vincent Van Gogh on the internet: films, websites and so on. So, in part, this blog charts the the development and publication of the novel, outtakes from the story itself, and it also acts as a gateway for all those fascinating gems that feature Van Gogh on the internet.

During the coming weeks, I plan to add more website links as well as charting the progress of the novel from a bunch of files here on my computer to the published book. As I write, I'm waiting for the cover of the book. I'm promised it will be wonderful. When it arrives I'll post it here along with the link to a short web film that features Van Gogh.

Vincent Van Gogh's work and life story had a huge impact on me, and probably helped shaped who I am and what I do. In short, I'm a fan, a huge fan. So this is where as I get chance to celebrate the life and genius of one of the greatest artists - ever!

Severn House link www.severnhouse.com