Was I Watched in Beeley Wood?

There's a new diary entry on hellsborough.com right now:

Head down the Middlewood road towards Outibridge and turn right, or take the Great Northern Causeway towards Wadsley bridge and turn left, and sooner or later, you'll find yourself in one of the most ancient of woodlands -- it goes by the name of Beeley wood today, but back in the day, it was Billa's Hag, a place where this Billa -- whoever he, she or it was -- grazed animals -- a hag being woodland where the soft spikeless upper leaves of holly were used as winter fodder for wooltard and demonspawn. There isn't much evidence of holly these days, but there is no doubting the place is ancient, rumour has it that the first recorded mention of it was by the monks of Ecclesfield Priory in the 1160's, but I know that milting knew and wrote of this place long before that; I've seen in mentioned in their semagrams.

Walking through the place was very therapeutic, and I need therapy at the moment -- things in the off-world are nagging at me, driving me to distraction -- so it was good just to wander under the canopy and forget things for a while. After I had been in the wood for a bit I ended up on its extremity on Dickie Lane and walked back towards Outibridge. Up there, it feels desolate and remote, the fields stretching out, an undulating carpet to the horizon. Not many folk get up there, and as I walked along with Shad, we disturbed varied wildlife -- all sorts of strange creatures scuttling about, and odd sounds up there -- buzzing and crackling, quite unlike anything I have experienced anywhere else.

Circling back down again into the woodland, we re-visited the site of the roasting spit that I have mentioned previously, but it was no longer there. I'm sure it must have been used though, because there were remnants of a fire, and a very strong smell of fresh wood smoke hung in the air. And unlike up on Dickie Lane, the wind got up in the wood and I was bombarded with leaf fall and seed bombs as I neared the carcass of a dead gruizer -- the poor thing looking very sorry for itself. There was a definite feeling of being watched when I returned to the wood -- to be honest it's always there, I just try and ignore it. Whether it's the beauty of Dunlockslyn, or something altogether more insipid, I struggle to make it out -- maybe it's both at the same time...

Other developments…

I am now starting to ramp up my marketing efforts as book one of Hellsborough Chronicles is now getting ever closer to completion, and I am determined to get it done and published within the next few weeks. Many thanks to MC-HB for proof reading and all of the other inspiration that you provide, you know who you are.

In other changes, I have now amended the hellsborough.com website so that you no longer need to register to read and download epub and kindle versions of the work on there, and can just subscribe to the mailing list for updates, which is now provided by beehiiv.com -- if you're reading this, thank you for being a subscriber, and I have already moved you across to my new email provider, so no need to do anything :).

I will soon be starting a Tiktok video channel called "Murk Lore" with video short stories that are set in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, I'll announce them as and when they are released.

Lastly, and I'll likely not mention this again on this mailing list, I have created a substack called "The Weird-World Builder", where I'll show you tools, skills and strategies you can use to ideate, build and promote your own weird-world. So that's more for writers and world builders than for readers -- which is the focus of this newsletter, but if you are interested, it's here.

Cheers, until next time,

Pip :)