Samhain is nearly upon us. With less than a fortnight to go until Halloween, I’m getting into the festive spirit by watching all of my favourite horror movies, reading new spooky books and wearing my Samhain-themed clothes and jewellery, pretty much everyday. I have enough Halloween clothing to last for ten days in a row without having to mix and match, ha ha.

Ever my own publicist, I’ve been focusing lately on marketing my Halloween-appropriate Belfast Ghosts trilogy, which also happens to contain two of my bestselling books. My latest video was filmed at the Thompson dry dock in Belfast, where Titanic was fitted in Harland & Wolff shipyard in 1911/12. The titular character in Belfast Ghosts book 1, The Blue Man, was a shipyard worker at Harland & Wolff before he met his doom. My video got a lot of traction on Tiktok over the weekend, and I thought it was befitting of a horror author for the number of plays to reach 3,600 views: with 666 being the noteworthy part of the number there. A coded spooky message from the universe to a humble horror author, perhaps? Perhaps not: it soon surpassed that number, currently reaching over 9000 views at the time of this post being published. But it was fun for a spooky screenshot which I shared on my social media ‘stories’ over the weekend.

If any of you reading this post are fellow horror fans, I’m sure you feel most at home during the spooky season, as I do. There’s something fun about being scared; I love nothing more than settling down on a cold autumnal day and watching horror movies with my family. Yep, in my household, we’re all horror lovers. We read scary stories aloud to each other, and can’t wait for Halloween. Finding ‘666’ isn’t necessarily a ‘Halloween’ thing, but it enhances the atmosphere of the season, adding sinister thrills. Great for the imagination. I find horror story inspiration in everything.

Buy the Belfast Ghosts trilogy

Posted by on October 20, 2025 in Marketing, promotion and tagged , , , , , , , .

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About Leilanie Stewart

Leilanie Stewart is an award-winning author and poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She writes ghost and psychological horror, as well as experimental poetry. Her writing confronts the nature of self; her novels feature main characters on a dark psychological journey who have a crisis and create a new sense of identity. She began writing for publication while working as an English teacher in Japan, a career pathway that has influenced themes in her writing. Her former career as an Archaeologist has also inspired her writing and she has incorporated elements of archaeology and mythology into both her fiction and poetry. In addition to promoting her own work, Leilanie runs Bindweed Anthologies, a creative writing publication with her writer husband, Joseph Robert. Aside from publishing pursuits, Leilanie enjoys spending time with her husband and their lively literary lad, a voracious reader of sea monster books.

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  1. lyndhurstlaura's avatar lyndhurstlaura says:
    October 20, 2025 at 10:19 PM

    Thanks for sharing your spooky stuff, Leilanie, as well as your TikTok handle. I’ve just joined TikTok, so have just followed you there. Thanks! 🙂

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