October 31, 2025

Halloween Thriller Dance Mob at Writer’s Square Belfast

Zombie pose at Writer’s Square Belfast

Today was so much fun as I took part in the Halloween Thriller dance mob at Writer’s Square in Belfast. It really was such a fun Samhain event and the rain held off. The event was a first for Belfast, and when I saw it advertised, I signed up right away. The money was for a good cause to raise funds for Young at Art, a company providing entertainment for local children.

I’ve been off work this week since it’s half-term break from school, so I spent everyday practising the Thriller chorus while watching easy YouTube tutorials. I haven’t danced in a long time – I did Salsa lessons long ago – so this was a lot of fun, and a great way to get in the spooky spirit. The dance mob was hosted by Q Radio in Belfast and we went through a rehearsal led by professional dancers before the main event.

Like my makeup? I bought temporary ‘Day of the Dead’ facial tattoos and then shaded in the rest with some Halloween makeup in black, green and white shades. My son said I looked unrecognisable, which I take as a compliment; I was trying to look creepy, so I think that worked.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Happy Halloween everyone, and have a spooky Samhain! See you on the other side of the veil (ie. November 1st, lol)

You can watch the Thriller Mob video posted by Amazing Belfast at: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdTLuSs5/

Posted by on October 31, 2025 in Random stuff and tagged , , , , .

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October 27, 2025

Great chatting to Kathy Clugston on BBC Radio Ulster show ‘The Ticket’

On BBC Radio Ulster’s show ‘The Ticket’ on Friday 24th October 2025

It was lovely to be on BBC Radio Ulster last Friday evening as part of NI Book Week to chat with host Kathy Clugston during her Arts and entertainment show, The Ticket. I was invited to discuss my ghost and psychological horror books since the countdown to Halloween is on, and to read an excerpt from Belfast Ghosts trilogy book 3: Matthew’s Twin.

Photo credit: Owen McFadden at BBC

Speaking live to thousands of listeners is nerve-wracking, but Kathy was such a fabulous host and really put me at ease. It’s only the second time I’ve appeared on the radio; back in 2009 while I was working in Cambridge, I had been on 209 Radio Cambridgeshire’s show ‘Who are you?’ hosted by Dominic Hall-Smith to talk about my poetry. I suppose for people who regularly appear on radio talk shows, it becomes second nature once you’re doing it all the time.

On 209 Radio Cambridgeshire’s show ‘Who are you?’ on Thursday 29th October 2009

If you missed the live show on BBC Radio Ulster, the episode of The Ticket featuring me will be available for a month to listen to on BBC Sounds, so if you have an account, feel free to check it out at this link.

Posted by on October 27, 2025 in promotion and tagged , , , , , , , .

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October 24, 2025

On BBC Radio Ulster for NI Book Week today

Tonight I will be live on BBC Radio Ulster show ‘The Ticket’ hosted by Kathy Clugston from 6-7PM, UK time, for NI Book Week to discuss my writing, so if you’re having a night in tonight, feel free to tune in.

Rainbow over Belfast while on a River Lagan book-promo-photo walk

I’ll be reading an excerpt from Matthew’s Twin, book 3 of my Belfast Ghosts series, which also happens to be my personal favourite of the trilogy.

Rainbow over the River Lagan and Harland and Wolff cranes

Today is also the start of my Halloween break from work, and like all horror authors, Samhain is my favourite festive holiday, so talking about my ghost horror books is a great way to get me in the spirit (er, cheesy pun intended) of the spooky season.

Posted by on October 24, 2025 in promotion and tagged , , , , , , , , .

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October 20, 2025

Horror season and the number 666

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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October 17, 2025

Creative writing projects this week – everything but my own

Forthcoming Bindweed anthology – White Witch’s Hat

I haven’t been posting much on social media this week, mainly because in between my day job in secondary education and typesetting the manuscript for White Witch’s Hat, the second of our biannual Bindweed Anthologies, I haven’t had a lot of time left over. I’ve been busy juggling creative writing projects, though not my own work.

Actually, that isn’t entirely true. White Witch’s Hat, the title of the forthcoming anthology, is another colloquial name for convolvulus arvensis (common Bindweed). Such a spooky moniker inspired me to write a seasonal horror story set at Yule, and after it was finished, I decided to open for submissions from other ghost horror authors, making it into a themed collection. My titular story, White Witch’s Hat, is in the collection, containing spooky seasonal ghost stories by 21 authors from all corners of the world.

Regarding my job teaching creative writing, my new students this year are very motivated, and generally as a group, much more extroverted than last year’s group. After the taught half of the lesson, where I go over narrative viewpoint, characterisation and so on, I give them writing prompts and they spend the second half of the class working hard on the computers in the library. At the end of every session, I ask them to either print their work, or if they have no printer credits, to email it to me. This gives me a week to go through their WIPs and give feedback.

Have I been working on any of my own projects? Not for now, but half-term break will be coming up, and the Samhain season always inspires me. I’m sure my imagination will get the better of me soon.

Pre-order White Witch’s Hat

Amazon US
Amazon UK

Posted by on October 17, 2025 in Random stuff, Writing and tagged , , .

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October 11, 2025

What’s the Halloween spookometer rating for my Belfast Ghosts trilogy?

Can you believe it’s only 3 weeks until Halloween? As a Samhain fan, I certainly can (erm, the rhyme there was unintentional). In the library where I work, I decided to do a spookometer rating system to let readers know what to expect with the horror books. For fun, I put my own books to the test. So, how do the books in my Belfast Ghosts trilogy rank?

Based on reader reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, here’s the order of scariness:

The Fairy Lights – not so scary

It seems that readers don’t find The Fairy Lights scary at all. One review mentioned that it was a bit creepy at the start, but that’s not the same thing as scary. The story takes a more psychedelic turn later in the book, and apparently is more fantastical to readers than frightening. As the author, I can live with that. It is, after all, a Yuletide paranormal romance as much as a ghost story.

Buy The Fairy Lights

Matthew’s Twin – kind of scary

The overall impression I get from reviews of Matthew’s Twin is that it is, by far, the goriest of my books, but maybe in terms of the sheer psychological threat, not the scariest. There’s a lot of graphic medieval fighting, and there is a lot of supernatural body horror, but I’ve been told it isn’t the scariest of my Belfast Ghosts trilogy. It is, however, my personal favourite of the series.

Buy Matthew’s Twin

The Blue Man – quite scary

I’ll admit that re-reading The Blue Man leaves me on a psychological downer, lol. It’s very sinister and I’ve been told that it’s not only the scariest of my Belfast Ghosts trilogy, but actually my overall scariest book so far in my back catalogue. Is that because it’s the most realistic? That what happens to Megan and Sabrina in the story could, potentially, happen to any of us? Maybe.

Read it if you dare.

The Blue Man

By the way…

On a final note, as an author, of course I want people to be reading my books. But displaying my own books in the display as pictured above was just for my promo pics and videos for online marketing. My actual library display included all of the recent scary books I’ve been reading with my son, who like me is a horror fan. We’ve been making our way through the Goosebumps series and also been reading a few other spooky books by Mary Hooper. Here’s a pic of the final library display with my spookometer ratings that my son helped jointly devise.

Enjoy reading them at your peril…

Posted by on October 11, 2025 in book reviews, Reading and tagged , , , , , , , .

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October 6, 2025

Keto diet, intermittent fasting and autophagy

Five months have passed since my last keto diet post back in May 2025 this year, when I blogged about how I had restarted keto as a spring detox after winter carb-bingeing. If you’re used to my keto posts, you’ll know that as much as I’d love to stay low carb all year round, seasonal eating always gets the better of me in autumn and winter. In between Christmas work-dos, comfort eating when I’m ill and craving stodgy carb-heavy foods in the colder months, during the five years since I first lost 42lbs, I found my weight yo-yoing by around 15-17lbs a year every year, up in winter, down in summer.

Now, anyone with even a basic understanding of the human anatomy would know that weight loss and gain swings are not good for the body. Between 2020 to 2025, I subjected my metabolism to annual crash keto dieting in the summer months to get bikini ready, and overindulging in winter. I tolerated my disordered eating from September to February, knowing that from March to August I’d work hard to lose it.

But not in 2025. This year, my body hit a plateau. Ketosis didn’t work. 16-8 fasting didn’t work. From May to July, I got no results despite a strict diet. My body reached a ‘settling point’ and my weight wouldn’t budge. To say I got despondent was an understatement.

Continue reading →

Posted by on October 6, 2025 in Health, Health: Keto diet and sugar addiction and tagged , , , , , , .

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October 3, 2025

Happy October! Cosy autumn reads

It’s October, which means spooky season is coming soon. Of course, I had my Mabon decorations up at the autumn equinox, but this month it’s socially acceptable to start wearing all of my Halloween themed clothes and jewellery without scaring the ‘normals’; not that such a thing would deter me anyway.

Autumn reads: time for a new seasonal display

With Storm Amy here in Northern Ireland today, schools have shut across the country, which means more reading time (I’m currently reading Junji Ito, and working my way through the Goosebumps series with my little literary one), writing time (chipping away at ghost novel WIP#7) and editing time this weekend (I’m working on the manuscript for the next Bindweed anthology, White Witch’s Hat, due for release in November).

Yesterday was National Poetry Day. Ordinarily I would have posted a video excerpt from one of my poetry collections to celebrate, but I’ve been tired from being flat out at work and feeling a bit under the weather with a cold/flu/covid/something else draining on top of it.

Anyway, a stormy weekend provides the perfect excuse to stay indoors lounging about with a book. The only thing is, I’ll have to resist the temptation to just stick on Netflix instead. Oh well. If it happens, I won’t beat myself up.

Happy Friday!

Posted by on October 3, 2025 in Reading, Writing and tagged , , , , , .

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September 27, 2025

Another year, another creative writing class

It has been a busy first month back for the new academic year in secondary education. Like last year, I’m teaching creative writing, a part of my job that I really love. It’s always exciting to see what the new sixth year students will bring to the sessions. I love the chance to tailor the lessons depending on their individual needs, especially to help with troubleshooting when they’re stuck on a project.

At the start of any group, after discussing the term plan and objectives, I always give out a questionnaire to my students to gauge interest in various aspects of the course. This year, one of my students wrote a note in the comments section, complete with smiley face, to say thanks for providing the opportunity for such an exciting and interesting enrichment group. I’d say I’m the one with the exciting opportunity: a chance to read work by the next generation of authors. A shared love of creativity and passion for writing is what drives me, and I can’t wait to see what this fresh new cohort of writers will bring to the table. For any fellow creative writing teachers out there, wouldn’t you agree?

All ready to teach a new creative writing group

Posted by on September 27, 2025 in Writing and tagged , , , .

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September 23, 2025

Hannah May Book reviews: The Wabi-Sabi Doll

Title: The Wabi-Sabi DollAuthor: Leilanie StewartPages: 339Genre: Dark Psychological StoryRating: 4/5 Book Blurb: After fourteen months of living in her home from home, Tottori, a town by the coast on the Sea of Japan, Londoner Kimberly Thatcher should have been settled in her job. She should have been happy with her new boyfriend Naoki. She should have been moving on with […]

The Wabi-Sabi Doll by Leilanie Stewart

Many thanks to Hannah May at Hannah May’s book reviews for this review of my latest novel, The Wabi-sabi Doll!

Posted by on September 23, 2025 in reviews and tagged , , .

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