If you don’t already know, I’m Leilanie Stewart, and I write ghost horror books. I’m the author of three ghost horror novels and two ghost story collections, two of which are award winners (hurray). But did you know that I’m also an avid reader of supernatural books? Since I read and review books semi-anonymously online, allowing me to support fellow authors while giving my honest opinion, I thought I’d take a moment to share some favourite spooky reads with you. Please do check out these fabulous authors and their supernatural reads:
Two Groves by G.K. Wilson has a very freaky supernatural antagonist and is a different kind of horror.
Did you read the article on Sky News on 11th May, titled I’m a literary agent – here’s what makes me sign a writer instantly and what most authors actually earn? It mentioned that the average salary of UK authors is around £4000 a year. Pretty depressing, huh? No wonder the majority of us have day jobs, or are writing after retirement, funding a literary lifestyle with a hard-earned pension, accrued from a lifetime of non-creative writing work. I’ve heard it said that some people consider creative writing a privilege not a profession and I wonder if that is part of the issue?
Anyway, the figure of £4000 prompted me to do a quick search, just to see if there was any more data to explain the figure. I didn’t find any sources to support that number, so it seems that was from the literary agent’s own experience. Instead, my general search suggested an average salary of around £7000 for UK author’s earnings. This is the same amount I found back in 2023 when I was looking into the topic for an earlier blog post, What percentage of authors make a full time living from it? Hmm. I can’t think of too many writers who could get by on that kind of money when rent and mortgage rates are at an all time high, and we’re in the midst of a cost of living crisis.
Do you ever get imposter syndrome? Recently, I was out running errands in Belfast when a woman approached me and asked, “Are you that author? I think I’ve read one of your books.” I was caught a bit by surprise, but confirmed without knowing if she meant me or not (lol) that I am, indeed, an author. The reader then went on to say that she had read my book, The Blue Man, as it was one of the titles that came up at her book club when the group was focusing on local authors. I’m guessing that her book club was through Libraries NI, but I didn’t ask, as I found myself somewhat thrown for a loop at being recognised.
Situations like this don’t happen to me a lot; this is the second time in the past year, to put it in context, the other time being when I was shopping in Belfast city centre and was recognised by a follower of my social media. This latest occasion really gave me a moment of disconnect, a real feeling of imposter syndrome, and a sense of detachment from Leilanie Stewart the author and even from the success of my book, The Blue Man.
Since I’m a one-woman writing and publishing team, which means I’m my own publicist too (hi and hello from both of us over here in Northern Ireland, lol) it’s time for some more shameless self promotion. Hey, an author has to keep the sales ticking along somehow, eh? I’m hoping that you’re a reader, or a potential reader of my books, and if not (yet!) then why not give them a try? They’re on Kindle Unlimited, if you subscribe, and if you’re a bit skint, then you can read them for free at any of the following libraries:
Here you can listen as I discuss my award-winning Belfast Ghosts trilogy on BBC Radio Ulster show The Ticket with host, Kathy Clugston. Book 1, The Blue Man won a Chill with a Book Premier Reader’s award in 2023 and Book 2, The Fairy Lights won an Author Shout ‘Recommended Read 2024’ award. But out of the series, Book 3, Matthew’s Twin is my personal favourite.
These three ghost novels are standalones, so you can read one of them, or all three, in any order you like.
Finally, after three years of writing my latest novel project, a ghost horror book set in London, I have finished the final draft. Hurray, yippee, whoopee, happy dance!
The reason that this novel draft took me so long to write was that I had several other projects on the go at the same time, so I hadn’t been focusing all my efforts on this one solely. I started writing it in May 2023, and during the three years, I finished and published short story collections Pseudologia Fantastica in June 2024, Love you to Death in February 2025 and novel The Wabi-sabi Doll in September 2025, in addition to reading and editing submissions for Bindweed Anthologies; so you can imagine how often I set it aside.
Better late than never, eh? I always print paperback copies of final drafts as I find it easier to spot mistakes than reading the manuscript on my computer; for this purpose I always use Lulu. Plus, the printed drafts make a nice edition to my bookshelf as a way of helping me remember the progression of my plot and characterisation before the polished book is ready for publication.
A few days ago I received a review of The Wabi-sabi Doll from a reader in Canada, giving the best compliment I’ve had for a book in a while: that they thought the novel read like a true story and hoped that some of the events were fictional. I really gave my main character Kimberly a hard time in that novel, as I joked about with host Kathy Clugston on BBC Radio Ulster when I was discussing the plot of The Wabi-sabi Doll, so I can see why the reader hoped it was fictional, which of course it is.
As a writer, I strive for authenticity in my books, so I’m thrilled that a reader felt the novel read as though it was real. I lived in Japan a long time ago, so I needed to do a lot of research to keep everything up to date and realistic in the story. In non-fiction books, references will be cited at the end; not a requirement for fiction, but in The Wabi-sabi Doll, I decided to reference the sites I used for research as a thank you for the information.
Anyway, if you want to support a humble indie author, you can buy The Wabi-sabi Doll from the links below. Content warning for racism, miscarriage, references to sexual assault, misogyny and domestic abuse. But if you like dark psychological reads, you won’t be disappointed:
Both! These novels each feature May 1st in the plot. The Fairy Lights is set at Friar’s Bush graveyard in Stranmillis, Belfast, where there is a Hawthorne tree known as a ‘Maybush’ and according to local folklore, if you sit under this on May 1st, you will find yourself transported to the fairy realms. Gods of Avalon Road takes place during the six days of Beltane/Beltaine, after a pagan ritual on Mayday, which resurrects ancient Celtic gods into modern day London.
Tonight is also a full moon, making Mayday a double celebration. The moon is reaching its furthest point away from the earth (its apogee), hence the ‘micro’ aspect of the name. As for the ‘flower’ meaning? April flowers bring May flowers, of course.
Or she may put you in a book and kill you. At least this is what it says on my favourite writing mug. A colleague bought this for me during a work Secret Santa six years ago and it’s a firm favourite for my caffeine fix while I write.
Speaking of writing, did I mention my good news? I finally finished my ghost horror novel WIP after 3 on-and-off years, during which I had writer’s block not once, but twice. Yikes. Of course, while struggling with my writer’s block on this particular project, I stayed productive by finishing and publishing my second short story collection, Pseudologia Fantastica, my third short story collection, Love you to Death and my sixth novel, The Wabi-sabi Doll. I guess that’s the reason why I started writing ghost novel WIP #7 back in May 2023 and I have only just finished it in April 2026.
Now that I’ve finished ghost novel WIP#7, does that mean I’m taking a writing hiatus? Of course not! I always have a WIP on the go; my latest is novel WIP#11, which is a literary horror that I started in November 2025. I’m currently at 17k words, since I started writing this alongside finishing novel WIP#7, but now that it has my sole focus, I think my word count might jump considerably. Here’s hoping.
This week, a book delivery arrived for my creative writers. In case you don’t follow my blog regularly, I teach creative writing to secondary school students, running classes from September to April each academic year, with an end goal of publication in an anthology. I currently teach my creative writing classes as an enrichment course for sixth form (16-17 year olds) in a grammar school here in Northern Ireland where I live, and I previously taught creative writing to KS3 (12-13 year olds) and GCSE age pupils (15-16 year olds) on the gifted and talented registers at two schools in Battersea and Hammersmith in London, so all in all, I have been teaching creative writing classes for fifteen years.
Wow, now I feel old, lol.
My writing certificate after my poem was published in Poetry Now young writers anthology 1995
When I was 17 years old, I would have loved the opportunity to have participated in a creative writing class with an end goal of publication. Apart from one poem that was published in a nationwide anthology, none of my fiction was published while I was a teen. Indeed, I wasn’t taught how to structure a short story while I was at school either, since GCSE and A level English focus on analysing literary methods in literature rather than the craft of writing.
Nevertheless, I began writing a children’s sci-fi adventure novel when I was 12, chipping away at the first draft in dribs and drabs throughout my teens. I eventually tried to get it published while I was a university student (studying archaeology and palaeoecology, not creative writing or even English). Back then, I knew little about point of view and characterisation. My plot wasn’t clearly outlined and the ending fell flat. I had two beta readers, who weren’t editors or even writers, and both praised the manuscript as they didn’t want to dent my fledgling confidence. One beta reader was my aunt and the other was a family friend, and both women only read contemporary romance books on occasion; never children’s sci-fi adventure stories.
My article appeared inNova City magazine November 2004 issue
After one full manuscript request and a handful of rejections, I considered signing up to an online writing course, but I was equal parts naive and cautious and worried about being scammed out of several hundred pounds, so I cancelled my application. Fast forward a few years, and while I was teaching English in Japan, and writing non-fiction travel articles which were published in the now defunct Nova City magazine in Japan, I began to self-study creative writing using primarily the Chicago manual of style, as well as critically analysing novels I was reading, jotting pencil notes in margins and on sticky notes. It was a longer learning curve than if I had attended a creative writing course, but my writing began to improve.
Once my teaching contract ended, I relocated to the UK with my then boyfriend, now hubby (who I met in Japan while we were both teaching English), and we lived in Cambridge, where I joined a writing group, and getting critical feedback on my stories helped to improve my writing skills even more. I began to get my poetry and short fiction accepted for publication in magazines and anthologies in the UK and elsewhere worldwide, and my career progressed from there.
For the past decade and a half, I have been fortunate enough to do something I’m passionate about for my day profession. My life has revolved around creative writing since I was a girl, and I love the opportunity to share this with the next generation of writers and helping them to become published authors too. I can’t wait to see their faces when they hold copies of their published anthologies and celebrate being published authors at 17, and living the dream I would have loved at that age too. 😀
April in Japan is usually hanami season (cherry blossom viewing) and seeing all the pink blossoms blooming in Northern Ireland has left me feeling rather sentimental about the four years I spent over in Japan when I was teaching English as a second language.
What better way to take a trip down memory lane than to share a bit about my latest novel, The Wabi-sabi Doll, when I discussed it on BBC Radio Ulster show ‘The Ticket’. What does ‘wabi-sabi’ mean? Listen as I chat to host Kathy Clugston about what this Japanese word means, why I wrote a sequel for The Buddha’s Bone, and how my main character, Kimberly, has a tough journey in this psychological fiction duology set in Japan.
