Category Archives: Harriet Goodchild author
Short Story: Usher’s Well
She waits by the window. Behind her, the kitchen clock beats out the time. Seconds slip away into minutes; minutes pile up into hours. Strangers’ voices fill the room: the pips, the news, The Archers, drama, more news. She listens. … Continue reading
Work in progress II
Time for some prose, I think. My second novel is, right now, ready for my editor’s comments. That means I can give myself over to thinking about the next book. I’ve spoken of it before, here; and there’s still a deal of work … Continue reading
A moment of balance
It’s the equinox today. I find it a curiously satisfying phenomenon – far more than either solstice, if truth be told – that entirely predictable balance of day and night, and no doubt it’s for this reason that it features so … Continue reading
New book: ‘The Crooked Path’
There’s news! Today I signed a contract with Eric T. Reynolds of Hadley Rille Books for The Crooked Path. It’s a prequel, after a fashion, to After the Ruin, and is a fairy-tale inspired by Celtic mythology and Greek myth. … Continue reading
Villanelle III: A rose, a king, an apple tree
I’m supposed to be editing a novel but I’m easily distracted from this task. This evening I started playing around with one of the songs from After the Ruin and ended up turning it into a villanelle. Why? Well, why not? Even though it’s of no … Continue reading
A portrait and a poem
I’ve written previously on how folksongs inspired After the Ruin. There are a couple of other things as well. Firstly, a portrait of an unknown young man by Titian. It hangs now in the National Gallery in London, and I … Continue reading
The Borderlands
Another post on world-building in After the Ruin. This time, I’ll tell you a bit about the borderlands, the liùthion* and their king, and the firstborn tree. The borderlands The borderlands lie at the edges of the waking world. You … Continue reading
Ballads and books: The inspirations behind ‘After the Ruin’
The following post was originally published on Heroines of Fantasy on 23rd March 2015. Louise Turner has invited me here today (Louise, Thank you!) to talk about After the Ruin. You will, I hope, read it for yourself so I … Continue reading
Out in the wild
After the Ruin is published. And this makes me very, very happy. Thank you to Terri-Lynne DeFino and Eric T. Reynolds of Hadley Rille Books. It took a long time, for reasons none of us could foresee back in 2013, … Continue reading