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Rick Rawes

Author. Storyteller. Mildly confused.

  • I Ain’t Afraid of No…: Writing About Ghosts

    Image by magwood_photography from Pixabay

    Ask any twelve year old what they’re afraid of the most (and after they’re done bravado-ing that they ain’t afraid of nuffin’ – save grammar) and eventually they’ll probably say ghosts. Why? Because ghost stories are perhaps the first tales we’re told around the campfire. No one’s going to tell stories about the English Patient under a spooky fully moon. And we’re endlessly fascinated.

    This is not a new trend either, ghost stories shot to fame during Victorian England and not all in some terrifying rip-your-face-off modern horror way either. Some were laments on the horrors of the day, some were morality tales about changing your ways or ending up eating turkey on Christmas day alone. I don’t honestly know whether it’s the turkey or the alone bit which I’d fear more.

    And don’t even get me started on Pliny. That guy was writing down spooks on paper when the Romans were still enjoying a little caged-lion-Christian-death-match between Coke -I adverts.

    So how do we, two thousand years later write about ghosts with anything approaching originality? Here’s an idea – don’t even try!

    Only Boo-man After All?

    Image by Tama66 from Pixabay

    But first, what are they? Ghosts are a comforting thought, right? Even the scary ones with chains and shit are still some kind of a proof of life after death. I mean, get right down to it and would you rather think that someone switches off the lights and you’re just snuffed out like a candle – or that somehow you can whizz around space and time and the universe in a lil ghost body (sometimes in whatever form you wish – I’m voting cat) and get up to all kinds of shenanigans.

    I mean, it fills a pretty specific human desire, right? Fear of death.

    But what about the idea that it’s not conscious? Take for example, stone tape theory that suggests we’re simply viewing recorded bits of old emotions played out like some astral projection. In this instance, we’re witnesses, passively seeing what came before.

    Then there are plenty of stories of conscious ghosts – ones who seem to interact with the living. Granted, why Margaret who died three years ago from a raspberry scone related anaphylaxis would spend her afterlife knocking on your backdoor and flinging your nick nacks across the living room is beyond me. But the tellie is full of stuff like this. So much so, Yvette Fielding is probably still clinging onto the chandelier for dear life like a U-Tv Sia.

    And are ghosts here to do specific jobs or are they here just to cause chaos? Some ghosts seem benevolent, saving people from frightening ends by acting like guardian angels – bringing paramedics to the scene of a crashed car in the woods. Some seem to be malevolent – the story of a guy in a Mexican apartment block that was throttled by disembodied spectral hands night after night once caught my attention.

    Jeez, how do we write about something so widespread and so heterogenous? (Yes, word of the day toilet paper)

    Writing About Ghosts

    Image by SuperHerftigGeneral from Pixabay

    The way I decided to approach it was to boil things down to a few simple and broad rules. First, I decided whether or not ghosts were a thing in my big ol’ universe. And, since I write in the supernatural field, of course there were going to be a thing.

    Then I had to decide how I was going to approach the idea of spirit. And this is where it comes down to a matter of preference. I don’t prescribe to any kind of specific religion, Christianity included, so the idea that the afterlife itself was some big paradise with a big white guy sat on a throne was out. Instead, I wanted to play into the idea of there being things well beyond our knowledge.

    So it came down to this – there is a genuine unknown threshold over which we cross. But not all spirits go there first time. Instead, spirits can hang around in one of the many realms of existence, until they’re ready. When they cross into the Beyond, then all bets are off. After that, spirit bodies zipping around was just the next logical step.

    And from there, everything else can flow. Because if you think about it, if human beings can be diverse enough that across eight billion people you can have almost infinite diversity of experience, then the same with ghosts. We’re just spooky people, right?

    So in the Rawesian universe, you can absolutely have psychic imprints left on homesteads. You can have spirits with intent visiting the ones they love – or the ones they love to torment. You can have crisis apparitions – where spirits may appear to loved ones – or ones they love to torment – before they actually die in real life. You can have things that look like spirits, but aren’t – and ain’t they the biggest buggers of them all?

    And yes, maybe somewhere, one Christmas Eve someone’s about to be visited by a pair of muppets. Who knows?

    Get to the Point

    Yes, okay, you got me. The point isn’t ‘write about ghosts in one specific way’. It’s more like, if there are an infinite number of ghost stories stretching back into the annals of history. So much so, that if Bob the Babylonian can scratch a man in a white sheet on a tablet while the pyramids are being built, and the writer of Ghostbusters can use Dan Akroyd to make an oral sex joke – then perhaps diversity is just a fact of their after-existence.

    So write ghosts if you wish, but don’t worry too much about the time-y wime-y spooky wookie of all it. If you can think of it, there’s probably still a folktale told in some timeless Bavarian village where it’s already being told to get the kids back into their bunk beds at night. So go for it, enjoy it – and if someone says ‘ghosts don’t behave like that’, tell them that you’ll sick Casper on them.

    But just remember what the most important point of a ghost story is. It’s imagination. It’s the humanity underneath it. We may have at some point in our distant past clung to the story of someone seeing a loved one wandering by the hunting grounds and thought – damn, I wish that were true. And maybe it is true. And maybe baked into the story of ghosts is heart, and hope, and love.

    And yes, more than a little bit of fear.

    So write that, in some spectral shape or form. You can. That, my friends, is one of the great things about being alive.

    ‘til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    2nd October, 2026

  • Episode Ten is a Winter’s Tale

    The penultimate episode of 2026 is now ready for the world to see and this one is perfect for spooky season and nights drawing closer. Suffer the Children is the closest thing ’til the End of the World has to a Christmas special, though really it’s a frosty tale of lingering ghosts. When a young boy goes missing while out shopping for Christmas presents with his mother, Amy and Luke have a race against time to find him before its too late. Meanwhile, the winter season brings with it old memories… and old wounds…

    You can read the beta version of the Episode here, check out the previous episodes in the series on our Series Page or consider checking out the upcoming collection Where Loyalty Lies (Year One · Volume II) collecting together Episodes VI to XI.

    ’til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    25th September 2026

  • Where Do We Go From Here? A Perfect Pause Point

    Disclaimer: This reflection on the year gone by isn’t exactly easy. But it’s honest. And to any independent author or creator who’s felt this way, it’s okay to feel shit – and still somehow get on with it.

    Intro

    Where do we go from here? I don’t know; that’s the honest answer.

    Unsettled, I guess, is the start of 2026. That crackling undercurrent of anxiety that exists in all of us, but which is not-so-gently yet acutely awoken every time your Facebook screen pops up with another new story about a Reform candidate, World War III or the EHRC toilet police.

    I paused to reflect (I always do this time of year), and strangely, I find myself drawn to the gloom. First, how the hell do we stay writing hope in a world that’s lost it? Then, the only logical thought that can follow – am I already Eeyore?

    Where is Everyone?

    Of course, you’re not here for my meandering take on world polities – even if I do a fab impression of Diane Abbott. Well, I’ve drunk canned mojitos on the Overground before, anyway. So I’ll segue back into talking about writing then.

    So I guess the big question is, where is everyone?

    I love every single person that’s ever read or engaged with anything I’ve done, that goes without saying (but say it repeatedly, I shall). But 2026 has seen me trying to expand into new markets, new ways of communicating and create ‘funnels’ (I think that’s what they’re called; I still have horrifying flashbacks to Year 9 chemistry lessons). I’ve released two books and dabbled in recruiting ARC readers. I even made a reel. Yes, a video-thing. And redid my whole website.

    And crickets.

    The Sound of Silence

    Oh, no, I must be honest – I have increased my followers to include bots and/or Christian-themed groups that may or may not be here to call me the antichrist. I have also had plenty of direct messages from people who have ‘read my book’ or ‘noticed my book’ and want to promote it if I will DM them. With my credit card and National Insurance number, very likely.

    I’ve also learnt about ARC reading and Reviews and had the soul-crushing realisation that independent authors make up a big chunk of profits for self-publishing outlets, but are apparently hampered repeatedly by review-culling algorithms. And that social media networking sites are no longer using hashtags, but instead engagement in a way that rewards 2-second attention spans rather than depth.

    Grrr Argh (Feelings)

    Yes, little demon at the end of every Buffy credits, grrr argh indeed. Kind of like the climber who reaches the edge of the ridge, only to see he’s barely anywhere up the mountain – I have taken more notice of the indie world, and its various machinations – to realise how small I really am.

    But do not mistake me yet again for Eeyore – like any storyteller worth their salt, I’m making a point. Even if I meander like a drunken goose. True story.

    I did think about quitting; I’ll be fair. Not quitting writing, because damn it, these stories are just never gonna let me go. I was banging them out in my bedroom as a teenager, creating whole imaginary worlds YEARS before Big Bang Theory made being a nerd cool. And yes, okay, I could have gotten more fresh air and exercise instead, but honestly, as a big gay bear, that’s probably worked out in my favour in the long run. So not quitting writing and imagining, but publishing.

    Now before you run for the hills, abandoning a sinking ship, I want to be clear – I’m not going anywhere. I said I thought about it – and if anyone else out there who writes says they never had the same feeling or doubt at any point, I’ll eat my hat. Which I’m not wearing. I’ll buy a hat.

    9 years. 10 books. 19 ratings/reviews across Amazon & Goodreads. I don’t even want to go into the profit/loss calculation.

    And I am still here.

    Choose Wisely

    So when it seems like the whole ride is rigged, and in cyberspace no one can hear you scream, what’s the option? Get off. No, not like that – rude – I mean, get off the ride. Change your mind. Spank your inner monkey or whatever the mystics of the world would say. I guess my biggest takeaway from the first eight months of this year has been that doing what everyone says are the ‘right things’ in an industry built for someone else (I mean this in terms of traditional authors and not-exactly-friendly towards queer authors sense, dually), isn’t the right thing for me.

    I am here. Social media outlets may bury me under bureaucratic algorithms designed for quick consumption, online self-publishing distributors may prioritise risk-averse shiny trends such as a remarkable amount of werewolf erotica, and maybe the only ones popping into my DMs are ScamBot42. But I. Am. Here.

    Online, as in life, I’m going to keep trying to connect. I’ll keep popping posts on, so people can get on down to the website and have themselves a mosey around. I know how the internet works; people’ll still miss every update in favour of a pygmy hippo. Oh, such a cute pygmy hippo. Sorry, where was I?

    Oh, right, I’m going to keep trying. Writing is my go-to; it’s my release, it helps me ignore the dumpster fire that seems to be going on in the wider world right now. And more than that, I’m good at it. I know I’m good at it. I know these stories are ones worth telling, because they’re the ones I never got growing up. Yeah, they’re often dark, but they’re queer, and they’re strange, and they’re damn funny at times (often very inappropriately so). They’re there. They matter.

    19 people thought so, at one point or another. Enough to make a comment or drop a rating. There was a change, however slight, in the world because someone took a bit of time to read one of my books. They took a chance on an indie author. 19 people is not nothing. It’s something. Which means it is everything.

    And I have to keep coming back to that.

    ‘til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    18th September 2026

  • Back to School: For Whom the Bell Tolls!

    Photo by Alec Doualetas: https://www.pexels.com/photo/abandoned-building-with-ivy-in-sunlit-urban-area-32146648/

    Here we are in September once again, and that means for a good chunk of the population – parents, kids, and those working in education – it means back to school. While for the rest of the world (well, UK specifically) it means our Facebook feeds flooding with first day photos like a wall of bad polyester blazers. And that’s just the teachers.

    Having worked in education my entire adult day-job life, its probably safe to say that school places aren’t exactly an unknown to me – which made the challenge of returning to my first and earliest set of stories ‘til the End of the World take on a different flavour. It could have been very easy to write about contemporary education – and in fact several of my modern day books have more than a few nods to the unsung heroes of modern day teaching.

    But the true challenge was not in describing around me but instead go back to what it used to be. And therein lay a very peculiar kind of challenge – which as a writer is basically catnip. So first, I had to go properly back. To when everything felt like the end of the world.

    Mmmmmm Bop?

    Way too many Ms, I know, but memory distorts the past, doesn’t it? To give a little context, I was just about leaving primary school (in the United Kingdom that’s at age 11) around the turn of the millennium, so my formative experiences of school life are from the very same era that gave us Smallville, Buffy, Teen Wolf and the like. And yet, if that was meant to give me an idea what high school would be like (ghouls and hairy monsters aside), it was a sore disappointment.

    While in no way claiming this is what schools are like today, in the early 2000s, the thing that I most remember is noise. Movement, chaos. In lessons sure, we were (relatively) well behaved and we got on with work and so many of us went and got fab grades and stuff – but the in-between? The social time? Feral. Anyone who’s seen the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan has experienced that first rush onto the playground at breaktime.

    A lot of depictions of school today are incredibly professional – and rightly so in many respects. But the early 2000s were nowhere near as professional as today. Sure, teachers were teachers and kids were kids – but shit was very different. People did smoke behind the bike sheds (and other less than savoury things). People were throwing house parties which ended up with projectile Baileys across the driveway and potentially an ambulance being called. The linguistic atmosphere of a corridor of high school kids did have the gentile tones of a Bernard Manning crossed with an uncensored Eminem album.

    And the teachers? I’m definitely going to get some raised eyebrows for my portrayal of Miss Drake in the series, but by ‘eck was some of today’s standards just a whisper in a darkened handbook back then. Teachers getting drunk at the Leaver’s Do (one chunking up in the back of the headteacher’s car as was the rumour), ‘ignoring’ kids having snuck beer into a residential trip, or sometimes making a year seven wet themselves in front of sixth forms to assert dominance. Yes, most definitely OFSTED had some blinkers on back then.

    Capturing the Atmosphere

    This was the challenge when going ‘back to school’ for ‘til the End of the World. How much of what I actually remember, do I actually remember? How much of that atmosphere is rose-tinted glasses and how much is the lived experience? Could I recall what being a teenager actually felt like – and crucially, did it really feel like that?

    What stuck out most strongly was that when we were fifteen and sixteen, like those protagonists, we weren’t kids. Not to us. We were something else between, and we thought we knew who we were and what we wanted. We had so much self-possession, that actually we probably did think we could handle all the adult stuff, like sex and smoking and deciding on our own curfews. And yeah, if demons and vampyrs had come along, we probably would have thought we could handle that shit on our own.

    We would have believed that not all adults could be trusted, while at the same time probably spending the majority of our time doing what they said. But adults would also keep things from us, telling us things like ‘it’s for your own good’ or ‘because I said so’ that would have been incredibly frustrating. So, yeah, that absolutely had to go in there – because adults do lie to kids. And whether or not we could have handled it, we would have thought we could – which is exactly what they do here.

    And probably the big thing to capture when going back to those ‘glory days’ (so-to-speak) is the feeling that problems were always going to be bigger than they were. A friendship on the rocks was like someone dying. A failed test result to some was like the ultimate proof of academic inadequacy. We couldn’t regulate the same way a lifetime of experience teaches you to, so for us every little event is a heartbreak, every day is the end of the world. Our world. And yeah, maybe in the end that’s where so much of this came from.

    ‘til the end of the world…

    Wrapping Up

    There’s so much more I could pull apart here, but we only have so much time. The things I’ve mentioned above are not specific to that early 2000s period when ‘til the End of the World is set, they are foundational to the adolescent experience. But the darker aspects of a somewhat more gritty, realistic childhood are there. I haven’t gone back to school thinking of everything has happy times where we all did what we were told and things were incredibly professional.

    I’ve written a (mature) YA novella series which goes back to the High School that was. Sweary kids. Unprofessional adults. Shit going on inside and outside of the classroom. And yeah, in the background the sweet soundtrack of music our parents listened to, and the irreverent camp of Take That and Britney.

    I’ve written a school in which smartphones didn’t exist (pretty much). Where people walked home at night. Where kids went to the park and hung out / fought horrible monsters and then snuck back in home way after bedtime. You know, real stuff. And if I take a little poetic licence from time to time, then I think that’s okay.

    Because our school years made us, one way or another. And looking back always has a kind of fog of time – not always for the better and not always for the worse. So, if your lived experience of high school, old or new, differs from the one you find in Calendar High School – that’s okay. This is how it was for me.

    Minus the demons. Maybe.

    ‘til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    4th September 2026

  • Episode Nine Now Released!

    After a summer of crazy times, including a well-performing bin – I can announce the beta version of Episode IX is finally available here.

    This month ’til the End of the World answers some long answered questions. What are the mysterious dreams Luke’s been having all about? What is the legacy of Sundune – that old bugger who may or may not have gotten his comeuppance? And what exactly has Sam been hiding from Luke all this time?

    And ultimately for our young heroes, they’ll have to decide when they know the truth – what are they going to do with it?

    ’til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    26th June 2026

  • Bite Me: An Exploration of Vampyrs in Fiction

    Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

    This time around, we’re going to talk about vampyrs. We’ll have a look at the folklore behind them, and I’ll even give you a little insight into vampyrs in my fiction. And yes, I am writing vampyrs specifically because that’s the spelling I’m going with. It’s my funeral pire, I guess.

    I have one question to begin with – which vampire do you fancy most? Seriously! Do you like a sparkly, skinny Edward? An ethereally bonkers Drusilla? Exotically alluring Queen of the Damned? Nah, maybe the big eyebrows of Nosferatu really melt your heart?

    Hey, I get it, throughout most of my youth the debate was over if Angel and Spike got into a wrestling match in jello, which would you let Sarah Michelle Gellar take to dinner after you were done with them both?

    Good God, people, when did vampyrs get hot?

    An Origin

    The rain lashes down as the once-hard, solid ground begins to turn into thick sludge, shovel after shovel slamming into it. The men work hard in the cemetery, undoing the freshly interred earth to reach the prize beyond. They have to; the villagers demand it. Too many people have already gotten sick. Too many more are at risk of dying. And yet, death is not the worst thing they fear.

    There it is, just shy of six feet. The thunk indicates they have reached the lid of the coffin. Continuing, though the cold bites their fingers, nibbling them into a kind of numbness, they work to prise their quarry free from the ground. Creaking wood, recently nailed down, is opened, and laid bare before them is their loved one.

    The face is gaunt, the fingernails long, the hair still growing. Blood-red lips and a peaceful face. They look as if they could be sleeping rather than dead. With grim determination, the men know what they have found. They have found… a vampyr.

    Now, I don’t know about you, but I do not find the prospect of spending a night in a cemetery particularly sexy. For one, it takes forever to get dirt from under your fingernails, even with a hot bath. And for another, having to then chop off a dead guy’s head, burn his heart and liver, and stuff garlic in his mouth hardly seems like a first date activity. A few years of marriage in, I might change my mind, but as long as there’s still Groupon, I doubt it.

    But that’s what we’re talking about here, in terms of more common folklore. Perhaps the origin of the myths which eventually led to the book that blew vampyrs into the common consciousness in Bram Stoker’s immortal Dracula.

    Of course, Bram had the great ol’ sense to make it a good story. And what was more of a good story to the Victorians than anything else? Why, flash me an ankle! He made Dracula sexy. Hot count from a foreign land, regal and in control. Seductive, slipping into young maidens’ bedrooms in the middle of the night and leaving them breathless. It could even be argued Dracula was the original sugar daddy, especially to the three Dracula babes he had in his castle. Or would that be ‘blood daddy’?

    And then they had him played by Gerard Butler and well… no looking back.

    Not the Only Vampyr!

    Image by Sammy-Sander from Pixabay

    The classic vampyr portrayal, rooted in what are very likely premature burials in Eastern Europe (and the reason some graves ended up with little bells on the gravestones), is a classic for a reason. It got the good press, but honestly isn’t even the best vampyr stories out there.

    Revenant-like beings, returning from the dead in many cases, or sometimes simply existing as supernatural beings in their own right, are often focused on drinking blood. They have been around for thousands of years. Take Lilith, for example, the Babylonian demon who would consume the blood and life force of infants and women in ancient Mesopotamia. Bet she wouldn’t put that on her Tinder profile.

    Some of the vamps have a lot of crossover with zombies instead. Vrykolakas of ancient Greece and Rome, the Strigoi of Eastern Europe, or even the Jiangshi of China are also variations on the theme of corpses returning to attack the living, primarily focusing on life force and blood. You definitely don’t see as many people romanticising zombies. Not none, unfortunately, just far less.

    What about the Nukekubi? They’re just heads that detach at night and go flying around looking for blood. I mean, I’ve seen a few pretty faces before, but perhaps when they’re trailing organs and intestines behind them like the Penanggalan of Southeast Asia, it might, ironically, drain the blood from your face.

    There are so many beings across so many cultures which are related to the process of drinking blood or draining the life force, that when we say ‘vampire’ in this day and age, we’re really narrowing down our options. And honestly, the story of vampyrs in modern-day times has become a little more Twilight than I think it deserves. But why?

    It’s all about fear.

    Why?

    When our bodies are afraid, we, broadly speaking, activate our fight-or-flight system. Our sympathetic nervous system floods our bodies with adrenaline and a host of other hormones and neurotransmitters, triggering a remarkably predictable response. Our hearts thunder, our breathing rate quickens, and our eyes dilate. Butterflies in our stomach as digestion slows.

    Sound familiar? Sound almost like… falling in love? Not surprising. Our body responds very much the same way to arousal as it does to fear. In fact, the word ‘arousal’ really links back to Middle English arousen – meaning ‘to awaken, stir to action’. Which is exactly what our body is saying when we encounter something dangerous. Wake up. Do something.

    Is it any wonder then, if our bodies respond so similarly to danger and to attraction, that we’d confuse the two sometimes? That we are drawn to stories in which the mysterious stranger may or may not be something otherworldly? Of course, but it also means when we’re thinking about vampyr stories, we’re narrowing it down only to what we find attractive and missing out on so much weird, wonderful (and sometimes gross) folklore that demonstrates a much richer mythological tapestry than a brooding tween with control issues.

    So, now you know where I’m coming from…

    My Vampyrs

    Image by Alexis Hunter from Pixabay

    Vampyrs have just started to appear in my ongoing series, ‘til the End of the World, as some of you will know. They’re not going to be the whole focus – I mean Buffy had the term Vampire in the name, and we’re much broader than that – but they are going to feature. The key thing is, they’re not there to be sexy. Nor are they the only ones.

    Vampyrs are an ecosystem. They’re a layer of the world we’re just beginning to explore. Some will be sexy, naturally; some characters always turn out that way. But some will be gross. Some will be incredibly evil; some may not always be. Some stalk in the dark as predators; some will prowl as scavengers. And some may even fly around as bodiless heads, as bizarre as it sounds.

    I like the folklore; I like its breadth and depth. I think maybe we’re coming to the end of the vampyr love triangles – The Vampire Diaries managed to get eight years out of it, after all. Now we’re coming to the age of diversity, of variety. It’s exciting times, and I look forward to exploring it all with you in the future.

    So if you want to read about vampyrs, not just for the simple titillation, but for the grim, dark reality, then maybe give ‘til the End of the World a go. Because it’s only going to get stranger from here…

    ‘til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    21st August 2026

  • Echo ARCs Now Available!

    Echo ARCs Available Here!

    Seems like it was only yesterday there was another novel, but here we go again! The ARC copies (eBook only) are now available for Echo, the new novel from Rick Rawes – and this time we’re entering into full science fiction territory.

    In miniature:

    Tech billionaire Michael Vale is declared dead after vanishing without a trace. Months later, a man bearing his face awakens with no memory, no past, and abilities that defy explanation. As he searches for the truth alongside the daughter he left behind, buried secrets emerge from the depths of a reservoir and the heart of a powerful corporation. In a story of identity, loss, and what it means to be human, one impossible return could change the future forever.

    Check Out the Full Echo Page

    If you’d like to read and potentially review around release time, the timescale is pretty generous – up until 10th October 2026 when it’s released. Of course if you have any questions about the process, you’re always welcome to get in touch beforehand.

    If you’d like to join the General ARC team, you can sign-up below as well:

    ARC Signup Page

    That’s it for now!

    ’til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    19th August 2026

  • It’s Grim Up North: What a Load of B…

    The Corn Exchange, Leeds
    (used in an upcoming novel)

    Imagine this with me, if you will: Sean Bean wrapped in thick wolf furs, trudging up a cobbled street blanketed with fresh snow. The sky above is grey, like forgotten dishwater. In one hand, he holds a chipped mug bearing Victoria Wood’s likeness, filled with steaming Yorkshire tea. In the other, a Wigan kebab, with fresh HP sauce dripping between gravy-soaked fingers. Somewhere in the distance, a mill chugs out black smog, and an ageing colliery brass band plays the Hovis tune in slow, weeping breaths. You can picture that band, can’t you? Overweight, red-faced men, most probably remembering their days down pits.

    That’s the North of England, right? Well, I’m sorry, but what a load of b******s.

    The North in Fiction

    Market Street, Manchester
    (featured in Heroes & Demons)

    The North (and yes, here the capitalisation is very much needed) is a strange and mysterious place in fiction. Some of the truth of it is well represented in film and books. Even in this very London-centric storytelling landscape, there are some absolutely excellent representations. Whether we visit Sheffield in The Full Monty and get a heart-warming tale of resilience in the face of economic oppression, or look at the complex layers of multicultural domesticity in East is East.

    Many of us likely remember Victoria Wood singing about the chippy, or struggle to get Jane Horrock’s Lancashire accent out of our heads at its heaviest (I must admit I still never understand Bubbles). Sometimes, we see resilience through big brass bands, a la Brassed Off or… wait… There is the brass band. Yes, and there’s the red brick terraced back-to-backs. And there’s the grim black sense of humour deep beneath the grim reality of closed pits and job centres. And domestic violence. And casual homophobia.

    And dear God, why would anyone want to take a trip up North? It seems, to the world at large, a dark and unforgiving place.

    Heck, let’s go back to thinking about Sean Bean in wolf furs. The North are rebellious and proud. Poor. Bleak moors. Cold winters. Bound by honour and duty, yes, but forgotten by the Southern Kings. And over that wall, let’s not even get started on the crazy redheads who live in huts and treat incest as a family tradition. Granted, that’s Westeros, but Mr Martin isn’t exactly painting with crayons that don’t already exist in one stereotype or another.

    So, I bring you back to this – it’s grim up north, isn’t it?

    The North in My Life

    The Three Swans, Sheffield
    (inspired places in Echo)

    I’ve lived in the North my entire life. Born in Merseyside, raised in Warrington. Child of parents from the red rose and white rose (which makes me, in turn, a pink rose, I believe). Was married to a man from Rotherham for a while. Educated in Manchester. Lived in Rawtenstall, Leeds and even inside the M60 at different times. Worked in Oldham, Todmorden, Bradford… in valleys and in mill towns. I’ve lived my life, for good and for ill, in the same streets used by so many storytellers to tell a story about the grim lives of Northerners.

    And truth be told, I do have some memories that fit with their image of the North. It does piss it down rather a lot – and I have nearly cracked an ankle on a few cobbled streets. I once helped to sell books from an old disused mill, and definitely overheard more than my fair share of thick Yorkshire (and Lancashire) accents from old men drinking a pint of Carling at 9 am in Wetherspoons discussing ‘the scabs’. You can’t help but see poverty, from the tower blocks of council flats on the horizon to the crumbling former facades, now gentrified by bougie new street-food vendor businesses.

    But, thankfully, it is not the whole truth. It’s a representation that comes from two main sources: the stereotypes that exist because people are too lazy to really find out about the place they’re writing about, or the well-meaning but still narrow-focused gaze of people trying to make a point about the neglect of the north by a southern-centric mindset.

    I’ll tell you what the North is now. It’s a community, even when you wish Aunt Sheila would mind her own business and go back to trying to cheat at Bingo. It’s nattering to someone in a pub beer garden on a bright sunny day, on the bus, on a bench, in the park – anywhere – just because you happen to share the same space for a few minutes. It’s calling your mate a bellend rather than saying you love him, because the language you both speak is one of emotional metaphor rather than explicit acknowledgement. It’s buying fancy Belgian chocolate cookies at the farmer’s market and dunking them into your tea, which works out to around 3.4p a teabag after you buy a pack of 500 at Costco. And you’re damn proud of it. It’s nosy neighbours and posh knobs. It’s scallies and academics. It’s yesterday, and it’s tomorrow.

    That is the North I write.

    The North in My Fiction

    Wentworth, South Yorkshire
    (how the other half lived!)

    The North isn’t entirely neglected in fiction, but I often found in my genre that it barely ever features. Maybe in grim (there’s that word again) crime dramas, or heart-warming tragic dramedies, sure. But in fantasy? Science fiction? Horror? Not so much.

    When I write, I try to correct that. Manchester is the heart and home of many novels of different genres (Avalon, Insomniac, Proud Marys) and with the release of Echo in October, we’ll be venturing to Sheffield. York has popped up, although I apologise for what I did to the minster (Hope & Fury) and I will extend a similar apology to Liverpool (Fire & Water). We’ll even spend a lot of time in the town of Calendar in Lancashire (‘til the End of the World) which, although fictional, is very much based on a small town in Lancashire – and those who know, know.

    If you jump into these novels and give them a go, you’ll see something different about the North. You’ll see a North filled with all kinds of people. Some of them smart, some of them dumb, some of them rich, some of them poor. You’ll see how real people react to myths and monsters in their world – and it’s not always the way you’d expect. But more than that, you’ll feel it.

    When you step into the fantasy genre of Avalon, you won’t just see geography in action. You’ll take a ride through Rusholme’s curry mile and pop into a bar on Canal Street. You’ll see a showdown at the Bridgewater Hall and a sunset sword fight at the Manchester Cathedral. You’ll see these places, sure, but you’ll feel beyond them. The warmth. The humour. The love. And perhaps most importantly of all, the diversity. The tapestry that is the North, rather than the static picture of a rain-slicked cobbled street.

    That’s the North you’ll see in my books, and I think honestly, a North we need to see more of beyond.

    The North in the Future

    Leeds – so many futures

    I’ll finish up by telling you a little about what inspired this post. I don’t honestly have a massive chip on my shoulder about the southern-centric literary landscape (and very real political landscape). I also genuinely believe some of the greatest works of British fiction have come from the very portrayals of the North shown through some of the movies mentioned above. But I also think it’s time to move beyond – because the mindset seems stuck.

    I was reading a book. On UFOs, of all things. The author had been collecting first hand accounts of UFO sightings and alien visitations from witnesses in the UK. He quite proudly stated that he had been all around the country. From Surrey to the West Midlands. It was a small statement, but incredibly telling.

    The entire UK – England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland – from Surrey to the West Midlands. A distance of about 100 miles give or take.

    Sigh. *dunks ginger nut disappointedly*

    This country is a beautiful one – when at its best. The North is a part of it, a big part. It is as beautiful, and ugly, and varied as the stories which should be coming out of it. The stories which should stand toe-to-toe with others from all over this country, and all over this world. Not in opposition, but alongside, representing this land in it’s entirety.

    It’s grim up north? Yeah, sometimes it is. But in one indie writer’s humble opinion, it’s a truckload more. So why not give us a chance to show you?

    In the meantime, I have a soggy bit of biscuit to fish out of my mug.

    ‘til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    7th August 2026

  • Episode Eight Now Released!

    After a mad week, and having finally made it back to the UK – I can announce the beta version of Episode VIII is finally available here.

    This month ’til the End of the World sees an odd turn of events. A beauty competition. Melting faces. And the introduction of magick to the world – as well as a new character that I personally love.

    For fans of the Avalon books, you might start to notice a little more connective tissue here. For those of you who’ve journeyed with ’til the End of the World so far, the world is about to get more than a bit stranger.

    ’til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    26th June 2026

  • Masculinity in Fiction: Writing in Today’s World

    Beard glitter rules, end of.

    What is a man?

    To even ask the question these days feels uncomfortable. Like, in itself, it is an act of political point scoring or defensive toxicity. As if by asking the question, you’re about to launch into a (not so vaguely) misogynistic hyper-testosterone-fuelled tirade while you wait for your pizza to be delivered, or wade in on the ever-present bathroom debate (just let people pee in peace already). Yet, for all our (writing from a man’s perspective) perceived and actual toxicity and historical abuse of power dominating the conversation, there are also competing movements around male mental health as a quiet epidemic.

    How the heck is anyone who identifies as male meant to navigate this minefield? And how can we, as writers of fiction, do our part?

    To answer that is to answer the question I first posed. We, as writers, turn a mirror on the world. Our male characters are the answer to the question ‘what is a man?’ The ones which may very well outlive us. So how we choose to write is very important.

    A Little Context

    The first thing to acknowledge is that there is no universal truth or experience. Hence, I’ll explain a little where I’m coming from. I grew up mainly in the nineties and early noughties, where, in simple teenage terms, the line between masculinity and femininity was very clear. The apex man was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the apex woman was Pamela Anderson. Men liked women, women liked men.

    Fast-forward to 2026 and what a load of bollocks that turned out to be. I, as a cis gay man, quite happily don’t give a flying rat’s arse about how much I can bench (which I learned recently is a sports term also), or who won the World Cup in 1966 (I think it may have been Paraguay?). I do not have an entire box set on the Romans or the Spartans, although I must admit a healthy crush on Gerard Butler.

    I do, however, like a beer. Sometimes more than one too many. I do enjoy a bit of mindless violence perpetuated against European bad guys in Los Angeles towers (welcome to the party, eh?), genuinely prefer pants to a kilt, and shave my face about as often as Paraguay wins the World Cup. And tomorrow, I’ll likely wear mismatched socks as I tackle our garden with a variety of brightly coloured instruments. Like a man.

    So, at some point, I figured out that being a guy meant a few things. It meant that if you wanted to be respectful, you walked on the other side of the street when it was just you and an unknown woman by herself, particularly at night. It meant making sure the door was open if you were alone at work with another person. It meant being expected to deal with the house spiders in the bedroom (as in removal, not building them a little cot). It meant hiding a part of yourself if it wasn’t manly enough, because people would then ‘know’.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying ‘poor me’ by any stretch of the imagination. These things keep other people (and to be honest, yourself) safe and comfortable. Unfortunately, we live in a world where these assumptions aren’t entirely stereotypical – they exist. But why do they exist? Because some men don’t get that the world isn’t fundamentally just theirs.

    How Did This Apply to My Writing?

    So, yeah, this is the bit where indie authors probably switch on again. I’ve looked back at my writing some time ago, and something slowly became apparent from my first two books. We’re talking nearly 10 years ago now, when I was a late twenty-something rather than a late thirty-something (soon looking at being a post-modern-early-forty something). And the realisation was this – God, I was a prick about gay men and masculinity.

    It was all over my first two books, Heroes & Demons and Avalon. In both novels, there are key gay characters. Rick Carter, Ben Ramirez, Artie Abrams and Matt Merrick. Most of them masculine (ish), most of them bears of some description – if you don’t know what bears are, that’s a whole ‘nother article sometime – and underlying it all was the sense that I had to justify that they were still men. That I had to make some point that being gay didn’t make you feminine. Didn’t make you a woman. And why?

    I mean, strangely enough, this didn’t apply to straight men or women in my work. Women were CEOs, hot-headed, soft and gentle, or violent and insane. They were a spectrum, beautiful and unique, each one of them, but defined by their character, not by their femininity (or by whether some had loads and some had none). The straight guys were the same, some were softly spoken and kind-hearted, some were absolute selfish pricks – and everything in between.

    So what gives? And then the answer struck me…

    On some level, I had internalised the notion that for a gay man specifically, feminine = bad, masculine = good. What the actual… well, you get the last word.

    It made me examine things I didn’t like about myself, and that took a lot of introspection. I could probably argue the culture I grew up in was pretty homophobic – and as such took on a kind of internalised homophobic misogyny. And I could probably see in my influence that portrayals of gay men in media were incredibly feminised and one-note. Even the most ‘normal’ masculine gay man I remember on primetime television (Will from Will & Grace) slowly but surely became a hyper-feminine camp version of himself by the time it ended.

    I was reacting, and I was subconsciously embedding that shit in my work.

    So What Next?

    Having that understanding was a revelation. Mainly because it meant I could confront a truth about myself – and in that way sit a lot more comfortably with my overall personality and quirks. It allowed me to realise that, actually, it isn’t always about performing who you are to the world in line with others’ expectations. It’s about being who you are, so throw a cocktail umbrella in your pint of bitter if you wish. Pop on the nail polish if you think it’ll make your toes sing. And glitter? Bloody well love the stuff – they do beard glitter now, do ya know? That has especially made me happier, personally.

    In terms of my writing, I went back. I didn’t, nor would I ever want to, fundamentally change the characters I’d already created or their relations to one another. But what I did do was clean up my act a little bit. I took those bits which I felt were trying to justify their own masculinity and, as a result, ended up with a better, healthier outlook presented within those novels.

    But I didn’t stop there. After that point, it’s no coincidence I turned to a comedy-drama set around the lives of three gay men (Proud Marys). Here I could tackle the issue head-on, in my own way, and really dig deep into all different types of men – yes, that is what he said. I wrote drag queens and transformation next to all-around nice guys and toxic smokers. I challenged chavs, even the gay ones, and interrogated what it meant to be gay and married to a woman. Some of my favourite lines and moments of all time came from the over-the-top Juan Rodriguez, whether drunkenly demonstrating pole dancing technique to strippers set to Private Dancer, or gliding through the moonlight in his kimono.

    I took what I was quite clearly already doing for straight men and women, and applied it to gay men as well. And in doing so, the shackles of who I could and would confidently write about changed. As did a fundamental aspect of my practice – the characters.

    Why Does it Matter?

    It brings us back at the end to what I asked at the beginning – what is a man? A man is the images we write and the characters we produce. A man, in the eyes of others, becomes who we are. Both those we encounter in our day-to-day lives and the characters we create in the world capture this snapshot in time – this little slice of the cultural zeitgeist.

    People will learn from us – again, the us we are in the real world out there – and in the legacy of the characters we leave behind. In our practice, to narrow down to just one type of man is incredibly harmful. I’m not saying we have a job to sanitise or remove negative representation altogether – in fact, that’s quite the opposite of what I’m saying.

    I’m saying if you’re writing male characters, make some incredibly feminine. Make some incredibly masculine. Make some happy to hold the door open for you, and others toxic bellends. Write them in ways that show the world what we want to happen – a world in which all men can be respectful and tolerant of others – and also condemn the behaviours we don’t. Let a man enjoy a football game without homophobic slurs being necessary – but if they become necessary to the story, make it clear he’s a knob.

    Make sure your characters show readers of our books that it is okay to be a man. And that being a man is a wide and beautiful spectrum, like any other characteristic. That it’s okay to change over time, and be something different or something else as time goes by.

    But also, make it clear that the one thing being a man doesn’t give you is the right to make anyone else feel lesser or unsafe. That is not what a man is. That, my friend, is just being a prick.

    ‘til the End
    Rick Rawes
    Leeds, West Yorkshire
    10th July 2026