Well, this is a turn up for the books.
If you’ve read any of my previous posts you’ll already know that I have a knack for finding playing cards when I’m out for a walk. Not always, but regularly enough to be noteworthy.
Yesterday this took on a new dimension as I was walking our dog down Gypsy Grove. It’s a half-mile Victorian footpath that has seen better days. Despite being slap bang in the middle of an urban setting, it has trees and is overgrown in places, with high-walled back gardens on either side. I love to walk our dog down there. It’s great for sniffs and spotting the odd squirrel or cat (which he loves).
We call it “Secret Alley”, and yesterday it placed a strange new treasure in my path.
My eyes were drawn to it straight away.
But I ask you, would you bring a planchette from a Ouija board home with you?
I’ll let you into a little secret: I have been wrestling with a gargantuan case of writer’s block recently. I hadn’t written a word for almost five months. It was having a detrimental effect on the old noggin, mental health-wise.
The project I was working on had gotten away from me, to the point where I was like a rabbit in the headlights anytime I even contemplated trying to work on it.
What I very recently decided to do was to put that project to one side for the time being. Now I am very slowly tapping away at something else. I’ve given myself permission for it to be stupid and bad, just as long as I do a little bit of writing as regularly as I can. And it’s FUN!
And no sooner do I open myself back up to the tides and moods of the muse, than I find this object in my path.
Is there anybody there?





Bonkers!! Haha.
Glad I found your substack - hopefully you can get your mojo back soon!
I’m finding it difficult to connect with like-minded horror writers here to push on and grow, and your substack was a breath of fresh air.
So I hope my support helps you to!
That is a find, definitely a sign—maybe that the words are there, that they are just waiting on the other side, the spirits who want to speak. You don’t ignore that one.