Hello lovely supporters,

Just wanted to let you know, in case you already didn't, that my debut novel, Villager, is now out in the world. If you didn't get chance to pledge for a first edition hardback, I do have a few for sale direct, signed, with a bookmark made by my mum, Jo, featuring one of her linoprints from inside. If you'd like one of these, please drop me an email via my website <a href="https://tom-cox.com/contact/">https://tom-cox.com/contact/</a>. I'm only sending to the UK right now, due to the vast costs of international postage, but Blackwells bookshop will ship overseas for zero charge.

The book also has a soundtrack, the lost album Wallflower by the mysterious Californian songwriter RJ McKendree. The vinyl sold out almost instantly but downloads, cassettes and CDs are available here: <a href="https://rjmckendree.bandcamp.com">https://rjmckendree.bandcamp.com</a>

Finally, I've now given my website <a href="https://www.tom-cox.com">https://tom-cox.com</a> a much-needed update. Lots and lots of writing on there, plus links to my new podcast, and an improved subscription system. I'll be sending out some free original art by my parents to early subscribers who take out subscriptions at the £5 per month or more rate. 

Thanks for reading!

Tom


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Villager/my new website

Dear lovely Help The Witch supporter,

Apologies if you've seen this as an update via the funding page for one of my other previous books but I wanted to give you a little preview of some of the art for my upcoming debut novel, Villager: Joe McLaren (who you might know as the man behind the cover of Help The Witch) has come up with a wonderful cover, and my mum Jo has been hard at work on some linoprints for the inside. There will also be a map of the village by my dad, Mick.

Villager is a book of mossy paths, lost music, stories that still breathe under the earth, ancient stones, eco terrorism, bemused hill gods, thwarted love, rivers, psychedelia and logs, covering almost two centuries of life in a fictional West Country village. It will be published in April 2022 but those who pledge for the book will receive a copy a month before it hits the shops.

The supporter list is closing very soon, so if you'd like to reserve a signed first edition hardback with your name in the back, now would be a great time to do so. You can do that - and aid the book's funding in the process - here: <a href="https://unbound.com/books/villager/">https://unbound.com/books/villager/</a>

Thanks again for helping to make my books happen!

Tom


 <img alt class="doksoft_image_img" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0728/3615/3620/files/3C8C766A-726C-4894-9D79-53B011C23A67_b8e05cda-323f-4506-b93b-c628b7c61c0f.png?v=1690910828" width="314" height="500">



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Villager: the artwork!

Dear Help The Witch supporters,

Some of you might already know about the very exciting HELP THE WITCH concept LP. Ten of my favourite songwriters and duos have each written a song based on a story from the book, and the result will be released on gatefold vinyl, featuring Joe McLaren's original cover art, next summer. I have now heard the finished, mastered record and it is AMAZING. I honestly believe it's leagues better than the book: a whole new, higher work of art. I wanted to let you know that there is now a trailer up on the funding page where you can hear a little sample of some of the music: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvdJ55eE5o8&amp;feature=emb_logo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvdJ55eE5o8&amp;feature=emb_logo</a>

The funding page can be found here: <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fromhererecords/help-the-witch-the-concept-album?ref=project_tweet">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fromhererecords/help-the-witch-the-concept-album?ref=project_tweet</a>. We are over 2/3 of the way to our target now but running out of time - the deadline is the 28th Dec - and it would be absolutely amazing if this project came to fruition. I am not taking a penny from it but the musicians have come up with such magic, I want to see their work rewarded. There is an option to pledge for the gatefold vinyl, but also for a digital download. There are a few other extras too, including Papercut Art and corn dollies by Gemma Khawaja and Stick In The Wheel, both of whom have contributed songs to the record. Look out also for some art by my dad going up on the pledge page.

In other news, the hardback of my latest book Ring The Hill came out in November. The paperback will be out in spring, as will the audiobook, which I recorded this week with a heavy cold (they edited out all the sneezing and coughing, although it's a bit... husky). My next book, Notebook, is now funding with Unbound here <a href="https://unbound.com/books/notebook/">https://unbound.com/books/notebook/</a>. There will also be an audiobook of Help The Witch next year. The book won a Shirley Jackson Horror Writing Award in late summer and got this review in the Guardian the other day: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/04/help-the-witch-by-tom-cox-review?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/04/help-the-witch-by-tom-cox-review?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks</a>.

All the best,

Tom

Help The Witch: the concept LP

Dear lovely Help The Witch pledgers,

I have some exciting news, which I have been dying to tell everyone about for a while: over the last few months, some of my favourite British musicians have gathered to each record a song inspired by one of the stories from Help The Witch. The overall result, Help The Witch: The Concept album, is now recorded, and currently being mastered, ready to be released next year by Stick In The Wheel's From Here records - both as a beautiful gatefold LP, featuring Joe McLaren's original cover art, and as a digital download. You can find out a little bit more about the album - and order your own first pressing copy, if you'd like to help fund the project and make it a reality - here: <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fromhererecords/help-the-witch-the-concept-album">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fromhererecords/help-the-witch-the-concept-album</a>. I have now heard all the songs, and I am absolutely blown away by the results. Each one takes a seed of inspiration from one of the stories, and takes it to a new, much more exciting place. (From Here will soon be adding some samples to the Kickstarter page for pledgers to listen to.)


 <img alt class="doksoft_image_img" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0728/3615/3620/files/EICZv_ZXkAEbW7Y.jpg?v=1690910805" width="500" height="375">


My next book NOTEBOOK is also now up for funding: <a href="https://unbound.com/books/notebook/">https://unbound.com/books/notebook/</a>

Finally, I have some signed copies of Ring The Hill and 21st-Century Yokel here, available direct from me, signed, with a hare bookmark made by my mum. If you'd like to order one, please contact me via this link: <a href="http://tom-cox.com/contact/">http://tom-cox.com/contact/</a>

Thanks for reading!

Tom

Help The Witch: The Concept LP!

<a href="http://tom-cox.com/uncategorized/a-true-story-about-two-trees/">http://tom-cox.com/uncategorized/a-true-story-about-two-trees/</a>

A  True Story About Two Trees, And The Book They Made

'These stories are a delight' Guardian
'Often unnerving, frequently funny and always original, the tangled roots of these haunted stories reach into deep, dark places to unearth an alternative England' Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing
As night draws through country lanes, and darkness sweeps across hills and darkness sweeps across hills and hedgerows, shadows appear where figures are not; things do not remain in their places; a new home is punctured by abandoned objects; a watering hole conceals depths greater than its swimmers can fathom.
Riddled with talismans and portents, saturated by shadows beneath trees and whispers behind doors, these ten stories broaden the scope of folk tales as we know them. Inspired by our native landscapes and traversing boundaries of the past and future, this collection is Tom Cox's first foray into fiction. Funny, strange and poignant, it elicits the unexpected and unseen to raise our hackles and set imaginations whirring.

An Extract from 'Wood House'


 It was 35 years since Sandra had first rented the cottage and since then
 much about it had remained static. She had lost the last of a head of
 startingly jet black hair down one of the two upstairs plugholes, a
 succession of small dogs who were now interred behind a Buddleia in the
 garden and an intermittently wretched husband who wasn’t. But it was still
 the same calm, unpulsating space that it had been in 1972, on the first day
 she’d walked into it: same 1940s aga dominating the small kitchen, same
 brown living room wallpaper vaguely stained with the nicotine of her
 predecessor, and, most crucially of all, the same monthly rent. It was a
 building that oozed quiet. She could reach the threshold of number 18 in no
 more than eleven paces from her back door but that was enough for an
 enormous change in ambience to take place: a change that had grown more
 extreme with the years, or which she had become more tuned into, or perhaps
 a bit of both. She would notice now, for example, upon her occasional
 visits to the garden of number 18 in spring or summer, that the air in had
 a thick, almost sparkly quality that made being in it feel a little like
 being inside an old sepia postcard, and also that the air seemed to be
 rigorously observing the garden’s boundaries. Maybe it had always been this
 way, but maybe it had grown. A house, Sandra felt, could be, and might even
 primarily be, an accumulation of all that had happened inside it. Furniture
 and people could be taken away, a large firm could be sent in to deep clean
 the carpets and cobwebbed corners, but something would remain. Sometimes
 what remained was bad. Then, because it was still there, it might prompt
 another badness to occur. Then, before you knew it, a succession of
 badnesses had built up and, even if there was an attempt at a goodness, the
 cumulative badnesses was too much for it, and it would be repelled,
 effortlessly ejected with a strength so great, so fortified by time, as to
 be invincible.


 Twelve different sets of tenants had come and gone from number 18 in
 Sandra’s time and, although that not might seem an unusually huge amount,
 over the course of three and a half decades, she could see the pattern, and
 it was undeniable: anyone else who’d been able to watch the house at such
 close quarters would have seen it too. Some new inhabitants arrived wearing
 their own previous sadnesses like big tiring coats but those were not the
 really agonising ones to watch. What hurt Sandra was seeing the ones with
 the open faces, the unblemished idealised concepts of the constant pinnacle
 that existence could be: the good-looking ones with the nests of healthy
 hair, earthenware mugs, young pets and carefully cultivated plantpot
 collections. The photos with the listing of the house always undersold it,
 didn’t even hint at the proximity of the river, or the old well in the
 enclosed front courtyard, and a “can’t believe our luck” expression amongst
 new arrivals became familiar to Sandra. She knew what was in store for
 them, but she said nothing. She brightly offered local footpath and grocery
 knowledge, kindly fed cats, dogs and rabbits. She played her role of
 Divorced Lady Across The Track Who Is Ever So Nice But A Little Quirky,
 With Her Interests In Bones And UFOs.


 In 1981, a tall slim American arrived, having secured a job teaching
 history at the university on the edge of town. After a month, a similarly
 tall and slim American wife arrived to join him, but left after only three
 months. He stayed on alone until that same autumn, leaving on a day of
 tungsten-edged Russian winds, chasing paperwork into the river as he loaded
 a white van without assistance. A week earlier he had spoken to Sandra of a
 dream he’d had of squelchy wetness leaking up from house’s floorboards and
 the rooms being overrun with unnamed amphibians. The American’s successors
 were two nurses: best friends who Sandra once saw holding hands in the
 queue for the cinema in town but whose screaming arguments carried through
 the open windows of the house in summer, all the way to Sandra’s place and
 beyond to die on the hillside, muffled by bracken. They somehow lasted four
 whole years, before departing in silence in the same VW camper van.


 Sandra only ever stayed the night at number 18 once, in 1978, although not
 by intention. This was not long after Sandra’s divorce, during the
 residency of Evelyn, a social worker with a topiary of red curly hair.
 After too much of Evelyn’s potent homebrew, Sandra and Evelyn had fallen
 asleep on opposite sofas in the front room, a table between them, hosting a
 ouija board and a half-completed game of Scrabble. Five hours later, Sandra
 had woken with a start, after feeling one cold finger trace itself not
 entirely unpleasantly up her wrist and a thin unisex voice whisper, “You
 have five years” in her ear. A slight fog had settled outside, stretching
 thirty feet beyond the river into the garden, but no more, at neck height.
 Sandra sat up and, with Evelyn still semi-comatose opposite her, crept out
 of the door and walked the eleven paces home, through mist and abrupt
 nonmist. Without telling anyone, she spent the next half decade convinced
 of her forecasted death: so convinced that, once beyond the deadline, her
 immense relief led her to live with a new looseness and swagger, feel
 almost grateful to the icy fingered nightmare voice, and embark on a series
 of flings, all of which were were terminated at a time strictly of her
 choosing. The only regrettable one of these was with Russell, a salesman
 she had met during his seven month tenancy at number 18 in 1987, but not
 had relations with until much later, when he had moved to a large executive
 housing estate closer to town, all of whose male residents, not discounting
 Russell, were vigilant in washing their cars at least once every three
 days. Resolutely unartistic in bed, Russell had complained when Sandra had
 entered his car with an open drink can and instructed her to leave it on
 the road, and not long after that it was all over. She’d later discovered
 from the landlords of number 18, Steve and Berenice, that upon his
 departure Russell had stolen two of the chairs and left a broadsword and a
 box of pornographic videotapes in the loft. Evelyn stopped speaking to
 Sandra in 1986, when Sandra refused to come to her wedding in Cyprus, on
 the grounds of fear of flying, but Sandra often wondered how she was doing
 and got within a couple of steps of half a small notion of trying to track
 her down online.


 From 1996 - the same year Sandra took the photo of the ghost on the gate
 outside number 18 - the tenants in the house seemed to get drastically
 younger, their clothes more complimentary to their body shapes. Time and
 again, she’d guess the age of a tenant as 22 or 23, only to find that they
 were in their early or even mid 30s. Sometimes, looking at the youthful
 people in the house, Sandra would be awed at her own reaction to their hair
 and skin: the radiance of both, their absolute ungreyness. Because of this,
 the pallor of the tenants upon moving out was even more troubling to
 witness, as if number 18 itself had given triggered the inexorable decline
 that is halted only by the cemetery. In 1999, Toby and Anne arrived in the
 house in a flurry of small hens and Moroccan rugs. Sandra had by this point
 begun to do some research into the history of number 18 and made some
 interesting findings. Taking over some sloes and apples she had foraged for
 her new neighbours, she asked Toby, who worked with computers, about what
 she’d heard about the Millennium Bug, and whether it would make the
 universe collapse in a few weeks when the new century arrived, and Toby
 said it was nonsense. The conversation didn’t make Sandra trust computers
 any more than she already did, which was barely at all, but it did give her
 a trust in Toby, who had an unguarded smile and was the first man for many
 years to live at number 18 who owned a smaller than average car. Anne
 maintained two jobs, as a baker in the mornings and as a yoga teacher and
 receptionist at the Buddhist centre in town in the evening, and the couple
 were trying for their first child. For the first six months, their tenancy
 only seemed to be marred by their problems with number 20, the house
 attached to number 18 on the side furthest from Sandra’s, also owned by
 Steve and Berenice, which was at the time being rented by two girls in
 their mid twenties - Sandra had initially taken them for teenagers - who
 did noisy step exercises against the joining wall and had weekly parties
 centring around what Sandra called “thumpy thump” music. Sandra soon became
 invested in Anne and Toby’s battle with number 20, not to mention in Anne
 and Toby themselves: their future as parents, as keepers of bantam hens,
 and as the first contented residents of number 18 in living memory. She
 even went so far as to send a letter to Steve and Berenice, explaining that
 she too had been disturbed by the noise from number 20, even though that
 was not strictly true. The thumpy thump music died down towards the summer
 of the century’s first year and an impressive and plush new set of garden
 furniture appeared outside number 18, so it was with considerable shock and
 dismay that, one day, on the dusty track separating them, Sandra bumped
 into Anne and received the news that she was moving out, and with even more
 shock and dismay that, over a cup of tea in Sandra’s kitchen, twenty
 minutes later, she discovered that the decision had been triggered by the
 afternoon the previous week when Anne had walked in on Toby, who was naked,
 on their own sofa, intertwined with the more strapping of the two girls
 from number 20, who herself was at least half naked. Although she would not
 act on it for a long time, it was at this point that Sandra first got the
 idea of burning number 18 to the ground.

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