In brief: Bloody Parchment's Icy Sedgwick

Icy Sedgwick is a veteran of the SA Horrorfest Bloody Parchment short story competition with her particular brand of quirky gothic tales that dig deep into mythology and history, specifically with her love for ancient Egypt. Her story "Midnight Screams at Holborn" ask what happens if a brave young man decides to take up a bet to spend the night in a haunted train station.

If you're yet to pick up your copy of Bloody Parchment: Blue Honey and the Valley of Shadow, you can do so right here at Amazon. But, without further ado, let's chat with Icy...

What darkness lies at the heart of your story?
I've always been fascinated by abandoned or 'lost' tube stations, and the British Museum station is a particular favourite. After all, how many stations can boast a legend of an Egyptian princess ghost? I knew that a newspaper had offered a cash prize for anyone willing to spend the night in the station, so I decided to slam the legend and the truth together.

Essentially, I think it's about the power of curiosity and the lengths people will go to when they really want something. Not to mention the strange things that must lie beneath a city as old as London.

What do you love the most about writing?
Seeing the story come to life. It's one thing having a cool idea bouncing around inside your head, but it's quite another to see that actually appear on the page. Once you've got it out of your mind and turned it into something tangible, you can share it with other people.

Why does reading matter?
It's a great way to expand your horizons. Few forms of media really give you the opportunity to step into someone else's shoes. Video games are great at putting you into a situation, where your actions cause things to happen to you. Films let you see the world as another person. But films are quite passive and video games lay everything out for you. Books require you to use your imagination and I think it's the space between imagined experience and the story that helps to increase your empathy. Plus it's a better way to spend your time than endlessly scrolling through Facebook.

An excerpt from "Midnight Screams at Holborn"...

Marnie put the board on the bench beside her and then unscrewed the lid off her flask to pour herself a cup of coffee. Simon fished out his own flask and did the same.
“Here’s to a night of ghost hunting!” Marnie held up her cup.
Simon knocked his cup against hers, toasting the evening with coffee. He drank quickly, wrapping his fingers around the cup to steady his hands. He’d never spent a whole night with Marnie before. What would people say if they found out she was down here with him?
“What did anyone tell you about the ghosts?” she asked after she’d drained her cup.
“I was given this,” replied Simon, handing over the pamphlet, “but everyone just focuses on the Egyptian princess. How many ghosts are there?”
“Mostly people just talk about the princess, but I’ve heard all sorts of stories. Most stations have at least one ghost. Wouldn’t it be fun if they walk the tunnels at night, and pop up in each other’s stamping ground? I suppose they must get dreadfully bored otherwise. Wouldn’t you?” Marnie pouted.
“The pamphlet says you can hear the screams of the princess all the way down the tunnel at Holborn,” said Simon.

What other things have you written? 
I have two series on the go. The Grey O'Donnell Series are Westerns, though book 2 veers into weird Western territory. I tried to focus on the more pulp/adventure side of the genre. So the books are fun adventure romps, rather than Cormac McCarthy-style Westerns. Book 1 is The Guns of Retribution which you can buy here.

My second series is the Underground City books. The first one, The Necromancer's Apprentice, emerged after a throwaway comment; I wondered what The Sorcerer's Apprentice would look like with mummies instead of brooms! I'm hoping to get book 2, The Necromancer's Rogue, out by the end of 2017. You can buy book 1 here on Amazon or here for other retailers.

I also have a collection of short stories available for free on my website. The stories were all previously published elsewhere but I pulled them together for the Harbingers collection. We've got angry Greek goddesses, a steampunk revenge story, Resurrection men, and even the Black Death in there. You can get your copy here.

Bloody Parchment's Icy Sedgwick

Today another Bloody Parchment veteran, Icy Sedgwick, stops by to chat a little more about herself and her writing. Welcome, Icy!

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm a Geordie born and bred, and I live and work in Newcastle. By day I teach graphic design, and by night I'm either working on fiction, or working on my PhD, which looks at set design in contemporary haunted house films. If I'm not doing that I'm knitting or crocheting. People laugh at me but hey, can their hobbies turn string into clothing using just two sticks?

What gives in your story? 

I've got a lifelong fascination with mummies, and I wanted an excuse to work one into a story! I'd had the title in mind for ages, and I never really knew what to do with it, so I just sat down and started writing. It ended up turning into a story about an evacuee, sent to an isolated country house (because it has to be isolated, or it's not Gothic) to stay with her aunt, but all is not as it seems, especially since she's acquired a mummy in a case, and something keeps talking to her when it's quiet...

What do you love about reading and writing speculative fiction?

I love the ease with which you can just dive into the unknown. It's the 'what if?' nature of speculative fiction. But then it's not just plot-driven, or escapist - speculative fiction can deal with huge themes and really important issues, but it does so in such a way that you actually find yourself invested in them, while more literary forms can sometimes make you feel patronised or preached at.

Is there a novel or movie that you feel has been the most influential on you, that you keep coming back to? 

I can't think of a specific singular book or film, it's more been about genres or authors, but I do think Neverwhere would be an influence. I love the way Neil Gaiman used real parts of London, and I won't lie, I did used to hope I'd stumble across the entrance to London Below when I lived in the capital. As far as I know, I never did.

How do you approach the writing process?

From an angle ;-) In all seriousness, I try to approach it with a sense of whimsy because when you look at it, the whole process is slightly silly. You're essentially making things up - there are few other times in life with doing that is acceptable, unless you're a politician. So I have my idea, which either comes from something I've (often) misheard, or a 'what if?', and then it's a question of following the rabbit hole to see how far it goes.

LINKS
Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, The Guns of Retribution, The Necromancer's Apprentice.

Six of the Best with Icy Sedgwick on The Necromancer's Apprentice

We recently celebrated the release of Icy Sedgwick's The Necromancer's Apprentice, published under Dark Continents Publishing's Tales of Darkness and Dismay line. Today I have Icy hanging out here at my spot to answer a little Q&A about her world-building.

Welcome Icy! Sum up The Necromancer's Apprentice up in no more than 16 words. Go!

A young magician gets an opportunity of a lifetime and squanders it through impatience!

Tell us about the City Above and the City Below?

They're not quite one on top of the other – they’re more alongside one another, but one is above ground and the other is below. The City Above is a gleaming sort of place, criss-crossed by a network of boulevards and canals, and the Underground City is a Dickensian warren of slums and 'unusual' emporia selling everything from more time to lost voices. Jyx and his family live in the Underground City but he managed to win a scholarship to the Academy in the City Above, so he has to make the trip above ground every day to get to school.

Jyx constantly overreaches himself. What motivates him as a character?

He desperately wants to prove himself because he's obviously painfully aware of his poor background, and many of the other students at the Academy look down on him because he doesn't come from wealth or status. He knows he's naturally talented, but he doesn't pace himself because he feels the Academy are holding him back. Besides that, he also recognises the application for the magickal theory that he's learning out in the real world, and he's continually looking for ways to earn more money to repay his mother for all of his school supplies that she's paid for.

4) If you could put together an EP with five tracks to accompany The Necromancer's Apprentice, what songs would you choose?

Naturally The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas, which people would recognise from Fantasia. I listened to a lot of Egyptian-themed music and movie scores so I'd also add Enduring the Eternal Molestation of Flame by Nile, and The Legend of the Scorpion King from The Mummy Returns soundtrack. I think I'd probably also add In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg and Toccata and Fugue in D minor by JS Bach.

What happens when people die in Jyx's world and why are necromancers necessary?

So-called “ordinary” people are still buried and mourned in what I suppose we’d consider a traditional Western fashion, but those who possess considerable knowledge or power are interred differently, and a link is maintained between their body and their soul in case anyone ever needs to contact them again – in this case, the necromancer would perform the duties, and would act as ‘interpreter’ between the living and the dead because the necromancer can traverse the Veil between the worlds. There’s only one necromancer, Eufame Delsenza, and she doesn’t just perform this function of mediating between the dead and the living, she also does a lot of magickal research herself, as well as performing more political or diplomatic roles. She probably doesn’t need to mediate between the Cities and other magickal institutions but Eufame is very much of the view that if you want something doing well, you’d better do it yourself.

Will we be seeing more of this setting in the foreseeable future?

Yes, I'm planning a couple of short serials about other characters in the Underground City, and there's a sequel planned in which we'll meet the necromancer general's siblings, which are far older and scarier than she is. It's a fun setting to work in, it lets me explore daft little ideas that I have and spin them into something creepy, or something magickal.

Bio
Icy Sedgwick was born in the North East of England, and lives and works in Newcastle. She has been writing with a view to doing so professionally for over ten years, and has had several stories included in anthologies, including Short Stack and Bloody Parchment: The Root Cellar & Other Stories.

She spends her non-writing time working on a PhD in Film Studies, considering the use of set design in contemporary horror. Icy had her first book, a pulp Western named The Guns of Retribution, published in 2011, and her horror fantasy, The Necromancer’s Apprentice, was released in March 2014.

Website: www.icysedgwick.com
Twitter: twitter.com/icypop
Facebook: www.facebook.com/miss.icy.sedgwick
Google +: plus.google.com/+IcySedgwick/about

Icy Sedgwick, Bloody Parchment 2012 finalist

The talented Icy Sedgwick is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but she writes some of the most charming, inventive and enthralling stories I've encountered in ages. She's a regularly contributor to the #FridayFlash phenomenon, and I'm overjoyed that she submitted her story, Protection, to the Bloody Parchment short story competition, and that it was well received by the judges. Welcome, Icy! What planted the seed for your story?

I was listening to a piece by Mussorgsky and it ended with a tolling bell. I just sat back and listened, and the mental image I got was of a small village, besieged by some menace, and the bell was a warning that trouble was coming. The rest of it just sprang from that! I'm not particularly musical but sound has a very specific way of generating images in my head that I can turn into stories.

What are some of the themes you treated in your tale? 

I don't specifically think about themes while I'm writing, but looking back on the story, I suppose my biggest concern was that of the outsider, and how they can be treated by their society – until their unique skillset is required by that society, and the community expect help. Should the outsider get involved anyway, or refuse the help that they never had?

What are the hallmarks of a great horror/dark fantasy author and story? 

I think imagination is key to dark fantasy, and a good story should take you somewhere that you've never been before. Horror should be something that above all horrifies. Some people seem to think that means being gory or explicit, and while that's part of horror, that's also the kind of thing to which you can become desensitised, so I feel that telling a chilling story is harder. Not everyone is going to be grossed out by something gory, so you need to find that key to tapping into what freaks someone out.

How do you approach your creative process? 

It depends on what I'm doing, really! But nine times out of ten, I'll come up with an idea, roughly sketch out the beginning, middle and end, and then just go for it. I let it all splurge out, and then I go back and tidy it up. I've tried outlining my work but I get so tied up in knots over it that I end up writing nothing at all, so it's better for me to just have a rough idea where I want to go.

What are you working on now? 



I'm in the last edits stage of a dark fantasy novella called The Necromancer's Apprentice, which is essentially what might have happened if Disney had swapped their sorceror for a necromancer, and the helpful brooms for bloodthirsty mummies!

You can follow me on Twitter @icypop, and both my pulp Western novella, The Guns of Retribution, and my collection of shourt stories, Checkmate & Other Stories, are available for Kindle from Amazon.

Mummies in Newcastle upon Tyne

Icy Sedgwick is one of my favourite people. Not only do we share a love for the written word, but we agree that ancient Egyptians, and mummies in particular, make fascinating people with whom to have tea. Of course Icy gets more time to visit with our old friends than I do, so today I'm handing over my blog to her so she can chat about her most recent expedition.

* * * *

Newcastle upon Tyne, in the cold north east of England, is perhaps one of the more unlikely places to find a mummy, but here at the Great North Museum (formerly the Hancock Museum), we have not one mummy, but two. The Egyptian Gallery in the newly refurbished museum houses a plethora of artefacts, including jewellery, scrolls, funerary ephemera, and a large statue of Sekhmet.

Our younger mummy is Irtyru; she dates to between 664-525 BC, and she was found at Qurneh on the west bank of the Nile near Thebes. Scientists believe she was between 30 and 35 when she died. She was sold at auction in 1825 and then donated to the Literary and Philosophical Society. Unfortunately, the Victorians didn't have access to modern scientific methods of investigation, and she was unwrapped in 1830. She was varnished to preserve her, which explains her skin colour, and her original wrappings and organs are long since lost. I can't help feeling sorry for her, missing as she is her internal organs and those amulets lodged within her wrappings, but she does has a habit of firing the imaginations of those youngsters who come to visit.

Our other mummy is Bakt en Hor, known as 'The Lady'. She lived between 1070 and 713 BC in Gourneh, Thebes, and CT scanning tells us she was between 21 and 35 when she died. She also had a full set of teeth, and her bones show no signs of bone disease. She was bought in Egypt in 1820, and donated to the Literary and Philosophical Society. However, Bakt en Hor was the subject of a mystery until recently. All of her documentation cited her name as being Bakt hor Nekht, translated as meaning 'Servant of Horus the Strong', even as recently as 2008 while she was temporarily on display at Segedenum, our Roman fort at the end of Hadrian’s Wall. A team of specialists decided to investigate further, although the investigation was operating under the caveat that her coffin was not to be opened, and physical samples were not to be taken. Luckily technology has moved on sufficiently that CT scans can tell researchers so much without mummies needing to be examined.

As part of her research, Egyptologist Gill Scott paid a visit to the Literary and Philosophical Society, a somewhat impressive library located near Newcastle's Central Station, and by chance discovered a volume entitled 'The Reports, Papers and Catalogues of the Literary and Philosophical Society, 1820-1821'. The handwritten volume contained newspaper articles and other items, one of which was a scrap of the original wrappings from none other than Bakt en Hor. Archaeological chemist Dr Stephen Buckley subjected the scrap to chemical analysis, and discovered that extreme heat and cheap materials had been used during the embalming process, implying a hurried or incompetent job. A CT scan allowed them to recreate her head, and the high levels of decomposition to her face confirmed this theory.

Further investigation revealed a mistake in naming her. Hieroglyphs expert Alan Fildes noticed a hurried water sign near the bottom of her cartonnage, which had been mistranslated, giving her the name of Bakt hor Nekht. Translated correctly, the name should read Bakt en Hor, and her true name has finally been restored after two hundred years of error. No one knows if her name was written so badly as part of the rush job surrounding her embalming and burial, but I'm quite glad that she's now known by her real name, rather than the wrong one. Before the museum's refurbishment, the old Egyptian gallery also featured a video in which visitors could watch as the CT scan of her skull was used to recreate her face, and the resulting image was one of a beautiful and strong woman. Sadly this video, or image, is no longer in the museum, replaced instead by the History Channel's short video about the investigation into her name.

As fascinating as the Egyptian gallery is, the mummies always take centre stage, and I’m glad that these women now have their real names as they reside in this cold city that lies over 2,600 miles from their homeland.

* * * *

Icy Sedgwick is a writer and film academic who lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom. She’s been fascinated by ancient Egypt since she was eight, and her next book is a retelling of The Sorceror’s Apprentice, substituting brooms for mummies. She often features mummies in her Friday flash fiction, including No Flash and Sand and Snow.

Icy Sedgwick on Characters. #guest

Today I welcome one of my good writing buddies, Icy Sedgwick. Some of you might already be familiar with her fiction from Friday Flash (and if you aren't, shame on you) but she's also got a Western novel out, entitled The Guns of Retribution. Thanks for stopping by, lady, and over to you...

* * * *

One of the questions I'm often asked is "How do you come up with your characters?" It's a tricky question because every character is different, and I don't follow a set formula to generating characters for various roles within a story. Having said that, having strong characters is a crucial part of a story's success, since these creations need to be able to carry your story - especially if you've chosen a first person viewpoint, and the character is essentially telling the story themselves.

I first had an idea to write a gunslinger several years ago. I never got any further than the opening lines of a story, but I knew I wanted to use him in some way. He got mothballed while other, more concrete, projects came along, and I didn't think about my gunslinger any more until the closing weeks of 2010.

I got an email asking if I'd like to write a story of revenge for submission to an independent press. I had several genres to choose from, and remembering my gunslinger, I chose the Western. Coming up with the basic plot was easy enough - Grey O'Donnell comes back to his hometown of Retribution, Arizona, after six years away, and has to confront an old bully, Jasper Roberts, who has risen to the position of sheriff. In the version of The Guns of Retribution that got published in September 2011, Grey is a bounty hunter. What a lot of people don't realise is he started out life as an outlaw.

Grey O'Donnell was originally a train robber, but in the mould of Robin Hood. He'd never steal from anyone who didn't have enough they could afford to lose, and despite his illegal activities, he was a gentleman to everyone he encountered. His companions, the young and enthusiastic Billy Cole, and the stalwart Apache Mahko, were still there, but this time they comprised his 'gang'. About a third of the way into the story, Grey took me aside for a quiet word. He told me that three men weren't really enough to rob trains, and really, he wasn't cut out to be an outlaw. Couldn't he do something else instead?

I sat back and looked at his actions so far. He was very keen on a sense of "right" and "wrong", but he was no lawman, especially not going up against a crooked sheriff. Grey smirked and suggested the role of 'bounty hunter'. Thus his profession was changed, along with his reasons for being back in the vicinity of Retribution. After all, it never sat right that an outlaw would leave his hometown, and travel across the country, only to come back to his old stamping ground to continue his life of crime. A bounty hunter in pursuit of his next pay cheque wouldn't have as many misgivings.

Grey's occupation wasn't the only thing that changed. I started out writing in the first person, but in present tense, as Grey told the story as if it were happening now. Around the time his occupation changed, I switched the entire story into third person, past tense. It gave me more room to be more flamboyant with language. Grey still wasn't happy. This was his story, and he wanted to tell it...so it switched back to first person, albeit now in past tense. That's the version you can read now.

If I can take anything from this process, it's that a story will always evolve - indeed, it needs to, in order to function as a solid narrative. Your characters have valid opinions as to what needs to happen, and when, and if you listen to them, you can end up with something more organic than if you stuck rigidly to a plot outline generated on postcards and Post-It notes. Remember that what you start out with isn't always what you finish with - but that's a good thing.

* * * *

About the author:
Icy Sedgwick was born in the North East of England, and is based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She has been writing with a view to doing so professionally for over ten years, and has had several stories included in anthologies, including Short Stack and Eighty-Nine. She teaches graphic design and spends her non-writing time working on a PhD in Film Studies. Icy had her first book, a Western named The Guns of Retribution, published through Pulp Press in September 2011.

Icy's blog – http://blog.icysedgwick.com
Find her on Twitter @icypop
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/miss.icy.sedgwick
Goodreads – http://www.goodreads.com/Icy_Sedgwick
Buy The Guns of Retribution – http://www.amazon.com/dp/1908544007/

Icy Sedgwick and her Guns of Retribution

I got to know Icy through her Friday Flash pieces--well worth stopping by her blog when she puts these up. Her tales are dark, yet carry a kind of quirky humor. Without further ado, I hand over my blog for a little Q&A.

You're interested not only in writing but film. Do you envision combining your two loves at some point?

I don't know. I've occasionally toyed with the idea of writing a script but I'm not sure where to start. I think in a fairly cinematic way, in that I tend to see my story unfold and I describe what I see, but I'm not convinced I'd be able to translate that into writing. It would be like visualising something, distilling that into words, and then reconstituting it as visuals again. Maybe I'll have a go one day, but for now I think I'll keep my fiction and my film theory separate.

You're quite the mistress of dark short stories. How do these come into being? Visions? Sudden flashes of insight?

It can be anything. It can be a random snippet from a newspaper story, a photo somewhere, a conversation I overhear on public transport - I either get a full blown idea, or just an image in my head, and then I keep asking "What if?" until I get a plot. That's a bit of an oversimplification but I don't even begin to understand the real process behind it so I just go with the flow when it happens. I suppose they tend towards the dark side because I find the darker side of life far more interesting.

You and your partner regularly go ghost-hunting. Has any of this spilled over into your writing? Ever had some strange occurrences you care to share?

I certainly find lots of interesting stories, both in the history of the places we visit, and in the information we get during the investigations, but I don't always like to use them. I suppose in some ways I would feel like it would be disrespectful to use them in a fictional sense. Having said that, I think the strangest experience we had would have to be when we were doing a ouija session at Kielder Castle and Grey O'Donnell, the bounty hunter from my Western, came through to say thank you to me. It really makes you wonder if these characters you work with are complete fantasy, if we bring them into being through the amount of energy we lavish on them through the power of thought, or they're entities that attach themselves to writers.

You've selfpublished a collection of short stories. Tell us more about how you pulled these together and where people can find it?

All fifteen of them were previously published online over the course of two years, but due to some of the sites having funding problems or simply clearing out their archives, the stories had disappeared from the internet. I wanted people to still be able to read them, so I edited them and put them out as a collection. They're mostly what I'd call "weird fiction", so not really horror, but more just about strange things that happen in everyday life. Checkmate & Other Stories is 99c on both Smashwords and Amazon.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28540

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004J8HVXI

You've also written a Western. Tell us a little about Guns of Retribution.

It's a pulp Western set in Arizona in the 1880s. It stars my bounty hunter, Grey, and he is drawn back to his hometown of Retribution while on the trail of a murderer. He has to confront an old nemesis from his past, because if there's one thing Grey doesn't like, it's a bully. It's really inspired more by the Western as a film genre than a literary one, but I did plenty of historical research. I wanted to try and capture the emotional side of the genre, and tap into the mythos somewhat, but I didn't want people to be jolted out of the story by a misplaced gun reference! Plus I really enjoy writing historical fiction so any excuse to do some research is fine by me. I'm currently outlining the sequel, where things take a more supernatural turn.

Who are the three most influential authors in your life, and why?

I couldn't do an interview like this without mentioning Roald Dahl. I loved his books as a child, and I still love them now. I was fascinated by his humourous twist on the macabre, and I think he really wrote books that celebrated children who are seen as a bit "different". I suppose I could relate. I'd also say Neil Gaiman - the breadth of vision in The Sandman is truly astounding, and I love how imaginative his books are. I also want to give credit to Carrie Clevenger, too. The lady is really going places but she's always been so generous with her time, and she's very supportive of me. I really look up to her and I admire how she handles everything.

In brief...

Icy Sedgwick was born in the North East of England, and is based in Newcastle. She spends her time gallivanting around the North East as a blogger and researcher for a paranormal investigations company. Icy has just had her first book, a Western named The Guns of Retribution, published through Pulp Press.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/miss.icy.sedgwick

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/icy_sedgwick

Twitter: @icypop

Blog: http://blog.icysedgwick.com