The Western Gate

The Domain of the Pale Queen
Benjamin Tweddell
Nephente Press

Fiction doesn’t figure large in the pageant of a thousand books I own. What I have with regards to fiction is mostly gothic horror, folk horror, fairy tales, and then the borderland of Myths and legends retold, are they true? and then I veer into reasoning, what is fiction? Is anything wholly fiction?
My own attempts at fiction were littered with experience, dramatic licence yes, acts and theatre condensed from a myriad of time pieces into one occurrence, personalities pestle and mortared into an archetype.
To create work that has no reflection on our lived experience is about as achievable as creating a new colour no-one has ever seen before. Our flavour and experience will permeate any story, deliberately or unconsciously.

Fiction is an ideal medium to express ideas where non-fiction would just stifle an enquiring mind with absolutes. It, Fiction, can evoke by subtle means the intended exercise.
I was very young when I read Edgar Allen Poe, it was strange fiction, certainly didn’t seem to fit in with my other reading material, being Mad Magazine or 2000 A.d. comics. It wasn’t that Edgar Allen Poe was overtly sensationalist or grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and shook you like a rag doll, it was unnerving, he spoke in a way that lured you in, created uncertainty, disturbed. Creepy. and I loved it. I then bought myself the complete works of HP Lovecraft, and MR perhaps the synopsis wouldn’t be enticing, “is that it?”, my friends would say, but these works are there to fiddle with your safety, to prod your comfort zone.
Folk Horror then became my favourite fictional genre.

Benjamin Tweddell became known to me as the proprietor of one of the best bookshops in the U.K. (nay, the world ) being Courtyard Books – Glastonbury , and it was here in the course of conversation he mentioned he’d written stories/books. I purchased his book ‘Trackless Paths‘ not out of a need to pander to favour, but in the course of discourse his revealing ‘The Club Dumas’ was one of his favourite books, as it is mine ( and I purchased via him the wonderful Centipede press edition) then obviously someone of that ilk deserves patronage. Trackless Paths was a wonderful collection of tales, one evoking a long lost bucket list item of mine, namely to go somewhere desolate, foreboding, and armed only with a pen and blank journal compose whatever dread I could conjure. Hopefully the dread would realise itself to me during such an exile.
Mr Tweddell knows his flora, the stories are riddled with herbalism and the lay of the land, he know things, he reads the stars like others a map, I squint, I’ve met self effacing people before. They come across as amiable and likeable, lure you in.
“What a nice man, ” said my wife as we left Courtyard books one day.
” Yes,” I replied clutching a bagful of books and ‘recommendations‘, ” he does his job well,” I reply immediately patting the empty wallet in my pocket.
Of course I’m being sarcastic.
He’s a top bloke, and as it turns out can tell a bone chilling yarn or three for good measure.

The Domain of the Pale Queen is a collection of four stories. I could summarise them, I could give you a synopsis, it would be futile to do so.
The book is illustrated in line art, black and white style by, “Black and Bone” whose work and art reminds me of Chrissy Demant~ Highate Vampire lover and Gothic to the core~ girlfriend to a friend of a friend.
It’s perfect.
So why will I refuse to tell you what the stories are about?
There is a certain atmosphere, as bold as I may be that can only be captured on these shores, I’m not sure how it works. France is only 20 odd miles away and many of us are inherently born or melded from that DNA soup somewhere, sometime, but stories borne from these shores are remarkably different to those of our Gaulish cousins. It doesn’t take a few generations to adopt the ‘British– Albion’ way, it almost infects you as soon as feet touch the landscape. Its far more than nonsensical patriotic fervour/fever. Indeed it goes beyond flag waving and more towards a darker and pagan landscape that envelopes your being. No other country, for examples, I offer to claim, could produce a TV series like The Detectorists or Small prophets, Catweazle or Children of the Stones. Or am I being rose tinted? Arturo Pérez-Reverte wrote The Club Dumas ( Upon which The Ninth Gate film is based) who, as I’ve mentioned, I set as a marker of merit, a nod of approval to Mr Tweddell.
You can’t explain ‘it’ , even though 90% of my life is spent in the urban sprawl of London, my spirit lies in the undulating green fields, the deciduous canopies and groves of woodlands, the marshes and desolation of moorland. Likewise, the folk tales that are beloved are not the bravado of some gunslinger in the wild west, nor martyrs and gladiators battling for heroic freedom but a lonely scarecrow loved by the carrion that he is designed to spook. A small posy of flowers on an unknown grave about which there are only rumours. The gathering of chitter chatter in a humble ale house. Folk tales. Stories of dread.
The Domain of the Pale Queen and its three sister stories gently calls you to the Sirens rock, and leaves you stranded, cast out with your imagination and inner sufferance. Longing.
I could read this book in that desolate cabin of my fantasy, one day will be true, but then the influence would be there and would my subsequent tales be born from my mind or arisen by images that these such books inspire. Instead, it’s blood theme merges and runs rooted to the stream inherent in our psyche, we cannot escape the unknown, where other stories will shine a light on the objects hiding in shadows, unmask the deviant in a final showdown, here, in folk-horror land, the story continues, the answer and the epilogue a journey we must suffer on our own. Even if the characters meet their doom, there is continuance, in the miasma and misty marshlands there is no “It is Finished”.
If I cannot find a desolate cabin steeped in a history of catastrophe and doom and write a story, then I’ll take Mr.Tweddell’s works and a clutch of books from the wonderful Tartarus Press (and I need to check out other works in the Nephenthe press catalogue) and spend a week just reading, bliss. Drinking cloudy Cider from chipped stoneware mugs, smoking some Dutch blend pipe tobacco, Watching the sun down by candlelight leaving me to the mercy of night.
My hair is already grey from horror and experience, it’s already fallen out from the last desperate influx of testosterone and hereditary curse, what else can such an exercise do in the wilderness of folk horror, I will return from that exile with a countenance divine as Moses, and Aaron will look at me and remark, ” look, look at you! hast thou truly been so shit scared in your life?”

As I look at my fiction books, not many, there’s very few authors still alive. Think of it, Benjamin Tweddell, Proprietor of an occult bookshop, world renowned, from Glastonbury, Avalon, the Heart, and he writes for us~ Folk Gothic Horror, all the boxes are ticked, the writing is not on the wall or a huge billboard or a continuous Facebook advert but etched into a rock somewhere. It deserves your patronage. He writes not to chase the noise of the age, but to leave strange runes in the dark for the few still willing to seek them.

Header Image : Abbey in the Oakwood:  Caspar David Friedrich c.1810