Check out Chapter 1 of THE CROWS, now on Spotify and RSS.com!
CHAPTER 1: THE CREEPY OLD HOUSE
Links on my Podcast page.
Chapter 1: The Creepy Old House
… in which Carrie Rickard has 33 days left to live…
“You won’t fit in there, Caroline.” Her mother’s warning was issued in the ringing, decisive tones of a fait accompli, the culmination of her ten-minute diatribe against Carrie’s decision. Any anxieties she’d felt at passing her quarter- centenary faded away as her mother stripped her development back by ten years.
C. M. Rosens, The Crows, p. 1
Carrie stood in one of the smaller back bedrooms of her new, finally-finished property, holding the phone away from her ear. Her lower lip had split from raking her teeth over it; blood tanged on her tongue.
“I’m staying,” Carrie repeated.
Few people tried to stand up to Margaret Rickard, and fewer still succeeded. The teddy on top of Carrie’s wardrobe looked on, glass eyes dusty and judgemental.
A beat. “You’re not… punishing yourself, are you, sweetheart?”
All the chapters in the novel are named after my favourite Gothic tropes, or at least, tropes that pop up in the chapter in some form. I wrote a post on The Creepy Old House trope here. Check it out with the podcast episode! Tasty additional content.
If you are interested in how I constructed Fairwood House/The Crows, I talk about it in more detail on the Left Page Podcast that aired last week! That was a lot of fun, and we talked about elite spaces vs working class spaces, but also how I conceptualised my sentient house and its personality.
If you want me to reprise that for a bonus episode and get into it a bit more, and maybe focus on some of the history of the house, then let me know…
C. M. Rosens 