Story-by-story: The Unbidden Guest

Funny story: I stole the title of this period horror story set in 19th century Milan from P.G. Wodehouse, who gave us ‘Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest’ in 1916.

For me, writing weird stories, or ghost stories, is often about an initial flare of inspiration, like the striking of a match.

When I saw the title of the Wodehouse story I thought: “Wow, that sounds like something from M.R. James or H.P. Lovecraft.”

I amused myself for a while by imagining how Jeeves might handle a haunting – “Perhaps you might invite one of your fellow members of the Drones Club, Mr Carnacki, to join us at Totleigh Towers, sir…”

Then, on holiday in Milan, the title popped up again and collided in my brain with a vague memory of The Aspern Papers by Henry James which I last read about 30 years ago, and the fantastic BBC film Schalcken the Painter, based on a story by Le Fanu.

Although most of my recent stories have had contemporary or post-war settings I’ve always enjoyed writing pastiche, and used to produce lots of faux-Edwardiana. So this was a slight departure, but not a major detour.

To get started, I found and devoured a slew of 19th century travel memoirs by British poets and writers, partly to train my brain on the prose style, and partly to, frankly, steal some of their descriptions of the historic city.

Having a narrator who is himself a stranger in town adds a degree of separation. If I get anything wrong, there’s his stupidity to blame.

Having ploughed through Byron at university, stanza after stanza, canto after canto, and Shelley as a teenager, I also enjoyed the challenge of writing some suitably bad poetry for my hero, James Lemuel Madin.

Again, it didn’t need to be good because he’s more Thomas Thorne from Ghosts than John Keats. Bumptious. Bigheaded. Convinced of his own brilliance.

Someone in my writing group read an early version of this story and said: “I don’t like him very much.” To which I’d say, correct. I don’t like him very much either.

That Madin’s best-known poem is an epic called Scholomance is (a) another point of connection between two of my stories and (b) adds another layer of Gothic spookiness, Scholomance being the mythical school of black magic mentioned in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Here’s the other story I’ve written that mentions Scholomance. There might be more to come.

Intervals of Darkness will be published tomorrow, Saturday 7 September. You can pre-order the eBook now.