AS WE get closer to Hallowe’en there are things that are definitely going bump in the night and it’s all thanks to an Emmer Green author.
This week, The Black Feathers has been released, the second ghost story by Rebecca Netley, and the spine-tingler will be thumped down on bedside tables across the land after she’s set teeth chattering, set imaginations into overdrive, and given countless people sleepless nights thanks to a good, healthy, fright.
Her previous, The Whistling, won the Exeter Novel Prize, has been optioned for a film and next year will become a stage play at The Mill at Sonning.
This new book is set in 1950s Yorkshire, just seven years after the Second World War. The gothic tale follows Annie when she marries widower Edward and moves into his estate on the Moors.
Living with them is Edward’s sister – a taxidermist and medium. She tells Annie to look out for black feathers, saying the mark the spot where a spirit has visited. Lo and behold, she discovers them and stumbles on a mystery… just what did happen to Edward’s first wife? And is Annie being watched?
The spooky tale is sure to be just as successful as The Whistling, and Rebecca can’t quite believe it the reaction to it from people who have had advance copies.
“The feedback to it has been really good,” she says. “The Whistling was quite a slow burn, so this has a faster pace to keep the tension up. People have said they really love it and it’s very creepy.”
It was a year-and-a-half in the making, so she’s thrilled that it has had a good reception.
“It is nerve wracking (waiting for reactions),” she explains. “You wonder what people are going to think, after all, you throw your life into it and if people don’t like it, you’re a bit stuffed and it’s very demoralising, so I’ve been very pleased.”
Rebecca has been a fan of ghost stories ever since she was child. “I absolutely adored them,” she admits, confessing to staying up late to watch the Hammer House of Horror films with her mum, while her house was full of books which was devoured: “From a young age, I read and read and read, really voraciously”.
“I found it thrilling, and I always planned to write a ghost story,” she said. “It’s a genre I continue to read, but there are not many ghost stories out there. You get lots of gothic fiction, lots of supernatural, lots of horrors, but things with actual ghosts in? Not so much.
“The first thing I come up with is the setting, as I think it needs to be a bit chilling, and the best place for that to start is in the reader’s head … you’ve done half the work already because you’ve a character walking around half expecting a ghost to appear too.
“I also love the idea of this other world that walks alongside ours. I do believe in ghosts very strongly, and I find it endlessly fascinating. I love exploring what happens after death.”
Rebecca first started trying to write a novel when she was a teenager, but never really made it beyond a chapter or two and a synopsis. She wrote a thriller in 2018, and then spent two-and-a-half years honing The Whistling, chipping away until she was happy with it.
The rest, is history. And it will make history next year when it has an autumn season at The Mill.
“I was gobsmacked when I found out,” she says. “I’ve got an option on it being made into a film, but it never occurred to me it could be a theatre production. When I had an email from The Mill saying they had been looking for a ghost story and they had picked up my book … I was absolutely thrilled.
“It’s not anything to do with our geographical distance, it’s just they wanted to make it into a play. I couldn’t be happier. It feels so good.”
The Mill has a famous neighbour … does Rebecca hope he’ll have a role in it?
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about George Clooney,” she laughs. “I’m intending to write to him and say this is a part you might be interested in.”
The Black Feathers, by Rebecca Netley, is published by Penguin Michael Joseph on Thursday, October 12, £18.99. It is available in all good bookshops including Waterstones in Broad Street and Fourbears Books in Prospect Street, Caversham. For more details, log on to Penguin.co.ukand search for The Black Feathers.
