by Kim Cleary
I'm often asked, how much of myself is in my writing? The truth is, I can’t keep myself out, I’ve never tried and I don’t want to.
Like all fiction authors, everything I write comes from my imagination, which has been fed by books and stories ever since I could carry books home from the library. But it also comes from my own experiences and the emotional roller-coaster of my life.
I write urban fantasy and romantic suspense with a paranormal element. Readers often ask me where I get my ideas from. How do you know about necromancy, ghosts, and witchcraft they ask – often with a head tilt and lifted brow. We thought you were kinda normal (insert nervous laugh here). "Have you seen a ghost" is often the next question.
I’m mostly a sceptic … but I’ve experienced a few ghostly experiences so my mind is open about the supernatural.
Was it my imagination, or did we experience a real-life paranormal event at our cheap digs in London? You be the judge.
My husband and I lived in London while he researched his doctorate paper at the houses of parliament library. We couldn’t afford to live near the Houses of Parliament so we had to find somewhere cheap and cheerful near a Tube-line to easily travel into the Houses of Parliament.
After several days in a ghastly cheap boarding house, we despaired of ever finding a cheap or cheerful place anywhere near the city of London. It’s so expensive to live there!
On the same day we’d given up and decided to fly home, we came across an affordable furnished flat, empty and available for immediate rent. Within walking distance of archway station, it was the middle floor in a three-storey terrace home that had been converted into three flats by a cockney accented character who could have appeared in the long running TV show Eastenders!
A lovely Canadian couple already occupied the ground floor. The top floor was empty, but the middle floor was perfect. It had lounge room, small kitchen, tiny bathroom, and a bedroom that was just big enough to fit a double bed and a large wardrobe. The whole space was decorated in the strangest assortment of old mismatched furniture, it could’ve been collected over decades of living in the old house. Or perhaps collected for cheap at the local secondhand shop.
The top floor was identical to our own, except with the tiniest galley kitchen I’ve ever seen. And it was cold. So very cold up there. It was as if the heat from the ground floor and the middle floor rose to our ceiling, but then somehow didn’t climb into the top floor at all.
Naturally we shared a staircase with the ground floor and the top floor.
My husband, normally completely immune to any location feelings, refused to go up to the top floor. He just shuddered and said, "it’s weird up there". He was a keen photographer back then however and despite the weirdness he wanted me to hang out of the top story window so he could get a photo from the street!
The floor felt wrong to me. Wrong in ways I couldn’t explain. But I wasn’t afraid, so I agreed to the impromptu photo shoot.
At the top of the stairs the cold engulfed me like it always did. But this time, as I walked towards the window the coldness pushed against my back.
The wrongness I sensed became a suffocating misery.
Something was in the room with me, and it wanted me to open the window.
I jolted to a stop in the middle of the floor. The coldness pushed harder. Had someone fallen out of it once in the buildings history? I called out to my husband, that I felt something in the room with me. He was silent for several seconds. Then he yelled out, “come back down, don’t worry about the photo.”
I ran back down the stairs, he was waiting at the bottom, his Nikon camera and long lens around his neck. His face wore the rigid expression it always did whenever I mentioned my “feelings”.
After coffee and whispered debate, I did end up donning a knitted beanie and scarf, running back upstairs, opening the window and posing for a few photographs. The second time, it was still icy cold upstairs, but nothing pushed me to the window. It would’ve been easy to discount it as my imagination. But I know what I felt.
It was the days before digital photography and I’ve searched the old photos from that trip. Strangely I can’t find the photo of me gazing down at Stephen from the third storey window anywhere. Maybe I looked cross eyed in the photo, destroyed the negative, and I’ve hidden the memory away in my brain’s vaults!
Or maybe the photo doesn’t want to be found…
KIM is a USA Today Bestselling Author who writes urban fantasy and paranormal mystery for anyone who longs to discover they are extraordinary. She writes about hopefulness and determination, and about heroes who push through extraordinary situations and obstacles, one step at a time. Magical friends and gorgeous guys help (and often hinder) in one adventure after another.
When not writing, or researching, Kim enjoys paper-crafting, gardening, plays with her dogs, chats on social media, catches up with friends or cooks an Indian feast. She is a certified chocoholic.
Kim grew up in Birmingham, UK. She studied medieval history and psychology at Adelaide University in South Australia. She now lives with her husband and a mischievous Moodle in Melbourne, Australia.
My social media details: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Website |
Or by e-mail at: Info @ kimcleary.com (no spaces)
I'm often asked, how much of myself is in my writing? The truth is, I can’t keep myself out, I’ve never tried and I don’t want to.
Like all fiction authors, everything I write comes from my imagination, which has been fed by books and stories ever since I could carry books home from the library. But it also comes from my own experiences and the emotional roller-coaster of my life.
I write urban fantasy and romantic suspense with a paranormal element. Readers often ask me where I get my ideas from. How do you know about necromancy, ghosts, and witchcraft they ask – often with a head tilt and lifted brow. We thought you were kinda normal (insert nervous laugh here). "Have you seen a ghost" is often the next question.
I’m mostly a sceptic … but I’ve experienced a few ghostly experiences so my mind is open about the supernatural.
Was it my imagination, or did we experience a real-life paranormal event at our cheap digs in London? You be the judge.
My husband and I lived in London while he researched his doctorate paper at the houses of parliament library. We couldn’t afford to live near the Houses of Parliament so we had to find somewhere cheap and cheerful near a Tube-line to easily travel into the Houses of Parliament.
After several days in a ghastly cheap boarding house, we despaired of ever finding a cheap or cheerful place anywhere near the city of London. It’s so expensive to live there!
On the same day we’d given up and decided to fly home, we came across an affordable furnished flat, empty and available for immediate rent. Within walking distance of archway station, it was the middle floor in a three-storey terrace home that had been converted into three flats by a cockney accented character who could have appeared in the long running TV show Eastenders!
A lovely Canadian couple already occupied the ground floor. The top floor was empty, but the middle floor was perfect. It had lounge room, small kitchen, tiny bathroom, and a bedroom that was just big enough to fit a double bed and a large wardrobe. The whole space was decorated in the strangest assortment of old mismatched furniture, it could’ve been collected over decades of living in the old house. Or perhaps collected for cheap at the local secondhand shop.
The top floor was identical to our own, except with the tiniest galley kitchen I’ve ever seen. And it was cold. So very cold up there. It was as if the heat from the ground floor and the middle floor rose to our ceiling, but then somehow didn’t climb into the top floor at all.
Naturally we shared a staircase with the ground floor and the top floor.
My husband, normally completely immune to any location feelings, refused to go up to the top floor. He just shuddered and said, "it’s weird up there". He was a keen photographer back then however and despite the weirdness he wanted me to hang out of the top story window so he could get a photo from the street!
The floor felt wrong to me. Wrong in ways I couldn’t explain. But I wasn’t afraid, so I agreed to the impromptu photo shoot.
At the top of the stairs the cold engulfed me like it always did. But this time, as I walked towards the window the coldness pushed against my back.
The wrongness I sensed became a suffocating misery.
Something was in the room with me, and it wanted me to open the window.
I jolted to a stop in the middle of the floor. The coldness pushed harder. Had someone fallen out of it once in the buildings history? I called out to my husband, that I felt something in the room with me. He was silent for several seconds. Then he yelled out, “come back down, don’t worry about the photo.”
I ran back down the stairs, he was waiting at the bottom, his Nikon camera and long lens around his neck. His face wore the rigid expression it always did whenever I mentioned my “feelings”.
After coffee and whispered debate, I did end up donning a knitted beanie and scarf, running back upstairs, opening the window and posing for a few photographs. The second time, it was still icy cold upstairs, but nothing pushed me to the window. It would’ve been easy to discount it as my imagination. But I know what I felt.
It was the days before digital photography and I’ve searched the old photos from that trip. Strangely I can’t find the photo of me gazing down at Stephen from the third storey window anywhere. Maybe I looked cross eyed in the photo, destroyed the negative, and I’ve hidden the memory away in my brain’s vaults!
Or maybe the photo doesn’t want to be found…
~~~~
KIM is a USA Today Bestselling Author who writes urban fantasy and paranormal mystery for anyone who longs to discover they are extraordinary. She writes about hopefulness and determination, and about heroes who push through extraordinary situations and obstacles, one step at a time. Magical friends and gorgeous guys help (and often hinder) in one adventure after another.
When not writing, or researching, Kim enjoys paper-crafting, gardening, plays with her dogs, chats on social media, catches up with friends or cooks an Indian feast. She is a certified chocoholic.
Kim grew up in Birmingham, UK. She studied medieval history and psychology at Adelaide University in South Australia. She now lives with her husband and a mischievous Moodle in Melbourne, Australia.
My social media details: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Website |
Or by e-mail at: Info @ kimcleary.com (no spaces)
Goose pimples! Thanks for sharing, Kim.
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