Questions about the site

Questions about the books

About the books

What is Chaz working on at the moment?

Chaz always talks about his current projects in his on-line diary and that's probably the best place to look for updates, too.

Will there be any more Benedict Macallan books?

Again, Chaz answers this in his weblog:

...my mate Richard asks if there will be any further news of the Macallan clan, first & last heard of in Dead of Light and Light Errant. The answer is that I deeply and sincerely hope so, but don't hold your breath. The series is a trilogy manqué, and always has been; volume three is called Night Fantastic, and the change of pun indicates a change of voice. NF is Laura's story: what it's like to love and be loved by a Macallan, to carry his child, so on and so forth. In the current circumstances no one wants to publish it, so it remains in my head, like an embryo in nitrogen. Come the movie(s), if ever the movie(s) come, then perhaps things will change.

On the other hand, let me tell you about Desdaemona...

Does this mean that there are plans for film / television adaptations of any of Chaz'z books?

There have been various projects at different times: the most recent list is:

At the moment, there are three projects running.

• My mate Trevor has had an option on Dead of Light for the last few years; we have a script, we have a wish-list for the casting, all we need is cash.
• Granada TV has an option on Shelter; I believe they also have a script, though we haven't seen it yet. Obviously they have the cash, but TV commissioning is a curious business, dependent on schedulers: few slots, and many bids to fill them. Don't hold your breath.
• And the new one, the current fun one, is Don the recent graduate who wants to make a short film of How She Dances, one of my 'Daniel Fox' short stories. He's working on the script as we speak; updates as and when.

Since when, things have been quiet. But who knows what the future may bring.

About the site

What's all this about "Northern Gothic"?

That used to be the name of this web site, for reasons I'll come to in a minute; which created a certain amount of confusion. Chaz has now adopted the name for his publishing arm, as publisher of Phantoms at the Phil

Where does the name "Northern Gothic" come from anyway? What does it mean?

When this site was first set up, way back in the 1990s, it went under the name "Northern Gothic". As Chaz explains:

Why's the site called Northern Gothic? Because a very wise & percipient man called John Williams was reading and reviewing a lot of the work that a bunch of us were (well, technically 'was') doing, back in the mid-nineties. He thought he could identify a trend, a particular brand of urban chiller, coming out of the north of England - people like Stephen Laws and myself. So he coined this phrase, 'Northern Gothic', and used it first in a review of Dead of Light. When Simon Wady offered to set up the original edition of this website, it was his idea to lift that line as a label; I liked it so much that we've kept it since, despite a degree of search-engine confusion (see elsewhere, for a word on Gothic fonts...). I'm not sure what Simon's doing these days, but John is now writing some terrific novels of his own, and needs an equivalent tag, only Welsh.

Chaz subsequently appropriated the name for his Phantoms at the Phil project, the most gothic of his current activities.

So it's nothing to do with medieval architecture, then?

No. Sorry.

Or the Goth aesthetic, bands, or lifestyle?

No; but if that's what you're looking for, Dark Side of the Net would be a good place to start...

Where can I find Gothic fonts?

Not on this site. But there are many fine fonts available free on the net, if you search for them - the one I used to write "Frequently Asked Questions" at the top of this page is called Frankenstein. It's available for download at various places: one good site is Thundrune's Free Font Downloads.
Good hunting!

Isn't this the Guestbook?

It is some time since the guestbook (which was once at this address) was removed. I'd like to thank everyone who wrote genuine entries in the Guestbook, it was much appreciated. You can still or , and we hope you will. But the growth of spam has made it impossible to maintain a guestbook.
This is now the Frequently Asked Questions page; I've started with the questions that have arisen from the Guestbook, but if you have any more questions, send them in.

That's a bit personal; can't I just leave a message somewhere?

Chaz has relocated his Journal to make it more interactive; you could always leave a comment there.

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