Mandrake Petals and Scattered Feathers: Tales from the Forest and Beyond

Mandrake Petals and Scattered Feathers is a tapestry of intertwined tales. We meet rogues, ne'er-do-wells and shapeshifters. Pickapple, the loveable trickster at the crossroads, Mullops, who falls prey to him on a number of occasions, Elmskin, the lovelorn, who is searching for Rimmony, the love of his life, who has just dropped everything and gone off in search of Flax Wing, a potentially mythic being who she thinks she saw once bathing in a clearing by the river and who she believes has spoken to her. Mandrake Petals and Scattered Feathers intertwines the stories of these characters and many others into a complex but moreish whole that draws the reader in and won't let go. Extracts: * The Keeper of Secrets lived in the hollow of an old tree. There he would sit and listen to the mutterings of a raddled old rook, a fox with three legs, a stub-footed pigeon and a one-eyed frog. And the hedgers, bodgers and ditchers would come and the charcoal-burners too. And the girlen who tended the geese and the old'uns and the potswills and those that had forgotten they ever had secrets at all. They would come to the tree and Old Snick, for that was his name, he would listen. But truth to tell, he did not keep these secrets well, for he would whisper them to the wind and the leaves as they fell and the babble of the nearby stream. * The lane became a tunnel of green, with brambles writhing either side. It had always been there, though Elmskin had never come this way before. He knew about it, of course. He'd heard the girlen talking and they always seemed to know. And the old'uns would mutter and whisper in corners. But he'd never seen it, didn't know where it might take him. He took a breath and ducked his head to make his way through when a wizened nut-brown figure swung down from the bough above. He stood half as tall as Elmskin, yet firmly blocked his path. * Elmskin and Gloathren hurried away, glancing round to see Tormentil sitting where they had found her, her face turned up towards the sky. It was growing dark now as they blundered on through a maze of twisted trees. Their boots were sodden with the brackish water which oozed between the roots. Elmskin's teeth were chattering as they plunged on through the mire. Then they broke out through the bushes, nearly stumbling into the water as they found themselves at the edge of the river. A grey goose clattered its outstretched wings and swooped into the air.

About the Author :
DAVID WARD was born in Northampton. He is co-founder of The Windows Project, running creative writing workshops in community venues on Merseyside since 1976; and co-editor of Smoke magazine. He has toured to Singapore, Hong Kong and Harbin (Northern China) and broadcast on BBC TV and radio. Poems in over 200 magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Review, Abridged, Ambit and Poetry Wales. Collections Tracts and On the Edge of Rain (Headland). Jambo (Riot Stories Ltd and Impact) Inside Pale Eyes (Hawkwood) Visiting Writer-in-Residence Nanyang University, Singapore. Honorary Fellow in Creative Writing, Liverpool Hope University. Writing as David Greygoose: folkloric tales Brunt Boggart (Hawkwood 2015; Pushkin 2018); Mandrake Petals and Scattered Feathers (Hawkwood 2021). Crow Dark Dawn (Tartarus: forthcoming)

Review :
"The tale unfolds like a Gaelic Lay. Tale-Teller Greygoose leads the way ... read by candlelight if you can." DONOVAN: 'The Hurdy Gurdy Man';"David Greygoose's richly descriptive folk tales conjure up a dreamlike other-world reminiscent of the work of Arthur Machen or Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy." MIKE STAX: Ugly Things magazine (USA) ; "I'm reading these stories on a high-speed train of steel and glass and plastic. Out the window are fields and forests, Norman towers and Saxon trackways. I always look at that damp British landscape and think it must be hiding hundreds of secret stories. Then I glance back at this book, and feel that these tales grow from that very earth." PAUL DU NOYER: Founding editor MOJO magazine;"In this atmospheric collection, characters are strikingly drawn with absorbing simplicity of style. Through sinister encounters and ominous symbolism, Greygoose breathes dark new life into the folk tale genre." LIZZIE NUNNERY: playwright (Daphne: A Fire in Malta, BBC Radio 4);"Each of his characters waits eagerly in the wings for their turn to dance, dazzle and spin in a linguistic firework display with every turn of the page -Entranced." PHIL MAY: co-writer The Pretty Things classic S.F. Sorrow;"Strange happenings and wyrd wanderings: magical and compelling, haunting and other-worldly." MELANIE XULU: 'MOOF' magazine of psychedelic music and art;With fans including Alan Moore, The Pretty Things' Phil May and Donovan, David Greygoose is clearly doing something right, and this collection shows his full range as a storyteller with gifts for folklore and fable, sinister witchiness and darkly allusive narrative. Read slowly, these tales will haunt your dreams" SHINDIG;"Unlike anything I've read... The invention on display is breath-taking. The characters display the instinct for survival and brute cunning of Ted Hughes's Crow. Take one story a night, just before bedtime. Repeat as necessary. INTO THE GYRE;"A modern-day masterpiece of storytelling... David Greygoose writes with a passion that leaps off the page" FOLK HORROR REVIVAL;"An almost magical realm full of laughter, fun, mischief, dancing, misdirection, villainy and much, much more. Greygoose cleverly juxtaposes the innocence of fairy tales with the darkness that often undercuts them. If you're a fan of Hans Christian Andersen or Angela Carter - pick this book up. You'll be reading tales full of folklore and mirth, a route to the imagination that we all so need." PEACH STREET MAGAZINE