Ray Newman
@raynewman.bsky.social
He/him. From Bridgwater, in Bristol. Writer, editor, content designer. Ghost stories, films. No alt text, no repost. Not here for politics. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/raynewman Header: my book Intervals of Darkness https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DDR8X9QY
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Ray Newman
@raynewman.bsky.social
· Mar 22
Between them ‘Municipal Gothic’ and ‘Intervals of Darkness’ have 27 stories full of haunted buildings, haunted people, and working class weirdness. Obviously *I* think they're great – but so do strangers who owe me nothing!
👉 www.amazon.co.uk/Municipal-Go...
👉 www.amazon.co.uk/Intervals-Da...
👉 www.amazon.co.uk/Municipal-Go...
👉 www.amazon.co.uk/Intervals-Da...
Reposted by Ray Newman
Currently reading "The Haunting of Hill House" for, I think, the third time. We're talking about it at our Book Group next week. It's cleverer and funnier than I had remembered. What a genius she was.
November 14, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Currently reading "The Haunting of Hill House" for, I think, the third time. We're talking about it at our Book Group next week. It's cleverer and funnier than I had remembered. What a genius she was.
Reposted by Ray Newman
Reposted by Ray Newman
slightly obsessed about the end of this lady's effigy tomb with the voluminous folds of her dress and petite heeled shoes
November 14, 2025 at 9:43 AM
slightly obsessed about the end of this lady's effigy tomb with the voluminous folds of her dress and petite heeled shoes
Day off. If the question is “Shall we detour to see the Kyoto Garden?” the answer is always yes.
[Video description: A heron, I think, sitting on a stone at the edge of a pond hungrily observing a massive carp.]
[Video description: A heron, I think, sitting on a stone at the edge of a pond hungrily observing a massive carp.]
November 14, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Day off. If the question is “Shall we detour to see the Kyoto Garden?” the answer is always yes.
[Video description: A heron, I think, sitting on a stone at the edge of a pond hungrily observing a massive carp.]
[Video description: A heron, I think, sitting on a stone at the edge of a pond hungrily observing a massive carp.]
“Mathew Street, drab back alley, ordinary gutter of a street you’d cut down on your way to the Grapes – when the Grapes was a good pub. For some reason history kept happening here, the city dreamed visions.”
I wrote about this street in Liverpool and about memory and myth for the 12th edition of Science & Magic, full of splendid writing as ever. You can read the magazine here: www.violetterecords.com/science-and-...
(Photo taken from the window of what used to be O’Halligan’s Parlour)
(Photo taken from the window of what used to be O’Halligan’s Parlour)
November 14, 2025 at 9:31 AM
“Mathew Street, drab back alley, ordinary gutter of a street you’d cut down on your way to the Grapes – when the Grapes was a good pub. For some reason history kept happening here, the city dreamed visions.”
Reposted by Ray Newman
Yes, being picked on. Goodness knows I needed to be mocked, and still do no doubt, but my mother used the first of them as a weapon against me when I was 15. It's one of only a handful of books I ever knew her to have read and she thought it was *hilarious*.
November 14, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Yes, being picked on. Goodness knows I needed to be mocked, and still do no doubt, but my mother used the first of them as a weapon against me when I was 15. It's one of only a handful of books I ever knew her to have read and she thought it was *hilarious*.
Reposted by Ray Newman
I read them, they were very good, and then there was the TV show and I got constantly serenaded with the Pandora song and asked about rulers. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times etc.
November 14, 2025 at 8:37 AM
I read them, they were very good, and then there was the TV show and I got constantly serenaded with the Pandora song and asked about rulers. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times etc.
Reposted by Ray Newman
Same reason I could never watch The Royle Family actually. I know it was wonderful and everyone in it was wonderful too, but an entire family claustrophobically squashed in a cramped working class living room? Nah. Too much like reality.
November 14, 2025 at 8:34 AM
Same reason I could never watch The Royle Family actually. I know it was wonderful and everyone in it was wonderful too, but an entire family claustrophobically squashed in a cramped working class living room? Nah. Too much like reality.
“The working-class comedy novel is a rarer thing still... Working-class domestic humour – i.e., comedy both for and about working-class families – is a knowledge gap in scholarly literature, with such discussion as there is tending to be limited to the anecdotal.”
thebeemagazine.com/a-guide-to-t...
thebeemagazine.com/a-guide-to-t...
A Guide to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
Georgia Poplett’s introduction to the plot, characters and historical background of Sue Townsend’s novel about a young working-class intellectual in 1980s Leicester.
thebeemagazine.com
November 14, 2025 at 8:19 AM
“The working-class comedy novel is a rarer thing still... Working-class domestic humour – i.e., comedy both for and about working-class families – is a knowledge gap in scholarly literature, with such discussion as there is tending to be limited to the anecdotal.”
thebeemagazine.com/a-guide-to-t...
thebeemagazine.com/a-guide-to-t...
“...in the urgency to try and construct a respectable post war German cinematic canon, up and coming directors and critics alike were not particularly keen to shed light on the cinema of the 1950s: Heimatfilme... Krimi...” (by @pulpcurry.bsky.social)
open.substack.com/pub/andrewne...
open.substack.com/pub/andrewne...
Helmut Käutner's Black Gravel and the lost decade of German cinema
I have written previously here about my love for German director Helmut Käutner’s 1961 noir, Schwarzer Kies, or translated into English, Black Gravel. It is without doubt my favourite German noir and ...
open.substack.com
November 14, 2025 at 8:09 AM
“...in the urgency to try and construct a respectable post war German cinematic canon, up and coming directors and critics alike were not particularly keen to shed light on the cinema of the 1950s: Heimatfilme... Krimi...” (by @pulpcurry.bsky.social)
open.substack.com/pub/andrewne...
open.substack.com/pub/andrewne...
Reposted by Ray Newman
I’m selling original artwork like this, an unpublished illustration I made for The Woman in Black. I’ll post the originals & their prices on here & you can also purchase giclee prints for £75 (Free P&P - UK only - but I also ship internationally) visit nicktankard.co.uk to see more.
November 12, 2025 at 7:23 PM
I’m selling original artwork like this, an unpublished illustration I made for The Woman in Black. I’ll post the originals & their prices on here & you can also purchase giclee prints for £75 (Free P&P - UK only - but I also ship internationally) visit nicktankard.co.uk to see more.
Reposted by Ray Newman
Reposted by Ray Newman
the fantastic rear of the Parseval PL25 German patrol airship, which becomes some kind of alternate-universe dreamliner in its own right
November 13, 2025 at 9:51 PM
the fantastic rear of the Parseval PL25 German patrol airship, which becomes some kind of alternate-universe dreamliner in its own right
I'm posting books out to people who have ordered them. It's always a relief to know they've arrived.
November 14, 2025 at 7:55 AM
I'm posting books out to people who have ordered them. It's always a relief to know they've arrived.
Reading about lucid dreaming in Fortean Times and this is a fantastic nugget.
November 13, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Reading about lucid dreaming in Fortean Times and this is a fantastic nugget.
Oh, yeah, there's a zine happening. Cover design doodles have been appearing spontaneously in my notebook during meetings and I think I know what's going in it.
Feeling the urge to make a zine again. This is dangerous. I don't have time to make zines.
November 13, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Oh, yeah, there's a zine happening. Cover design doodles have been appearing spontaneously in my notebook during meetings and I think I know what's going in it.
Reposted by Ray Newman
I’ve taken to compiling quick collages in my planner out of the bits of ephemera I collect each week. I’m particularly proud of this one (from Halloween week).
November 13, 2025 at 2:28 PM
I’ve taken to compiling quick collages in my planner out of the bits of ephemera I collect each week. I’m particularly proud of this one (from Halloween week).
Ah, that film where Robin Williams plays a quirky, annoying man!
It is very important to me that more people know the theme tune to Star Trek: Enterprise was written for Rod Stewart to sing for the 1998 Robin Williams movie, Patch Adams.
Not sure what was worse: the trainer who took my gym class this morning starting the workout to the theme from Star Trek: Enterprise, or him not *knowing* it was the theme from Star Trek: Enterprise when I asked him, implying that he actually found the song by another route and LIKED it???
November 13, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Ah, that film where Robin Williams plays a quirky, annoying man!
Reposted by Ray Newman
Grace of My Heart (1996) Underseen musical tragicomedy not-a-biopic, inspired by the career & life of Carole King
A joyous, funny, bittersweet love song to the heyday, & demise, of the Brill Building. The original songs sound like genuine 60s hits & in the lead Illeana Douglas has never been better
A joyous, funny, bittersweet love song to the heyday, & demise, of the Brill Building. The original songs sound like genuine 60s hits & in the lead Illeana Douglas has never been better
November 13, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Grace of My Heart (1996) Underseen musical tragicomedy not-a-biopic, inspired by the career & life of Carole King
A joyous, funny, bittersweet love song to the heyday, & demise, of the Brill Building. The original songs sound like genuine 60s hits & in the lead Illeana Douglas has never been better
A joyous, funny, bittersweet love song to the heyday, & demise, of the Brill Building. The original songs sound like genuine 60s hits & in the lead Illeana Douglas has never been better
Reposted by Ray Newman
Genuinely laughed out loud at this poster. This is meant to be Maigret? Yeah, OK, whatever dude.
November 12, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Genuinely laughed out loud at this poster. This is meant to be Maigret? Yeah, OK, whatever dude.
Reposted by Ray Newman
We’re going to need a bigger little treat
November 13, 2025 at 9:08 AM
We’re going to need a bigger little treat
Woke up too early (boo!) but then took the opportunity to go for a really long run around the harbour which has, predictably, annoyingly, worked wonders for my mood.
November 13, 2025 at 8:55 AM
Woke up too early (boo!) but then took the opportunity to go for a really long run around the harbour which has, predictably, annoyingly, worked wonders for my mood.
Reposted by Ray Newman
Somehow these are real buildings
November 12, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Somehow these are real buildings
Now watching: ‘True Stories’, dir. David Byrne, 1986. 🎥🎬
November 12, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Now watching: ‘True Stories’, dir. David Byrne, 1986. 🎥🎬
Now watching: ‘Winchester ’73’, dir. Anthony Mann, 1950. 🎬🎥
November 12, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Now watching: ‘Winchester ’73’, dir. Anthony Mann, 1950. 🎬🎥