The Books of D'Espérance

Chaz says:

"Ideas don't go away. Nor moulder, nor die. I don't quite know how it works, but they stay dormant in some back corner of my mind, only waiting for the opportunity to flourish.

More than a dozen years ago, I wrote a longish ghost story about a strange dark house called D'Espérance, in a wooded valley in the north of England. That story - The Keys to D'Espérance - is set just after the First World War, and I always meant to write more. I wanted to make a series, where the history of the house would echo the history of England through the twentieth century.

Time passes, things change. An old friend asks if I'd like to write for this new list she's building - and there is D'Espérance in my head again, fresh again. We did a two-book deal in two days, and I'm excited. I get to write about the Second World War, and about the 'Sixties. And about my really, really scary house...

The "old friend" is Kate Lyall Grant, now commissioning editor at Severn House, says: "I am thrilled to be reunited with Chaz Brenchley whom I first came across at Hodder and who, I think, is one of the most talented - and underrated - British horror/fantasy novelists writing today."

The first book, provisionally titled House of Doors, is due for publication in September 2011.

The Keys to D'Espérance was published as a limited edition chapbook in October 1998 by The Subterranean Press, with an introduction by Peter Crowther. Although the hardback copies sold out rapidly, there are still come copies of the chapbook available.

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Order The Keys to D'Espérance from the Subterranean Press.

Read The Keys to D'Espérance on the internet in Infinity Plus.

It is also reprinted in Mammoth Book of the Best New Horror, edited by Stephen Jones, (Robinson, 1999).

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