Hey there, Insiders!
Okay, cards on the table, we kinda tricked you with one of our series. See, we at the Uncanny Kingdom claim to publish Urban Fantasy stories—stories that take place in everyday urban settings where magic and monsters muscle in—but, well, in the case of one series, that’s not quite true…
Dark Lakes isn’t set in some big city. A lot of the time you’ll find Joseph Lake, the bumbling lead of the series, rushing around quaint villages and open, sprawling countryside. I guess a more accurate genre for the Dark Lakes books would be something like ‘Rural Fantasy’…? Is that a thing yet? It totally should be, right?
But why did I want to ignore one of the main rules of Urban Fantasy and give Dark Lakes a countrified setting? Well, because that’s where I’m from…
The county of Cumbria, and within it the Lake District, is way up top in England, touching butts with Scotland, and it’s not only where Joseph investigates the weird and the creepy, it’s where I grew up. Cumbria is full to the brim with huge lakes, steep hills, and ancient standing stones. You can feel the history. You can almost taste the folklore. It’s the kinda place you can easily imagine witches living in. The kind of place you just know demonic cults have sacrificed a virgin or two under a glowing full moon.
The kind of place that magic might live.
CLICK HERE to check the series out if you’d like. There are three books so far, and I’m itching to start a fourth…
Oh, and here’s a bit of fun – earlier this year my co-writer, David Bussell, went on vacation to Cumbria, and sent me this photo of him laying next to Derwentwater, the exact same lake that Joseph Lake wakes up next to with no idea who he is, where he is, or why he’s bleeding from so many different and interesting places…
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