Tabitha Potts's Blog

As I wrote recently, I’ve been having a difficult time personally recently. It’s not something I’m able to talk about at the moment but I can only compare it to the nightmare sequence in Hitchcock’s Vertigo where Scottie finds himself in free fall through the air. However, I’m happy to say that my book launch is still proceeding as planned! My publisher has been very supportive and I have a good team helping me getting everything ready. Once The House of Dust and Shadows is out on June 16th, I’m due to disappear on a three week writing residency (more about that soon) so I will be a bit quieter on here but will still post occasionally – probably about the residency itself, which is for artists, writers and musicians and something I am really looking forward to. Three weeks to focus on writing and learn from other creative people – how lucky I am to be able to do this.

We created our first ever video podcast on Story Radio, an interview with me about the book, and you can listen to it here or watch it below. I talk about some of the inspiration behind the book, some of the academic studies I worked on during my Creative Writing MA and how I found my publisher, Rowan Prose Publishing.

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I’ve just finished proof-reading a final draft of my debut novel and sent it to Rowan Prose Publishing. It’s been an intense few weeks editing and re-reading but I really welcomed the opportunity to go through absolutely every line and tweak it more thoroughly than an A-lister about to walk on the red carpet.

I’ve been living with my three sisters Lucia, Isabella and Sara in their remote Norfolk manor house for over seven years now (I’ve even dreamed I was one of them and walked through their dining room). I think I am finally ready to say goodbye to my unrepentantly Gothic du Maurier and Bronte love-child and release it into the wild, where I hope it will prosper.

If you would like to pre-order it, the link is below, and as always, don’t forget that writers love to get reviews!

Pre-order The House of Dust and Shadows

I am now free to start thinking about my next project. I am happy to say that I am already ten thousand words into this and was long-listed for the Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers’ Prize last year. I am still in the honeymoon period with it and I think (hope) it will be a lot easier to write than my first. My first novel is about the horrors of the patriarchy for female artists and is (I think) remarkably restrained considering I finished it at the same time as the Epstein files were released.

My next one is going to be a lot less restrained and will feature some forgotten Celtic goddesses getting fairly mediaeval, or perhaps I should say Iron Age, on various asses. I can’t wait to finish writing it. I’ve been reading strange occult tomes, studying ancient history and learning to translate Anglo-Saxon in preparation. It’s been a fascinating journey. I hope to finish it in the next six months or so – we shall see. I am not a fast writer.

There was a ‘Blood Moon’ solar eclipse on March 3rd. That inspired me to choose the title for this entry, and it seems appropriate as I am going through a difficult time personally at the moment. It’s very strange how just when you think things are coming together, they fall apart. I’m glad that I still have the gift of being able to send my words out into the world.

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I walked past this beautiful Street bench on my way to Hackney City Farm where I’ve enrolled in an art class. It inspired me to take a photograph to celebrate the kind person who placed it there.

We all know life can be a storm and that’s certainly true right now. I haven’t felt so furious, frustrated and unsafe since Brexit – which as it turns out, was a dress rehearsal, with many of the same actors, for what privileged and entitled white men (yes, they are mostly men, that’s a feature not a bug as far as they’re concerned) are creating in the USA.

I have been trying to respond by looking for hope and positivity where I can find it. My art class is one way I’m doing this. I loved art and painting as a young person, studied it to A Level, went to art school before I went to university, got very confused about what I was doing there and dropped out. Somehow this became an internalised commandment not to draw or paint again, because I’d ‘failed’.

Anyway, I’m in the Hackney Fine Arts class, charmingly situated in a city farm, giving myself permission to make art again. We are copying paintings in charcoal and afterwards in paint – I’m working on a Hockney tree tunnel, as I’ve realised landscapes inspire me more than portraits.

But I’m taking this as a jumping off point. I will allow myself to be messy, and real, and fail. Because perfection is not the end point of creation – it is its death. We need to hold on to our imperfect, creative selves. Our creations are our shelter.

I’m also celebrating new beginnings with my podcast, Story Radio, which has just incorporated at Companies House as a Community Interest Company. A Community Interest Company is a social enterprise or not-for-profit. Our object has always been to help emerging writers and actors and benefit the writing community as a whole, and now we’re formalising that. We’ve run the podcast for three years as volunteers, paying costs ourselves, but it’s time to try and put it on a more secure footing so we can sustain and grow it.

If you’d like to support our fledgling CIC in any way, please get in touch! You can donate to us, but you can also advertise on our show. We’d love to promote your bookshop, for example. And writers, please keep sending us your stories. We have some exciting plans for the future!

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Greetings from Japan, where my husband and I have been celebrating his birthday. We’ve visited Tokyo and Hakone where we’ve been admiring the Autumn leaves (Koyo), bathing in the onsen fed by natural hot springs and eating traditional ryokan-style meals. 

It’s been a much needed break after a stressful year including being made redundant. I’ve decided to focus on writing for the foreseeable future. As Mary Oliver asked, ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ The answer becomes clearer the longer you live. I’ve decided to treat my life as both wild and precious, rather than jumping through any more hoops for other people. I’m in a writing group which explores creativity through Women who Run with Wolves and The Artists’ Way, and we are exploring a short story about Vasilisa and the sacred fire she brings back from Baba Yaga’s hut in a skull and uses to destroy the obstacles that stood in her way. That is the energy I’m bringing to 2026…

I did not get shortlisted for the competition I entered, the Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers’ Prize, in the end, but I am extremely proud that I was one of the 50 out of 500 longlisted and the judging panel also gave my WIP a special commendation in their very kind email, mentioning it by name. I do feel in my bones that this is going to be an exciting novel so I will be going full speed ahead to finish it in 2026. It will be full of magic, lost languages and ancient goddesses. Congratulations of course to all the shortlisted writers!

Meanwhile, my wonderful publisher Rowan Prose Publishing has added a special one-off pre-order discount for my debut novel, The House of Dust and Shadows. In the US, it’s 99 cents, but it’s on special offer everywhere until the 1st December! Please do take this opportunity now if you’re interested in dark, Gothic-tinged mysteries about (very) dysfunctional families in haunted Norfolk manor houses. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about fire – you’ll find it featuring in The House of Dust and Shadows. Some of the early British people used it as part of a ritual, burning the bones of dead animals. It must have symbolised warmth, home, food, light and comfort for them, but of course was also dangerous, destructive and a weapon of war. Like the old goddesses who symbolised both birth and war, fire has two aspects, creation and destruction. The House of Dust and Shadows is about creation and destruction, and how sometimes creation needs destruction to happen first, as when forest fires spark new growth.

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What a wonderful Autumn we are having here in the United Kingdom. I am welcoming the cooler temperatures and the leaves changing colour this year and not missing summer at all yet; perhaps because the sun is still out? At any rate, I am loving filling my pockets with conkers and inhaling the sharp scent of fallen leaves. 

I was recently long-listed for a literary competition (I’m not sure I am allowed to say which one yet, so I’ll keep quiet for now) and have been frantically typing away in order to reach the deadline. I don’t know what the odds are of making it to the next stage, so am trying not to get my hopes up too much, but I’m proud I managed to reach the word count they requested and recently sent in my final edited draft of several thousand words.  

It’s set in Oxford in the 1980s, when I studied there, and coincidentally I went back for a college reunion and to visit some friends just before the deadline. I promised one of my fellow students while there that he’ll get a name check if the novel is published, so James, you might one day discover yourself reimagined as a Professor. No resemblance to persons living or dead is intended, etc etc (there will be a lot of dead people, it’s that kind of novel). 

In other news, one of my short stories has just been published in an anthology of ‘quiet horror’ (isn’t that a brilliant term?). The book is Silent Screams edited by Mathew Gostelow of Ghost Willow Press, out just in time for Halloween. 

It’s a changeling inspired story I’d been tinkering with for quite some time in different forms but it finally came together and I think is one of the strongest I’ve written recently. The title for the story, ‘Welcome Little Stranger’, was inspired by a Victorian pincushion my mother owned which had those words spelled out on it in pins. Pins, to me, are a strange combination of the sinister and the reassuring – unheimlich if you will – and I aimed to get the same feeling in the story. 

I will be featuring the book and interviewing Mathew on the Story Radio Podcast on December 1st, so do tune into that. Mathew will read one of the stories from the anthology as well so you will get a sneak preview. 

My debut novel will be out in June 2026 and you can now pre-order The House of Dust and Shadows here. I’m so pleased with the cover and very excited that the book is so close to publication. It’s been a battle to get this book written and published and I am so proud that I have achieved this life-long dream.

I quit my then job as a marketer to concentrate on writing it and then discovered I had cancer. I continued writing while undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment and carried on with it while working on my Creative Writing MA, eventually submitting it as part of my thesis. I spent quite a long time querying it, so I was very happy when I found my wonderful US publisher Rowan Prose Publishing thanks to Twitter (before it became X) and querying as part of PitDark.

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I’ve been having a productive time in my writing life, I am happy to report. Thanks to a yoga and writing retreat with the Chateau de Sacy which I thoroughly recommend, I have finished my short screenplay adaptation of Crow Girl. It will need more work, but I am pleased to have created the shape and structure it needs. It was wonderful being with such a talented group of people (we had a particle physicist, a singer/songwriter, an artist and a climate activist in our little group) and spending time walking in the countryside, eating fabulous vegetarian food and swimming in lakes as well as working on our projects.

Meanwhile, I’ve started work on my second novel, which is in too much of an early stage to share much information about, but feels as though it has exciting possibilities and has led me down some interesting research rabbit holes.

Story Radio is currently on hiatus till October but I read my dark, summery short story ‘Poppet’ for it, adding some sound effects I recorded in Norfolk. Listen to ‘Poppet’.

Finally, we had a very enjoyable morning writing and recording flash fiction writers in a workshop with Story Radio. Many thanks to the Daisy Green Cafe in Holland Park for being our generous hosts and sharing their space (and delicious coffee!) with our inspiring writers.

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I wrote this short story especially for our latest Writers Salon podcast – it’s the last one in the episode.

It was on the fourth day that the building stopped humming. It sat in an unregarded street on the edge of an unloved town, squat, grey and utilitarian, resembling a hangar in an industrial park, except for the acres of land that backed onto it, filled with crops that only an expert eye would recognise as not quite like any others.

You might have noticed that the hum had stopped, if you walked by it every day. The sound resembled the humming of bees in a giant hive, but in fact it was the sound of the many fans that kept the seeds at an optimum temperature, stopping them from spoiling in the metal drawers and drums where they slept. Scientists occasionally removed a batch of seeds, propagated them in test tubes or seed trays, pollinated them, grafted them, or peered through microscopes at their intricate whorls and spirals. Sometimes, not always, they would be planted in the regimented fields outside, with their high walls. These were the ‘safe’ plants, the ones whose genetic material was certain not to escape or mix itself with others.

But after the mad king’s decree, the library was forced to shut down. All the scientists, some old, some young, men and women, were escorted out of the building, balancing brown cardboard boxes in their arms, some in tears, some stoic. The door was locked and bolted. A security guard patrolled the empty lot, an Alsatian watchful at his heels. But sometimes there were still glimmers of light on the top floor. Perhaps the building was not as empty, as abandoned as it seemed. In the night-time hush, perhaps there was something moving.

You started to notice it a few weeks later. A shock of bright colour on the motorway verge, where no one ever walked. On the pavement, an unusual, bright green arching root thrust its way through the tarmac and began to climb into the air. In a broken-down street, where men sat in cars with dark windows or furtively passed parcels and cash from hand to hand, a tree sprang up and spread its giant white petals everywhere, dropping like snow, its perfume so rich and strange that even those hardened men stopped to smell the flowers, inhaling each one deeply, as if the flower itself were a drug.

Rubbish piled high on street corners everywhere, rats scuttled in and out of the drains, masked militia roamed with guns at the ready, looters smashed the windows of the few remaining stores, the currency had fallen to a new low, and now this. The roots, the leaves, were encroaching everywhere. They were twining around your window, they crept into the brickwork, they whispered into your dreams. They were tearing up the motorways, buckling the airport landing strips. The authorities realised this too late. They sent out men with huge machines, with vats of chemicals, or with flame throwers – but the flowers were implacable.

They took over the courthouses and the town hall, their sinuous curves as powerful and improbably beautiful as a serpent’s coils. The masonry crumbled. They grew too fast, they were too strong. Sometimes their suckers or feelers reached out for you, as though they yearned for your touch. The flowers were almost like faces, the two dark patches on their velvet petals seemed to stare, they turned to follow you as you walked past, to ask you who you were, where you were going, what did you dream of? Because you did begin to dream.

As their melancholy perfume rose over the town, a strange lassitude descended upon you. At first you fought it. You went to the office as usual, walking under the dim green canopy that now stretched from building to building. But as you sat in front of your computer, hearing it strike its familiar start-up tone, your eyelids began to droop. You held your lost lover in your arms in a sea of white orchids. You didn’t want to leave him, ever. When you finally woke up, your limbs were heavy but your pain was gone. You ate less. You drank less. You wanted less. You needed – less.

No one drove any more – the streets had buckled. The train tracks were a forest of green. The animals began to return. On your windowsill, when you woke briefly, sated with dreams and strangely calm, you found tiny jewel-like birds had built a nest. It was surrounded by plaited green strings, as though the plants were protecting the minuscule eggs within.

Now the mad king is slumped on his golden throne, a glimmering thread of spittle hanging from his mouth. His courtiers lie around him, felled by the flowers. It almost looks as though they are becoming plants themselves – their skin has a green and waxy look, their faces have an ashen pallor, the sockets of their eyes are darker, less human than before. The sound of gunfire, which has filled the streets for months now, has stopped. You smile as you open your window again, to hear the whirr of the wings of the humming-birds as they feed from the flowers. 

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Recently I’ve been immersed in studies which I mentioned in my previous newsletter: one in Anglo-Saxon literature run by the British Library and a course called Print and the Ascent of Magic (reading occult books in the allegedly haunted library in Senate House, possibly the best way to spend an evening ever). 

In the first course we looked at and translated Anglo-Saxon texts, in the second we looked at some ancient books such as Daemonologie and Malleus Maleficarum, all books that were used to oppress women and the poor, as well as learn the history of voodoo and how it was suppressed by colonial rulers. It was eye-opening to learn how many ‘magical’ systems of belief were seen as a threat to the ruling class at various points in history – we even saw how laws were made over centuries to repress travelling magicians, healers and fortune tellers, describing them as vagrants and limiting their freedom of movement.

I became very interested in runes. They were often used to name a personal object in Anglo-Saxon times (runes are different to the Anglo-Saxon language itself). They were  used for magical or protective purposes, for example on funeral urns or swords. Also on this beautiful object, the Franks Casket, which we translated on our course. 

Rather than allowing runes to die out along with paganism, Anglo-Saxon monks preserved them (while in the Northern European countries where they originated, they were treated as witchcraft). You can find them in the Book of Exeter, for example, which is full of spells and riddles (Anglo-Saxons loved wordplay). 

Women giving birth in the medieval period used to wear a scroll with magical words on it around their waist, I learned at the Medieval Women In Their Own Words exhibition (listen to our podcast about that here). 

And at the fascinating Secrets of the Thames exhibition at the Docklands Museum I encountered more runes on decorative objects, such as this pin, pulled from the Thames by mudlarks (podcast coming soon on the 1st of June). 

What I have learned is that a belief in magic often went hand in hand with a belief in the power of words. Warriors inscribed them on their swords, birthing women wore them round their waists, people hand-stitched them on their clothes to fend off sickness. 

Anglo-Saxons liked to give voices to inanimate things, so the inscription on a ring might say ‘I am called Ring’. Our teacher said that this might be a tendency towards animism in the Anglo-Saxon world. One famous Anglo-Saxon poem, the Dream of the Rood, gives a voice to a tree that later becomes the cross used for the Crucifixion. It was inscribed in runes on the Ruthwell Cross around 700 AD (a cross that was incidentally pulled down and broken into pieces in the 1640s during a moral panic about idolatry).

There’s something about words and their physical form which arouses strong emotions in us. Why else do people burn and ban books, as they are currently doing in America? And that is why our next live short story reading, on the 9th June, is based on the theme of ‘The Library’. We will be looking at the power and magic of words, and how others seek to limit and control them.

We will also be running a series of flash fiction workshops in June, July and August in the beautiful surroundings of the Holland Park Cafe run by Daisy Green, which is generously hosting us (and providing free teas and coffees). The workshops are £30 a head with five subsidised free places for concessions – you can buy tickets here.

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Sometimes it’s possible to feel downright powerless and disenfranchised by global events. I’ve been questioning what, if anything, I can do to resist the global swing to the right in politics and culture apart from what I do already (petitions, letters to MPs, sharing news). 

I’ve stood to be a councillor twice in my local area Mile End (for the Liberal Democrats). I help with a green group on our East London street that has installed a communal planter and planted several street trees, a little legacy. We welcomed a Ukrainian refugee into our home and helped him find his first job and get English classes, he moved into his own place ages ago and is now going on to university. I will continue to do what I can. 

But I’ve come to the conclusion that the way I should focus my energy is doing what I do best, writing and sharing the work of other writers. Writers may not any longer be the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’ but the way we create worlds that others can explore does mean we have the power to move them and sometimes that’s the most important power you can have. In dark times, it’s ideas and stories that give us hope. And when the world seems bent on chaos, madness and self-destruction, hope itself is in short supply. 

Our podcast Story Radio has continued to be a wonderful celebration of creativity and irrepressible ideas and I’d like to invite submissions from any writers among you on the theme of ‘The Library’ for our next Story Radio Salon on Monday 9th June at the Colony Room Green. Just submit your story via our website but put in your cover note that it’s for the Salon (and remember, you need to be available to read it live on the 9th in London!). 

Meanwhile, my short story ‘Giants’, about the destruction of the environment, which came third in the Olga Sinclair Prize, is now available for purchase on Amazon in their anthology, Thirteen Shades of Green. Do have a look if you’d like to support my work and that of the other prizewinners in the collection. It is on Kindle Unlimited too. It is essentially a love song to the landscape of California where I lived for two years, especially to redwood trees, the giants of the title. 

Recently, I saw one of those submission calls which make your heart beat a little faster, because it seems to be designed just for you… This one asked for ‘quiet horror’ and I sent my story in, as always steeling myself against rejection because this, unfortunately, usually is the way it ends. A fact of the writing life.

Instead, I had a wonderful and enthusiastic acceptance of my story, ‘Welcome Little Stranger’, and it is going to be published in an anthology this Autumn. More details to come soon! 

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My publisher recently finalised the design for the cover of my novel The House of Dust and Shadows, which is coming out in 2026. I’m delighted to be able to share it with you here. There was a lot of discussion about it, as we looked at different styles of typography and various types of design, but I’m delighted with the result. I even got to choose the ghost! If you would like to find out more about it please do follow the link, you can pre-order it on Kobo or add it to your Goodreads Want to read list.

I must admit that publishing my novel, while it is a dream come true, is also a nerve-wracking moment for me. I’m distracting myself by working on a screenplay and mulling over ideas for a second novel. I think I have the concept worked out but I need to read some hard-to-get-hold-of library books for research (research is my favourite part of novel writing). Oh yes, and relearn Old English. I studied it at University and have signed up for a course to help myself remember how to read it. I remember very little about it apart from the way Beowulf began with ‘Hwaet’ (what or why) to get the listener’s attention, instead of invoking a muse. There’s something sturdy and practical about that, it’s a very earthy language.

I’ve also signed up for a course on the history of magic, where we get to have a look at a sixteenth century copy of the Malleus Maleficarum and learn about the Tarot. I may not use all of this, but I am hoping it will at the very least give me some ideas. I find that knowledge is what sparks off creativity for me, and stories from the past seem to grab my attention (Hwaet!) more forcefully than the present day. Perhaps that’s because the news has been so gloomy recently.

Another short story salon is coming up with the Story Radio Podcast – it will be at the Colony Room Green on the 10th of February and features some of our favourite Story Radio writers who have generously given up their time to share their work with us. It will appear on the podcast too but I strongly recommend you come along in person and hear some of our stories which will be on the theme of love, in honour of Valentine’s Day. Did you know that Valentine’s Day falls one day before the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, which involved fertility rites and goatskin costumes? Anyway, if you’d like to come along (no goats involved, but definitely some wine) please do book a ticket on Eventbrite.

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