House Call #7

Plus, Have You Read This?

At The Gym of All Places

I found this December 2025 issue of Apollo, a magazine that seems dedicated to the arts and the art-selling industry. Priced at eight pounds, it’s posh. In teeny-tiny lettering on the cover, it teases: “The Ghostly World of M.R. James” so I stole it. Inside, the article is Raising the Dead and the author, Christina Faraday, gives a brief-but-fresh look at a guy who worked a day job and wrote a slew of ghost stories on a lark — Ghost Stories of an Antiquary — meant to be read aloud in small groups on Christmas Eve. The collection was a hit, and fiction gave James a way to vent about his fellow relic hunters who weren’t above clipping apart medieval illuminated texts, buying, selling and mutilating the bits of history they claimed to protect.

In story after story, such lax historians are hunted and killed by the spirits linked to ancient objects. Once you read James you’ll recognize how his best stories are cribbed everywhere. This one is clearly James’ story The Mezzotint. Another is A View from a Hill, which makes a decent short film; unfortunately, the film doesn’t get into how the magic binoculars are made using the ground-up bones taken from desecrated graves. More’s the pity.

A confession? While I know a powerlifter from the gym who could not walk home in the dark immediately after reading the story Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, I’ve never appreciated M.R. James. That’s until the Apollo article described one of the last stories written by James, The Malice of Inanimate Objects, the tale of a very old man whose possessions conspire to eventually murder him. The title so much echoes The Safety of Objects by A.M. Homes that now I want to reread both. What’s the secret link?

Long story short, if you want proof that you can work your day job and still find literary fame… while you lambaste your co-workers for butchering relics — this Apollo article is proof.

Which Leads Us to…

This week’s House Call. All week I’ve been conferring with J. Lincoln Fenn over The Mad Ophelias. This is the first time a House Call has addressed a longer work. The Mad Ophelias is the enticing first part of what’s clearly going to be a great novel. J. Lincoln has been a hero about supporting other writers in this endeavor. Please give this House Call a look and some constructive feedback or praise.

It’s the death of any workshop or reading series if writers only show up when they have work to present. Such selfishness is a boor. Likewise, it’s a boor when writers insist that they’ll only learn when it’s their story being presented. In my experience, the opposite is true: Most writers learn nothing when it’s their work on the table. They’re too attached to it and react defensively to any feedback.

J. Lincoln wasn’t defensive, and there’s a lot to learn in our week’s back-and-forth about how to communicate trauma in fiction. As always, future House Calls will be chosen from the writers who participate most. But it’s worth repeating: The story being discussed need not be yours for you to learn from it in workshop.

Please give J. Lincoln Fenn a read.

P.s. Happy new year. Let’s hear your resolutions.