Frozen Charlotte: 1 (Red Eye, 1)

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Both Charlotte books hit the nail on the dead, having an excellent balance of fast placed plot, the supernatural, characters you care about, and nasty little dolls ... -- Ginger Nuts of Horror The Island of Skye is such a creepy setting in your story! Why did you choose it and did you have to go visit it for research? I wanted Sophie to be quite normal, in contrast to the other family members, but her courage and determination are the things I most admire about her, as well as her commitment to find out what happened to her friend.

Author Luke Palmer introduces his new book, Play (Firefly Press) about four boys growing up together, the challenges, the friendships, and what hap... After Sophie’s best friend dies in a tragic accident, she travels to the isle of Skye in Scotland to visit her relatives, who live there in an old, possibly haunted mansion. even gorier and scarier than the first novel [...] the harshness of [the historical setting] made this ever more horrific. Wonderful work yet again from Alex Bell! -- Miss Fay Myers NetGalley I stumbled across the Frozen Charlotte dolls whilst doing research online one day and the idea for the story basically came from there. I thought they were so deliciously creepy and unusual, as well as not being all that well known, so it seemed like a great starting point for a horror novel. I didn’t know exactly how things were going to play out before I started but I had a rough idea. I prefer not to plan my books in too much detail but I do like to know how the book will end. Grief and death are difficult subjects to write about but I find horror stories more effective when they deal with some real life horror as well as supernatural scares. Losing our loved ones, or dying ourselves, is one of our most fundamental fears, so it’s a useful one to tap into for horror.

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Not one to learn from past experience, Alex started the Legal Practice Course in London. There she met some great people and had a lot of fun messing about during lessons that were clearly meant to be extremely solemn affairs. Thankfully, she dropped out just before the point where all students must submit to the personality-removing process that is a compulsory part of being an esteemed member of the legal profession.

What inspired the story for Frozen Charlotte? Did you know how things would play out before you started? A Frozen Charlotte is a specific form of china or bisque doll made in one solid piece without joints from c. 1850 to c. 1920. They were typically inexpensive, and the name Penny doll is also used, in particular for smallest, most affordable versions. The dolls had substantial popularity during the Victorian era.Dolls with china heads, 1750-1870, Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium. Jointed doll and penny dolls, Kirsti Scott. Porcelain doll arms, Marylou Forrest. They were popular during the Victorian period and are based on a ballad about a young woman who refuses to wrap up warm for a sleigh ride to a ball and, when they arrive, her fiancé discovers that she’s frozen to death during the journey. The dolls are normally made of white porcelain and have unjointed “frozen” limbs that are intended to portray a corpse. It seemed so typically macabre of the Victorians to create dead dolls for their children to play with! The dolls all come naked, with only painted hair, facial features and shoes. The idea was supposed to be that children would make dresses for them out of any spare fabric their mothers might have lying around. For many beachcombers, the Frozen Charlotte doll is a strange and exciting prize. These beautiful and slightly creepy pieces of Victorian history wash ashore in many different sizes and styles, and have a notoriously dark origin story. The tale is well-known in the beachcombing community: A young woman Charlotte wanted to attend a New Year’s ball on a particularly cold night. She insisted on traveling in an open sleigh so she could show off her beautiful gown, despite her mother’s many warnings and pleading advice to dress more warmly. Foolish and vain, Charlotte disobeyed her mother and froze to death. But should these distinctive beach finds actually be called “Frozen Charlotte” dolls?