Author: Owain Oakwood

Removing the single stories

I’m taking my short stories down off of Amazon. Just the individual ones, they’ll still all be available as collected editions, which represent better value anyway.

In theory I’m doing this because I’m concerned that a plethora of short books will confuse new readers. But secretly it’s because it confuses me to have to keep track of them all. That and I changed cover styles several times, and it’s all just messy!

It’ll take a little while to sort out, so if you happen to have collected most of them and just have a couple of gaps to fill, now is your moment.

Why Argana Zeit?

I wrote a submarine horror novel. It took three years and genuinely gave me nightmares, which was possibly my first clue that I wasn’t cut out for penning terror. I duly sent it off to agents that I admired, or at least had heard of, and waited for the advances and royalties to roll in.

As that wait grew unaccountably longer, I figured I’d write something short, as a bit of a pallet cleanser. I’d been watching Columbo* and really wanted to do something with clues in it. I had this paranormal investigator character from a comic I’d half drawn years earlier, so I blew the dust off, and threw her in a story. That was Argana Zeit and the Haunted Busker.

When the replies finally came in on the submarine novel, they were all delightfully polite variations on ‘this is very imaginative, but you haven’t got a clue what you’re doing’. I rediscovered that manuscript recently, the same way you find a rotting vegetable at the back of the fridge hiding behind the cheese box, and about as appetising. I’m eternally grateful that no one was foolish enough to publish it.

But that’s okay. I enjoyed writing Argana so much I came up with another seventeen adventures, and probably more by the time you read this. They’re undeniably cosy stories, set in a green-leafed world where nobody ever dies on camera, the swearing is mild, and the paranormal threat is undermined by the chaotic humour of the background characters. It’s this way because – the aforementioned nightmares aside – when I started writing in 2020, I needed an antidote to the strong possibility that the world was about to end.

It didn’t, though, and fortunately neither has Argana Zeit.

*It’s to Columbo that Argana owes her terrible driving and tactically dishevelled look.

The Devil in Derbyshire

The Devil in Derbyshire: Weird Tales of Argana Zeit Volume 2

Argana Zeit dreams of the day she can give up her day job and get paid to save the world … or at least, her corner of it. There’s a curdling strangeness in her hometown of Trotterwell. Poltergeists defraud the dead. Shopkeepers curse their customers. Mortal rivals set moles on one another. The local magician has been hexed. And naturally there’s an eldritch horror masquerading as the devil.

Beset by mysteries, Argana Zeit and her dog max are going to get the chance to prove themselves … but can they?

Contains the stories

  • Argana Zeit vs the Mole Marauders
  • Argana Zeit and the Cursed Tattoos
  • Argana Zeit and the Educated Dead
  • Argana Zeit Saves Halloween
  • Argana Zeit and the Wolf Moon

Argana Zeit Bothers the Boggarts

In the haunted and forgotten hills beyond Sheffield, the sheep are dying. Tourists report blue lights bobbing like marsh gas. A legion of mischievous spirits, quiet for generations, is rising. Paranormal Investigator Argana Zeit and her dog are going to need all their wits about them as they try and uncover the cause. But with a city to save, figuring out what’s riled the boggarts is only the beginning of their troubles. Can they quell the insurrection?

Argana Zeit and the Ghostherd of Lathkill Dale

The dead have their shepherds, nudging them steadily toward the light. That’s no easy task in leafy Lathkill Dale, where lost souls curdle in the darkness of the abandoned mines below. Here a ghostherd will seize a unique opportunity, one that will pit its limitless empathy for the departed against its callous disregard for the living.

There’s going to be trouble. And Argana Zeit will be right in the middle of it.

With three lives on the line, can she solve the riddles of the past before she reaches the river’s end?

Paranormal in The Peaks

Paranormal in The Peaks: Weird Tales of Argana Zeit Volume 1

Is Argana Zeit’s limitless curiosity the power that will sustain her, or the curse that will lead her to disaster? Ghosts, possessions, pan dimensional monsters, ancient entities, angry tree spirits … there’s not an occult mystery in all of Derbyshire she won’t stick her nose into.

Available as both an e-book and paperback, this collection is a convenient way to get your hands on these, the first seven Argana Zeit stories:

  • Argana Zeit Ruins Halloween
  • Argana Zeit is on the Menu
  • Argana Zeit Stones the Solstice
  • Argana Zeit Rings the Other World
  • Argana Zeit Collects Snow Toads

Now out on Amazon – UK link here and US here.

Argana Zeit and the Bay of Ghosts

Masked urchins are stealing hermit crabs. There’s child cultists and a fisherman who just might be a ghost. But that’s not all that awaits Argana Zeit on holiday in Robin Hood’s Bay … something ancient and terrible has been waiting for its time.

This novelette, which takes place in the summer before Haunted Busker, is exclusively available by subscription to the Owain Oakwood mailing-list.

So head on over to the sign-up area and dibs your copy!

Argana Zeit Saves Halloween

It’s Halloween so naturally paranormal investigator Argana Zeit would like nothing more than to stay in and keep her head down. Some chance! When illegal ravers are abducted in the woods on her patch, she’ll get dragged into this mystery.

Pour yourself a bowl of pumpkin soup and settle down for an hour or two to enjoy paranormal shenanigans.

UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09KH5YX9L

US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KH5YX9L