Mat Troy

It’s Thursday, so if you’ve been paying attention, you know what that means. Yes, I’m going to reveal another story from the ghost story anthology! This week, it’s Noye’s Raven, written by Mat Troy with art by Bevis Musson! In the backwoods of Nineteenth Century New England, old fashioned morality and progress vie for the hearts and minds of the good people of Milton. When Farmer Morrow finds an alluring and mysterious artifact, he reframes the argument for his own gain, but in doing so invites an older and much more sinister force to balance the ledgers. Mat Troy (he/him, @mat.troy.writes ) is a Welsh writer and performer with a love of folk, speculative, and cosmic horror. He has written sketches for BBC Radio and has stories and poems in publications in the UK and North America by such publications as The Ghastling, Neon Literary, Hallowzine and Arachne Press. He runs an annual winter spooky story tour around the country called Dark Winter Tales, is the co-writer and producer of the horror play Dead Air, and his anthology graphic novel I Feel Fine, co-created with Mariel Kelly, will be released in 2027. Bevis Musson (nominally he/him but not terribly fussed either way, @bevismusson ) is a comic writer and artist best known for The Dead Queen Detectives and Beef Squad. He lives in Manchester with his family and cats and thinks making comics is a better use of time than most anything else. Find his online portfolio at / I’m really pleased both Mat and Bevis came on board this project. It’s fantastic to have a proper, New England folk horror ghost story in the book, and Mat and Bevis are knocking it out of the spooky park with this one. Here you can see Bevis’s pencils for page one of the story, as well as a few panels from later on, because I’m a filthy tease.

Fantastic night, amazing to see @the_dylan_moran live at last (and so close up) and share that incredible stage at The Mount Without with so many talented folks. Also, nothing feels more appropriate than writing material in a crypt I tells ya. Huge thanks to Sam @riotactshowtime for putting on this colossal event!

Thanks to the glamorous @brendan.common for snapping me in my evangelical phase, doing poems at The Mount Without for Riot Act.

Thanks again @smithfieldcreatives for an awesome night!

Absolute joy to get the perform at the @smithfieldcreatives night in Dublin tonight. What a fortuitous set of events. Looked for a night to perform at. There was one tonight, it was right across the road from my hotel! Thanks to Adam for being an amazing host and to everyone who performed, you were all fantastic! Feels good to take Tilda Swinton to Ireland! #IYKYK

The props of Dead Air #4- Quinn's Headset. The instigators of the studio chaos! We originally looked online for some period headphones, but again, even broken crud from the 30s and 40s are now antiques. I opted to buy a pair of 1970s Alba H-5s from Ebay. Initially I thought they would do the trick but @alxnagle aka Dane Ashforde immediately recognised them for what they were so I knew I'd need to modify them. I didn't feel that bad about chopping up the headphones as they stank really bad. I believe they were originally owned by a smoking wet dog who liked cheap cloying cologne. I spent a few days cleaning them with various cleaning products and even getting into the nooks with q-tips but they still stank. I was relieved that the stench had been mostly contained in the head padded sponge, so when I cut them off it was reduced by 90%. Using some pictures of older headphones I then did some silver acrylic dry brushing to give them a scratched up used feel and make the plastic look more metallic and painted the head band the colour of the brown leather often seen on older cans. As a final touch, I painted one of the wires red to give the effect that theyd been repaired by the station at some point. It was only later I realised I had probably been recreating the headphones from this classic picture of my dad as a teenager in the RAF in the 50s.

The props of Dead Air #3- Octavian's letters. Another blink and you'll miss it prop. Octavian needed some imperious task while interrogating Dane, so I made a little stack of letters bound by string. Among the envelopes with fake 1930s American stamps are a couple of curios, a faded postcard with uniformed men on it from an antiques shop and historical postcard from my friend Drew for my birthday a few years ago depicting the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. American World Fairs were an obsession of Drew and I after reading The Devil and the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson, about World’s Fair architect Daniel Burnham and of H. H. Holmes, a criminal figure widely considered the first serial killer in the United States. I can only assume the postcard was a curio for Octavian too, as at that point the fair had been over for 33 years. The postcard has now been safely returned to its plastic sleeve on the wall in my office.

The props of Dead Air #2- The Zane Grey connection. Quinn Carlisle's favourite, Poor Zane Grey gets roasted twice in Dead Air. He was added to the script by @alistair_rey as a reference to Holly Martins from The Third Man being a fan and in turn us being influenced by the 30s radio work of Orson Welles. I didnt make this one, I just scoured charity shops and online until I discovered a massive selection of books under my nose at Troutmarks second hand bookshop Cardiff (check them out theyre amazing!). It's a bit of a cheat as it's not a 30s edition, but having looked at the era covers it is close enough. As tiny internal reference, one of the scripts lying around the studio when Quinn Carlisle enters is an adaptation of The Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey. An even closer inspection reveals Octvian lives in a rather occultish address in The Palisades where Orson Welles once lived.

The Props of Dead Air #1- Condenser Microphones. We tried to find some old mics but even ones that havent worked for years were expensive (the 1930s is slightly beyond the era of things being old junk lying around and well into everything is an antique now). Luckily there were these awful plastic mic heads on Ebay for about 6 quid. I dry brushed the black one with silver acrylic paint and the gold with black paint to make them look scratched up, like they had been languishing in the studio since the 20s, it helped that we had one of each colour as it gave the impression one had been replaced and nobody in WRIP cared about consistency. I made the logo heads with a plastic notebook cover, cable ties and black tape. The WRIP logo was created by @marielashlinn who created the Dead Air posters.

Another sold out night for our second and final show at @almataverntheatre Bristol! Please get down to this excellent venue and check out their shows (and eat their amazing food)! Thank you Alma Tavern, we had an absolute blast! And thanks @esther.paints for snapping us!

Another year, another Cardiff Mini Film Festival! Genuinely one or my favourite hosting gigs. The crop this year was outstanding. Documentaries of UFO hunters, base jumpers and one that changed my view on bare knuckle boxing. It seems that the main difference between low and big budget short fiction now is just the amount of time it takes to make them! The quality was insane. Also, some amazing music videos including Sophie Aldred, a Welsh Phoenix Nights and fire eaters in Kew Gardens. What a day!!