Blog post #0 – What I blog about, and why you might be interested…

Featured

Posted on by
1

Hello to Huey’s Blog and thanks for putting your gaze upon these words! I guess you’re curious and want to know more… what’s this guy about? Is he a satisfying BLT stack sandwich (believable, likeable and trustworthy), or is he an empty nothingburger (amazing how certain words and phrases suddenly appear in modern terminology as if they’ve always existed).

What does he do, you may wonder?

I’m a writer, right? So I write. The trick for me is to make the words I put on the page (or screen) interesting to you. Let me explain and you can decide…

I’ll cut to the chase. I’m minded to talk about anything, but really what I want to talk about is fiction, the creative process, UFOs, our Universe and where you and I fit in to all of this. And where we’re all headed. I mean the times we’re living through. That may seem like anything and everything, but I can assure you it’s not. What do I mean?

Here’s a fact for you. In 2024, sales of the Bible and religious and spiritual books skyrocketed among younger men, particularly in the US. These figures are from Amazon, and I guess if anyone knows anything about reading trends, it does. What’s also interesting was the simultaneous swing away from sales of political books. And aligned to the rise in religious book sales (in 2024, Bible sales were up 40 percent) was the increased church attendance of Gen Z men, opting too for traditional Catholic and Orthodox churches instead of the mega churches popular with their parents. Not only, Gen Z is apparently the first generation in centuries where male church attendance is higher than female. What’s going on?

I’m interested in the zeitgeist, aren’t we all in one way or another, and I want to write fiction that chimes with the times. I’m intrigued by these book sale figures and associated societal and cultural shifts. Why? Because the spiritual aspect of our existence occupies my mind almost every hour of every day; those big existential questions we’re seeking answers for (at least I suppose some of us are). This growing interest in the spiritual – whether in fiction, or for self-help, personal growth and mindfulness, and so on – particularly among young men, seems to indicate I’m not alone in being curious about the big stuff. That being said, I don’t actively practice religion, but I do think I’m spiritual in my own way, and I do write, which is its own kind of meditative act. I write for me first, but I’m certain the views I express, and the fiction I create, will interest others too. And not just Gen Z, but men and women, young and old. And everybody in between; however you identify as a human-being on this tiny piece of rocky galactic real estate.

Let me be clear again. I’m not a religious fanatic, far from it. But I am interested in what makes us all tick. Heck, I’d love to know what makes me tick! And that’s why I write, as I explain in a later blog.

Reading some of my older fiction (short stories, failed novels, assignments for my creative writing course years ago) it seems clear now I’ve always been interested in certain themes. The spiritual, yes. The existential, tick. But I’m also curious about our connection to the cosmos. This sounds whacky. It’s not (leastways, I don’t think so). I sense we’re at a defining moment in our history, with recent breakthroughs in technology and the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), supercomputing, the advancement of space travel in our solar system. The march of science, medical discoveries, a growing focus on the meta and quantum, theories around consciousness. It’s like we’ve reached an inflection point, all bets are off and all cards on the table. Anything could happen in the next decade. I bet you can feel this change too?

The term ‘singularity’ banded around in relation to AI in late 2023, and more specifically what it refers to, seems entirely plausible in my humble opinion, certainly to some degree (I’ll let you do your own research on what this word means – but think of a plughole, and our human intellectual primacy here on Earth being sucked into it). We’re at the intersection of human intellectual evolution and the rise of artificial intelligence. Which brings me to nonhuman intelligence, or NHI. UFOs…

As I write in a later blog, UFOs have always fascinated me. What’s not to like about them. But my interest has shifted away from being a straightforward ‘sceptical believer’ in nuts and bolts alien craft, towards thinking there’s something else going on here. I found the evidence for a bona fide, genuine, and mostly unreported global phenomenon (in the mainstream media) hard to ignore when researching my debut novel. I urge you to do your own analysis. The plain testimony from thousands, millions of people, many in high-profile positions of authority, offering unimpeachable credentials and extraordinary evidence or statements, cannot be ignored forever. But the recent feature I find most interesting is the increasing swell of support, both in academia, science and the military industrial complex (MIT), for research into UFOs and the consciousness connection. I’ll say no more about that for now, because there isn’t t space and you don’t have time. What I will say is that consciousness and spirituality are two sides of the same coin in my estimation. Anyway, I find all this mindbogglingly fascinating, don’t you?

All of which is to say, it’s a jungle out there and I feel like a zoologist (maybe an anthropologist or sociologist) with a telescope and a notepad. On which point, the beasts of the rainforest I’m most interested in are the outsiders, the loners, the marginalised, the quirky, the offbeat. The unusual.

I boiled a lot of the above down and put it into my debut novel, The Otero County Disclosure, coming later this year (2025). I’ll be discussing the book and its themes in more detail in the coming weeks, but suffice to say I love drawing a direct line between the everyday and the truly universal, because whatever my life experience(s), and however I think, it’s likely true for all of us on some level. My question could well be your question, and vice versa. I hope so. I want to think about and discuss all this stuff and how it informs my ideas and my fiction writing.

I guess I want to get some things off my chest and not feel like a lone zoologist in this vast jungle. A better metaphor might be, help me feel less like a lone voice in the wilderness.

And so, I hope what I have to say, whether here, or in my fiction, will mean something to you too. Please visit again and write me back when you can with your own thoughts. Share, like and drop me a line.

Thanks for stopping by.

Huey

Subscribe to receive my latest short fiction and newsletter.

Blog post #17 – It’s been a while (again). So, I’m gonna get back into my blogging groove… with the strange disappearance of Zigmund Adamski

Posted on by
Reply

Since late 2025 I’ve been writing about true crime. Mysteries, and conspiracies. Particularly British ones, dating back over the past century. These include peculiar deaths, paranormal occurrences, strange disappearances, and (possibly) the hidden hand of government(s) involvement. I’ve been researching those infamous tales less traveled. Less well known. But with a real chill down the spine impact. I’ve been publishing these stories in my regular monthly author newsletter. It now goes out to thousands of people, I’m delighted to say. This new approach to my content is in preparation for the new mystery-thriller trilogy coming later in 2026, or early 2027. I’ll be talking about this more in due course.

Meantime, there’s a novella I’m publishing this summer that acts as precursor to the full novels.

What follows, below, gives you a flavor of these bizarre and mysterious events I cover. This month it features the true, odd and eerie tale of the strange disappearance – and subsequent death – of one Zigmund Adamski. The circumstances of which are now well known here in the UK. Oddly, his death was only the start of some truly peculiar coincidences.

All of which is to say, if you’d like to subscribe to the regular newsletter, and read more, you can do so here. No obligation to do anything else. Oh, and you’ll get a free copy of The House of Woo.

On with the blog…

Here we are. The days are finally stretching out here in England. We’ve traded those grim, steel-grey skies of February for something a little softer. There’s a hint of spring in the air. Daffodils nodding their yellow heads along the roadside, birds waking me up, and that distinct smell of rain on fresh grass (something we’ve had a lot of since the turn of the year). It’s enough to make you feel optimistic, isn’t it?

Well, almost.

If you’re anything like me, the changing seasons mean swapping one set of chores for another. But, as always, the writing desk is the best place to hide from responsibilities.

Speaking of hiding, thank you to everyone who wrote in about last month’s dive into the ‘Bella in the Wych Elm’ mystery. Your theories were fascinating. And terrifying. It seems we all share a love of the unexplained, of those stories that sit just on the edge of reality, refusing to be neatly categorised.

Talking of which, I’m hugely excited for Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming summer blockbuster, Disclosure Day, out in theatres (or cinemas, here in the UK) on 12 June. He’s returning to his Close Encounters, E.T. and The War of the Worlds roots, diving back into UFOs and the big question: are we alone? This time, it’s a more grounded conspiracy thriller (though very little is known about the plot at this stage). You can watch the latest trailer here…

I’m excited because this precise subject was the premise of my debut, The Otero County Disclosure: A novel for our times, published last summer. It too featured hidden truths and deep conspiracy (and climaxed on the set of a Hollywood blockbuster being filmed in the US’ mysterious southwest). Like the movie, it’s a story that dares to stray to the edge of our reality, and a novel that can’t be neatly categorized.

With all this in mind, this month’s true case is both bizarre and frightening, and features the subject close to Spielberg’s heart: UFOs, with a mysterious death thrown in for good measure.

So, grab your coffee (or tea, I’m not judging), find your favorite reading spot, and let’s travel back in time again. This month, we aren’t going back to the 1940s. We’re landing in 1980. The year of the Rubik’s Cube, Pac-Man, and The Empire Strikes Back. But in a quiet corner of West Yorkshire, here in the UK. For something far stranger than science fiction was about to unfold…

We’re heading to the town of Todmorden.

The strange, eerie case… of Zigmund Adamski

It was June 6, 1980. A Friday. 

In the bustling market town of Tingley, near Wakefield, 56-year-old former coal miner Zigmund Adamski was running errands. It should have been a joyous time. His goddaughter was getting married the very next day, and the family was in high spirits.

Zigmund was a solid man. A Polish immigrant who had made a life for himself in Britain after the war. He was known as a hard worker, a loving husband to his wife Lottie, and a man of routine. He wasn’t the type to disappear or walk out on his family, especially not the day before a wedding he was looking forward to.

Around 3:30 PM, he popped out to buy some groceries. He stopped to chat with a neighbor, exchanged pleasantries, and then… vanished.

Just like that.

When he didn’t return home, Lottie panicked. This wasn’t like Zigmund. The wedding came and went without him—a somber affair overshadowed by his empty chair. Days turned into a week. Police were baffled. There was no evidence of foul play, no sightings, notes left, or money withdrawn from the bank. It was as if the earth had swallowed him whole.

Five days later, on Wednesday, June 11th, Zigmund Adamski was found. But where he was found—and how he was found—would spark a mystery that endures to this day.

His body was discovered over 20 miles away in the town of Todmorden. He was lying on top of a 10-foot-high pile of coal in a coal yard near the railway line.

Now, pause for a moment. Imagine the scene. A man who has been missing for five days, found atop a massive heap of coal. But here’s the kicker… he was wearing a suit, but his shirt was missing. His watch and wallet were gone. And despite climbing a coal heap, his clothes were remarkably clean. His shoes were tied properly.

The pathologist, Dr. Alan Edwards, was stumped. Adamski had died of a heart attack; that much was clear. But the body’s condition was baffling. He had burns on his neck, shoulders, and the back of his head. However, these weren’t burns from fire. They were chemical burns, covered in a strange, gel-like substance the coroner couldn’t identify.

And there was something else. Zigmund had been missing for five days, yet he only had one day’s growth of beard. He was well-nourished. It was as if, for the majority of his disappearance, time had stopped for him. Or perhaps, he had been kept somewhere… else.

The cop who saw too much

The coroner, James Turnbull, would later go on record calling it the most baffling case of his career. The verdict was an open one. He stated explicitly that the burns could not have been self-inflicted and that Adamski had died of “fright.” Yes, you read that right. He was scared to death.

But the story doesn’t end with poor Zigmund. In fact, it gets stranger.

The police officer first on the scene at the coal yard was a man named Alan Godfrey. A pragmatic, no-nonsense Yorkshire copper. He investigated the scene, noted the oddities—the clean clothes on the dirty coal, the strange burns, the look of terror on the victim’s face. He filed his report and tried to move on.

But Todmorden wasn’t done with Alan Godfrey.

Six months later, in November 1980, Godfrey was on patrol in the early hours of the morning. He was driving down the town’s Burnley Road looking for some missing cows (you can’t make this stuff up—it’s the most British beginning to a sci-fi story ever).

As he rounded a bend, he saw something in the road ahead. At first, he thought it was a bus that had skewed sideways, blocking the lane. But as he got closer, he realized it wasn’t a bus.

It was a diamond-shaped object, hovering about five feet off the ground. It was rotating silently, the bottom spinning while the top remained stationary. It was massive—about six meters wide and 4 meters high.

Godfrey, bless him, did what any good policeman would do. He grabbed his radio to call it in. But the radio was dead. Just static.

So, he did the next logical thing. He grabbed his sketch pad to draw it.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light.

The next thing Godfrey knew, he was driving his car again. But he was 30 yards further down the road. The object was gone. The cows were gone. He was alone in the dark, confused and disoriented. When he checked his watch, he realized he had “lost” about 15 minutes. He couldn’t account for it.

As he told The Sun newspaper in 2020, “I was about 100 yards on the other side of where the thing had been hovering,” he claims.
“There was a strange tickly electric feeling about the place.
“I turned around and went back to the spot the object was hovering. The road surface beneath it was bone dry – everything else was glistening from the earlier downpour.
“In the dry patch, leaves, twigs and small branches lay in a swirled pattern. It was very peculiar.”

When he returned to the police station, he noticed something odd. His boots were split at the sole, as if he’d been dragged. And the radio? It was working fine again.

Oh, and those missing cows? They were eventually discovered later that day, mysteriously relocated to a rain‑soaked field.
Crucially, the field showed no hoofmarks, despite the wet ground—one of the elements that made the case so puzzling.

A connection in the sky?

Now, here is where the threads start to tangle. Godfrey, being an honest man, filed an official report about the UFO. He didn’t want to be ridiculed, but he couldn’t lie about what he saw. It made the papers. Locally and nationally. “Copper Sees UFO.” You can imagine the field day the press had.

But the connection to Adamski is what keeps researchers up at night.

Both incidents happened in Todmorden, within six months of each other.

Godfrey was the officer who found Adamski’s body.

Adamski had strange burns and “missing time” (the beard growth discrepancy).

Godfrey experienced “missing time” during his encounter.

Years later, under hypnosis (a controversial method, I know, but bear with me), Godfrey recalled being taken aboard the craft. He described seeing a human man there—a man who looked suspiciously like… Zigmund Adamski.

Is it possible? Could a former coal miner from Tingley have been abducted, subjected to some terrifying ordeal that stopped his biological clock, and then been unceremoniously dumped on a coal pile, scared to death? And did the officer who found him get a visit from the same visitors months later?

Or is it all a tragic coincidence? Was Adamski kidnapped by humans? Perhaps a family feud or a grudge we don’t know about? But that doesn’t explain the mysterious gel, the lack of beard growth, or the clean clothes in a coal yard. And it certainly doesn’t explain a hovering diamond in the middle of a Yorkshire road.

Alan Godfrey suffered for his honesty. He was ridiculed, his career stalled, and he eventually left the force. But he never recanted. To this day, he stands by what he saw. He maintains that the Adamski case and his own encounter are linked, pieces of a puzzle we haven’t quite figured out how to solve.

The town of secrets

Todmorden itself is a bit of a hotspot for this kind of high strangeness. Locals talk about lights in the sky, strange hums, and feelings of being watched. It sits in a valley, deep and shadowed, the kind of place that holds onto its secrets tight.

I find the Adamski case particularly haunting because of the humanity of it. Zigmund was just buying groceries. He was a man with a family, a life, a future. He walked around a corner and stepped into a nightmare. It’s that randomness that chills the bone. We like to think we are safe in our routines, that the world makes sense. But stories like this remind us that sometimes, the rules don’t apply.

What do you think happened to Zigmund Adamski? Was it a botched abduction? A secret government experiment (chemical burns and mysterious gels often point that way for conspiracy theorists)? Or something even darker?

And what about Alan Godfrey? A hero for speaking the truth, or a man whose mind played tricks on him in the lonely dark of a night shift?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Reply to this email (huey@hueyhawke) and let me know. Do you believe in UFOs? Have you ever had “missing time?” Or maybe you’ve been to Todmorden and felt that strange energy yourself.

A little tease…

Before I go back to my chores, a quick update on the writing front. The manuscript for the full new conspiracy thriller trilogy is coming along nicely. It’s gritty, it’s fast-paced, and yes, it might just have a little touch of the unexplained in it. All this research into local mysteries has the creative juices flowing.

I’m also still looking for a few more beta readers for the upcoming thriller. If you want a sneak peek before anyone else and don’t mind spotting the occasional typo (it’s a rough draft, after all), drop me a line.

And next month I hope to share with you a new free novella, linked to the trilogy, set in West Virginia in 1972. A strange death in a remote forest close to the Ohio River, investigated by a Scottish journalist who’s trying to hide…

It’s called The Notch.

Until next month, keep your eyes on the skies—but maybe keep your feet firmly on the ground. You never know who—or what—might be watching.

Stay safe, and happy reading.

Huey

Blog post #16 – Finally, becoming a published author

Posted on by
1

Heck, has it really been more than three months since my last post? What took me so long, what happened?

I became a published author. That’s what!

And it’s everything and nothing like I expected…

I woke up on the morning of Wednesday, 9 July, with an immense sense of gratitude, pride and relief.

The day before the debut novel was birthed to the world, and a project I’d been working on for more than three years had finally received its baptism. It was neither one of fire, nor an event bedecked with celebratory garlands. Instead, it was a quiet reckoning that all was just as it should be.

The truth is, I didn’t really know what to expect now the book had been published. I anticipated some anticlimactic emptiness, a kind of, ‘okay, what happens now?’ accompanied, perhaps, by a disappointment, or a wild excitement, depending on how sales went. May be fear, if there was something amiss; something I’d overlooked that disappointed purchasers of the book. A worst case scenario being the dreaded ‘poor review’.

You somehow imagine the world will stop and acknowledge your effort. Halt its forward motion to break off and recognize and admire your magnum opus, in that all-encompassing way that takes a hold of a person when something fully absorbs them.

In fact it was crickets.

What I hadn’t expected was the suspension of time, a sort of pause in my life and routine, as though my perception of daily repetitiveness was from a bubble, the humdrum world going on outside. Because of course these things, like the launch and publication of a book online, don’t happen in real-time, in person. It’s like a slow-motion scene. It takes time for people to buy and read and feedback. For platforms, like Amazon, to track purchases and Kindle Unlimited page reads. Or to approve a review.

And so nothing really happened. Excepting family, friends, and acquaintances in the know, who sent me ‘good luck’ messages, or said they were buying a copy of the book, and so on. This apparent pause on progress actually turned out to be a good thing. I didn’t feel compelled to do anything except sit, and wait, and acclimatize to my new status as a published author (whatever that means), without the pressure to do anything more for the time being.

I had been poised to react. But react to what exactly? As an author – or anybody for that matter who creates something, be it a work of art or a business, for example – you build these notions that humanity will go crazy when your ‘product’, hidden for so long under a bushel, finally gets its time in the sunshine. To be consumed, analyzed, studied and critiqued. Finally. Call it the moment of truth.

But of course the world, even reading communities, is not in the least bit interested in someone else’s hobby project. For that is what it was for so long. Until it wasn’t. And I decided to publish. To become a bona fide author.  

Again, in my naivety, I assumed book retailing platforms would keep me updated every step of the way. ‘Huey. Congratulations. In the last hour you have shipped a further 100 paperback copies of ‘The Otero County Disclosure: A novel for our times’. 30 customers in India have purchased the Kindle version. 90 people in the US have begun reading the Kindle Unlimited version…’ And so on.

Nope.

Silence.

There is such a thing for publishers called the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Dashboard. It’s fab. And as I came to discover, pretty exciting too when the algorithm kicks in and the data starts flowing. It does indeed track everything. But whereas I thought I’d be updated with real-time notifications sent on some app, or a text, email etc., you actually have to proactively use the dashboard to see the book’s sales’ performance. So it was, I went to work, toiled and waited.

Still nothing.

I went to bed with a sense of a party going on elsewhere. A party I wasn’t invited to. The book wasn’t mine anymore. It was everybody else’s. For them to do with it as they wished, when they wanted. And I was happy with that. At least no-one had messaged me to complain. I slept like a baby. Exhausted, after months of everything from editing, to working with editors, book cover designers, marketeers, and of course, dear readers; my newsletter subscribers, Facebook followers, and the like. I had many lovely messages throughout the day, but no-one was claiming it was a dead cert for the Pulitzer, or an Oprah hot pick.

The promotions kicked off and there was nothing further for me to do.

Nobody had yet read it. But still, nobody was yet complaining either.

So it was I awoke with a sense of calm, of a job well done. I really was a published author. Or was I? No-one said I was and perhaps the book hadn’t been published. There was an error or something? I determined to go downstairs and check. Surely someone who grants these titles (‘published author’) had sent me confirmation?

Still nothing. Inboxes bereft of updates, and social media and messaging apps had slowed to a trickle with incoming notices. I thought I better just check on the dashboard everything had gone off as planned.

First, I visited the Amazon.com site to check the novel was actually on sale. And there it was. In glorious crimson.

The words ‘Best Seller’.

My face throbbed with heat and excitement, and my chest felt as tight as a drum. I went to the dashboard and fumbled through log-in details and passwords. It seemed to take an age. Finally, the evidence. In simple text and numbers. Units processed, pre-orders, KU page reads, all neatly broken down by territory.

I think I may have hollered. Danced a jig. Blown my nose (I always blow my nose when I’m excited, a nervous tick).

It remained an Amazon #1 Best Seller in two of its three listed categories, in the US, for nearly a whole week. And during that time I felt moved to thank everybody I’d ever met. I will never forget those minutes and hours, stretching to a few days, this long, hot, summer now fading.

But here’s the truth. I haven’t shifted thousands of copies. Heck, I haven’t even broken even. But I now have a readership and the reviews have started to come in. It seems people are really enjoying reading it. The average rating is just under five stars and some folks have been kind enough to write multiple paragraphs about the book. A novel I wrote.

It. Gives. Me. So. Much. Pleasure!

The calm didn’t last and I’ve spent the past month-and-a-half since publication planning the book’s continued promotion and evolving its marketing. I’ve already got a new cover for the Kindle version coming out (see this post’s title image, above), and various other activities planned in the run up to Christmas. And then I’ll start over again, as I look to piggyback on Spielberg’s similarly themed movie (UFO disclosure) coming out next year.

Boy, have I learned so much in the process of becoming a published author. I’ve made far more mistakes than I have good decisions. But as someone once said, ‘if you’re not failing, you’re not learning’. How true.

So now, in between pushing the first book, I’m planning my second. And my third and fourth. A trilogy. Set for publication in 2026. Only next time I’ll be a published author and the stakes higher. But I’ll take all those achievements and failures, those lessons learned and the platform I’ve built, and create, nay, write, something magnificent. On the other hand, being published doesn’t change a thing. It just confirms that yes, I can do it. I should always have done it. And now I will do it again. And again, and again.

If you’re interested in reading the book, you can find it on Amazon, here (US). For other territories, go to your local Amazon and search ‘The Otero County Disclosure’.

Enjoy.

Thanks for reading.

Huey.

August 2025