How to contact me
It’s always an absolute delight to hear from readers, so please do get in touch!
- By email: steph@cityofsecrets.blog
- On BlueSky: @stephlay.bsky.social
- On Instagram: @Stephanie.lay
- On Twitter: @StephanieLay
If you’d like to be notified when there’s a new post, or when I have any exciting news, do consider subscribing—I promise I won’t do anything nefarious with your email 🙂
Steph.
Site policies
I never thought I’d need anything as formal as site policies, but just to be totally clear on a few things…
Copyright and content use: All of the original content on this site is © Steph Lay 2015-2025 – and all rights are reserved. Any content I’ve re-used (e.g. images shared with permission, screenshots from Google maps) will clearly state the original source. If you would like to use any of my content, do get in touch to ask first. I’m likely to say ‘yes’, but I’d like to know what and where things are going 🙂
Real stories, real places, contemporary photos: My Revenants on the Redway project grew out of my own walks around the city, and it’s been an honour to share the real-life stories that people have told me. One thing I wanted to do wherever possible is to visit each grid square and take my own pictures of the area as well as use experiencers’ own images or historical images. Often this is to give a general sense of a particular estate or street, but if my photos capture anyone’s house, business or vehicle and you’re not comfortable to have these pictured, please do contact me, and I can either obscure the details or remove the image entirely.
Use of AI generated images: In addition to using my own photos, I currently do use some AI tools to create illustrations for this site and will always make it clear where these have been used. I know this can be controversial, and you can read more about my approach to this tricky topic here.
Acknowledgements
A couple of important ‘thank-you’s …
First, and so important, thank you to my wonderful late husband Jef, for all the years of being a fantastic muse and for having shared many of these creepy explorations with me. I’ll carry on exploring alone, but it was so much nicer in company.
Secondly, thank you so much, to everyone involved in the MK Literary Festival but an extra special shout-out to Flora and Dave for, well, for everything they do! The competitions, the anthologies, the events, the magnificent online writing workshop that has turned into such a supportive and encouraging community—it’s all been so valuable. I’ve developed so much as a writer through taking part, the experiences I’ve had have been nothing short of transformational. I really hope I’ll keep being part of the fun for many years to come.
Finally, thank you to James Willis for his brilliant book Mysterious Milton Keynes. Not only has that been an invaluable source of inspiration for places to explore, it’s where the name City of Secrets originally came from. Right at the end of the book, he has a picture of the statue of the whispering girls outside the MK library which he’s captioned A City of Secrets. The phrase stuck with me ever since I read it, and this blog really couldn’t have been called anything else!
Willis, J. (2013) Mysterious Milton Keynes, DB Publishing/JMD Media
