Ursula Wills is a writer who lives in Gloucestershire, UK. She writes short stories and novels. Her story The Wicker Husband is now a film! Wicker will be out from October 23rd and stars Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård. Watch the trailer here!
Ursula is represented by the lovely people at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. You can also find Ursula on Substack here, or on Instagram.
Ursula loves folk tales and folklore, strange and silly goings on. She writes about the places where the ordinary bumps up against the uncanny, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Wicker Things
The trailer for the 'Wicker' film based on my short story 'The Wicker Husband' is now out and totally viral! You can watch it here.
The film stars Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgard, Peter Dinklage, and Elizabeth Debicki, with special effects by Weta.
The film will be out worldwide from October. I've seen a sneak preview and it's amazing!
If you're looking to read The Wicker Husband story it's not currently available but will be very soon via audiobook and ebook, along with the film. Full collection of short stories to follow. It's all very exciting!
Prior to that the story was turned into a musical by Rhys Jennings and Darren Clark at the Watermill Theatre Newbury in 2020.
For all enquiries relating to rights please contact Blake Friedmann or use the contact form below.
Current Work
The inhabitant of the attic in Hinterzwischengasse has been dead for some time. Nonetheless, like any self-respecting inhabitant of Vienna, he’s getting on with life: eating cake, drinking coffee, visiting his lady-friend, unburdening himself to his psychotherapist, putting up with the music student next door practising Schoenberg, and indulging in a decades-long feud with his bookseller neighbour. Please just don’t ask him how he died…
He doesn’t like talking about the early years. Back then, he was angry. He broke things. He might have killed a man. It took decades to get to a better place. Many people helped: Madame Violette, the medium who fled her own ghosts; The Major, a man determinedly stuck in the glittering Vienna lost in the Great War; and an annoying hippie guru who promotes imagining your own destiny. Most of all, kind-hearted florist Jana, who leaves her cheating husband to be with him...
But now he’s in crisis: after decades together, Jana is dying. She’s pretty relaxed about this, and has even picked a funeral director. Jana thinks after death they’ll be together. But he knows differently - she’ll move on to wherever all the dead people go, and he’ll still be stuck, in Vienna. Also, there’s bad things going on next door. And all this death is giving him flashbacks to his life...
As he unravels, he unravels his death – and life – back to front – and ends at the beginning, at last.
I’ve wanted to write a novel about Vienna ever since I first visited in 2015. It has such an interesting history and is so very full of contrasts. It’s magnificent, civilised, prosperous and sunny, but also freezing, creepy, and the site of terrible events.
I conceived the idea of the ghost in the attic as a way of moving through all these places and moods, but also because the city has a reputation for being obsessed with love and death – so that’s what the novel is about. It’s also about reinventing yourself after disaster – as the city does, so the ghost does too. But there’s always a new challenge round the corner…
