Peter Straub’s Ghost Story by John A. A. Logan
When
I was 14, in Scotland back in 1982, my two favourite novels were The Stand, by
Stephen King, and Ghost Story, by Peter Straub.
One
summer night in 1982, in Inverness (small city in Scottish Highlands), I was
introduced to a guy three years older than me, who it would have seemed I ought to have nothing in common with. We ended up being left alone together in a car, by
the friend who had introduced us, and a heavy silence fell in the air, only to
be broken when somehow the subject of reading came up, and we both found we had
read The Stand, and Ghost Story.
Neither
of us had ever met anyone else who had read both
those novels before.
I
knew very few people back then who read books at all.
Thus
began a friendship which lasted for the next 15 years or so…
A
couple of years later, in 1984, it so happened that Stephen King and Peter
Straub teamed up, to co-write a novel, called The Talisman, which I loved.
(“WOLF!! Right here and Now!!”)
I
loaned The Talisman out to two new friends in 1986 and they loved it, too.
Then,
somehow, I forgot about Peter Straub for the next 28 years (Sorry, Mr Straub!)
That
is, until I was doing a Bookbub promotion for my novel, The Survival of Thomas
Ford, back in October this year.
After
I’d given 40000 free copies of Thomas Ford away in 5 days, a new book cover
popped up under the Thomas Ford cover on the Amazon page:
Ghost
Story had popped up, as an “also-bought” for The Survival of Thomas Ford!
I
hadn’t seen that book for 28 years, and, although I think it had a different
cover back then, it was as though a literary
cycle had been completed.
One
of the books that had inspired me to write had reappeared unexpectedly, and
here it was being sold by an algorithm on the same page as I was now selling a
book of my own.
Would
my 14-year-old self have believed that possible, or my new friend that night in
the car who also loved Ghost Story?
I
clicked “Look Inside” on the Ghost Story cover, and began reading it all over
again, realising how well it was written, the quality and the voice, the power
and magic in that story, which had inspired me then, and I realised was still
an inspiration now.
Again,
that’s part of this mysterious cycle, though – realising that those early
influences really were as good as they seemed at the time, that it wasn’t all
because of first discovery that things seemed so good back then, that sometimes
it was also because of the quality of the discoveries themselves.
Thanks
again, Mr Straub!
Peter
Straub’s Ghost Story on Amazon Kindle:
The
Survival of Thomas Ford on Amazon Kindle:
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