Authors Electric

This is the story of James, a man in his sixties, living with Asperger’s and impaired vision. James is an only child who has lived at home all his life, except when he was away as a teenager at a school for the blind. He has also left home on occasion to be involved in quiz programmes. His mother, Margaret,  suffered k idney failure so, from age 13, James helped care for her in the school holidays when his father was at work. Then, later, when his father also became ill, James was glad to look after them both. He underwent some eye operations which improved his sight. They were a very happy family. James’s mother, died in 2017 and from that time James and his father seemed to become objects of suspicion to Social Services. This culminated in James’s father being forced into a care home after he had been admitted to hospital with an attack of gastro-enteritis.  As I listened to this part of James’s story my heart sank – I have heard too many long sad tales from people who fee...

           It's Octobrrrrrr and the season of witches and spooks is here. It's time to draw the curtains, edge closer to the fire and get your nose stuck into a ghost story or two. For my money, those which are short stories work best and there are some great ones out there - tales which get it just right, scaring the pants off you and haunting you for years after, jumping out at you from dark corners of your memory at unexpected moments, and without ever needing to overstep the matter and descend into horror and grim and grisly goriness to achieve their effect.           If you need some classic examples, there's our own Sue Price's Overheard in a Graveyard for starters: it's right up there with that master of Halloween eeeek Ray Bradbury's story The Emissary from his collection The October Country .           And there are of course other m...