Authors Electric

My birthday falls in October and every year I think about what if it were my last and what I would do. Would it seem like much ado about nothing. Or would I take on the stance that there was no need to fuss.   W ould I shrug it off as an insignificant year in case anyone slept through it.  Stirring honey into my black tea, in the dining room, I contemplated timing and pondered over what to do with my upcoming special day. We humans get so many special days.  The first day of spring.  The last day of school. Christmas day and New Year’s Day. Sundays. Holidays and leap days and lazy summer days. Happy and sad days. Days we remember, days we waste, days we choose, or not, to forget. Any random day of these, we spend in random ways. Making coffee, making eggs. Making appointments, making lists. Making points, making excuses. Making time, compromises, sacrifices. Meanwhile, any random one of these, mayflies spend making love.   How different ...

           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...