Authors Electric

  Rod Kamitsuka, back when . To paraphrase Samuel Johnson: The prospect of death (by Coronavirus) can "concentrate the mind wonderfully."  We've been living with that prospect for more than a year now, awaiting the vaccine cavalry while the threat escalated from miniscule to monstrous. It matters not that the odds are in favour of survival except among the elderly and health-impaired. It's still a threat, with nasty side effects. Covid and the solitude of lockdown have made death more present to us all. Our capacity for denial wilts as the toll doubles and redoubles on TV. Death, however, can be a writer's friend. It motivates characters. It propels our narratives, themes, plot points, and symbols. Plus, dying can be a good career move for some writers, boosting book sales, prestige and popularity. No one ever heard of Stieg Larrson until he died, and we all know how The Great Gatsby flopped in 1925 and didn't catch on until after F. Scott Fitzgerald 's ...

           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...