Authors Electric

Anne Boleyn’s Last Ride (as it is Christmas - an (*almost) traditional Christmas ghost story for you all.) *** Back in 1971 most pubs closed at midday on Christmas Eve but as luck would have it our local wasn’t one of them. And so it was that, at 8pm, we slouched, in relative good mood, across the bridge over Carshalton ponds; past the Vinyl works that, in honour of the season, was not belching its usual fumes into the air from the far bank of the Wandle; and into the Lord Palmerston Public House. As always we avoided the spit and sawdust, because even we bikers had standards. In the saloon bar a battle-scarred bar top reflected one solitary strand of coloured lights strung above it, and the carpet’s bi-annual clean ensured that it pulled slightly less stickily at our boots. Yet, despite its shortcomings, entering the Lord Palm, with its dim light and beery fumes and welcoming warmth, was like sliding into comfy slippers. Most of the regulars were sprog-wrangling in their o...

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...

Upon the moonlit doorstep sat a small girl selling pins.             ‘A penny, you say?’             ‘Please m’m. Penny a packet.’             The Lady dropped a shilling in the little girl’s lap. She took the wrap of paper in her glove and hurried home, where she tossed the pins into a drawer. Soon to bed, she lay awake a long while, troubled by a tingling in her fingers. Though she tried rubbing them, then warming her hand under the pillow, the tingling grew ever more fierce, till it was like pins and needles jabbing through her palm. After many fretful hours, the Lady slept.             Next evening the Lady passed that way again. The dark doorway seemed to be empty. Then a familiar voice piped up behind her.        ...

The Lion of Sole Bay Halloween has snuck up and jumped me from behind. Several months ago I was visiting my friends at Kessingland Primary School near Lowestoft when I received an invitation to call on the librarian (oh, okay, Resource Centre manager) at the nearby secondary school, Pakefield High. It's a newly-built school and I was keen to visit as I knew that most of the Year Six children I'd met at Kessingland would be moving on to Pakefield. The school is still in a state of construction but the Resource Centre was impressive and there was a lovely buzz from the some of the younger students who were off to a poetry competition in Norwich the following day. I was therefore delighted when I was invited to take part in a 'Literary Leap Day' scheduled for the autumn term. “We're planning some sort of ghostly / Halloween theme” said the manager, Linda. “Oh fine,” I responded blithely. “I'll have my new book out by then and that's sort of Halloween-...