It’s PUBLICATION DAY!

and the wraiths are loose.

This piece has had a few reincarnations. First it was known as Leave the Living Alone, a humorous tale that boasted a lean two thousand, six hundred words. After a rewrite a further three thousand words were added. Another rewrite slashed two thousand off the word count, and provided it with a new name: Elsie and the Psychopomp. One more rewrite, and another trim, and I had the fourth story now in Corpse Road Blues from Demain Publishing. Please welcome the newly retitled, What the Dead Fear.

The antagonist’s viewpoint has always intrigued me. What makes the monster or the ghost tick? What drives them? Getting into their heads and knowing their story is vital, even if the writer doesn’t utilise that knowledge. What the Dead Fear is all about the ghost’s story, not necessarily the antogonist.

For a long time, I had no plot, only an image of a character: that of the ghost of a young boy, brushing his teeth, toothpaste spilt on his too-tight Marvel pyjamas. Then I started writing of his escapades in the family home. I then pieced together another character using what I knew about my fortune-telling grandmother.

What the Dead Fear did not come easily. Like its characters, it’s a story with a troubled past, a fiction that was sweated and toiled over, hammered and bullied in a wordsmith’s furnace. For that, it remains a dear friend.

If you’d like to read the story, you can buy Corpse Road Blues here.