Thirteen Tales of Ghosts. Settle down in the dark and lose yourself in fear….
A collection of short stories concerning ghosts. Some are traditional ghost stories in the tradition of M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe. Other are not. Some scare, some are fun. Some play with the concept of a ghost. There are ghosts who are out for revenge and the living avenging the spirits that curse them.
Ideal for sitting around a campfire and late at night under the covers. Or maybe not if the stories themselves are any guide.
Available on Kindle and paperback for those who prefer the feel of the paper while huddling by the fire – on your own – in the dark – with that noise behind you……
All this has mean that along with the demands of life, many family illness and dealing with a son with Autism, I have not had much time to actually write anything new. I have kept my blog alive by reposting old work daily.
I tried NaNoWriMo, but again, due to life commitments and stress, did not complete it – though I did come out of it with five drafts of short stories.
So. New years resolutions!
Firstly, it should be noted I have 100% failure rate on these. I can make goals and get there, just not new years resolutions. I think this is because I tend to try and make big life changing ones.
So this year I am going to do two things. One, I am making them public, here and now. Hopefully that will give me kick up the backside to actually complete them. Secondly, I am making them a bit more modest.
So this is my plan for 2020.
One poem a week.
One short story a month
Enter one competition or submit to one publication per month.
These are reasonable and well within my capabilities. 52 poems and 12 short stories. I have done far more that that in a shorter time before.
The other big difference will be that I will not be posting them on my blog. I am keeping them unpublished so I can use them to submit to competitions and publications.
Which means, this blog will be a lot quieter this year.
So I was daydreaming in the bath – thinking about a book I read long ago – a biography of a famous 19th-century explorer and how he could be seen as representing men as a whole – but that’s a whole other post that will be coming soon.
Anyway – in the wandering way of my mind this lead me to thinking about how men have become demonised in the media generally. We are seen as stupid or beasts or slovenly – I could go on. But then, I thought women get it just as bad and then there’s ethnic minorities, the poor, immigrants – the list goes on. And on.
Maybe it’s just rich white people who get off lightly – but even as you read this what are you thinking? Of those Etonian brothers who keep their friend rich via nepotism and corruption while sneering at the poor? The rich wives from Chelsea with their lap dogs and expensive handbags and no clue about the real world?
See even they are demonised.
Why?
Who by – that’s an easier question. The media. And we all know that the media is run by those in power. I am no conspiracy theory nut – I don’t believe that there’s a tightly organised elite pulling the strings. Rather I think it’s like a self-sustaining system which lifts the people it needs to maintain its stability into positions of power. But whatever the reason – the media is the tool of that system.
So again why? Why demonise every single sector of society?
Control. If you cannot be proud of where you came from how can you rise to greatness? Great people can threaten the order of things, they can lead people out of their everyday drudgery and tedium. Out of wage slavery and obedience.
So greatness is stifled. In the modern garden of the world, the land is left to weeds and overgrowth. Anything that rises above the weed line is quickly cut down or sprayed with toxins until it wilts.
In such a barren and ill-tended garden, how can we expect flowers? How can we have anything more than poor harvests?
Scott Andrew Bailey - Author 