A brief history of Ghost Story

Ghost Story started all the way back as a one off sequence of a attempt to write a better series of poetry for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) . I had first tried this in both 2012 and 2013 and writing in some many different forms and styles over the 30 odd days or so while proving great fun to write by the end of it had left me completely worn out and produced a incredible varied (and I am talking about quality) amount of poetry.

In 2014, as a one off I decided to try and write it as a seralised story you could say. I had already wrote by that stage poems in sequences (see my second full length book ‘The End of Summer’ for examples of short sequences and also my first book with Nick Armbrister ‘Europa’ which contained a series of 8 poems). The plan with Ghost Story was originally was a one off with me wishing to write a simple 30 poem sequence with a supernatural / horror sequence and came together on my head walking to get the Metrolink home from work and well, the idea came there from nowhere with literally no planning throughout it apart from the fact I wanted to write a tense, horror story (See http://napowrimo2014.blogspot.co.uk/)

Ghost Story II which came the year after in 2015 was planned somewhat more, but of course not wrote until April 2015 came after a walk through Manchester Piccadilly just after a major security incident and I spotted what was then I thought would happen if this.. happen and I came up with the outline of a shooter causing havoc and Andy, my main narrator caught in the middle off it after Michelle reappears to him (See http://ghoststoryii.blogspot.co.uk/)

By the time we got to Ghost Story III in 2016, I was engrossed in a book which my brother had got me called Underground Manchester which had looking at secret tunnels and underground bunkers in Manchester in ways I hadn’t found off before, and I ended up placing Andy and Michelle in a chase to stop a infected Rat King from killing hundreds of people (http://ghoststoryiii.blogspot.co.uk/) and at the end of it introduced Mandrake who would become a major character in Part 4 onwards.

Mandrake who first really appeared in Part 4 a lot of people wouldn’t know this first appeared in a comic (alongside Inspector Brooks and Joe and Cherry, all of which cropped up in the series) I first tried writing all the way back in the mid 1990s with my friend, Graham. We got as far as designing the first 4 or 5 issues onlyfor it to never get finished. It was never planned to bring Mandrake, a vampire hunter into the story but it kind of made sense to focus Part 4 on him, and leave Michelle (who only came into the story at the halfway point really and Andy in a brief cameo) at a gig featuring a metal band next in 2017 where literally all hell broke loose (http://ghoststoryiv.blogspot.co.uk/)

Last year was a sidewise step as I covered ground where Andy had been while not in Part 4 to bring the story up to date (http://ghoststoryv.blogspot.co.uk/).

Part 6 this year is three words ‘all out war’ and will start on 1st April.