Monday, October 21, 2024

What do ghosts read? An Open Book blog hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Stolen from an X (Twitter) post: Which genre do you think ghosts prefer: mystery, thriller, horror, fairytale, or magical realism? 
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What a fun question! 

The answer might depend on your beliefs/philosophy about ghosts themselves and what exactly they are. After all, fiction gives us quite a range of ghosts. 

  • Some of them are basically the same person they were they were alive, just transparent and unchanging now. In some stories, they don't even know they are dead. 
  • Some of them are more like an echo of who they once were, trapped in a small moment, reliving it over and over. I'm not sure they can even interact with the world. 
  • Some of them are malevolent--poltergeists, vengeful spirits, and the like. 
I'm thinking that the only types of ghosts who read are that first type: the ones that are still who they always were, just dead now. And for those guys, I bet they read whatever they liked when they were alive. Though it is fun to imagine that, once freed from the limits of the mortal coil, like a need for sleep or to earn money, a ghost could just wander the library reading anything and everything. 

Heck! Maybe this is my chance to actually read everything in my TBR!

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Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Ghost Story Time! An IWSG bloghop post

    


Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the October 2 posting of the IWSG are Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre!

October 2 question - Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What's your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.
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I adore ghost stories. I could probably list a top 10 and still have dozens of favorites left to list. But the one that lives in my heart is Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp. 

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I first read this one when I was pretty young, an older child or younger teenager, so that's part of it--books that you read at that age imprint on your soul differently because you don't have wider experience and so many things get to the first one of their kind in your life. 

I've read it many times since, and it still delights me every time. 

It's got everything: an atmospheric old house, mysterious family history, an evil child, and even romance. Honestly, this book explains a lot about me. To this day, I am suspicious of gazing balls in gardens. This is probably why one of my upcoming projects is a Gothic romance, too. 

How about you? Do you love to read spooky stories? Tell me about them and add to my spooky season TBR!