features some short ghost stories. Why is that?
After Dark Hollow was published, I was approached by the BBC, who asked me if there was anything I wanted to do for TV. The books take so much time to write that I struggle to find the time to do anything else, and the idea of banging my head at a 90-minute script didn’t really appeal. I was, however, curious about perhaps doing something for radio. I like the narrative style of radio. I like the idea of someone sitting in their car or in their bedroom listening to a play. … I thought it would be interesting to see if I could write stories influenced by an earlier tradition, namely the ghost story. I still feel that I’m not too good as a short-story writer, as I prefer the panorama that a novel allows. These ghost stories were written as plays but without dialogue, so they were written as monologues, for a male actor to narrate. The BBC broadcast them at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I then got this welter of complaints from people — especially about “The Ritual of the Bones,” which w
