Tommy has come home from the city to visit his Dad for one last time. He is determined to get to the bottom of all of the secrets that his Dad has kept for hidden behind a smokescreen of storytelling and charm.
It turns out that some secrets are best left untold.
NOT JUST ANY OLD GHOST STORY is a quiet little story about coming home and ghosts that you can never escape and a love that never dies. It is a story that will take you to the very heart of storytelling itself.
"If Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch had a three-way sex romp in a hot tub and then a team of scientists came in and filtered out the water and mixed the leftover DNA into a test tube, the resulting genetic experiment would most likely grow up into Steve Vernon." - BOOKGASM
"Steve Vernon was born to write. He's the real deal and we are lucky to have him." - Richard Chizmar, CEMETERY DANCE
"This genre needs new blood and Steve Vernon is quite a transfusion." - Edward Lee, author of THE GOON and HEADER
Six 5-Star reviews.
I have heard an awful lot of stories and I’ve even told a few and nearly every story I’ve ever heard or told was born from my dad. I guess this one is no different and why should it be? My dad has told me nearly everything I’ve ever learned and twice as much as I’ll ever be able to forget.
And even now I remember it all.
He has told me about snow snakes and mud trout. He has told me how dreams were nothing more than stories waiting to be born. He has told me that the ocean was made out of tears cried by a woman who sits upon the bottom sobbing and shaking so hard that the waves toss and turn in their sharing of her sorrow. He has told me how my home province of Nova Scotia once served as Glooscap’s bed and Prince Edward Island was the pillow for his head.
“But Cape Breton was the old dark fooler’s canoe, you bet,” Dad would tell me. “Hunting or fishing, when Glooscap wanted to get himself anywhere handy to interesting he came right straight up to old Cape Breton Island.”
My dad has told me how the raven stole the sun from the heart of winter and traded his song to keep it. He has told me how icicles are nothing more than snow angel tears wept down for all of the snowflakes that never reached a child’s out stretched tongue. He claims that the flounder got to be so ugly-faced a fish after losing an ill-planned swimming race with a fast-moving skate.
“That old flounder pulled a face in disgust and it just stayed stuck,” Dad told me. “Believe you me, nothing sticks harder than regret.”
And maybe that’s so.
I mean, think about it.
We all learn to carry so much unnecessary regret. We drag it around behind ourselves and wear it sewn into the inner lining of our shadow. I think that the heart of every ghost story ever told is awash with the soft faded autumnal color of pure unredeemable regret.
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French
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Already translated.
Translated by Vieru Raluca Maria
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Author review: Great work! |
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Italian
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Already translated.
Translated by Carmelo Massimo Tidona
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Author review: Always a pleasure to work with. |
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Fabiana de Moraes da Silva
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by María Fernanda Rincón Rangel
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