Graveyard Shift in Ghost Town Teaser 1

With Graveyard Shift in Ghost Town (the sequel to the Aurealis Award Shortlisted Gap Year in Ghost Town) to be released in July, I’m deep in the last stages of editing. Thanks to the good people at Allen and Unwin, the story is getting tighter and pacier, coming together nicely. The editing process does mean, however, that some good bits necessarily hit the cutting room floor. But why lose them forever? Why not use them as tasty teasers for what’s shaping up as another spooky, witty, alarming adventure?

So here’s the first.

After the ghost’s gaze roamed vaguely in my direction it drifted back to whatever he was doing – or thought he was doing – and right there’s one of the puzzles of ghost hunting that fills in the boredom while waiting. Do ghosts actually think or are they, as they appear a lot of the time, an insubstantial machine going through the motions of life without any real intelligence? Whole careers have been taken up arguing about stuff like this in ghost hunting academic circles where professors huff and puff about this and that while cleaning their monocles or adjusting their pearl earrings or sharpening their flick knives or whatever ghost theoreticians do. Maybe they get red in the face and take it outside to settle these things mano a mano.

Okay, so I haven’t had a lot of direct experience with ghost hunting professors, but that’s what imagination is for, to fill in gaps like that.

Imagination. It’s not just for professionals.