Listen

I never realized it until I started compiling the stories that I wanted to include in A CONFEDERACY OF HORRORS, but to that date I had written quite a lot of ghost stories. It didn't hit me just how many I had created until I began to sift through the sold and unsold manuscripts and found that a plurality of them were ghost yarns.

One always has favorites. This is they way of things. I have favorite stories among the ones I have penned, and among the four or so of the ones at the top is a story that I wrote for an anthology edited by Stephen Mark Rainey. It's called "Listen".

When I think of the concept of ghosts and the supernatural I see them as forces, influences, things that cannot quite be touched--but which can touch you. It was with this thought foremost in my mind as I sat down before my keyboard to create this tale.

Recently a woman I had not previously known friended me on Facebook. She did so because she wanted to adapt "Listen" to an audio format for a YouTube video (how's that for a mixing of concepts?). I didn't know her, did not know her work, but was frankly flattered that she'd picked one of my favorite tales to adapt and that she'd been kind enough to make friends with me so that she could ask for that permission.

I didn't really think about it. I just granted the request with--I must admit--some humility. And, of course, I hoped that she would do a decent job of it.

Today she sent me the link to her adaptation. To say that I was pleased is a massive understatement. I've had a novel adapted to audio, and comic book scripts adapted to graphic art, and one novel turned into a screenplay. Julia Morgan's audio adaptation of "Listen" is the best transformation of one of my fictions that I've witnessed. She completely understands everything I was thinking when I wrote it. It is flawless. It is amazing.

And so...listen.