#ghost dogs

You know what kind of book people really like? One with ghosts and stuff in. The really big sellers; The Exorcist, Dracula, The Bible – they’ve all got somebody coming back from the dead and causing hi-jinks of one kind or another.

Look at that Stephen King. He’s been banging out spookiness of varying quality since the early Seventies. Sometimes he dips into his bottomless well of ideas and fishes out an absolute cracker. Sometimes he just pulls up a slimy mess. But either way he publishes his spooky jottings and by and large the books sell by the skipful.

And books that sell by the skipful is – I think we can agree – what we both want. Stephen King is my kind of chap. And so are ghosts.

But where’s my new angle? We’ve had ghosts of all shapes and sizes. Fat ones. Thin ones. Practically transparent ones. Olden-days ones that haunt castles and rattle chains. Modern ones that lurk about in Barratt homes and change the wi-fi password on the sly.

If you’ve been following my series of guaranteed-hit pitches for a while, you’ll know what I do when I need a new twist on an old idea. I throw an even older one in. A bit like the cooks at school do when a stew’s not working out so they bung in some curry powder and a fistful of Fruit And Fibre and crack on it was supposed to be a Beef Madras all along.

What do people like even more than books about ghosts? Books about dogs.

Even Stephen King had a pop at a dog book. It’s dreadful: written apparently when he was indulging in the writer’s prerogative of enjoying more than a few cold drinks before starting work, it’s a short story blown up to novel length with a lot of stuff about dogs leaving people in hot cars.

But even so it won prizes and was made into a film and whatnot. Because people love dog stories.

But I’ll tell you where Big Steve went wrong: Cujo wasn’t in the least spectral. He was a big fat St.Bernard with a nasty disease. A bit like a poorly Beethoven.

But a full-on ghost dog, one that chews power cables that no corporeal dog could reach, or leaves a furry bum-print on sofas that have never known the arse of a living pet, should sell like gangbusters.

Not convinced? Try, if you dare, a spooky excerpt from Chapter 12;

Blake Moran* woke with a start. There was a scratching sound coming from somewhere nearby. And along with it something else…something sniffing?

Blake wondered if perhaps a fox had managed to get into the house. He’d read about that in a paper once. Foxes liked to get into people’s houses at night and gnaw on babies and watch the TV and such.

Blake eased stealthily out of bed. Pausing only to use a detailed list of stereotypically American food products to establish his Maine, New England location he slid the Louisville Slugger MLB180 Natural Wooden Baseball Bat (Brown, 33” - $49.99) from the space under his bed where a monster might usually be kept and hefted its weight in his right hand as he opened the bedroom door with his left.

His senses were assaulted by the whiff of a steaming dog egg that had been deposited just where an unslippered foot might squish it.

Undeterred and over-turd, Blake gingerly stepped over the glistening deposit.

He checked the doors. Every single one of the heavy bedroom doors was closed, in keeping with Maine’s notoriously strict fire regulations.

The front door, too, was still firmly bolted.

The poo could only have been produced by a phantom pooch. Blake Moran had been visited by Castle Rock’s legendary Ghost Dog.

Interested? Pop round and we’ll discuss terms. No scratching at the door, mind.

*See what I did there? I’ve done that thing where I include myself in a book before. That stuff is the absolute Tabasco to the ‘giving out prizes for books’ crowd. But this time I’ve made my dog a character in a book. A book about dogs. See? Guaranteed literary prize magnet right there. You mark my words.

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