A brief history of Ghost Story and what lead into it

At the beginning of 2012, heading towards 40 was an interesting time in my life and my writing in general. At the end of 2011, my band A Means to an End had just really started getting going with Jeffarama! and Petrova and me and Jeffarama! Had just bought a split book called A Means to an End, which was an exciting time in my writing.

However, it was also quite a stressful time as I still adjusting from being diagnosed with Diabetes at the end of 2011 and also been laid off from working at a job I had worked at for just over 5 and a bit years and was now on a six month contract at a job at a housing association in the Lowry Centre which I hated and ended up spending nearly every lunchtime sat by the Quays outside thinking why was I here and surely there was more to life than this.

I discovered NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) through chance I think likely through a fellow poet and decided to give it a go. NaPoWriMo for those interested in what it is a loose collective of poems where people are encouraged to try writing poems for 30 days sold, one a day throughout April and my first years attempts were mixed as although I had wrote regularly for the last ten years or so before that, one a day was hard work in particular when I started following as many themes as I could and was by the end of it was completely drained.

I did it again in 2013 and was more prepared for it and a number of poems from that year appeared in my second full-length book ‘The End of Summer’.

In 2014, I then decided to approach it in a different way wanting to have a go at writing a full sequence of 30 poems on a specific theme. The idea for it was morbid to be honest as the job I am at now I used (and still do) to sometimes used to walk down to the quays to get the metro link or tram (a kind of light train) back to the centre of Manchester and one day a few days before the 1^st April, I looked at a tram on the other side of the track and thought to myself what if a ghost was stood on the other side of the track and was there to try to warn me not to get on it.

Reaction was good, in fact very good and despite by the end of it been very open-ended I knew there was a second story to tell you the year after when walking through a certain rather large main train station and I saw a incident involving the Police and a gentleman who had caused a lot of trouble there and I thought to myself what if it was a shooter, and before I knew it, on the 1^st April I was at it again with Andy and Michelle.

Part 3 the year after was planned with after my brother bought me a book called Below Manchester which contained some information which proved very important for Part 3 of the story and also Part 4, both of which I knew how the stories were going to unfold before I even started them.

Part 5 which will start tomorrow as I have stated before will run hand in hand with Part 4 as it covers where one of the main characters missing from most of Part 4 has been and what he has been up.

As always with the previous 4 Ghost Story pieces, and the two years before that, pieces will be blogged on a daily basis.

I can’t wait to start sharing with you and hope you enjoy it as much as I do reading it.

Any thoughts feel free to let me know.

Cheers

Andy  N

31 March 2018