04/05/2013 Fantastic Friday!

Hello everyone! It's Friday, which means we successfully made it through another week. I am still busy, which by now I'm sure you're all sick of hearing about, but am still making good progress. For now though I'll get to work on the reason why you're actually here.

Today I bring you 'An Apocryphal Ghost' by Mario Carassco Teja. It was originally written in Spanish and has been translated by Ingred Ebergenyi Salinas. It tells the story of four ghosts, all in different ages of afterlife, having a conversation in the living room of an older man's house. Some of the conversation is rather entertaining, though I do suspect some of the humor may have been lost in translation. That doesn't mean the story isn't meaningful or enjoyable by any means though.

The characters are unnamed, and part of that I believe may be intentional, since it shows the loss of self once you have passed on. The ghosts all range in the appearance of age with the one who looks the youngest actually being the oldest. The conversation they have is about why some of them, and other ghosts insist on behaving in such a way, and things seem to be going quite well until two of them get a little rough and it is discovered the man living in the house can interact with them. After that point things get a bit more serious when the ghosts learn his young granddaughter is ill and there are questions about how she got that way.

'An Apocryphal Ghost' is available for free at Smashwords, and I do think everyone should give it a read. The translation is very good, and some of the stylistic choices I believe are in part due to the translation. I would appreciate it if you would all give it a chance and a read.

Thanks everyone for stopping by today. I am expecting a rather tiring weekend, but I will do whatever I can do live through it! I hope you all have a fun couple days though and I'll see you all back here on Monday. Have a great weekend!