Is death truly the end? Not for the kids in The Ghost Job! Author Greg van Eekhout is bringing you a tale from beyond the grave(s) of his main characters who aren’t letting a little death stop them. Follow along in his Big Idea to see just how this “haunting” idea formed.
GREG VAN EEKHOUT:
The elevator pitch for The Ghost Job goes something like this: Four young ghosts pull heists in hopes of finding a supernatural artifact that can restore them to life. The most promising of these is a device called the Redeemer, owned and operated by a rich necromancer who holds souls hostage for ransom. But a book isn’t always about a big idea. Sometimes a book is more like a rolling katamari gathering up a bunch of small-to-medium ideas. Then you identify the biggest or best of those ideas and declare it the Big Idea.
I’m pretty sure that’s how I came up with The Ghost Job, my latest middle-grade novel. (Middle grade is a marketing term referring books pitched to readers aged 8 to 12, which is confusing because here in the US we have middle school, which is generally for kids 11-14, so I usually refer to my books as all ages.)
Anyway.
Ghosts are perfect thieves. Maybe that’s the big idea. Think about it. Ghosts move silently. They don’t need doors or windows because they can pass through walls. They don’t show up on cameras (really, they don’t, I don’t care what Discovery Channel tells you) and even if they did, what are the cops going to do, arrest them at a séance?
The Ghost Job: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Mysterious Galaxy
Read more at: The Big Idea: Greg van Eekhout
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