Every story is a ghost.

They are still, writers.

There are writers who are akin to ghosts. They may have extensive, respectable, large bodies of completed works, even have an honourable list of published pieces. Yet, they are insubstantial, these writers, these scribblers and their careers, their reputations, their achievements.

They have not been gifted by the golden light of discovery warm and radiant on their faces. Some will perpetually have shadows upon them, year after year after year, decade after decade, as torturing ambition slowly turns rancid.

They are still, writers.

Then there are writers like Chuck Palahniuk. One of those lucky few. Living the 'rock star' writer's life. Multiple book contracts, buoyed by generous advances, books-to-movies with wunderkind directors attached, anecdotes sprinkled with media celeb names, big dollar 'options', 'treatments', 'developments'. He certainly seems to be living thus. Yet, he too, is still a writer.

Chuck Palahniuk seems to be living a writer's life. As Dickens, De Maupassant, Hemingway, that other 'Literary Ambulance Driver' Maugham, Burroughs, even Ellison and Barker lived and live writers' lives.

No phantom he. And deservedly so.

Palahniuk is a prime, living, working example of a 21st Century writer making 21st Century writing.

Sure, it might not be 'Great Literature' but it is entertaining, engrossing and some of it may make you laugh out loud (if you like that kinda stuff).

It might be interesting to talk to Chuck Palahniuk. Maybe it would be like talking to a good bullshitter. Except more entertaining.

Palahniuk is an 'A' grade bullshit artist.

As any 'A' grade writer needs to be.

I came to Palahniuk (Paula-nik) via the film Fight Club, in my opinion one of the last millennium's best pieces of cinema, a fitting fin de siècle work. I liked it so much I got the screenplay (Jim Uhls, also brilliant).

A hop, skip, shuffle and jump and I am immersed in Palahniuk's Haunted a novel composed of short stories created by its cast of characters. And that's the least of it.

Chuck's web site The Cult (referred to ala subtitle, in keeping with the man's mind-set, as 'the Movement') even looks like something organized by one of the 'groups' you'll find in works like 'Fight Club' and that seem to fascinate him. It's got the classic b&w writer's headshots. Writers tips. Lectures. Essays. Workshops. Tricks of the trade. And, of course, pre-orders. Etc. Though it features a blog and unashamed self promotion like every other goddamn writer's site (big, pro, semi, no one, for the latter two communities copy the former) it is not quite the same as every other goddamn writer's site. Chuck happily gives away some of his tricks. But not all, oh no. No master tells his students everything.

He is a skilled raconteur. Guy knows how to tell a story. And he brings, clever writin' feller, giveaways to his lectures.

Apparently he's gay. Damn, these gay boys (Barker etcetera) can write. But Palahniuk's writing is decidedly masculine. At least on the outside. Could such be worn as armour?

Haunted is a novel made up of short stories.

Writers' Retreat:

Abandon your life for three months.

Just disappear. Leave behind everything that keeps you from creating your masterpiece. Your job and family and home, all those obligations and distractions—put them on hold for three months. Live with like-minded people in a setting that supports total immersion in your work. Food and lodging included free for those who qualify. Gamble a small fraction of your life on the chance to create a new future as a professional poet, novelist, screenwriter. Before it's too late. Live the life you dream about. Spaces very limited.

A type of extreme Clarion boot-camp, with hidden tutors? It is a clarion call nonetheless.

An assortment of people, nick-names attributed, answer the ad. To gather in an abandoned theatre and be trapped there.

But they are their own keepers. Story is the warder.

And let's just say that few of these 'captives' are the retreating type.

From this hybrid of the Book of the Thousand and One Nights (aka The Arabian Nights) and the famous/infamous gathering of five by Lake Geneva at the Villa Diodati is born a nihilistic, fantastic realist result. It is, rather, a messy home abortion, brought on by shallowness, greed, ego, laziness... in short, human nature.

The writing is contentedly malicious and you will meet an impressive cast of morally bankrupt, ethically degenerate, all too human characters here.

Palahniuk has audacity. Such gambles don't always work – writing fiction per se is a gamble. But there is a view that to be audacious, win or lose, can make you better than writers who are not, writers who play it safe and secure.

The inventive Palahniuk will take an urban legend, a conspiracy theory, a news item, and he'll work from there. Overclocking the subject till it is just right. Realist fantasies. Speculative fiction extrapolated from newspaper headline and tabloid story fact or faction, but seldom allowed to dance or bleed or cross beyond the line of reality, of possibility.

Can he, this writer based in mainstream surreal, write horror?

You betcha.

Some would argue that Haunted is not horror fiction. But make no mistake, as in the story "Hot Potting" Palahniuk out-King's King.

He's the storyteller who wrote a short story that can make some hapless folk lose consciousness. His tale the clap that drops the fainting sheep. Truth? B.S.? Or a little of both, it's still a good story about a good story.

At his lectures and interviews it's obvious he's a story machine. You just press this button, click here, wind this, and a story comes out. As with most of us, quality varies, but you do get the consistency of story.

Some standouts here for me were: "Guts", "Slumming", "Swan Song", "Dog Years", "Exodus", "Punch Drunk", "The Nightmare Box", "Civil Twilight", "Dissertation", "Something's Got To Give", "Hot Potting", "Cassandra".

Some of the linking pieces, the integument, the fat and gristle and tendons are good too. Tasty. But it's the muscle, the actual meat, grits and guts, that matter.

In his afterword (the story about the story) Palahniuk mentions it being '...a book you wouldn't want to keep next to your bed. A book that would be a trapdoor down into some place dark.'

I kept it by my bed, each night for the period it took to read it, and I sampled it regularly there and at work. For we speculative fiction writers, it's all about the dark descent through such trapdoor books. It's all about the ghosts that we gather close.