'Dropping in this semicolon is the T-Rex stomping on the landscape'

Stephen Graham Jones' masterclass on prose style ^ Plus Part 20 of The Demon Inside David Lynch

The rear entrance to Santa Rita’s Psychiatric Hospital, Madrid

In today’s issue

—’I read about people trying heroin for the first time, and the way they explain it, it's like tapping into a perfect and perfectly timed semicolon’: a masterclass on prose style by arguably the anglophone world’s greatest horror writer, Stephen Graham Jones. On Friday we chose his Don’t Fear the Reaper as the most stylishly written book on the shortlist for this year’s Bram Stoker Award for best horror novel. We have masterclasses coming up from many more of the world’s greatest writers.

On Tuesday we picked John Langan’s The Fisherman as the best-written previous winner of the Bram Stoker award, part of our project to find the most stylishly novel of the century in any genre.

—‘When I was still boozing a friend’s sister gave me a copy of AA’s Big Book and I read it in a single go, and for months carried it around with me, including in the bars and clubs I stole people’s drinks in. I compulsively re-read its …