Is it just me? Or is everyone too tired to drag out the Halloween decorations this fall? We’re nearly three-quarters of the way through year two of the pandemic, and I barely have the energy to change out of my pajamas most days. I sure as hell don’t feel like getting my porch all dolled up like it’s going to a spooky party. Besides, where I live, we don’t get trick-or-treaters on a good year, so it’s not as if anyone would see them. And since I’ve only been inside the grocery store a total of five times in the past several months, I haven’t gotten swept away by the impulse buys. I can scarcely believe it’s already October, and I don’t even have candy corn yet.
What? Is that the sound of candy corn haters I hear? I’ve got news for you. I actually like the tri-colored confection. I might even go so far as to say I love it. And do not @ me, people. I’m well aware that eating too much of the sickeningly sweet stuff causes a wicked headache worthy of the worst hangover ever. And yeah, the sugary goodness gets stuck in all the nooks and crannies of the most expensive dental work. But it’s also the very epitome of fall. It screams of cool evenings, pumpkin patches, kids in costumes and…
As Forrest’s buddy, Bubba Blue, might say, candy corn is the fruit of the corn maze. You can make candy corn fudge, candy corn peanut bars, candy corn rice crispy treats, candy corn Chex mix, candy corn poke cake, candy corn Halloween bark, white chocolate chunk candy corn sugar cookies, candy corn trail mix, candy corn chocolate chip cookie cake, candy corn brownies, candy corn blondies, candy corn pop corn balls, candy corn ambrosia, candy corn cheesecake, pumpkin bread with candy corn topping, candy corn biscotti, candy corn punch, candy corn cake pops, candy corn lollipops… you can add candy corn to plain M&Ms, peanut M&Ms, and mini pretzels. And don’t forget the candy corn Jell-O shots!
In a pinch, candy corn can even do double duty as fall decor. Fill a jar halfway with the itty bitty sweets and stick a candle in the middle. Hell, it’s even good for stress relief. Who wouldn’t want a pumpkin shaped piñata filled with candy corn to work out those pandemic frustrations, while also satisfying a sweet tooth? And before you say, “but it’s bad for you!” I have it on good authority, you can buy organic candy corn, and how can that be bad?
So to all the naysayers out there, I’ve got one thing to say to you… quit hating on candy corn! It’s quite literally the unsung hero of Halloween. You heard it here first.
Boo-graphy: After walking away from her career as a business banker to pursue writing full-time, Erica Lucke Dean moved from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a small tourist town in the North Georgia Mountains where she lived in a 90-year-old haunted farmhouse.
Tired of being woken up in the middle of the night by a pesky poltergeist, the author of contemporary young adult, romantic comedy, and paranormal romance moved into a cute little cabin in the woods, where she lives with her husband, her dogs, and the occasional bear. Much like the characters in her books, Ms. Dean is a magnet for disaster, and has been known to trip on air while walking across flat surfaces.
How she’s managed to survive this long is one of life’s great mysteries.
You can find out more about Erica, in addition to her humorous blog posts and disasters, on her website.
Represented by: Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong of The Purcell Agency
Eve Versus the Apocalypse — When everyone she cares about is killed in an alien invasion, college color guard Eve uses her skills with a saber to battle her way through the changing landscape. Faced with monsters of more than one kind, Eve isn’t sure who to trust. After running into a group of survivors, she must decide if a new alliance with the dangerously sexy Archer is worth the risk. His offer of protection is tempting, but if she agrees to join him, her life may not be the only thing on the line.
Meghan: Hi, Erica! Welcome to this year’s Halloween Extravaganza. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Erica: I’m a huge fan of all the spooky stuff. I love the pumpkins, witches and ghosts… especially the old decorations from the 30s. Somehow they’re creepier to me than the modern slasher movie props.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Erica: It isn’t Halloween without watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. And Hocus Pocus. The original Halloween. I don’t know, I like it all… from trick-or-treating to picking out costumes to decorating the house (mine isn’t done yet this year, but it will be!)
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Erica: Halloween is most definitely my favorite holiday. I think first of all, from the time I was a kid, it was like the gateway to the holidays. Mom used to pull out the velvety paper cutout decorations. We always found the biggest pumpkin to cut into a jack-o-lantern. Mom made our costumes. Our little town had a parade with prizes to the best costumes.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Erica: I can’t sleep if my feet aren’t under covers. Or if any part of my body is dangling over the side. I don’t know if that counts or not. I’m not afraid of black cats – in fact, I’ve had several growing up. And my daughter has 2 now. They love sleeping in my lap.
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Erica: Michael Meyers from the original Halloween movie. And I don’t endorse anything between the first one and the most recent ones with Jamie Lee Curtis. Those are the best. I’ll give bonus points to the Rob Zombieversion. It was good, but sooooo gross. LOL.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Erica: I don’t really follow unsolved murders that closely, but I think the Black Dahlia is the most fascinating one I can think of.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Erica: I don’t like looking into mirrors in dark rooms. I’m always afraid I’ll see Bloody Mary or the Candyman in them.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Erica: I hate to say I have a “favorite” because serial killers are bad dudes. But I can’t seem to help myself when any documentary on Ted Bundy comes on. It’s terrifying to think someone could live a normal life, have a family, a job, and just be out there killing people on the side. He could be anyone.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Erica: I was a huge fan of the old Abbott and Costello movies when I was a kid, especially Abbott and Costello Meet Dracula/Frankenstein/the Wolfman. I loved those movies. I was probably 7 or 8 the first time I saw them. I can’t remember how old I was when I read The Amityville Horror, but I LOVED scary books and movies as a kid. I think I read exclusively horror until I graduated college. Weird, right?
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
I loved Stephen King books when I was a teenager. To this day, ’Salem’s Lot scares the bejesus out of me.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Erica: I’ve seen a lot of horror movies in my day, but the one that scared me for life was Final Destination. I still can’t fly.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Erica: I dressed a I Dream of Jeanie one year. That was my favorite adult costume. My favorite kid costume was the year my mom dressed my sister and me as a two-headed man. We won a prize at the annual Halloween parade that year.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Erica: I have too many. Monster Mash, Little Red Riding Hood, Werewolves of London, I have an entire playlist that goes on loop from October 1st – 31st.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
Erica: I actually love candy corn. Mary Janes. Sugar Daddys, Snickers. You can keep your Gushers, Smarties, and those other fruit flavored things.
Meghan: Thanks again for stopping by. Before you go, what are your top 15 Halloween movies?
Erica: There are really too many to choose. I might not watch all of them every year, but I might watch some of them more than once. My list might fluctuate from year to year to add or subtract one or two. But these are must watch movies!
Boo-graphy: After walking away from her career as a business banker to pursue writing full-time, Erica Lucke Dean moved from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a small tourist town in the North Georgia Mountains where she lived in a 90-year-old haunted farmhouse.
Tired of being woken up in the middle of the night by a pesky poltergeist, the author of contemporary young adult, romantic comedy, and paranormal romance moved into a cute little cabin in the woods, where she lives with her husband, her dogs, and the occasional bear. Much like the characters in her books, Ms. Dean is a magnet for disaster, and has been known to trip on air while walking across flat surfaces.
How she’s managed to survive this long is one of life’s great mysteries.
You can find out more about Erica, in addition to her humorous blog posts and disasters, on her website.
Represented by: Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong of The Purcell Agency
Eve Versus the Apocalypse — When everyone she cares about is killed in an alien invasion, college color guard Eve uses her skills with a saber to battle her way through the changing landscape. Faced with monsters of more than one kind, Eve isn’t sure who to trust. After running into a group of survivors, she must decide if a new alliance with the dangerously sexy Archer is worth the risk. His offer of protection is tempting, but if she agrees to join him, her life may not be the only thing on the line.
In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff – gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.
Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.
And now the dread night approaches – so let the Game begin.
Author: Roger Zelazny Illustrator: Gahan Wilson Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Gaslamp Publisher: Avon Books Publication Date: September 1, 1994 Pages: 280
October 12th
A very short, single page chapter today. Jack is at home, preparing ‘materials’ but not yet ready to use them. The ‘things’ in their various traps are under control. Snuff is happy to have a ‘domestic’ day. The only thing of note is news that the owl and the snake have had a falling out and that the owl transported the snake out of the game, leaving it a long slither back to its master. So the familiars, like their masters, seem to be getting slightly tetchy.
The month is drawing on and preparations are well underway, yet we still don’t know what the players are preparing for, and Zelazny is more than happy to keep us in the dark at this stage. There’s longer, more pertinent passages of action coming up soon I’m sure. But for now, we’ll allow Snuff a quiet day. He’s a good boy. He deserves it.
Boo-graphy: William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.
He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, Crossroad Press and Severed Press, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines.
He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company.
When he’s not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory.
The Green & the Black — A small group of industrial archaeologists head into the center of Newfoundland, investigating a rumor of a lost prospecting team of Irish miners in the late Nineteenth century.
They find the remains of a mining operation, and a journal and papers detailing the extent of the miners’ activities. But there is something else on the site, something older than the miners, as old as the rock itself.
Soon the archaeologists are coming under assault, from a strange infection that spreads like wildfire through mind and body, one that doctors seem powerless to define let alone control.
The survivors only have one option. They must return to the mine, and face what waits for them, down in the deep dark places, where the green meets the black.
Meghan: Hi, Kevin! Happy early Halloween! Thanks for stopping by today. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Kevin: Definitely the atmosphere. There’s something about September and October that I adore. The changing in the seasons and the leaves. The pleasant crisp air. I watch and read horror year round, of course (and write it!), but during the Halloween season, mystery hangs in the air. I know that sounds terribly dramatic, like I’m trying to channel Ray Bradbury, or something. Even so, it’s true. You feel like a kid again, when anything is possible.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Kevin: As a family, we always go and get pumpkins for Jack o’ Lanterns, and then cider and donuts at our favorite cider place, a few weeks before Halloween. I always read something Halloween-oriented on the the way.
For the past five years, my daughter and I checked out Spirit Halloween soon as it opens, and take silly pictures in front of the all the animotronics.
Last year, I started my own Halloween-movie-marathon September 1st. Doing it again this year.
My pastor and guys from my church (you read that right!) have been going to Reaper’s Revenge, the past few years, in Pennsylvania. It’s absolutely astounding. The size of the exhibits, the pageantry of it all, the communal sense of being startled with friends. Even after going several times and “knowing” what to expect, it’s an absolute thrill.
And of course, Trick-or-Treating as a family! I love seeing some of the displays folks put up.
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Kevin: Pretty much for the reasons I listed above. When you’re out Trick-or-Treating, that night seems like it could go on forever. It’s slightly chilly but comfortable, maybe there’s a mist rolling around the streets, and everyone has dressed up as their favorite things, or their favorite scary things. There’s also a communal sense in the town we Trick-or-Treat in; everyone’s walking the sidewalks to and fro, and it’s quite a to-do.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Kevin: Nothing much, really. Sorry, it’s a boring answer, I know. Although, I’m STILL a little nervous about open closets at night…
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Kevin: I think it’s a toss-up between Pennywise (from King‘s novel It, though both cinematic renditions are pretty powerful), and honestly, Michael Myers of the Halloween franchise. In the novel It, Pennywise knows exactly what haunts us and hurts us the most, and knows how to use that with surgical precision, and his very presence brings out the worst in us. Michael Myers is an unrelenting force of nature, for some reason, far more imposing than Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Kevin: To be honest, I’m not much interested in these, so I don’t really have one.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Kevin: Well, I can tell you this: I’ve never, ever, been tempted to say “Bloody Mary” three times in a mirror. And I can pretty much guarantee I’m never going to touch a Ouija board, ever.
The one about the truck shining high beams into the back of your car – either because they’re stalking you, or trying to warn you about the killer in your beak seat – is also pretty impactful.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Kevin: Again, this isn’t really an area of interest for me.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Kevin: I saw my first horror movie completely by accident, and for the longest time, I couldn’t remember the title, just images. I was at my Uncle’s, flipping through channels, and I came across the movie involving mannequins, in which some guy gets impaled by a pipe, and the blood comes trickling out of the pipe. That image stayed with me, for some reason. The idea this guy’s blood was gushing out of a pipe in his gut. Also, the ending was disturbing, (I’ll avoid spoilers), because it called into question my perception of what was happening in the movie, and my perception of simply being alive and volitional. Years later, I realized the movie was Tourist Trap, starring Chuck Conners.
Not counting the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, I came to horror late. I didn’t read my first horror novel until I was twenty-one. It was Desperation, by Stephen King. I was astounded at its depth. How it pondered the meaning of good and evil, on both a human and spiritual level. It pushed me over the edge into become a horror and a Stephen King fan.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Kevin: In Silent Graves, by Gary Braunbeck. I’ll still never forget my experience reading that. It’s about a man who loses his wife and his unborn child in a terrible circumstance, and the nightmarish horror he’s pulled into. My wife was away at the time while I read it, and her absence was exacerbated by this story.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Kevin: Believe it or not, most horror movies don’t scare me, in the whole sense. I can tell you movies which made me profoundly uncomfortable, however. One of them was 8 Millimeter, staring Nicolas Cage. Maybe it’s not considered a “horror” film, but its deep-dive into the dark underbelly of the porn industry is truly horrific. And I felt like a strung piano-wire all through Sinister.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Kevin: Believe it or not, I don’t really have one. I think my enjoyment has always been the creativity of OTHERS, and their costumes, really.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
I’m not sure if I have one, but I can tell you during the Halloween season I have the Halloween and Phantasm theme songs running through my head all the time.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
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October Nights — Halloween is a night when anything seems possible.
This is true everywhere, but nowhere more so than in the small town of Clifton Heights. October nights here are long and strange, filled with both dread and transformation, and in these four shared-world tales of small-town Halloween horror, you’ll encounter things both wondrous and terrifying, in equal measure:
-A priest hears a ghostly confession on Halloween night which will mark him forever. -A young man is offered a supernatural chance to remake his fortune, at the risk of losing everything. -A pastor fleeing the death of his daughter comes to Clifton Heights to face his fears, but finds himself living a nightmare instead. -Two people with supernatural talents face-off with an engine of darkness and pain on Halloween night.
Four connected Halloween tales, evoking echoes of Ray Bradbury and Charles L. Grant, taking place in a town where every day is All Hallow’s Eve. Spend the Halloween season in Clifton Heights… if you dare.
In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff – gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.
Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.
And now the dread night approaches – so let the Game begin.
Author: Roger Zelazny Illustrator: Gahan Wilson Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Gaslamp Publisher: Avon Books Publication Date: September 1, 1994 Pages: 280
October 11th
A short but pertinent chapter today. Snuff is out on his rounds and meets the Dour Detective and his companion near the Good Doctor’s place. They recognize him from their meeting in London, and make some sweeping generalizations about Snuff based on his appearance. Snuff does his ‘good dog’ shtick then leads them astray when they ask him to lead them to his home. Instead he takes them to the occultists’ place and leaves them there.
While travelling between the occultists’ and the Count’s residences Snuff notes something interesting happening in his mental map, something that gets more interesting when he adds in a trip back to where the Good Doctor works. We’re not told what exactly is interesting but we can surmise it’s something to do with Snuff’s ‘magic tracking’ system and the finding of the center where the events of Halloween will take place.
Snuff is showing himself to be a doughty companion, and possibly even a player in the game in his own right? I’ve read this book before of course, but following it on a day by day experience like this gives me more time to mull over the questions of each day as they come up before proceeding. It’s less of a headlong rush this time through, and more of a growing respect for how Zelazny has put this extravaganza together so seamlessly and entertainingly.
Boo-graphy: William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.
He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, Crossroad Press and Severed Press, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines.
He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company.
When he’s not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory.
The Green & the Black — A small group of industrial archaeologists head into the center of Newfoundland, investigating a rumor of a lost prospecting team of Irish miners in the late Nineteenth century.
They find the remains of a mining operation, and a journal and papers detailing the extent of the miners’ activities. But there is something else on the site, something older than the miners, as old as the rock itself.
Soon the archaeologists are coming under assault, from a strange infection that spreads like wildfire through mind and body, one that doctors seem powerless to define let alone control.
The survivors only have one option. They must return to the mine, and face what waits for them, down in the deep dark places, where the green meets the black.
Meghan's House of Books 