Halloween Blog Tour: Elizabeth Black

Welcome to the Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour!! A few of my author friends from Broad Universe and I adore Halloween, so we're trading blog posts every other day for this last week of October.

Elizabeth Black is a Broad I've met more recently than the other women on this tour, but I'm so glad to know her now. And I am such a sucker for haunted house stories! I sooo want to go here!

Happy Halloween!!

I Stayed At A Haunted Bed And Breakfast. Twice.

By Elizabeth Black

Yup, I was foolish enough to stay at a haunted bed and breakfast - twice. This B&B dates back to the Revolutionary War, and it sits on a river. I had heard about it from one of my ex's friends, and after much planning I finally stayed there when I was in town for a theater stage crew convention.

The story behind the haunting is as follows:

British soldiers came up the river and proceeded to set the small town on fire, destroying most of it. Soldiers threw torches on the porch of this B&B, which was originally a brothel. The proprietress swept the torches off the porch with her broom. She made a deal with the soldiers. She would house them, feed them, and allow them to use her services as long as they didn't burn the place down. They agreed, and this B&B was allowed to stand whilst homes around it burned to the ground.  The haunting involves the ghost of the proprietress wandering the halls in the dead of night, checking on her clientele and the women to make sure everyone was comfortable. There have been other sightings as well. The B&B itself is absolutely beautiful, decorated in Victorian splendor. It includes a lovely bar and discounted dinners every Friday night. The rooms are beautiful, spacious, and very homey in that Victorian style I liked very much.

The first time I stayed it was off-season in mid-winter. I was in a room overlooking the river. What a view! I enjoyed a delicious meal and the company of a man I met in the bar. He came to the B&B several times per month to enjoy dinner when in town on business. No, I did not take him to bed, although he was very handsome. We ate dinner together. That night I slept well until about 3 am when I heard a party going on in the room next to me. There was a lot of noise. I managed to go back to sleep. At about 4:30 am I heard heavy footsteps walking up and down the hallway. I immediately thought of the ghost of the proprietress stalking the halls checking on everyone and went back to sleep. I wondered whys she wore combat boots, since her footsteps were very loud and heavy. I felt very safe, secure, and comfortable. Not the least bit scared.

The next day, when I went down for breakfast, I told the clerk about the party and the footsteps. She told me I couldn't have heard anything because I had been alone in the building all night. Yeeeahhh!!!!! The party! The footsteps! None of it could have happened!!!

Of course, I had to return. J

The second time I stayed I was with my current husband. While we slept, someone turned on the overhead light in the middle of the night. I was a very light sleeper and I snapped awake the moment the light turned on. My husband snored away next to me. I was far too tired to get up and turn off the light, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up shortly before dawn, the light was off. I asked my husband later about the light and he said he had turned it off before going to bed. He didn't get up during the night at all.

So who turned on the light? And who later turned it off?

I heard those footsteps in the hallway again, and felt as safe as I did the first time.  No party this time, though. At least this time there were other guests in the place. I wasn't alone in the building again.

So there you have it. I had my own ghostly experiences. Granted, I think there were perfectly natural explanations for what I heard. The kitchen was downstairs right off my room and noise from clean-up could have carried up the stairs. I could have mistaken those noises for a party. It's also likely my husband simply forgot he didn't turn off the overhead light. But I like to think I had ghostly experiences both times I stayed.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

My stay at the Kitty Knight House influenced my erotic romance novel "An Unexpected Guest". Here are buy links and an information page.

Fanny Press

http://fannypress.com/2009/12/12/an-unexpected-guest/

Amazon Paperback

http://tinyurl.com/yb9ya5t

Amazon Kindle

http://tinyurl.com/yhbll2h

Web Site Page:

http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com/p/unexpected-guest.html

Here's where to find me on the web. Friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, and check out my books! I've included my Amazon author pages for both of my pen names, so whether you're into sexy or spooky, I have stories for you!

Elizabeth Black - Blog and Web Site

http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com/

Elizabeth Black - Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack

Elizabeth Black - Twitter

http://twitter.com/ElizabethABlack

Elizabeth Black - Amazon Author Page

https://www.amazon.com/author/elizabethblack

E. A. Black - Amazon Author Page

http://www.amazon.com/~/e/B00BBWHMFM

The Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour runs every other day October 23-October 31.  Join us all five days for Halloween fun!  Be sure to say hello on any post to be entered in a giveaway at the end of the tour! 

Halloween Blog Tour: LC Hu

Welcome to the Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour!! A few of my author friends from Broad Universe and I adore Halloween, so we're trading blog posts every other day for this last week of October.

I'm honored to have our own Hostess with the Mostest who put this blog together, LC Hu, for today's post! :) And I'm also extremely pleased with this article on vampires because for a long time, I shared her disdain of these particular monsters. I love how she refound the spark of horror!

Happy Halloween!!

Revamping the Vampire, by LC Hu

Happy almost-Halloween, everyone! 

A quick shout out to Trisha for hosting me!  It's great to be here. 

Today, I want to talk about revisiting a classic Halloween monster--the vampire--twice, and what it means to me to reimagine a subject.

We've all heard the old adage "There's nothing new under the sun."  (Or the stars, in a vampire's case.) And it's true--it's hard , if not impossible, to come up with something completely new; even if you think of something that's pretty original, odds are good that someone else has thought of it too.  There's a lot of people pondering a lot of subjects out there. 

So for me breathing fresh life into something old is more about adding a personal touch.  Finding what unsettles me, or interests me, and adding that little bit to the existing monster.  And hitting a common note is just fine--wanted, perhaps, because it will help my audience connect. 

In recent work I've revisited the vampire twice.  I find this a little funny--since outgrowing my Anne Rice and Poppy Z Brite phase, I've carried around a little bit of hipsteresque disdain for the befanged blood drinker.  But for the Re-Vamp project, we were doing a tour of all the old, classic, monsters, so I was obligated to revisit the subject.  And for Midnight Carnival shared world project, part of why I tackled a vampire was precisely my disdain; it seemed like a personal challenge, to make this overdone monster interesting to me again. 

Re-Vamp was all about trying to bring the classic into the current, to be both nostalgic and contemporary at once, so for the vampire in my short story "Lump," I read a lot about the origins of the vampire.  I decided to go with the elements that disturbed me: the corpse-like pallor, the distended/bloated belly, elements that hearkened back to people being frightened of decomposing corpses.  Decay and rot are unsettling to a lot of people.  For the contemporary angle, I used situation and location--by the side of the highway, the dark woods, the quandary of helping someone (or something) injured by the side of the road, or leaving it out of fear. 

Being a shared, established world, The Midnight Carnival had established certain rules for vampires already, so I only had so much room to work with: they could be wounded or killed by holy water, fire, sunlight, silver; they were made, not born; they live on blood; they are stronger and faster than humans, and able to heal quickly. So it became the little things about my individual vampire, Carver, that I played with to make him interesting to me.  I tried to imagine how a vampire like that might blend into the human world best, become the wolf in sheep's clothing as best as possible.  What biological alterations the transformation would cause, and what neurochemical or other personality-influencing changes.

His teeth, for example: they are all sharp, like a dog or cat's teeth, even the molars.  The canines are longer, the front teeth more flattened/bladelike, but they are not the two puncturing canines of the classic movie vampire.  They also retract.  The human set and the vampire set are interchangeable, sliding back into the gums, one set replacing the other.  Or his breathing--Carver breathes so he can speak, because I liked the physicality of it, the little obedience to the real world, that you must have air in your lungs and expend it to speak.  It's also good camouflage, when you're pretending to be human. 

And I mentioned mental changes too--it's not clear, in the MC world, if it's a demonic soul outsting a human one to cause the vampiric change, or a virus, or something else, so I went with it being more physical, including alterations to the brain and brain chemistry.  Once upon a time Carver was a very good, upstanding man, a detective with a beloved wife and two beloved daughters, and I started thinking about what kind of a vampire a man like that would become, if you took away his regret and a large part of his empathy and handed him a ravenous, unending appetite for blood. 

…I could go on all day.  Suffice to say, I interested myself in this old, reliable monster again, and had good fun with it too.  In the end, I think that's all it takes to breathe a little new life into the old--have fun with it, go crazy, let yourself break rules or obey them, just learn to enjoy the monster--or whatever subject matter you're revisiting--again. 

#

To learn more about The Midnight Carnival: One Night Only or Re-Vamp, visit maddocsoflit.com or find L.C. Hu at elsiewho.wordpress.com!

The Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour runs every other day October 23-October 31.  Join us all five days for Halloween fun!  Be sure to say hello on any post to be entered in a giveaway at the end of the tour! 

Halloween Blog Tour: Justine Graykin

Welcome to the Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour!! A few of my author friends from Broad Universe and I adore Halloween, so we're trading blog posts every other day for this last week of October.

Justine Graykin's second post in this tour tickles me to no end. I've been a fan of her Archimedes Nesselrode since she started reading excerpts from it at Rapid Fire Readings years ago. It was an audio book first, and I just don't do audio books. So, when she finally, finally, finally had a huggable book published, I did, indeed, drive all the way up to her release party in New Hampshire so I could immediately hug my own copy. Squee!

Happy Halloween!!

An Excerpt from Archimedes Nesselrode by Justine Graykin

Archimedes Nesselrode, my newly-released novel from Double Dragon, is mostly gentle and whimsical, a tale of an artist with strange and wonderful creative powers.  But these powers also have a dark and frightful side, one which even the artist himself fears.

In honor of the this shiversome season, I offer to the readers of my dear friend Trisha’s blog an excerpt from the book in keeping with that spirit of darkness.

We join the artist and his devoted housekeeper attempting to escape from the vengeful anger of Zarah Trebbiano, the operatic diva whose advances Mr. Nesselrode has rejected.

“Get in the car, Mr. Nesselrode,” Ms. Mare said firmly, “I shall handle this.”

“Oh, yes, get into the car, Michel!” the singer mocked.  “Do as your woman servant says!  Spineless worm!  That is all you are!  Gutless and spineless!”

“That will be enough!” Ms. Mare snapped in an imperiously commanding tone that any school mistress would have envied.  “You will leave immediately and do not dare attempt to contact Mr. Nesselrode again in any way!”

“Call off your dog, Michel,” Madam Trebbiano said, “her yapping annoys me.”

“You are a crude, ill-bred woman who ought to be ashamed of herself, but is too arrogant to realize it!  Now, good night to you!”  Ms. Mare turned on her heel to go.  Her employer had still not moved.

“Ill-bred?” the singer cried.  “This from an illegitimate brat of the serving class!  Oh, yes, I know who you are!  You’re the housekeeper, aren’t you?  Do you think to improve your position by coddling your master?  A bit of advice to you--don’t attempt to bed him!  He is a passionless, impotent fish!”

“How dare you?” Ms. Mare cried in outrage.

“Can’t you say anything, Michel?  No, you pathetic, sniveling poseur!  I should never have wasted my time with you!  You are not a man at all!”

“That will be enough!” Ms. Mare commanded, uncomfortably aware that they were beginning to attract a crowd.  “Mr. Nesselrode, get into the car.  We are leaving!”

“Go on, Michel!  Run with your tail between your legs!  That’s all you’ve got down there!  Go home with your faithful dog!  Perhaps you can reward her with a few limp-wristed caresses!  Or do you prefer little boys?”

“Zarah, shut up!”

The transformation of Archimedes Nesselrode from rabbit to wild-eyed fury was sudden and astonishing.  He spun around to face her and his voice rose into a screech.  “Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!”

Madam Trebbiano was shocked speechless, taking a step away from him.  Ms. Mare was frozen, her mouth open.  She had seen him annoyed, fretful, peevish and irritated.  She had never seen this.  His eyes blazed with madness, but not the gentle, harmless madness she was accustomed to.  His face was twisted horribly and malignantly.  The winged snake flew up into the air with alarm and darted over to Ms. Mare, coiling about her legs and cringing, afraid of her own master.

“You summon great passion in me, Zarah!  Oh, yes!  You inspire me with wild emotion!”  He laughed, but it was a fearful, maniacal sound.  “You are fascinated by my magic, eh?  I’ll give you a demonstration!  See what I create in your honor!”  He held out his hands.  To Ms. Mare’s horror they were dripping with scorpions.  If there was any creature which inspired greater loathing in her than spiders, it was scorpions.

Madam Trebbiano’s expression showed much the same sentiment.  She was grimacing in revulsion.  Archimedes Nesselrode, quite monstrously insane, walked towards her.  “Embrace me, Zarah!  I’m all yours!”

“Get away from me!” she cried, backing away.  But she found her retreat blocked.  They were no longer standing on a city sidewalk.  Archimedes Nesselrode had conjured a chamber of horrors.

The stone walls that enclosed them slanted at bizarre angles and intersected with unbearable asymmetry.  The seams where the stone blocks met were cracked and seeping with fungoid slime.  From the slime bubbled shapeless things which crawled and dripped to the crazily tilting floor.  The ceiling was thickly hung with sticky webs which seethed with black legs and bloated bodies.

“Gifts for you, Zarah!” he shrieked, his voice cracked and shaking, “From the bottom of my heart!”  He threw the scorpions at her, and began to laugh hideously.  He became swathed in robes of black and scarlet, and from beneath the folds of the robe erupted monstrosities, deformed and hideous.  Writhing hunks of severed flesh, embedded with eyes, oozing like open wounds, they flopped and crawled around him.  Zarah Trebbiano screamed and clawed helplessly at the venomous creatures that clung to her, stinging her repeatedly.

Stunned with horror, Vivian Mare stared, unable to believe that her timid, sweet employer could have so suddenly mutated into this terrible monster.  It took an act of strongest will power to break the paralyzing spell.

“Snake, for pity’s sake, let go of me!”

My thanks to Trisha Wooldridge for her gracious hospitality.  Archimedes Nesselrode is

available as a paperback through Amazon and as an ebook though most major distributors.  You may learn more about this and my humble self on my website, at justinegraykin.com

About the Author:

Justine Graykin is a writer and free-lance philosopher sustained by her deep, abiding faith in Science, Humanity and the belief that humor is the best anti-gravity device. Author of Archimedes Nesselrode, a book written for adults who are weary of adult books, she is producer of the BroadPod podcast.   She lives, writes and putters around her home in rural New Hampshire, occasionally disappearing into the White Mountains with a backpack.

The Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour runs every other day October 23-October 31.  Join us all five days for Halloween fun!  Be sure to say hello on any post to be entered in a giveaway at the end of the tour! 

Halloween Blog Tour: Vonnie Winslow Crist

Welcome to the Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour!! A few of my author friends from Broad Universe and I adore Halloween, so we're trading blog posts every other day for this last week of October.

I'm thrilled my first post is from Vonnie Winslow Crist, a woman after my own heart when it comes to faery tales and folklore. I just love her post here!

Happy Halloween!!

Ogerhunches and other Goblins by Vonnie Winslow Crist

Goblins are dark Faeryfolk often associated with Halloween. They appear in fantasy literature and film from J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter to scary nursery rhymes like Little Orphan Annie by James Whitcomb Riley. And there are so many terrifying varieties of goblins that a Red-cap, Bogy, Padfoot, Barguest, Tankerabogus, Grindee, or Ogerhunch could be hiding under your stairs this very minute!

Not all goblins are as fearsome as Red-caps who wear hats died crimson in the blood of their victims. Nor as frightening as a Bogy who is known to follow people around calling out, “I want my bones.” Nor as unnerving as a Padfoot who walks behind an unsuspecting person, then runs up to his side and roars. Nor as scary as a Barguest with its horns, teeth, claws, and fiery eyes. Nor as dreadful as a Tankerabogus who comes and carries naughty children away to its pit-hole. Some goblins are actually more terrifying!

When I wanted to add goblins to my Young Adult fantasy adventure novel, The Enchanted Skean, I had to decide what my goblins would be called and what they'd look like. Plus, I wanted to give them characteristics which would make them repulsive and fascinating at the same time.

The first type of goblin I created are Grindees. They're smallish nocturnal goblins that travel in swarms of 20

to 30 individuals. Grindees chase down travelers, devour both animals and humans, then steal whatever valuables they possessed. They have glowing orange eyes, mottled skin, elongated fingers, multiple horns, and wide mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. Able to speak in a hissing, lispy manner, Grindees are happy to let a person know just how much they despise humans – just before they bite them.

When it came to creating the second type of goblin for The Enchanted Skean, I decided to find an archaic word for a frightening creature. One of the fabulous words I found in Jeffery Kacirk's The Word Museum was Ogerhunch. According to Kacirk an Ogerhunch is “Any frightful or loathsome creature, especially a bat.” Well, I'm a fan of bats, so I decided to make my Ogerhunches goblins that looked like forest debris and stumps. A horde of Hunches will sneak up unnoticed, knock their victims to the ground with their branch-like limbs, then suck their juices out with their rootlets. Luckily for the protagonist in my novel, Ogerhunches aren't especially smart and they're afraid of fire.

In the sequel to The Enchanted Skean, Grindee and Ogerhunches are sure to appear. The trick will be to add an even more devious goblin to the mix.

So this Halloween when your doorbell rings and you open your door to trick-or-treaters, keep your eyes peeled for goblins. It's easy to separate them from the neighborhood kids – their ugly faces aren't masks and they don't come off with make-up remover. And remember “you better mind your parents and your teachers fond and dear, and cherish them that loves ya, and dry the orphans tears and help the poor and needy ones that cluster all about, or the goblins will get ya if ya don't watch out!”

About the guest writer: Vonnie Winslow Crist is author of a YA fantasy novel, The Enchanted Skean, 2 speculative story collections, The Greener Forest and Owl Light, and other books. A firm believer that the world around us is filled with mystery, miracles, and magic, Vonnie celebrates the power of myth in her writing.

Read an excerpt of The Enchanted Skean featuring Grindee goblins: http://vonniewinslowcrist.com/books/the_enchanted_skean_excerpt

Learn more about Vonnie and her writing: http://vonniewinslowcrist.com  and http://vonniewinslowcrist.wordpress.com  Become her fan: http://facebook.com/WriterVonnieWinslowCrist  and http://goodreads.com/vonnie_winslow_crist  Follow her: http://twitter.com/VonnieWCrist  Purchase Vonnie's books: http://tinyurl.com/Vonnie-Winslow-Crist-Amazon and http://tinyurl.com/Vonnie-Winslow-Crist-UK-Amazon

The Wicked, Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour runs every other day October 23-October 31.  Join us all five days for Halloween fun!  Be sure to say hello on any post to be entered in a giveaway at the end of the tour! 

Happy… erm… Day After Halloween/Samhain!

I have the power!  And teh interwebz!

'Cos our Hallowe'en party was SNOWED OUT! by a freak Nor'easter that came in and knocked over a whole bunch more trees (because Irene and the May tornadoes didn't knock over enough).  We were about 36 hours without power… fortunately, AFTER the last of our brave guests left… after we moved the first few trees so poor, brave guests could leave.

So, um… Happy Hallowe'en from me and Scott! 

Zombie Tourist and Fairy Goth-Momma

Oh, and Nylis and I feel about the same about this stupid snow on Hallowe'en.  You can see some of the tree damage out the window behind her.

Not like we generally get trick-or-treaters down our dark, dead-end street… even if most suburban parents haven't been not taking kids out for actual neighborhood trick-or-treating for some years now… but really, with the ice, snow, and slush… we didn't even bother putting our light on. 

You couldn't see it through the snow-covered leaves anyway.

I'll stop bitching now.  Scott is threatening to eat my brains.  He did the gash, I did the make-up; further proof that we make a pretty damned good team.

It's NOVEMBER!  Which means NaNoWriMo!

Why am I writing a blog when my trickster novel could be getting written?

'Cos I love you.

Anyway: work update:

Despite no power or webz for an extended period of time, I still managed to shoot out four submissions for the Broad Universe Mailing Party.  Fingers crossed for acceptances!!

Now… onto novel writing madness.

Happy Hallowe'en, Samhain, All Souls, and All Saints Day!

And This Week's Manic Happenings…

Wait, I can actually breathe and catch up this week! 

Or, mostly, catch up.

I owe my WoMag editor a list of bakeries for the next "______ Woo" series.

Cali's moving back to where I'm boarding her this week.

That email needs to get below 100.

I need to get back to updating the BSER Facebook page regularly.

And I need to finish the edits for both websites - eep!

Oh… and want to write down that short story that attacked me last week.

The Halloween weekend was pretty awesome.  We had a successful Halloween party, despite our lack of efforts in planning.  Before that, we'd kidnapped some friends for the annual Repo! The Genetic Opera event with Genetic Imperfection with the most kind and wonderful Terrance Zdunich, creator and star of the show, who's currently working on the excellent comic, The Molting.

My friend Stina, Terrance, and me - photo taken by H-of-A on Stina's phone.

After the party (where we were having too much fun to take pictures), we went to the wicked Voltaire concert. 

The awesome Voltaire & me, photo by line-friend Erin - love strangers who become friends in signing lines!

 I wrote about how much I love Voltaire in this blog, and I got a nifty interview with him for Worcester Magazine, which he signed.  You can read the article online here, too.

Squee!  He signed my article!

Tonight, I just got back from being a guest on Dr. Chris's Radio of Horror.  I touted the EPIC finalist placement for Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory and even read some poetry from The Unicorn and the Old Woman.  I also chatted about faerie folklore and legend and other various dark material.  I shared the show with some other cool people.  In the studio with me was the Husband-of-Awesome, T.J. May, Geoffrey H. Goodwin, and Brenda Sullivan of the Gravestone Girls.

So, now that I got to do a little planning and bragging, I'm off to bed in hopes of achieving this great "Catch-Up" dream in the week to come!

Frantic Faerie & Fearsome Friday

Squeezing this out between deadlines, shows, & appearances.  :)  Thus the "Frantic."

Faerie!

Fabulous news!  Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory has finalled for an EPIC eBook Award for Best Anthology!!

We won't know if we've won until March, but so cool that the BAF crew continues to represent!  Find out more about the anthologies at our website:  www.badassfaeries.com or our blog: http://www.badassfaeries.com/blog.htm

Fearsome!

Listen on Halloween to WCUW!  If you're local to Worcester, it's 91.3 FM - OR you can stream it online from www.wcuw.org!  Why listen?  Well, because the Husband-of-Awesome and I will be chatting horror and other cool, scary stuff on the radio!  Fellow horror writers from New England Horror Writers and Broad Universe will also be there!

Mwahahahahahaaha!!!

Friday!

Well, it's Friday!  Tonight we'll be watching Genetic Imperfection do their shadowcast of Repo! The Genetic Opera at the Academy of Music in Northampton.  There's still tickets available if you're in the area.  It's a GREAT production of an awesome film.

And Tomorrow is VOLTAIRE!  In Worcester!  Tickets are also available for that, so come and party!

Then, of course, HALLOWEEN!

So, have a wonderful weekend to all.  :)  Happy Halloween, and Blessed Samhain!

Working for yourself…

Dear Hooman, WTF?!

… is that constant, "I gotta get this done" mixed with the entire purpose of wanting to work from home or work for yourself: Freedom!

I don't wanna be chained to the desk or a schedule. 

I like that fact that I can shoot out to go visit a friend who, well, likely needs a friend.  Or I can escape to a wonderful artist studio to get some writing done.  Or I can write while eating a delicious lunch.  Or that I can make my schedule around playing with my horse.

But… I still have work to do.

When I'm sick, I can - in theory - take some time off.

But… no one else will do the work.

It's a constant mental struggle sometimes.  I have a strong work ethic.  (Thanks, Mom! :) )  I also know the value of being true to one's physical, mental, and spiritual needs.

Like not signing on right away on a Sunday after playing with friends and your horse because the kitty just looks so cute in this nifty bow that came from a gift basket you won at the latest horse rescue fundraiser…

I iz soooo impressd wit these ribbons and pumpkin. Can't U tell?

… besides that, as I think I've mentioned, I've been going straight for the past few weeks.  Saturday I finally got my "crash and burn" day and slept in until about 3PM before shambling downstairs for H-of-A's pumpkin waffles and then going out to dinner (ok, that "counts" as work as it was a review) and then seeing a movie (back to my Day of Rest).

I totally needed it.  I was getting cranky as well as sick.

Can't U C I'z trying to sleep?  GTFO of mai face with dat camera!

In any case, this week is….. HALLOWEEN! 

Samhain for many of my friends. 

Also coolness for this week:

A'ight. Wuz kyoot 4 u.  Food nao!!

Voltaire!!  Who I actually wrote a blog about a while ago because he's a great inspiration to me as an artist/writer/make-$-by-doing-what-I-love kinda person. He'll be HERE in Worcester!!  I'm so psyched!

And THEN, also coolness, I will be on the RADIO!  :)  Dr.Chris, who I met at Rock and Shock the last weekend ago, invited me, my H-of-A, and other cool horror-y writers and other folk to be on his radio show on Halloween!  So, if you are local, it's WCUW or hop online at www.wcuw.org and stream us from 8PM until midnight (Eastern Time) on Halloween!

Now, as for that whole freedom thing?  Yeah, announcements made:  I'm going to bed!

Happy Halloween & Blessed Samhain!

When an a propos title would be generic…

I just realized I never posted my pumpkin recipe on Friday. Oops! I really don't mean to tease anyone who's waiting for it. This Friday - promise!

NaNoWriMo kicked off today. I don't know Chris's word count, but mine was a paltry 1500 or so, and that wouldn't have even gotten done if it wasn't for the Worcester Chapter meeting from 1-3PM over at Clark University today. Yay Worcester Chapter for providing discipline! That 1500 words was one whole scene, though… so not too shabby.

xx

Today also had my the poor Husband of Awesome having to fix the brake sensor on my car again… and the water heater breaking. FTW, Murphy?! I barely got my review in on time. The one that shoulda been done on Friday, but the restaurant kicked my butt and sent me to bed for a few hours. More on that later…

xx

2009 Halloween was AWESOME! I loved my costume:



We spent the holiday at a good friend's house with other friends. J We watched scary movies and handed out candy and ate good food - like BRAINS!!! Yay us!

xx

Friday was just a little insane.

It started with the chiropractor… then onto the transformation into the costume:




Yes, that is hair dye. Yes, it is obscene blonde. I don't care what the package says, it ought to be called "Obscene Blonde." More obscene: my brows didn't take. Whatever… it's a big difference, and I like it. The good thing about $10 hair dye is you don't feel awful if it looks funny; it's not a lot to change it back. Or change it to something different.

The green face is foreshadowing. Shortly after I made myself oh-so-pretty, I took my mom out to review a restaurant. The restaurant and I weren't in agreement on the quality of food… and even less so on price. I'll leave it at that. You can see the review next Thursday in Worcester Magazine.

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I did recover enough on Friday (It would have taken outright food poisoning to keep me from going!) to make it to the Northampton special event at the Academy of Music by Genetic Imperfection (aka the Come Again Players) of Repo! The Genetic Opera. Especially awesome: Terrence Zdunich was there and it was a fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis - a disease that took a way a good friend of mine last year right about this time.

The event was awesome. See for yourself:




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Thursday was a coffee cupping at one of my favorite delis, where I didn't exactly admit to my alternate food-critic personality. No matter, I was writing an article under my own name, so I still got to pick the owner's brain… while eating fabulous pastries from the Pink House and drinking delicious coffee.

Oh… and this deli carries Jamón Serrano!!!! Totally made my night!

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Wednesday night I went to Gulu Gulu café with my friend Dan. We had an open mic. It was fun, I read some poetry, but it wasn't quite worth the $ I lost by not working that night… and how bad I felt because the tutoring queue was busy and no one could sub for me.

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannndddd… Bad-Ass Faeries 1 & 2 are officially released!!! J Please patronize your favorite writers & editors and buy these nifty, pretty, and new copies!

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I'm getting that soreness in the throat that says if I don't go to bed shortly and sleep in more, I will get sick. Goodnight!