Happy Halloween!

Ah, my favorite holiday, when all things spooky reign!

I love handing out candy and seeing all the different costumes. Though in recent years, it seems creativity has slipped a little and most tykes come to the door in a plastic, store-bought Buzz Lightyear costume. I remember the year I glued cotton-balls to my face, then had my mother apply some sort of brown goo. When the goo was combed into the cotton balls, it made them "shag" and presto! I was a hairy werewolf (boy did it hurt taking those cotton balls off, but it was a small price to pay for such a great costume).

I love shutting off the lights and watching the non-stop horror movies. I'm looking forward to the premiere of AMC's "The Walking Dead." I'm a big fan of zombies.

And every now and then, the weather is nice enough on Halloween that I can go out in the backyard and have a nice, old-fashioned, Halloween bonfire (really just a couple of logs in a copper backyard fire-pit, but hey, I live in the city-- you've got to make do with what you've got).

And did you know: the government has a Halloween page?
USA.gov Halloween Page
So why isn't it a national holiday?

Whatever your holiday traditions (or anti-traditions), I hope you have a safe and happy Halloween!

Alecsander's Empire

This is an excerpt from a story that originally appeared in Loving the Undead: An Anthology of Romance. . . sort of, published by From the Asylum Books and Press. It was published back when I was using the pen name "Doug Graves." The book is out-of-print, but I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy to give away on Facebook. Stay tuned for details.

"I should have married Richard!"

Yes, you should have, he thought. He sipped his coffee, refusing to let her draw him into an argument.

"Just look at this place." She swung one meaty arm wide. "Everything's falling apart! The front burner on the stove is out, the garbage disposal's broken, the front window is cracked, the table is wobbly . . ." She reached out and gave the table a shake, sloshing coffee from his cup. "Richard could fix anything." She glared at him. "What can you do?"

He watched the coffee puddle make a run for the opposite side of the table. You forgot one: the trailer is starting to list starboard. He looked up at her and shrugged. "I'm doing the best I can with what I've got."

She scowled and snatched a roll of paper towels from the counter.

He watched her as she eased her bulk, groaning and popping, down to mop up the mess. Her hair was grey and thin, her scalp showed through in places. She didn't even bother to take it out of curlers anymore. She had taken to wearing only shapeless housedresses, which was a good thing, considering she didn't have a shape anymore. Now he understood why they called them "muumuus." And she sported more facial hair than the werewolves he hung around with in the wild nights of his youth.

The wild nights of his youth . . . he sighed and watched her struggle her considerable bulk out from beneath the table. Is this behemoth really the same beauty I met on that wild night, so long ago? The memory of that night could still raise his hunger: her long, red hair spilled in ringlets across the pillow, her skin milky-white as fine porcelain, her figure lithe and trim, swelling in all the right places beneath the sheet. He had already overindulged that evening--blood and cheap whiskey--and so he had seduced the great beauty he had stumbled upon. Four months later, she had hunted him down at his favorite jazz club and informed him she was with child. It wasn't until she was pregnant with their second child and packing on pounds like a sumo wrestler that he had an epiphany: was it even possible for a vampire to sire children?

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Horror Movies

I popped over to Teen Word Factory to check out the post on Horror movies (how could I resist)!

When I was younger, my favorite scary movie was The Blob. The idea of a creature that could pretty much get to you no matter what (under the door crack, up through the drainpipe) was heart-stopping. To this day, I don't like to look at the gap under a door.

Now my favorite horror movies are the Alien series (I know--technically sci-fi) and John Carpenter's remake of The Thing (when that blood screamed, I screamed right along with it).

I haven't been too pleased with some of the more current horror movies. For example, I waited YEARS for Stephen King's The Mist become a movie, and was fairly pleased with the result . . . until the ending. The new ending ruined the whole thing for me.

But I do like:
Pitch Black (sci-fi, I know; but if it involves non-technological scary monsters, it's horror to me);
28 days/weeks later;
Resident Evil;
and I also enjoyed Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow, and Zombieland, though I count them more as black comedy than horror.

What are your favorites, and which ones do you wish you'd never seen?

Don't date him; he reads Koontz

I found an interesting post here: http://www.therejectionist.com/2010/10/bookclub-love.html

I find the idea of a dating site based on literary selections interesting, but I just don't know how well it's actually going to work.

We all know that there's already a lot of "fiction" on dating sites; can there really be that many blond-haired, blue-eyed single women with perfect figures or that many tall, dark, and handsome single doctors? And why the heck does that photo of the single hunk have "goodlookingstockphotos.com" watermarked in the lower corner. Now single people have to worry that their potential date is padding their reading list? Does Biff really spend his evenings wrapped in a Snuggie, reading and re-reading Dante's Inferno?

And how much can you really tell about someone from their reading list. How could you "make a match" through it? My favs list includes everything from Stephen King to (I swear) Canterbury Tales; Janet Evanovich to (I swear) Shakespeare; Gone with the Wind to (I swear; wait, this one makes sense) Edgar Allan Poe. So what would be my match? A romantic punk rocker with a sense of humor?

What do you think of a literary dating site? What about your reading list-- what do you think a "potential mate" could tell from your list?

I think I found the problem, Jim

Whether you "believe in" global warming or not, there's no arguing that the planet has seen better days. And this is a good indicator of the problem:

New Snub-Nosed Monkey Discovered, Eaten

Yep. That's right: new species discovered moments before it became the blue-plate special.

Bob: "What is that thing?"
Ray: "I don't know. I ain't never seen one before."
Bob: "Whaddya reckon it tastes like?"

I saw the same sort of reaction in a news story a while back. I've lost the link, but it was about a "giant bug" creature that was found attached to a submersible that was hauled back up out of the ocean. The thing looked like a giant pill-bug (or "roly-poly" bug, as we used to call them). The comments that followed the picture started out as, "whew! that thing is ugly," and "That's frightening;" but not long after, the comments shifted to, "I wonder what that would taste like with a little butter and garlic."

So that's our problem: the world is just too doggone tasty!

Cameras Steal Your Soul

This "author photo" thing has my head spinning. I have never liked any photo of myself (I often used the excuse "but everyone knows cameras steal your soul" to get out of taking photos), so I knew it was going to be hard. But it turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated.

When taking a photo for your business card, you want to look the part: if you're a CPA, you want your business photo to look like you are a CPA; if you're a real estate broker, you want your business card photo to like you are a real estate broker. If you're a writer, you want your business photo to look like . . . what?  . . . Hemingway?

How on earth does one project the message "I am a writer" through a photo? With the other business cards, the message you want to send is pretty straightforward: I'm professional, reliable, diligent with your finances, you can trust me to find you a house, etc. But what message is a writer trying to send: "Hello. I'm really good at making up stuff"?

Maybe there is a way to "look author-ly;" perhaps stare into the distance pensively, as if mulling the meaning of life. Maybe break out a smoking jacket with leather patches on the elbows. How about a nice handcrafted pipe as a prop?

Even worse, my author picture had to project the image of a HORROR author. Now how does one manage that? I hung up my black lipstick years ago. I don't have anything pierced (even my ears are boring: each is only pierced once). Should I have perched a crow upon my shoulder? Held a bloody knife (I can see that going over REAL well on the Internet).

I finally gave up and just decided to look like me. What does a horror author look like? Like me, that's what.

I did decide that the black and white photos look a little more "author-ly" than the color ones. The color ones tend to look like they were taken in the backyard--which they were--while the black and white ones look more like they belong on a book jacket.

So what's your opinion on author photos? Have you seen an author photo that made you scratch your head and say, "THAT guy wrote this?" Or how about those of you who are authors--how did you do your author photo?

Another test post

Just another test post to make sure I've set up my feeds correctly. I'd hate it if I cross-mojonated a link and ended up blowing up the Interweb.