Try Seasonal

 by Charlotte Hinger

I have a neighbor who goes all out for Halloween. Their display is enormous. I'm intrigued by the figures every year. A lot of them are motion activated. For instance this dead woman holding a dead baby begins to rock. It's hideously frightening. 

It's a funny thing how people love to be scared. Steven King has written a wealth of books that are based on the occult or issues that scare the daylights out of people. The first scary book I remember reading was Washinton Irving's Ichabod Crane. And my Halloween neighbor has an image for that.

And don't trust this bar tender. He offers you a drink when you approach, but don't risk it. Rumor has it that he's up to no good. 

If you would like to write westerns with a specialized appeal, how about this dude for your cover?

Editors love stories that are appropriate for a special event or a season. If you have one in mind, go to work. Submit to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine right away for consideration for next year's fall issue. Yes, magazines work that far ahead. In fact, now is a good time to polish up a story for new year's Christmas issue. 

Submissions timed for a particular holiday just might tickle the editor's fancy

October: Time for Scary Stuff

We’ve just flipped the page on the calendar to October.  Definitely one of my favorite months, it’s the time when the air turns cool and crisp, leaves on the trees magically transform into brilliant bursts of color, and football is in full swing.

Pumpkin spice lattes?  I might do one.  Only one.

October is also the month of Halloween, the time when nearly all the streaming services are showing horror flicks.  What is it about horror that we love so much? 

My theory is it’s like being on a really scary rollercoaster ride.  When you get to the top of the first rise and you’re just about to hit that precarious drop, your heart is pumping, your palms are sweaty, and there’s a scream in your throat you know you’ll be helpless to stop. In short, it’s terrifying and exhilarating, but in the end, you know you’ll be safe. 

We like sitting in a darkened theater to watch a scary movie or cracking open a horror novel if in the end we know it’s all going to be okay.

As close to a horror novel that I’ve written was Graveyard Bay. It’s the darkest of the Geneva Chase Mystery Series.  It’s the book that when I asked my neighbor if he enjoyed reading it, he looked away and muttered, “The ending gave me nightmares.”

What book or movie has stayed with you for a long time or scared you silly?

For me, there have been quite a few.  As I was growing up, I binged on weekend horror flicks like the nineteen-thirties version of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolfman. Back in the sixties, Aurora manufactured plastic model kits based on the old movie monsters.  After I’d put those bad boys together and painted them for my bedroom, I decided to read the old classics.  

Dracula by Bram Stoker had some similarities to the movie, but it was much scarier to read.  Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly is a much different story than the movie starring Boris Karloff and I really enjoyed it.

Then I went through my H.P. Lovecraft phase.  It doesn’t get much darker than his Cthulhu Mythos.

My thirst for horror had taken root.  As I grew older, I read the likes of The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.  That was pretty scary book, but the movie frightened the living hell out of me.  It was one time when the film was scarier than the book.

The book that gave me nightmares, however, was Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. It scared me so much I hated going down into the basement for any reason for years.  His book The Stand comes in a close second.  

And of course, since then I’ve read many of Mr. King’s novels as well as such horror writers as Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, and Anne Rice.  

Just a quick aside, did you know that in addition to horror novels, Anne Rice wrote erotica under the names of Ann Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure? BDSM erotica...written years ahead of Fifty Shades of Gray.

So, I’m going to pour a glass of wine, pop some popcorn, and get ready to binge on some horror before Halloween gets here.  What are your favorites?

Twins, the Holiday, and Pushing Laundry Up the Steps

I’d like to start out this blog with holiday news on the family front.  My daughter, Jessica, and her husband, Josh, have struggled for years to have a baby.  In the end, they went in-vitro and discovered that they were going to have twins.  An ultrasound told them that the kiddos were a boy and a girl.  Due date scheduled for the middle of January.

My oldest son, Tom, and his wife, Gillian, have two sons (my grandsons) Henry, twelve, and Jake, ten, whom I adore.  They’re smart, athletic, and funny as hell. Tom and Gillian are wonderful parents and it shows in their kids.

But we doubled the amount of grandkids around here when my daughter went into early labor last week and delivered Caroline Elise, 4lb 9 oz, and Thomas Frederick, 4lb 8 oz, 22 minutes later.  Both children are doing well but they will be in the NICU while they finish “cooking”.

I got the call after midnight from my son-in-law about the delivery.  When I heard they’d named the boy ‘Thomas’, I sat down at the kitchen table with a scotch in my hand and tears in my eyes.

And I about lost it when I heard the girl was named ‘Caroline’.

A little back story: I was a single dad from the time my daughter was thirteen. Jessica and I learned a lot together.  I didn’t know anything about shopping for groceries or cooking, but Jess and I learned it together.  Now, I love cooking.  I make mention of that in an earlier blog.  It’s really the main reason Cindy married me.  I do all the cooking.

In my first Geneva Chase book, Random Road, I introduce Kevin Bell, Geneva’s love interest.  He’s a single dad raising a thirteen year old girl named Caroline.  I had written Caroline with my own daughter in mind.

And now Caroline is real.

Switching gears:
Two days ago, Frankie Y. Bailey wrote an excellent blog about how she imagined her characters would spend their holiday. 

In Graveyard Bay, scheduled for release in July of 2019, the novel takes place the week before Christmas. I can’t say a whole lot about how Geneva Chase, Caroline Bell, and Mike Dillon spend their holiday, but if you’ve read the first twobooks in the series, you know it isn’t all decorations, sugar plum fairies, and boughs of holly.  It’s more guns, murder, whips and chains.

Good holiday fun.

The time of year that I begin writing a book has been the time of year the story takes place. In Random Road the story is told in the heat of July.  That worked for me on a number of levels.  A lot of the action takes place outside but the hottest scenes are in the bedroom.  Summer was perfect, plus that’s when I wrote the opening scene.

The second book, Darkness Lane, takes place prior to Halloween.  I love that time of year.  It’s autumn, the trees are resplendent, there’s a bite in the air, and it’s spooky.  Scenes in that book unfold in a dark forest, an old theater, and a haunted house.

Establishing the time of year and the location gives me the opportunity to afford the reader details that help make the book more real.  I use sounds, sights, and most importantly, scents in my descriptions. Holiday time has such wonderful scents—Christmas trees, baking cookies, cinnamon, roasting chestnuts (especially in New York).

Some smells are nearly universal in how they trigger memories.  For example, the holiday scents I mentioned in the prior paragraph.  The smells of a pizzeria—garlic, tomatoes, peppers.  The scents of a walk through a forest in autumn—decomposing leaves, damp earth, the smoke from wood fires in distant fireplaces. All of them are relatable to readers.

Okay, I’ve rambled enough.  I’m heading out to buy last minute presents.  But before that, I’m checking out photos of the kiddos again.

One last thing, I’ll leave you with a Facebook post by my son about Jake and Henry:


After comparing the 10 year old to Sisyphus as he was pushing two baskets of clothes up the stairs one step at a time, he gets to the top and says to his brother, "help me, I'm dying"

His brother, like the rest of the family, well schooled in the nihilistic fact that our long trek towards death begins the moment we're born, responds, "we all are."

I've raised them well.

Cheers and Happy Holiday.

What's the deal with goblins and ghosts?

Today is Halloween, a time when ghosts, skulls, and tombstones decorate front lawns, a time when not only is it all right to scare the daylights out of people, but it's encouraged. The creepiest, spookiest houses on the street are the coolest, and children dressed as goblins and skeletons race with gleeful shrieks towards that fear.

Why this celebration of the macabre? Why the fascination with death and blood and creatures that return from the dead? Why the compulsion to scare and horrify ourselves?

Preoccupation with the dead and their spirits dates back to the beginning of time, and although the celebration has evolved and absorbed others over the centuries, the origins of modern Halloween can be traced to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain around 2000 years ago. The Celts celebrated the new year on November 1, which marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of the long, cold winter (an idea that makes a lot more sense than January 1). They believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the living and the dead became porous and the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. On October 31 they had a celebration with sacred bonfires and sacrifices, dressed in costumes, and told fortunes in an attempt to curry favour with the Celtic deities for the coming year.

When the Romans conquered the Celtic lands, two Roman festivals were merged into Samhain, one of them being the annual Roman festival to commemorate the passing of the dead, which took place in October. And by the 9th century, the influence of Christianity reached the Celtic lands and put a Christian interpretation on existing festivals like Samhain. The Roman Catholic church had designated November 1 as All Saints Day and November 2 as All Souls Day, both intended to remember and honour the dead through parades, masses, and ceremonies. All Hallows Eve was the night before All Saints Day and marked the beginning of this three-day commemoration of the dead. Thus Halloween got its contemporary name.

The evolution of Halloween in Europe and North America into its current form is too complicated for this admittedly brief historical journey, but suffice to say that fear of ghosts, spirits, death, and the unknown were a vivid part of human experience since our early days, as was the belief that powers beyond ourselves controlled our destiny. Elaborate festivals and rituals evolved as attempts to provide reassurance and strength, as well as to trick, influence, appease, bribe, or defy those powers.

What does this have to do with crime fiction? I don't think we writers are attempting to influence fate. But perhaps we are trying to stare death and fear in the eye, shake our fists at it, perhaps demystify it a little, and at least in fiction defeat it so that justice and goodness prevail.

That's as far as I will go today. I have a couple of pumpkins waiting to be carved, a ghostly spectre to hang, and a scary costume to devise before the gleefully terrified children arrive at the door.

Ghosts, shoes, and suicide.

My post this month coincides with the Halloween weekend, the time of the year for ghosts and other scary things. I'll start by talking about shoes, specifically these shoes, which are the pair my father wore when he committed suicide thirty-three years ago.

The shoes have been on my closet shelf, unworn since that fateful day. It may seem macabre to wear his shoes, but they fit and every time I put them on it's an homage to him. I'm familiar with the saying, walk a mile in my shoes--there's even a song with that title--however I don't need to wear his shoes to understand what caused him to break and disintegrate into self-destruction.

These shoes are plain, army-issue low quarters and were the only style of shoes my dad wore. Obviously he wasn't much for fashion. My mom detested these shoes, but he ignored her requests to wear something with more pizazz. What most bothered her was that the only time he'd get them polished was by a shoe-shine boy during twice-monthly trips to Juarez. In between those visits, if the shoes got muddy or dirty, so be it.

Several years after my dad's passing I was at the bedside of my paternal grandfather. Even until late age he remained robust and active. However because of brittle hip and knee joints he couldn't walk. He lay on the bed, emaciated, wearing diapers, his only companions in that dark, lonely house a live-in attendant and a terrier named Chachi. In his prime my grandfather had been a colonel in the Texas State Guard, a judo instructor, and one of the earliest activists for Mexican-American rights. He gazed at me and began mumbling and it took me a moment to realize that he thought I was his son, my dad, long since dead. Carefully, I corrected him, and he regarded me with a pat on my hand and then fell asleep. Seeing my grandfather reduced this way weighed on me. During the drive home, his spirit and the ghosts of my dad and all my other dead relatives swirled around me so very real and terrifying that I had to pull off the highway and compose myself.

This week I decided that I needed a pair of black casual shoes and these were available, so I dusted them off and took them to a shoe shop to be refurbished. When the cobbler inspected them he noted the heels had nylon inserts and so exclaimed, "I haven't seen these in forty years!" I let him keep the heels for his collection of vintage footwear.

Though I wear my old man's shoes, he and I are on different paths. In fact, I've lived past his expiration date by twelve years. Most years, the anniversary of his death goes by unnoticed. Sure, I don't have to wear his shoes to remember him or to remind myself that we have to take care of ourselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I wear these shoes because they are comfortable and that I need a pair of black casual shoes.

Tom's Halloween Blog

The month of October marks the beginning of autumn.  The leaves are turning color, the days are getting shorter, the air is crisp, and Starbucks is serving their pumpkin-spice lattes.  It’s also the month for Halloween…and when I particularly enjoy scary movies and novels.

I’m currently binging on the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House. It’s comprised of ten episodes and, while it veers considerably from the 1959 gothic novel by Shirley Jackson, it pays homage to its essence.  It’s a slow-motion horror burn and it’s scarin’ the bejesus out of me.

Concurrently, I’m reading an excellent (if not spooky) account of a real-life paranormal investigation written by two dear friends of mine, Joey and Tonya Madia.  They were residents here on the coast of North Carolina and recently moved to Ohio.  They’ve written a book entitled Watch Out for the Hallway: Our Two-Year Investigation of the Most Haunted Library in North Carolina.

Now, to give you a little context here, this area of the coast has a rich and colorful history.  The pirate Blackbeard sailed in these waters three hundred years ago.  Indeed, his ship Queen Anne’s Revenge was scuttled by Blackbeard himself only a mile off our beach.  To my knowledge, it was one of the first examples of downsizing as a cost cutting measure.  Fewer pirates employed, fewer pockets to fill.

This region is also known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic because of the large number of shipwrecks these waters have claimed.  Sudden savage storms and shifting sandbars all contributed to heavy losses of life and property creating some remarkable stories and legends.

Just around the corner from my office here in Morehead City, North Carolina, sits the Webb Library.  In 1929, Mr. Earle W. Webb, Sr., CEO of Ethyl Corporation in NYC and native Morehead City resident, began construction of a commercial building on the corner of 9th and Evans Streets in downtown Morehead City.

For the first few years the building had doctors’ offices downstairs and a training facility for the local garment factory upstairs. When the upstairs noise became too much for the downstairs occupants, the garment factory left. Mrs. Webb, a member of the Morehead Woman’s Club, asked her husband if the club could move its 300-book library to one of the upstairs rooms. When he agreed, the library was moved.

A few years later in 1936, the Webbs’ son, Earle W. Webb, Jr., became ill and died. In honor of their son, Mr. and Mrs. Webb dedicated the building as the Earle W. Webb Jr. Memorial Library and Civic Center and opened it to all the citizens of Morehead City for community use.

The Webb Library is subject of Joey and Tonya Madia’s book.  It’s fun to read about their investigation and how the spirits they encountered had personalities, moods, and sometimes indulged in playful activities as well as bad and rude behavior.

The difference between Hill House and the Webb Library?  I have no worries about going in and borrowing a book or two at the Webb.  I’ve been there for fundraisers, meetings, and have never been uncomfortable.  Of course, now after reading the Madias’ book, I find myself looking over my shoulder more often.

Hill House?  You wouldn’t catch me there….ever.

Full disclosure.  I’ve never actually seen or felt a ghost.  Honestly, the only spirits I’ve ever seen have been in the bottom of my glass, right where they’re supposed to be.

That being said, I still like a good scare from time to time.

Happy Halloween.

For more information on Joey and Tonya’s book: http://visionarylivingpublishing.com/book/watch-out-for-the-hallway-our-two-year-investigation-of-the-most-haunted-library-in-north-carolina/

For more information on my mysteries, go to www.thomaskiesauthor.com

The Day of the Dead

I missed my post a couple of weeks ago, and it was completely by accident. I actually wrote the entry below and scheduled it for publication, but I didn't hit publish. Instead I kept it as a draft. Now, I've been known to do this before, but I always always check on my post day to make sure the entry came up.

Except for last time. Instead, I was lying in bed suffering from the flu, and rather than sharing thoughts about the Day of the Dead, I was wishing I was dead.

I have recovered, more or less. My plan for this week was to write something about the Women Writing the West Conference I attended a couple of weeks ago,  (which is where I picked up the influenza of death.) But I like my Dia de los Muertos/Samhain entry and felt sad at the idea of not using it. So here it is, Dear Reader, two weeks late. I hope you enjoy it notwithstanding.

***

Today (Nov. 2, 2017), my friends, is the Day of the Dead, a Spanish/Aztec celebration much beloved down here in southern Arizona. Día de los Muertos is a day for remembering your loved ones who have passed on. It’s like a family reunion, with your dead ancestors as the guests of honor. Day of the Dead is a joyful time, with parades, music, costumes, lots of food, and a candlelit altar to help the dead find their way home for the two days of the year (Nov. 1 and 2), when the living and the dead can commune.

Throughout the 1990s, I ran a little shop and sold imports from  Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. For a decade I was totally immersed in the Celtic culture. Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 are very important days in the Celtic calendar, for at midnight, the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead thins, and we may actually be able to see one another.

All those Celtic peoples who came to the New World early on and settled on the frontiers and the back woods, from whom many, many of us descend, myself included, had a view of existence that is very different from the modern way of looking at things. We wonder how such realistic and practical people could have so readily believed in ghosts and haints and contact with the dead.  It had to be because they were ignorant and uneducated, we think, and obviously not as smart as we are.

But I say, au contraire, my friends.  As I travel through this life, I begin to have an intimation that things are not necessarily what they seem.  We perceive the world as we have been taught to do.  We see what we are looking for.

My great-grandmother, whom I was privileged to know when I was a girl, knew there were spirits abroad just as firmly as she knew the sky was blue. She had seen them, and she believed the evidence of her own eyes. Did she really see them, or was she deluded? I’ve never seen a ghost. Am I realistic, or am I blind? How does a sighted person convince someone who has never seen that there is a color blue?

My protagonist, Alafair, perceives the universe in the same way my great-grandmother did, and I do not judge her for that.  In fact, maybe I’m a bit envious.

Samhain (pronounce that SHAW-win), Dear Readers, is a festival better known as Halloween, All Souls Day, and Celtic New Year. Some Celtic people would light bonfires on Samhain eve to guide the souls of loved ones, and make lanterns out of hollowed out turnips to lead the dead home for their annual visit.

My husband remembers that every Halloween, his father would dig a pit in back of the house, line it with bricks, fill it with wood, and light what they called a "bonfire", though it was more like a good sized campfire. The family would sit around it and roast wieners and marshmallows on sticks and stretched-out hangars. He has no idea where the family tradition came from, but I'm guessing it was passed down through the family from the misty past, for such traditions are remarkably enduring. So, if you live in the country or don't worry about being fined for building an open fire in your back yard, stretch out those hangars and get yourself a bag of marshmallows, and take a trip into the past with some campfire s’mores. Put a slab of Hershey bar on top of a Graham cracker, put a melty-hot roasted marshmallow on the chocolate, top with another Graham cracker, and enjoy.

And while you’re at it, be sure to light a candle to guide your loved ones home.

S'Mores and Ghosts

It is a few days after Halloween and the Day of Dead as you are reading this, Dear Reader, but I, Donis, am writing it on Halloween day itself, which has put me in mind of Halloweens past and loved ones past as well.

Every Halloween, my father-in-law dug a pit in back of the house, lined it with bricks, filled it with wood, and lit what he called a "bonfire", though it was more like a good sized campfire. The family would sit around it and roast wieners and marshmallows on sticks and stretched-out hangars. I have no idea where the family tradition came from, but I'm guessing it was passed down through the family from the misty past, for such traditions are remarkably enduring. So, if you live in the country or don't worry about being fined for building an open fire in your back yard, stretch out those hangars and get yourself a bag of marshmallows, and take a trip into the past with some campfire s'mores.

Put a slab of Hershey bar on top of a Graham cracker, put a melty-hot roasted marshmallow on the chocolate, top with another Graham cracker, and enjoy.

Of course Halloween didn’t used to be about s'mores, or trick-or-treat, or candy. In the Celtic tradition it is the turning of the year, the one day that the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead thins, and thus we may be able to see our departed loved ones.

The Celtic peoples who came to the New World early on and settled on the frontiers and the back woods, from whom many, many of us descend, myself included, had a view of existence that is very different from contemporary Westerners see things. We wonder how such tough and practical people could have so readily believed in ghosts and haints. It had to be because they were ignorant and uneducated, we think, and obviously not as smart as we are.

But I say, au contraire, my friends.  As I travel through this life, I begin to have an intimation that things are not necessarily what they seem. We perceive the world as we have been taught to do. We see what we are looking for.

My great-grandmother, whom I was privileged to know when I was a girl, knew there were spirits abroad just as firmly as she knew the sky was blue.  She had seen them, and she believed the evidence of her own eyes.  Did she really see them, or was she deluded?  I’ve never seen a ghost.  Am I realistic, or am I blind?  How does a sighted person convince someone who has never seen that there is a color blue?

My great-grandmother

My protagonist, Alafair, perceives the universe in the same way my great-grandmother did, and I do not judge her for that. In fact, maybe I’m a bit envious.