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| A tin jack-o'-lantern the blogger bought at a thrift store and put up in his living room. This mini pumpkin was made and hand-painted by an unknown Indian artist. Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr. |
Tomorrow is my favourite day of the year as a fantasist and
so I have been extra busy preparing. I meant to do several blog posts leading
up to the holiday but got so busy with other projects and even non-writing duties
that I decided it would be best to write one big Halloween post. That includes
Day of the Dead which is 2 November.
Halloween Horror Fiction I’m Writing
For this Halloween, I’ve been revising a short horror story fitting
for the season. I actually wrote it last year about this time but it was too
close to the holiday so I didn’t bother revising it until just this month. It’s
a juvenile story. I say “juvenile” rather than young adult in this case because
I’m trying to target it at a tween audience as well a teen one. Yet I’m hoping
it can be enjoyed by adult readers too. Who knows, if you check here at the
Fantastic Site tomorrow you may be able to read it for free as a Halloween
treat! So check back tomorrow. If I don’t finish it in time, then I’ll try to
have something here for you so you don’t feel like you wasted your time
checking.
I’ve mostly been revising the story for character and am
realizing how hard characterization and development can be. For example, I
don’t know all the names of the clothes that today’s tweens wear and so I had
to do my research on that. But the challenge was finding out the generic names
for the clothes and ways to describe them so as not to use trademarked brand
names and risk infringement. Most of this research I’ve done on retail stores’ websites.
I’d go into other details of the challenges in revising this story but I don’t
want to create any pumpkin spoilers.
Just this Tuesday I wrote a new horror short story. It was for
my writers’ club that I’m a member of. The story is based on a special
Halloween prompt we were given to write on. It’s not particularly a Halloween
story, even though it is set during that time of year. It plays on the evil eye
myth. The twist? Well, it’s kind of a twist: the eye has no body. As soon as I
revise it fully I’ll publish it somewhere either in my next collection (that I
haven’t really planned out yet but am getting ready to) or in another source.
Whichever, I’ll let you know once it’s published.
Halloween Meets Day of the Dead
Something that has been making Halloween better each year is
the apparent merging of the holiday with the Mexican Day of the Dead (Dia de
los Muertos). Though the purposes for celebrating the two holidays are
different, the two have many similarities that depict the myths of the
afterlife and netherworld that are so iconic in the skeleton. Because the two
holidays fall only within two days of each other, Day of the Dead has even
influenced the stores: there are actually Day of the Dead skull masks you can
buy at party stores and even general retail chains such as Target. (Although I
do not condone the extreme commercialism of the holiday.)
As a Mexican-American, what really makes me proud of this
holiday growing in popular in the U.S. is the new animated movie that director
Guillermo Del Toro helped produce, The
Book of Life. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to see it myself but am
sure to. However, this movie is great at introducing to people the Mexican
holiday that, like Halloween, celebrates skeletons and ghosts (this second one
many of whom our relatives have personally known!). But I’m so amused at how
Day of the Dead is becoming more popular and mainstream each year to the level
of Halloween that I decided to do a sketch of how I see the compatibility of
the two:
And this is no joke. I really do see the two that way.
Halloween Book List
Last time I said that I might have a list of my Halloween horror
fiction reading. Here it is:
The Manitou, Graham Masterton: This 1976 novel about an evil
spirit of a Native American medicine man was made into a movie later in the
decade. The movie was far underrated in my opinion. I talk a little more about it in my
previous post.
“Alive-Oh”, Lisa
Morton: This is a short story about a man who goes to a Halloween haunted
attraction which turns out to be more than he expects. Much more than he
expects. It’s a very meaningful story with a social message while the story
doesn’t try too hard to convey that message. It takes a really good twist on
the haunted attraction horror story. In this one, the real horror may be very near
to where we are sitting as we read it. You can check it out for free at The Horror Zine.
“Storyteller”,
Nicholas Dahdah: Another short story from The Horror Zine.
This one is Lovecraft-inspired but don’t worry, it’s not another Cthullu fan
fiction piece. Even more, it’s far from amateur. This one actually features
Lovecraft as one of the characters. Read the story and find out why.
The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the
Macabre: The above Lovecraft-inspired story inspired me to read a
couple of Lovecraft’s stories and so I decided to read them from this
collection. One is “The Picture in the House” and the other “The Silver Key”.
The first one has its own characters and storyline while the second is from the
author’s Randolph Carter series of stories which are really good and can get
really mind tripping.
Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 2: Witches, edited by
Isaac Asimov (and others): I haven’t read all the stories in this book yet,
but the one I recently read for the season is “The Witch” by A.E. van Vogt. It’s
about a seemingly helpless old woman cared for by a young couple. But the
husband has his suspicions.
And these are stories I’m planning to read for Halloween:
The October Country, Ray Bradbury: This is the late Bradbury’s
book of dark supernatural tales of which I try to read at least one each
Halloween season.
An Edgar Allan Poe
tale: For us avid readers, Halloween just wouldn’t be complete without one,
right?
That’s it for now. And, as I said, I’ll have a Happy
Halloween something for you tomorrow. So until then, take scare!
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