October brings out the party animal in me!
I can’t help it . . . from the extensive decorating (too many orange tubs to count!) to the ghoulish appetizers (including skull Jell-O molds!) . . . I love it all!! But for sake of space, I’ll condense my bump in the night and howl at the moon passions into a list of favorite things.
Favorite childhood scare: Bella Lugosi’s Dracula
Favorite type of shapeshifter: Wolf
Favorite Halloween movies: Wolf, Ernest Scared Stupid, Hocus Pocus, Halloween 2019
Favorite costume from childhood: The front half of a donkey
Favorite scary place: The Myrtles Plantation outside New Orleans
Favorite scary book: Stephen King’s The Shining
Favorite paranormal TV shows: Supernatural, Penny Dreadful (first 3 seasons), Night Gallery, Kolchak the Night Stalker
Favorite otherworldly passion: Collecting Tarot cards
Favorite Halloween candy: Snickers
Favorite Halloween decoration: my animated/lighted Halloween village, now with over ten buildings and graveyard!
And my other favorite . . . Halloween music videos! For your grim enjoyment, shiver your way through my Halloween Video Playlist on YouTube
Have a Boo-fully scary (but
safe!) holiday
Read an Excerpt:
Max hadn’t
visited that dark portion of his past for a very long time. Why now? Because of
the life his mate carried? Or were the dangerous shadows of unfinished business
reaching out from a swampy grave, a reminder of things he’d rather forget?
A rocking
chair’s familiar creak. He tensed and twisted anxiously in the throes of his
dream. Icy fingers of caution and loss clutched his chest as eyes darted behind
closed lids. Unable to deny his desire to look again upon the worn elegance of
his mother’s features, he faced his dread the way he’d addressed his life, with
a cautious, reluctant need to know the truth . . . of who and what he was.
Shadows, like
those long-ago secrets, hung thick, revealing little of the dark head bent over
the child Marie Savoie held in arms both protective and comforting. Max wished
she’d look up to feed time-starved memories, craving the gentle curve of her
smile and loving warmth in her gaze. He settled for the steadying croon of a
voice from the past.
“What is it,
Max? Another bad dream? They can’t harm you.”
As much as he
loved her, then and now, he’d never quite believed that assurance. Bad things
existed beyond the rusty gate imprisoning his youthful curiosity within their
overgrown yard for the first five years of his life. He knew because he was one
of them, a child of the unnatural world. All he’d wanted was to find his place
within it. But his mother had hidden that knowledge from him, just as she’d
kept the outside away for as long as she could
“Mama, what’s
wrong with me?” that small voice sobbed.
The rocker
continued to complain as she stroked the child’s black hair. Her tender gesture
failed to calm either boy or the man he’d become.
“Nothing’s wrong
with you, Max. You’re perfect. They just don’t understand, so they fear you.
That’s why you must be careful to never let them see the truth.”
“What truth?” he’d
pleaded. “Mama, tell me!”
Low and soft,
Max repeated from where he watched, decades away, “Mama, tell me.”
She brushed a
kiss across the top of the child’s flushed brow then slowly straightened,
turning toward Max Savoie, a surreal voyeur from the future she’d never see.
Her gaze swam with tears like liquid silver before flaring bright, then hot.
Then red.
“Max,” she
crooned, “you’re just like me.”
