I meant to post this last week for Halloween but forgot about it till tonight. Since my NaNo Novel is about vampires (a different kind of vampire, mind you) and with the release of Twilight’s New Moon later this month, I thought this pic was still very appropriate!
1. Write at least 60,000 words for NaNoWriMo.
2. Possibly finish the Christmas shopping.
3. Clip mega coupons for Thanksgiving savings.
4. Finish reading Celebrity. It’s over 500 pages. I’m 200 in.
5. Lose 25 pounds before Thanksgiving Day. SIKE!
6. Possibly finish the edit of Are You Sitting Down? This is a possibly.
A year ago today J and I visited Bellefontaine Cemetery and captured some awesome pics of the fall foliage and statues. I remember that day well.
Check out some of my photos here and here.
I’d still like to go back some day to the cemetery adjacent to Bellefontaine and pay a visit to Mr. Tennessee Williams.
What happened to the days of all the neighbor and church kids riding in my dad’s trailer as he pulled us around the neighborhood with his tractor and we went house to house and collected tons of candy. We knew every house in the neighborhood, all within a two or three mile perimeter of my Mom’s house. It was a glorious night of trick ‘r’ treating. We awoke to streamers of toilet paper in our trees and smashed pumpkins in the front yard.
I remember it raining one year and my Mom still took me out in the car door to door to the nearest neighbors who knew we’d come by. I remember a group of us kids and parents walking our streets for several hours one year collecting treats.
Years later in middle school I held a sleep over with two of my friends. We wore masks and had a mini haunted house in the front yard and gave out candy. Then, we stayed up late watching scary movies. We snuck out with a roll or two of toilet paper and rolled my own yard.
In high school, I stayed home and gave out candy and counted the number of trick ‘r’ treaters that came by. Entire church vans of kids pulled up and got out because everyone still knew everyone in the neighborhood.
As an older teen, I went out with other high school friends and rode around town. We stole a scarecrow and rolled yards of people we didn’t know.
In college, I always went out to clubs for Halloween Costume contests. I never won, but it was still fun to dress up and go out dancing all night.
For the past 3 years, I’ve put decorations out and gave out candy. We had about 25 or 30 kids stop by. We still don’t know any kids in our neighborhood to this day. Last year, we only saw about a dozen kids. With anticipation of Halloween being on a Saturday this year, I bought 9 bags of candy and put out my decorations early in the month. I even bought more decor today at the store because it was all 50% off. I rushed home to add the finishing touches on the yard. We ate dinner early so I could sit outside and pass out candy.
It’s now 8pm and we’ve had eight kids come by. The streets are empty. There are no cars. Half the street has its lights out. I’m so disappointed. And so I sit here and wonder why there’s no knock on the door, awaiting the Roseanne Halloween marathon, making coffee, and wondering what the heck I’m going to do with all this candy.
*sigh*
Despite the economy woes, and swine flu, and Halloween urban legends involving fruit and razor blades, I just wish Halloween could still be like the ole days.
Oh wait, there’s a knock at the door….
The leaves have been so pretty this month, and have hung on to their limbs for much longer than I remember in the past. So, as October comes to a close, I thought this song was appropriate.
I don’t know why, but I’m back on Facebook again. I almost feel lost. Farming just isn’t the same either. It’s like moving away from home, when all your friends stayed in the town you grew up in. And then you go back to visit and realize life kept going there without you and suddenly you feel out of place. It’ll never be the same again. Life, and Facebook, is funny that way.
I guess I’ll go play Farkle now and send odd colored hay bales to my Farmville friends and hope they forgive me for leaving in the first place.
Sorry I haven’t updated in a while! I’ve been busy with life and things – not writing as much as I should be – and just haven’t had much to say here.
But I have a bit of good news today.
My 2nd book, Stealing Wishes, has been released under my very own imprint: Shanlian Wordlit Press.
The book is the same but it’s now lower in price. Only $12.95.
And even though the price has been lowered, I’m now making a bigger commission than I was under my old imprint! How cool is that?!
So, if you haven’t bought a copy yet and you’re dying to read my latest book (You know you are!), do me a favor and click on the book cover and buy a copy today!
I hate it when something has been on my mind but I can’t really remember all the details, like a movie I saw and maybe I forgot the title. I continue to think about it and think about it and more details come into the light, and finally after thinking about it so much I finally remember the whole thing or the missing part is finally revealed. I love it when that happens.
That recently happened to me when I was thinking about a trailer I saw for a spooky Halloween movie that looked really good but I couldn’t remember the name. I could only remember bits and pieces of the clip, but I wanted to look it up and see if it was out. I tried Google, but had no luck. So I resorted to putting a post on Facebook and someone else replied right away with the name. Trick R Treat! I was so happy and I immediately added the movie, which came out last week, to my Netflix Que.
Well, for years there’s been something on my mind which I just could not figure out. It was a summer miniseries that played on TV back in the 80s. The details I could remember were blurry and skewed. But anytime a group got to talking about old TV shows, I always brought it up to see if anyone else could remember it. It was about 3 guys (maybe 4) who had just graduated from high school (or college) and were going to go celebrate in an Uncle’s cabin in the woods. On the way there, they pick up a girl who is hitchhiking. One of them rapes her and they end up burying her in the wood when they think she is dead. It’s a secret they keep the rest of their lives. They go their own ways and the movie follows each of their different lives. Here’s where my memories got really sketchy because I couldn’t remember anything else except for how it ended. But no one had ever heard of it or could remember seeing it no matter how many times I had described it over the years.
Yesterday at work, a coworker and I were talking about V, the sci fi miniseries that also played in the 80s and has recently been redone and starts on November 3rd. I saw this as another opportunity to mention that other miniseries and while she didn’t remember it, she said it sounded a lot like a book she’d read a long long time ago called Celebrity.
I immediately looked it up and found it was written in the late 70s-early80s by Thomas Thompson and sure enough, the details of the book sounded a lot like my miniseries I’d been obsessing over. With the help of Google, I found out it was indeed the book my miniseries was based upon which had been later released on VHS. It was indeed about 3 boys graduating from high school, committing a crime that night that they keep secret, then going on with their lives and each becoming famous in their own way, and then in the end one gets tried for murder.
You don’t know how happy I was to have the pieces of this puzzle come together after all of these years. I immediately bought a copy of the book to read and I’m thinking seriously in investing in a copy of the VHS. It was like a huge sigh of relief to finally have this weight lifted from my mind. That A-ha! moment that brings it all to completion!
Yesterday, I bought Halloween candy. I call it pre-Halloween candy because it probably won’t last till then, especially since it’s Kit Kats and Reese Cups.
I also turned on the heat yesterday morning because there was a chill in the house. The heat! We turned the air off weeks ago.
I brought the plants in too. Our patio and deck are so empty and dirty now, like the day after a good party. It was a good party…spring and summer I mean.
It’s hard to enjoy Fall despite the Halloween decorations I put up last weekend and the caramel and harvest candles I’m burning even now as I write this. I guess because I know there will be a frost soon, forcing the trees to finish off their changes and just drop all their changing leaves on the lawn. The grass will die. The branches will be barren. My flower beds will wilt and die.
Winter comes too soon, and I hate falling into it.
