Halloween Musings and Insights... And a Tour with The Best Prize Ever So Far!

It's just a perfectly gorgeous day today.
After a full week of gloom and rain - which the grass & plants all needed badly - the sky is bright blue again, and the sun sparkles through the greengold leaves of the birch trees.
Autumn is one gawdy season, isn't she?
But she should be - pure in all her scarlet and orange clashing glory....

 My friends Shellie Sakai (from #MyWANA) and Allie Wilde (from Writers' Platform) love me and simply can't get enough of me. Something about my suburban LaLaLand where I live I suppose.
They have both graced me with the Versatile Blogger award !
Too, too honored....
But, methinks I shall spin this to my own purposes. Here are 7 Random Thoughts & Insights on Halloween. Indulge me?

• I think retailers love it - finally moving out the bulky swimming pool inflatables and untidy bathing suits (attention inventors! invent a hanger that bathing suits won't fall off of - bras too, while you're at it!) and replacing them with scarecrows and pumpkins and mums and Christmas trees --

Yes -- yes it is what you think you see. 

HOLD THE PHONE! 

Christmas Trees? ! 

Yup. Thanks to the struggling economy and the racing pace of this world in which we live, the superstores - I'll give you three guesses and you'll be right all three times! - had lighted Christmas trees right up against the haunted houses, pointy hats, and supersized bags of candy in their aisles. 

You know, some of us can mix up all the foods on our plates and eat it and be perfectly happy. 

But then there are others (of which I am one) who prefer our potatoes and peas and chicken remain separate and unto themselves, to savor their own flavors and goodness. 

If I wanted chicken soup, I would've asked for chicken soup. But no, I wanted chicken, potatoes, and peas - in their own neat little piles on the plate. 

And so, this is how I prefer my holidays: first I like my Halloween to be purely orange, peppered with some spooky black witches and ghouls, and for dessert, some beglittered and betulled Disney princesses and spandexed superheroes - the smaller, the cuter. 

The buffet can include some scarecrows, some ghosts, and the occasional clever homemade headless-walking-thing-which defies a name. Hold the sexy nurses and pimps please - I like the trick-or-treaters who come to my door tiny and G-rated. They're more adorable that way. 

I keep a vampire of my own for my treats, thanks. 

• But adorable grows up and becomes horror... and then you're stuck giving out the candy at the door instead of walking the neighborhood to make sure nobody steals your tiny Superman or Princess Jasmine. 

A horror fan I am not. 

Give me wicked... evil... Poe-esque mystery...
... but keep your bloody, pus-filled, drippy, frothing at the mouth with spittle, raggedy and dirty, moaning and groaning, bad-hair-days zombies out of my holidays!
I know, I know...
Zombies are in, Zombies are cool, Zombies are the Walking Dead.
I get it.
But, remember Edgar Allen Poe's heartbeat that couldn't be found? Or the Masque of the Red Death, coming for you?
Or that damnable raven who wouldn't shut up...?
Leave a little mystery to my mayhem please. A creaking casket, an empty crypt, a creepy dark basement with a single lightbulb over a chair....
An icy breath across my cheek, from a ghost's whisper behind my ear...
Or the feeling of hairs standing on end on the back of my neck and arms, where the chillbumps pop out on my skin....

• Where's Martha when you need her? All the recipes, the crafts, the decorations, the props, the parties, the cuteness...

Instructions on You Could Make That blog

Oh! the Pressure of It ALL! 

I used to be the party house on the block. You know, the one with the eyeballs and floating ice hands in the purple punch? The 'ghosty' cookies in the graveyard pudding? The dirt cups with gummy worms? 

We'd spend the day before Halloween stretching that sticky fiber stuff that approximates spider webs, and juice up the fog machine, and set the thunder & lightning sound effects in the corner, with a flashlight in the pumpkin headed scarecrow. 

Yeah, did it. 

Know what I do these days? I get the tiny battery operated votives from the dollar store, and stick 'em in plastic pumpkin buckets, and hang 'em on all the trees leading up to our front door. 

Because I still have spider web from 2003 stuck on my front window, and I'm not going to ever get it off. 

• No, I don't do horror. So when the batshit crazy guy up the street thought it would be funny to get his giggles by wearing his Jason Hockey mask to the door when my kids yelled out Trick or Treat! and got no reaction from them but puzzlement...

That was a sweet moment for me. Couldn't have been prouder. 

I wasn't too happy with the smeared chocolate all over the inside of my mailbox the next day, but a little 409 ...and Life once again was good. 

However,  I DO watch The Best Scary Sexy Spooky Movie for Halloween -- 

Romantic & Spooky with Johnny Depp

                                          The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 

Now you tell me -- Jason? or Johnny Depp?

Thought so.

• I am a survivor of Cub Scout Mania Pumpkin Carving 101. 

Jack

One day long, long ago, I raised my hand and opened my mouth and said yes to an opportunity... 

To LOSE MY MIND! 

Yes, I was a member of that most awesome class of Volunteer Goddesses - the Cub Scout Den Mother. 

Please, you may rise -- and leave your offering with my Paypal donate button.

I wore the shirt, sewed the patches, did the games, made the requirements, kept everybody happy, provided a party every week, was incredibly creative, energetic and organized...

and all without medicinal help! 

It was a worthy endeavor, one which made memories for me and my guys for all time. And I need never repeat that endeavor again.

So, it is not without a little bragging here that I say, no cubs were harmed in the carving of jack o'lanterns in my garage. 

Wish that were true for the dads. 

• Say it Loud, Say it Proud -- I Am A Twilight Fan and I Wish the Darn Movie Would Open Already! 

Breaking Dawn

Stop with the booing! Down with the rotten tomatoes! 

You can be self righteous and smug all you want, but you have to admit that you wish you'd reinvented the vampire the way Stephenie Meyer reinvented the vampire. 

Come on... vegetarian vamps? All sparkly in the sun? Ever awake... ever young... ever angsty and strong? 

It's been the most successful book to movie enterprise since the Harry Potter series, 

and you're jealous you didn't think of it first, aren't you? 

I always was Team Jacob after that

               heat-her-up-in-the-tent and then the kiss-me-and-see-what-you'll-be-missing scenes --

 I'm a girl who likes it now... as in Right Now!.. as in 

              if-you-keep-on-with-the-teasing-I'll-show-you-some-righteous-fang-action 

But...ahem... back to our show.... 

Stephenie Meyer pulled off one stunning coup if what she says is true: that her submission was picked off the slush pile by an editor's part-time assistant and brought to the attention of the publishing house and the rest is history.

 Whatever deal she made with the devil  gives the rest of us hope.

I like it. I like her. I actually liked The Host, too (though it should've had two hundred pages edited out). 

So there, Stephen King. 

• The 'C' Word. 

Artful, no?

Chocolate. In all forms. 

Twix scores the most points, but KitKats are right behind. 

And later in the year for those times when you'll tear out the walls to find the last chocolate Easter egg your kid never found and you know where it is, but you just don't know if you can bring yourself down to that level of filching it out of the a/c duct work because that's where it fell when the cat kicked it because she thought the sky was falling when it fell off the door frame and bonked her on the head ...?

 

Tootsie Rolls rule. 

But the best kind of treat is a good book! And my friend Carol Burnside, w/a Annie Rayburn is joining us in one big Georgia Romance Indies' Book Blog Tour next week! 

Monday, join me here for a review of Phantoms & Fantasies. And leave a comment for a chance to win a download of this book, where Zeenie and Turk find each other but Zeenie harbors a secret hurt that may just be too big for Turk to overcome. 

We're also giving away a download of Insight,                                                                                      Annie's introductory short to her Crainesians species. Don't worry if you don't think you like science fiction - Crainesians are almost human, blending into the human species seamlessly, except for their elevated empathic skills and ability to recognize their lifemates the first time they set eyes on each other.

That's what makes her books so good - when her heroines recognize their lifemates, well... you'll have to wait to find out!  

Annie might have a few other goodies to offer too - but you have to comment to win! 

And the best part? She'll be giving away one copy of Phantoms & Fantasies all week on the other GRI blogs! 

Plus, if you comment every day, you'll have five chances at Annie's big prize on Saturday -- 

"Because my books all revolve around matters of the heart, the grand prize will be a beautiful collection of semi-precious heart pendants and necklaces encased in their own wooden jewelry box."
                                                                         --Annie Rayburn

Next week will be filled with Zeenie & Turk... and more Versatile Bloggers to get to know! 

So stop by here Monday..., 

Tami Brothers' Live, Love, Write! for an author interview Tuesday..., 

Sandra McGregor's Life, Love, and a Good Book for an excerpt Wednesday...,

 Pink Fuzzy Slippers' Writers' Blog for an interview with Turk on Thursday..., 

and finally a game of Spin the Bottle ... which Crainey Would You Kiss? at Linsey Lanier's blog Friday! 

Saturday Annie will wrap things up on her own blog, with all the names of commenters from all the blogs together as many times as they've commented, to win One Great Big Beautiful  prize! 

What are some of your Halloween crafts, costumes, traditions, movies...?  
Favorite candy or mancandy? 
Twilight friend or foe? Team Edward? Team Jacob? Team NoWayJose? 
Coming to our tour next week? I love the turquoise heart... which one is your fav? 

A bientot! And... thanks you two crazy kids!