the league of reluctant adults

Sorry folks, I was so busy shoveling candy into my maw that I forgot to post the winner for the Kelly Meding prize. As a refresher the prize is a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card and a copy of DARK DELICACIES. The winner is: JSB!!! Congrats. Email me at jayewells(at)gmail(dot)com with your snail mail address and I'll make sure Kelly gets your info. Hope everyone's having a spooky Halloween filled with tricks and/or treats!

Would it surprise any of you to learn that some of my fondest memories of Halloween are of hiding behind pillows with my middle-school friends while we watched wildly inappropriate horror films? After trick or treating or G-rated parties, we'd all gather in my bedroom and turn on some gorefest we'd found at the video store. And shriek at the scary bits until my mother came upstairs and told us to shut up and go to sleep. Ah, memories. Here are my top scary moments (inspired by Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments ). Feel free to jump in via comments! The Exorcist Not the vomiting scene or the scene where the priest's mom starts talking through Satan/Linda Blair. No, the thing that got me in Exorcist is when Father Merrin makes a tape (reel-to-reel, baby) of Regan's voice to be analyzed and finds out poor lil Devil Child is speaking English...BACKWARDS! Poltergeist Evil clown doll + girl who hates clowns = AIEEEE! The Watcher in the Woods As a disclaimer, I was si...

And now, a special guest post from Miriam Kriss, uber-agent from the Irene Goodman Literary Agency: Halloween in New York City is a big deal, the nearest thing we have to Marti Gras. Everyone, from the free-wheeling and scantily-clad Village Halloween Parade partiers, to the more innocent parade of young princesses, pirates and superheros that clog Brooklyn's Seventh Avenue, to the bag lady who hangs out on my friend's Alphabet City stoop, gets in on the act. So even in my poor college days I felt I had to make an effort for my first NYC Halloween. There's a great costume shop on Broadway, just down from the Strand Bookshop, that's a block deep and I went in there to find something fun. Most of the costumes were out of my price range and the ones that weren't looked it. Finally I settled on a pair of fangs, really nice ones that had plastic molds you melted then fitted to your eyeteeth, where they sat suspended as though they grew there. At twenty bucks I could swi...

Halloween wouldn't be complete without a few tricks, so I invited three of my most serious literary author-type friends to share their favorite holiday memories... ****************************** I love Halloween night. Maybe it's the crispness of the winter air, the fantastical costumes, the freaky faces in carved pumpkins, or the joy of whacking zombies with your cricket bat or shotgun. (I always go with the shotgun.) Okay, okay. I love Halloween because of the free candy. Well, the chocolate. Honestly I don't understand the point of handing out non-chocolate treats. SweeTarts? Might as well eat a piece of sugarcoated chalk. Candy corn? Blech. Licorice? Are you kidding me? And those pixie sticks are evil incarnate! Satan must sell those at a discount or something. Let's review. On Halloween, chocolate good. Everything else, bad. I know, I know. Zombies only rise from their graves once a year, but c'mon, would you rather go to the graveyard and waste your bullets or...

Happy Halloween! Today we have Jennifer Rardin in the clubhouse helping us celebrate. Jennifer is the author of the kick-ass Jaz Parks urban fantasy series. I love me some Vayl. For realz. Anyway, Jennifer's given us a treat to nibble on today. Enjoy! Zombie Jamboree by Jennifer Rardin Rindall Hunt leaned against the tallest tombstone in Browen Cemetery. Naturally the name carved across the base of the obelisk spelled BROWEN. Herbert John, born 1825, died 1899, slumbered on the south side of the plot. As far as Rindall knew, he'd never risen on Halloween, called or not. Neither had his second wife, Deborah Jane, R.I.P.ing on the opposite side of the stone. But his first love, Elizabeth Marie, who'd died in childbirth at the age of twenty-four, moved around so often that nothing grew on her grave but weeds. Rindall slammed his hand against the monument, wincing at the clacking sound that reminded him his digits hadn't quite fleshed out yet. He bellowed, "Rise...

Why do we associate Samhain/Halloween with fire? With orange and black? Our ancestors didn't worship fire, but there's no denying the incredible importance of it. Fire was life; it was heat and light. Without it there was only darkness. So it makes sense that fire would be a very important part of all celebrations, particularly the two most important one. Beltaine, May 1st, and Samhain, Nov. 1st (note: The feasts were celebrated on the eves of these dates, thus giving us April 30 and October 31). As I mentioned in my previous post, these dates were considered the points where the wheel of the year turned; from spring to summer, and from fall to winter. On these nights danger lived; when time turns it creates a thinning of the veil (there's a reason why midnight is called "the witching hour"), and through tha veil all sorts of things can slip. Is it possible that the reason those festivals were celebrated with bonfires was in an attempt to use light to drive away t...

My Halloween Guest Blog, or How I Got The Crap Scared Out of Me By An Inkblot Never ever trust your college friends around Halloween. Just expect those lovely people you bonded with during freshman orientation screw with you at some point during the last week of October. When asked to guest blog on a scary experience, I immediately thought of the many, many horrible things my college friends and I did to each other in the name of spooky fun. Like my girlfriends taking yours truly, the haunted house weenie, to a "haunted dorm experience" and telling me the actors weren't allowed to touch me. When a zombie reached out from under the bed and grabbed my ankle, I punched some poor guy dressed as Freddy Krueger in the stomach and ran out the emergency exit. Or take my friend, Scott, who went into his sleeping roommate's bedroom after they watched the Blair Witch Project, stood in the corner a la Russell Parr, and whimpered until said roommate woke up screaming in terror. ...