Happy Halloween! Blessed Samhain!

Please click the card for a Halloween greeting! Thank you to everyone who reads my little blog.

Revenants Abroad pre-orders open!

I have done it, I have loosed my vampires upon the world! This is both terrifying and exciting. There was a lot of time I thought about just tossing it in a drawer (electronically) and forgetting about it. But then I thought, what the hey, eh? Why not just run it up the proverbial flag pole and see who salutes? Maybe we should meet the team:

Andrej Vojacek

Anne-Marie Van Vooren

Neko Melonakos

This is the core group: just a couple of fun-loving, bourbon-swilling, chain-smoking, blood-drinking vampires and one human woman who have become a de facto family. It’s a little dysfunctional but what family isn’t? Somehow they’re still falling in with the wrong crowd.

The book releases on October 31 (I just had to have that day!), but you can pre-order now on Smashwords in a variety of formats and it should be up soon if not already at B&N, Kobo, Scribd, Oyster, FlipKart, Overdrive…  You can also download 10% of it to take it for a test drive, see if you’d like to read more. Also, the first chapter is up on Wattpad .

I’m working on getting it up at Amazon, but until then you can get the MOBI version from Smashwords.

If you don’t like pre-orders the book is available in just a couple days. I did a short pre-order period, mostly due to the timing of being able to get it through Smashwords vetting system and into their Premium Catalog, which took far less time than anticipated.

So, on to NaNoWriMo on Saturday, and start of the sequel to RA, working title “The Age of Revenants”.

Coffin Hop Blog Tour

The last week of October I’ll be participating in the Coffin Hop Blog Tour facilitated and organized by Axel Howerton and RL Treadway. The Facebook group is here if you want to jump on this crazy train. I’m still not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do, but it will involve some sort of giveaway as part of a contest. This is my first time participating in one of these so right now I’m a little fuzzy on the details. The most likely prize will be a copy of my book, Revenants Abroad, which (if all goes according to plan) should release right around October 31. More details as I get them. Watch this space, and all that.

Weekly Card – Queen of Wands

So this week I had to go with the All Hallows Tarot by Robyn Tisch Hollister. And we have the Queen of Wands. Wands are associated with the element of Fire, and creativity. All Queens are associated with Water, so we have Water (emotion) of Fire (passion, creativity, energy). Competent, strong-willed women who do what they love. The Queens are women of power who have arrived. They’re mature, they’ve achieved both spiritual and professional growth. If you know such a woman, enjoy her company. Perhaps you see a bit of yourself in her.

This week is Hallowe’en, All Hallows Eve, Samhain, Summer’s End. To the ancient Celts it was the New Year.

To those celebrating this as the New Year, a blessed Samhain to you, and all good things for the new year. The wheel turns, celebrate the harvest and a new beginning. Start a new project, pour your creativity into it. I’m about to start new novel for NaNoWriMo, so that’s where all my energy will be going for the next month.

Blessed Be!

Happy Halloween

Click on the picture for a Halloween card.

I almost feel guilty celebrating with so much destruction and devastation this week.  If you’re lucky enough to have power and are celebrating, whether it’s the secular Halloween or the Witches’ New Year of Samhain with its attendant memorials to those who have passed over, the day before NaNoWriMo begins and life goes haywire, enjoy your good fortune. Happy New Year to my witchy compadres!

Build Your Own Cemetery!

When I was a kid, there was a house in town that did a Christmas display that would have rivaled Disney. I’m talking a working carousel that carried 3’ tall elf dolls, a working ski lift/skyride that more of these dolls rode in, and loads of other things all over the yard. Sadly, vandals finally did so much damage the owner finally gave up. Terrible shame.

But this. This is unbelievable. A co-worker who shares my love of Halloween told me about this today after seeing my former cube all decked out (I didn’t bother decorating the one I actually sit in). The Davis Graveyard in Milwaukie, Oregon is not a cemetery at all. This is someone’s home.

No foolin’, this is for realz. Somehow I have missed this annual spectacle of the macabre, even though they’ve been covered on the news numerous times, and have apparently won all kinds of awards. From the home page click on the Gallery, and take a look at some of the past years’ displays, as well as this year’s.  The decorations are up for a full month, the rest of the year it’s probably a normal suburban house. They seem to make most of the props themselves and during the summer the owners offer reasonably priced classes to make your own corpses, gravestones, etc.  I’m in awe. Most nights it’s just the display, but at least 3 nights also includes sound effects. Like driving past Christmas lights, only better! Check out the Links page, too. They have an impressive collection of links to others who did this, as well as annual haunting convention (yes, there is such a thing), known logically enough as HAuNTCon. Be still my heart!

Here’s a pic of my little decorations at work. Kind of pales by comparison. There’s more, but it’s hard to photograph a cube. The Skull o’ Cookies did make a return appearance today, to much acclaim.

Collecting Vampires

Oh you guys, here it is, my next ‘must have!’ :

Are these the cutest flippin’ salt and pepper shakers you’ve ever seen?!?!?! SQUEEEEEE! They stick together with a little magnet. Talk about magnetic attraction 😉  Click the link or the photo to go to Goreydetails.net (who happen to be here in Portland, btw).

I’ve never understood people who collect salt-n-pepper shakers, and I don’t believe this is going to make me board that train, but these are too cute to pass up. Just when I thought I’d safely made through the Halloween season without overspending on new decorations. Ah well, they’re only $10.

Gracie and Skully

I couldn’t resist this as I was about to leave for work this morning. Gracie perched herself so perfectly with the Halloween decor on my dining room table. Normally I would shoo her off the table, but I couldn’t have gotten her to pose like this if my life depended on it. Strike while the iron is hot, and all that.

That’s the Skull o’ Cookies (it’s a cookie jar). I told people they had to reach in and eat the brains when I brought it to work. Big hit in the office, as were the chocolate chip cookies that I filled it with.

The Cats and the Count

I got this papier mache vampire last year, but never put up the photos of the cats I managed to corral into posing with it. This is one of the goofiest decorations I have.

Buster, looking his demonic best with the red eyes. The better to impress the Count with, I suppose.

Princess Gracie, patiently posing with Count Bobblehead.

Michael Swanwick’s “October Leaves”

For those who are not on Twitter and don’t watch my tweets, I had to post this. You MUST go check this out, it’s amazing (click on the photo to go to the Flickr slideshow):