So… here we are… it’s Halloween once again. It’s hard to think that it is autumn with the weather being so warm. Here, in the Southern parts of the US, the weather is unseasonably warm, making it feel more like summer than fall.
Since I live in Florida, I wasn’t exactly thinking it would be cool and crisp, like our neighbors to the north, but still, this is really warm. Uhhh, doesn’t bother me one bit. Hell, it’s why I moved to Florida in the first place.
As a kid, Halloween was a big holiday. It was a chance to dress up and of course, get candy, play jokes on some and in general, just have a good time. I made out like a bandit on the candy front. I carried newspapers for nine years and I always got special treats and great xmas gifts, mostly in the form of cash. Now what kid doesn’t like money?
But back to Halloween…
I remember one Halloween I got so much candy, my mother took more than half of it away from me. I wasn’t too happy about that, but in hindsight, she was right. It was more than any kid needed. I found out later that she’d taken it to a nursing home, so that made it less painful. If she’d given it to other kids I might have had an issue with it.
Halloween as an adult was a lot more fun. Halloween as a gay man was stupendous! You could do practically anything… well as far as a costume that is, and I did quite a few over the years. It was always fun and the bars would be packed to the gills.
A lot of bars would have contests with some decent prizes, most of which were bar tabs of some sort. It wasn’t so much the prizes that drew guys out to participate, but the appreciation of the work that they did on their costumes. There were a lot of private parties in Atlanta, but still, guys would end up going out bar hoping just to see and be seen. These guys spent a lot of time and sometimes money on their get-up. It was all great fun.
I personally love the weeks prior to the holiday. There always good horror movies on TV, which I do love. Now, I don’t care for the slasher type flicks. I like a good physiological thriller type film. Anyone can do blood and gore, but it takes an artist to scare the bejesus out of you without it.
Take Alfred Hitchcock for example: he could creep you out without showing much of anything. Psycho is a prime example of that. It was all done with music, implied violence and a bit of fake blood in the bottom of a shower. It looks easy, but anything that looks easy usually isn’t. I remember the first time I saw that masterpiece. It scared the crap out of me. So did The Birds. That thing was especially scary for kids. My sister let me watch that one when I was about eight. My poor sister got reamed out pretty good by my mother when she found out.
As an adult, I took to reading as well as watching. One year I decided that I would read Stephen King’s Misery. Oh hell, that book freaked me out. When it came to the scene where she was hobbling the MC, yeah, I don’t think I slept at all that night. Mr. King had a way of bringing his words to life like few horror authors ever could. To be honest, I think Misery was the only book that scared me that much.
It takes real talent to write a good dark book. Anne Rice is still one of my favorite authors. I don’t know if I’d call them exactly horror, but she can go pretty dark. I remember picking up Interview With a Vampire when it first came out in paperback. Honestly, I’m not sure you could call that a real horror type book, but it definitely had its dark side, and I loved it. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read that book. The Mayfair series is still one of my favorites.
Did you know I wrote a vampire book once? I swore, promised and declared I would never write a book about vampires. The main reason was because of Anne Rice’s vampire series. I mean honestly, after the character Lestat, who could top that, right? That is why I was adamant about not writing vampires.
So why did I do it? Simple. I was dared to. It was during NaNo Write Mo. Don’t ask me what that means because I’ve long since forgotten. It is basically a push for writers to write so many words in a month, basically a book. A friend that I was in a writer’s group with wanted me to do it with her and I agreed. It was when I was first starting out, so hell, why not. It gave me something to do.
The problem was we only had thirty days to write a complete story/book. Being the newbie that I was I thought sure, I can do that. Yeah, right. Up to that point, I’d really only written short stories. I was good at those, but a full on novel? Yeah, not so good. The first problem was I didn’t know what to write about. I couldn’t come up with an idea that I could stretch beyond a short story. I was really struggling with it. On the upside, I did crank out a pretty good short story which ended up being published, but that wasn’t getting me to my goal.
Nine days in and I was floundering. I had no ideas, no prospect of an idea and that was when the gauntlet was thrown down. The challenge was on. I was to write a story about vampires, which I’d sworn to never do. So… I did. From start to finish, I wrote that book in ten days. Admittedly, it was an editor’s nightmare. I did say I was just starting out, so it was a mess, but I did get it written!
No publisher would touch it. Yep, it was a real mess. It wasn’t until over a year later that I opened it up and started working on all the mistakes I’d made: beginner’s mistakes. By then I’d learned a lot and I wasn’t quite so scared of the thing. Again, how can anyone compete with Anne Rice, certainly not that twinkle/glitter vampire writter!
In the end, and a lot of work, I called it done and what do you know, I actually liked it. The reason I liked it I think, is because it is a good story that just happens to involve vampires. Of course the story wouldn’t work if they weren’t vampires, but it isn’t focused on the fact that there are vamps in it. No, it is a story that revolves around them.
What’s my twist on an age old theme? Ha! I put in sexy Marines. Now, who doesn’t like a hot, hunky Marine I ask? You don’t get just one, but a whole platoon of sexy Vampire Marines. Yep, I went there. Oh, and there was a lot of research that went into that book.
Note: I spent twenty hours one day/night just doing research, and then wrote for another then hours, if I remember correctly. It’s a bit of a blur…
So… if you’re looking for a paranormal type love story, (which in the end it is) a little something to read while the little monsters invade your neighborhood, why not pick it up? As an added bonus, there is a lot of sex in it.
Happy Halloween, y’all.
Max
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