Coffin Hopping: How to Scare the Neighborhood Children

It's that time of year again...Yeah, baby! Zombies are coming, as well as vampires and werewolves, witches, ghosts, ghouls, demons and devils (and some pretty things, too, but those aren't nearly so much fun, are they?) In honor of the upcoming holiday, I've joined the Coffin Hop Web Tour again this year. In case you hadn't noticed by all the badges and banners...credit to atrtink for those, obvs I couldn't do something that cool...this is a huge event with artists and authors giving away hundreds of prizes on their sights. So hop on over to the list of horror authors and join us for some scartitivites.
 
As my family debated Halloween costumes this year, I got to thinking about the trendiness that Halloween has taken on. And more generally, the fall season. As soon as October begins, everyone is clamoring to post the first colored leaf photo, Tweeting about their pumpkin spice lattes (#PSL, of course) and instagramming pics of their newly dusted off Ugg boots and flannels. (Don't be offended, I'm poking fun at myself here, too). Fall is the hot new season, and it has been for several years now. Poor summer. So neglected.

When I was a kid, I don't remember adults dressing for Halloween. Perhaps my mom would find an old black skirt and a turtleneck, top it off with a straw hat, and call herself a witch, but the adult costumes were always kept to a minimum, made up of things they already had in the closet. Nowadays, Halloween is an all-ages event, with adult participation and enthusiasm (at least) as high as the kids'.

If you're not going to a party but stuck handing out candy, and you still want to dress up, consider scaring the neighborhood children. Oh yes. It might take a little more work than grabbing something off the shelf, but with the right makeup, face paint, and even items out of your closet, you can piece together a grim and gruesome costume.

You can go above and beyond and spend lots of money, but if you're like me, finances are tight this time of year with the holidays coming up. Zombies are still hot this year, as they have been for the past five or so years, and talk about a cheap and easy costume. Got an old t-shirt, a pair of ripped jeans and some dirt outside your house? All you need is some fake blood and maybe a makeup kit if you want to smear some white and black on your face. Smear the blood around your mouth, grime up your clothes a bit, dribble fake blood down the front of your shirt. Smudge some makeup (Halloween makeup or just regular old eyeliner) around your eyes, then go wait on your lawn. It's even better if you have a whole family or some friends willing to join you in this endeavor. When the kiddos start coming along your walk, begin lurching towards them (someone should also fall and army crawl, that's always a good one) growling and expressing your general desire for brains. If you want to go above and beyond, you could even make a few quick "coffins" out of scrap wood or pallets and have a couple people pop up out of those for effect. Then, watch the neighborhood kids scream in terror...just don't expect to be popular with the neighborhood parents!

 In case you were wondering, I still haven't decided on a costume, but I will definitely be in costume come Halloween night. Until then, I'll be hopping around reading scary stories on some of the author blogs over at the Coffin Hop, as well as giving away free copies of my own books. For the five days before Halloween, The Superiors will be free on Amazon, so pick it up if you like dark vampire stories (no explicit sex). And if you want to read the second book or third, I'll be giving away copies to Coffin Hoppers exclusively. The first person to comment each day this week will receive a free ecopy of any of my books. Just leave your name and contact info (email, twitter handle, fb, etc) and I'll get you a free copy.

Thanks for hopping in my coffin with me.

Edit: for length and relevance to topic.

Halloween Special: Book Review: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Maybe I should wait to review this book, as I've just finished and I'm not yet sure what to make of it. But I'll try to write something comprehensible.

First of all, I was told this was the quintessential haunted house book, and I hadn't read any horror fiction for a while, so I thought I'd check it out. Plus, it's a bit of a genre-classic. I read the introduction to this book, which may have been a mistake. It gave away the ending, and also gave a lot of spoilers and analysis that I probably shouldn't have thought about until after the book. I really wish they'd made it an afterward instead of a foreward.

So, let me try to review the book as I would have if I hadn't read the intro.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The protagonist, Eleanor, was very simple and fanciful, almost like a child. She never really grew up, and we assume this is due to her long imprisonment as the caretakeer of her mother. She never grew up or even lived, but spent most of her adult life caring for her mother. When her mother dies, she is left with a sister she doesn't like (who is not developed, but what we see of her through Eleanor's eyes is not a flattering picture). Eleanor is invited to Hill House and goes there, although we're not really sure why. She repeatedly says "journeys end in lovers meeting" so we have to assume she's looking for a bit of human contact or even love.

What she finds is, well...a haunted house. At first she, like the others, feels the evil of the house and fears it. We're never really sure if the house is haunted, or who it's haunted by, but we assume it's a family who previously lived in the house.

Somewhere along the way I came to realize that Eleanor was not a reliable narrator. It's hard to separate from the first-person narrative--we're inside Eleanor's mind, so we want to believe what she believes. At one point I got paranoid that the others were playing tricks on her because she thinks they are. Shirley Jackson does a great job drawing the reader into Eleanor's mind and not letting go. I began to think she was going crazy, and eventually she really seems to lose it. But it doesn't seem like it while reading, because we are inside the crazy person's head.

Eleanor at first fits in, but eventually she begins to separate herself (or the house does?) by her constant need for attention. She claims that the others (or Theo, in particular) only want attention all the time, to be center stage. While in fact it is Eleanor who always wants to be the center of attention, although we only know this through her actions, as she herself never consciously craves or seeks attention.

Her relationships are painted in a vague, shadowy way, which leaves the reader to guess what happens. Is she in love with Theo? Is Theo a lesbian, or just friendly? And I still am not sure if Eleanor had sex with Luke, although I believe she did. Whether Jackson didn't want to be explicit in saying this, or if she wanted us to have to guess, I'm not sure. I also thought that Theo and Luke had a short affair, although that was also left unsaid. Eleanor really seemed to fall apart after her hour spent with Luke doing whatever, so I am assuming they had a brief encounter and then, since he's described as a 'cad' and a 'scoundrel' afterwards, that he wanted nothing more to do with her. Theo seems jealous about this, but she never admits it to Eleanor. Instead, she goes after Luke herself (we think, but maybe it's only Eleanor's jealousy?). Eleanor falls apart then, losing her friend and whatever Luke was to her. She never comes out and says it, but we guess from the risk Luke takes to save her that it's his guilt driving him.

The house seems to possess Eleanor, rather than a ghost or spirit. It absorbs her, and I'd have thought it preyed on her because she was the weak one, living half the time in her fantasy world. She was most impressionable, so the entity that possessed the house went for her. Then she sacrifices herself to it, so to speak, so she can remain forever a part of the house. Or that's how I would have read it if I'd never read the introduction. After reading it, I guess I'm supposed to think that it was actually Eleanor and not a ghost haunting the house. That she conjured all the events from her subconscious or psychic abilities, drawing attention to herself with the messages from 'ghosts,' ruining the possessions of someone who angered her. But still I wondered if the house wasn't trying to gain her trust so that she would surrender to it. Although I know I'm supposed to believe Eleanor created all the phenomena in the house, I'm still not sure I believe it. I still suspect that the house engulfed and infiltrated her to drive her mad so that she'd join whatever spirit walked there alone.

I know I usually give less summary in reviews, but that's my review of this. It was a great book, although confusing, and I will be thinking about it for a while and trying to figure it out. The book is very well-written, the dialogue is snappy, witty, and surprising. I did think that they should have been nicer to Eleanor and explained things better when they sent her away. But overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes to have a deep thought about literature and not just read it and forget it. If you like thought-provoking, ambiguous books, this one's for you.



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Cover Reveal Wednesday: The Renegades, Book 3 in The Superiors Series

In honor of my favorite holiday (Halloween, of course) here's a bit of shameless self-promotion for my new vamp/horror novel, coming soon. As everyone knows, self-promotion gets old really fast, so I've tried to stay away from that as much as possible. But I'm a writer, so of course I'm going to get excited and want to share my AWESOME NEW BOOK COVER! I just got it back from my cover designer, the brilliant Casey Siegel, and couldn't wait to share it. It still needs a few more tweaks, but here is the preliminary:

I'm super excited about it, and I love it already. The book, The Renegades, is tentatively scheduled for release on December 3.

Coffin Hop giveaway winner!

Hey guys!

Thanks for checking out my coffin hop blogs. The winner of my contest is Jennifer S. I will be emailing you shortly. Congratulations!

And thanks to everyone who entered. I will follow your blogs back if you've followed mine. Happy November. I hope everyone had a spooky, eventful Halloween! Mine was!

Hallo-week Book Reviews: Carrie by Stephen King

Carrie by Stephen King

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm not sure why I haven't read this book before now. In high school I read tons of Stephen King, but for some reason I skipped over this one. Maybe because it was thin and I liked the big thousand-plus page books he wrote. I was finally inspired to read this book because I saw the movie, liked it, and wanted to see if the book was better.



For me, it was a good read. Some of the parts got a little tedius, but overall, it was a good book. A little immature in the King realm, but that's to be expected from his first book. Some of the characters could have been better developed, IMO, and some of the exciting parts were too slow. They would have been better if the action had been speeded up some. Such as the part about Carrie after the prom, which went on and on, and I really lost interest and drifted off to sleep a few times during those parts. I did like how the book showed how alienating it can be to be an outcast, and how that made Carrie at sort of hateful person on the inside despite her religious upbringing and her usual character for most of the book. But when she had the power to get back at everyone, all the years of being picked on boiled to the surface. I thought the book did a good job of showing how brutal girls can be, even more so than boys.



This book was pretty good, but far from my favorite King book. Recommended for King fans, since this is a classic and his first book--you sort of have to read it.



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Coffin Hop!

Hey guys! As some of you know, I've been invited to participate in the Halloween Coffin Hop for horror authors. If you'd like to check it out, you can win tons of free stuff, play games, find new authors, etc. Click on the coffin hop badge to the right to go to the Coffin Hop site.

Also, I am doing a giveaway as my part. I'm giving away an e-ARC of my upcoming book, The Vigilantes (sequel to The Superiors). If you want to win a copy, here's how.

Follow my blog (+1 entry)
Follow my Twitter @lenahillbrand (+1)
Like my FB page http://www.facebook.com/LenaHillbrand (+1)
Post on FB about this giveaway (+2)
Post a blog about this giveaway/the Coffin Hop (+2)

Just leave a comment here letting me know what you've done, with links to your FB or blog post.

Thanks and have fun coffin hopping!

Guest Author: Nancy Straight

Guest Post from Nancy Straight: Support Independent Authors

I’ve been an independent author for nearly 90 days now and have met some of the most amazing people of my life. Independent Authors are a breed all their own. I’ve worked in many industries, and rarely have I been humbled by my peers. As an independent author, I write for a selfish reason - because I love it. I didn’t know that there were thousands of people out there just like me! Each one of them more willing than the last to: offer advice, recommend other authors’ works, and engage with their fans.
These are the people that tell stories that make you laugh out loud, hours after your husband has fallen asleep. Stories that allow you to escape into worlds full of Vampires, Shape-shifters, Angels and creatures no one has even heard of. The same stories are able to drive us to the brink of hysterics when the heroine doesn’t fall for the right guy.
Traditional authors are great, publishing houses are necessary institutions, but over the years I’ve found fewer and fewer traditional authors whose work I felt passionate about reading. Independent authors’ work is different; it feels different to read. The amazing part is, every independent author is anxiously waiting to hear from you on Facebook, their blog, their website or in your reviews.
When you buy books from Independent Authors, and their work moves you – you can tell them. They want to hear from you. The stories I am able to read now, from other independent authors, have made me love reading again. So when you have a choice between that $17 book from a publishing house or a .99 cent story from an Indie – take a chance, I bet you’ll be surprised.
Links to my books
http://www.amazon.com/Meeting-Destiny-Series-ebook/dp/B003U2RUP8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319075880&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Destinys-Revenge-Destiny-Series-ebook/dp/B005FO28PG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1319075880&sr=8-2
Facebook Author Page
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Nancy-Straight/243616005687882?sk=wall
Good Reads Blog
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4114202.Nancy_Straight/blog
Twitter
@nancystraight

Review Wednesday: Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I read this book in honor of Halloween month...er, October, I guess it's called. I was hoping for a non-Stephen King horror book that might scare me. Unfortunately, this one did not.

I listened to this on audio, sometimes late at night when everyone had gone to bed. I even shut off the light and listened to it while I went to sleep a couple times. I really, really wanted to be scared. But I wasn't.

First off, the audio narrator supposedly won some awards, but I did not care for his reading style at all. It sounded like a robot was reading, which I got used to except for during the dialogue, where there was not a single voice inflection. It was so bad I started laughing when the people were supposed to be terrified. Maybe reading it, I would have been more scared, but I don't think I'll bother finding out.

Reading other reviews, I've seen a lot of people saying this book is bogus and all fake. It was in the non-fiction section of my library, and it does say several times that all the events were true. Maybe if I believed in that sort of thing, hauntings and paranormal activity, it might have frightened me. But I'm too pragmatic to take a book at its word, even if the author says its true. Which, to be fair, I do believe that he wrote down the stories that he heard. I'm not even saying the people who went through the experience made it all up. What I'm saying is, although it might have scared the crap out of the Lutz's, it did not scare me. Whether or not it is true or accurate, I don't really care. I wasn't doing research. I just wanted a book to give me the shivers. If you're looking for that kind of book, I suggest looking elsewhere, unless you are a big believer in ghosts and evil entities coming through the walls. Then this book might scare you.



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Ten Things I Love About You

Okay, so...It's fall, officially and in every other sense. And everyone knows fall is the best season. Obviously.

In honor of my favorite season, and my favorite month, I've made a list to prove why fall is once and for all the best season ever.

1. Jeans, glorious Jeans!

2. Not one, but two, holidays. One for family (Thanksgiving) and one for troublemaking wholesome fun with friends.

3. That would be Halloween, if you hadn't figured that out. Actually, number 3 is an extension of number 2, but come on, Halloween deserves its own number. Candy, Costumes, Carving.

4. Pumpkin patches. No matter how old you are, these things are fun. And local. And you get to pick a pumpkin for that carving I mentioned above, and support your local growers (unless your patch gets their pumpkins from Mexico, and then you can support growers in another country).

5. Um, leaves. Hello, what fun would it be if you had to call it autumn all the time and not fall? Falling leaves make fall.

6. Lighting the fire again. My house smells like wood smoke again...yay! Bonfires outside are good, too. Just don't let your costume catch on fire. Those synthetics go fast. You don't want to be the naked guy (or girl) with a scorched bum. And frankly, probably no one else wants you to be either.

7. The end of the heat-wave we call summer down here in the South. That's right, South with a capital S. When the summer temps are over 110 degrees for a week straight, you have one thing to look forward to. Fall. Unless you have a pool, and then you probably don't care. And also, you should invite me over.

8. Goodbye, bugs. Now I know lots of people who don't know the irritation of a mosquito hovering next to your ear for months at a time, but it's really annoying. Just trust me on that. And we won't even get into the other friendly neighborhood bugs who think they'll try out being little itchy Draculas for half the year. And how do we deal with bloodsuckers?

9. Changing my wardrobe. Even if I only buy one new sweater, it's worth it. I'm tired of all my summer clothes by now...ready to switch back into cozy winter mode.

10. What's number 10? Football? New Sam Adam's seasonal flavor? Halloween again? Rocky Horror Picture Show? Thriller playing on the radio? Octoberfest? Haunted Houses? Austin City Limits? I can't pick just one. And I'm sure I've left out about 10 more reasons why this month and this season 'totally rock, dude!' Oh, yeah, that was in honor of all the college students swarming back into town. Yep. That's good, too.

Review Wedneday: Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I very much enjoyed this story about a nine 'but big for her age' year-old girl who gets lost in the Maine wilderness. For the most part. So let's get down to it.



What I liked: The girl who loved baseball. Yep, that pretty much sums up why I loved this book. I mean, how can you not love a nine-year-old who loves baseball, in large part because she shared it with her absent-through-divorce father. And maybe I'm a little biased because I was a kid who loved basketball, and then baseball, and then football. Yep, I had favorite players, I could recount their stats. I knew who they pitched against, if they had trademark moves, etc. And for sure I could understand why and how baseball was her link to the world, how she listened to the games for solace and sanity and hope, for escape and, well, everything we love about sports as children or adults. And the girl was tough-as-nails but not unrealistically so. I didn't even mind that she cried ALL the time. I mean, not only was it realistic, but it didn't annoy me how, say, reading YA books about girls crying all the time makes me want to throw the book against the wall. No, when Trisha cried, it fit into the story and didn't make her seem like a spoiled whiny brat (sorry, I have a thing against girls who cry a lot in books). Instead of giving up and feeling sorry for herself, our plucky little heroine gets her resourceful butt up and goes on.



Which, incidentally, brings me to the next part of my review: what I didn't like so much. First of all...I may have read this wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is how it happens. Girl hiking in woods with family. Girl comes to fork in the road, goes off in the MIDDLE to pee, and gets lost. She tries to slant off to one side to catch up with her family on the trail, taking the short cut. Okay, so maybe the trail winds away somewhere and she wouldn't intersect it that way. So what does she do? She keeps walking. FOR NINE DAYS!!!!! Hello, why not just turn around? She's in the middle of a fork. When she realizes she's lost, if she'd turned around and gone back, she'd have to either run into one of the two trails or come back to the intersection. It's geographically not possible that she wouldn't. Draw a picture if you don't believe me. For such a smart, resourceful kid to not think of something so simple...I don't believe it for a minute. Not for a kid who knows what to eat in the woods better than I do, and I'm an adult who happened to grow up, that's right, IN THE WOODS!

The next thing that sort of bothered me was how she got sick from drinking clear pure stream water. That's pretty much a myth. If you drink stream/river water that comes out of a farm where there's runoff from animal dung, maybe. In the middle of a pristine forest? Not so much. I'd buy it if the swamp water, or the puddle water, made her violently ill ie food poisoning, but not the clean water. And the last thing. Yeah, I know, SK points out that this was her first bad decision, to go north towards Canada instead of south when she got to almost civilization. I could see how she'd miss when she was so close. I could see how she didn't hear the town. But who goes north? Come on, she's seen maps, right? She lives in Maine, right? Can anyone name a town north of Maine besides, um, Canada? Can anyone name a town south of Maine? Yeah, that's what I thought. This girl was way too smart to make those mistakes. If she'd been an idiot, I'd buy it. But then, she wouldn't have lived.



So I guess my final word would be this: come on, Mr. King. Don't fall back on the same lame old lost-in-the-woods cliches. Your fans expect more.



Also, like most of King's almost could-happen books, I didn't need the supernatural stuff. It was hokey. There's plenty of horror in real life, plenty of scary situations for a girl lost in the woods. We really don't need wasp-gods to know it's scary. Really. I like King's supernatural books fine, but some of them, I always think, are more plausible (aka scary) without it. Those elements just ruin the spine tingling "this could REALLY happen" vibe and distract/detract from the suspense. Maybe he just adds it bc he thinks the fans like that? I know I don't need it in every book. Not. At. All.



I definitely fell in love with the character in this book, which is one of the things that Stephen King does SO well. I just didn't buy all the circumstances. But overall, it was a satisfying, if not exactly terrifying, story.



I'd recommend to younger King fans or those just getting into his work. And YA readers. And people who have gotten or would like to get lost in the woods.



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Coffin Hop!

Hey all!

As many of you know, my favorite month is coming up tomorrow!

In honor of Halloween month, I'm participating in a Halloween Blog Hop.
Details below. It will run October 24-31.

Also, all of my book reviews for October will be for horror/thriller novels. As an extra special bonus, I am posting a blog every day of Halloween week--my Hallo-week book reviews! I will post twice about the Coffin Hop that week and the other 5 days will feature horror book reviews. Oh yeah, did I mention I love October?

I will let you know about the giveaway as the blog hop approaches! Feel free to check out the website ahead of time, and spread the news!