Happy Halloween, Like It or Not

Well, it's Halloween, a day I loathed and dreaded as a child. This is weird because many people will tell you that I have spent my life in a fantasy world and I'm pretty darned theatrical to boot. But all that dressing up on Halloween never appealed to me.

Why?

Well, you get to put on the costume, but you don't really get to live the part. You don't get to spend days or weeks or months as a pirate or vampire or Hermione Granger. Just that one night. So there just wasn't sufficient time to really enjoy the charade.

Second, and this is undoubtedly the most crucial reason, when I was a kid, we all had to wear those cheesy plastic costumes from K-Mart or the local drugstore. I had wild curly hair (still do) - which always got horribly tangled in the elastic band. This meant my mom had to cut the band later to get it off, which usually meant getting a chunk of my hair cut out too. As if that weren' bad enough, they had those stiff masks with the elastic band to hold it on to your face. Those eyeholes on the mask never lined up right so I was always tripping over my Cinderella gown. Plus the plastic was so non-breathable, it made my face sweat. I felt like Richard Nixon in those Kennedy-Nixon debates when I wore one of those masks.

Last of all, I was a very serious and (in my mind, anyway) a very dignified child. I was way above having to go up to strangers and beg for candy from them. Plus I didn't have much of a sweet tooth. And I was almost as neurotic as my son is now, so I was convinced the candy had been spiked with razor blades or LSD. Maybe both. My mother, saintly woman, didn't really try too hard to disabuse me of this notion. I think that was because she wanted my candy. In fact, I probably would've gotten to stop trick or treating even sooner than I did, except that she had such a sweet tooth. I wonder how many kids will be forced to dress up this weekend in order to satisfy some parental craving for Hershey's Kisses? Maybe Congress could investigate and see whether this violates child labor laws.

Anyway, I'm glad I don't have to dress up anymore, and even gladder (???) that my son isn't interested in trick or treating, now that he's 13. He is, however, very theatrical, so he'll be donning not one, but two costumes this weekend. His friends want him to come to a party as Harry Potter, but he's just so over Harry this year. He wants to be Michael Jackson. Which if you think about it, is way more appropriate to the traditional Scare-tastic approach to Halloween. He's supposed to be Michael for the first half of the evening, and Harry later on. Although he is threatening to combine the two costumes and become Michael Potter, an orphaned wizard who moonwalks and wears one white glove and has a predilection for plastic surgery. Now that's scary.

Newsletter and Contest

I switched my newsletter service from Yahoo to Vertical Response. I might actually remember to send the newsletter out more often now, since it's got all kinds of cool whiz-bang graphics and formatting I can play with.

Anyway, to celebrate the arrival of the new newsletter, I'm holding a contest for subscribers. If you subscribe to my newsletter, I'll enter you in a contest to win a $10 Barnes & Noble gift certificate. Winner to be announced on Halloween.

See that box over there on the right? No? Well, scroll down a ways and you'll find it. Just enter your email address in that box to sign up for the newsletter and the contest. I promise not to flood your inbox with junk, since the newsletter will only be done quarterly. Unless I suddenly become real prolific like Nora and have a new book to announce every week. But I am way too lazy for that. So no fear of junk mail - just occasional book news, reviews, writing tips and contests.

And if you're reading this at Amazon or elsewhere, here's the link to my contact page. You can also sign up there: http://www.lynnreynolds.com/contact.html

Medieval Noir Returns

Did I mention I read a lot this summer? I also watched a lot of DVDs and Hulu, but we'll talk about that some other time.

Jeri Westerson was nice enough to let me have an advance copy of her wonderful new novel, Serpent in the Thorn, featuring her wonderfully tortured sleuth, Crispin Guest. Crispin is a medieval Sam Spade, although he looks more like Orlando Bloom on the cover, don't ya think? ;-)

Stripped of his title and his lands and servants after foolishly getting tangled up in a plot against then 10-year-old King Richard II, Crispin now ekes out a miserable living as "The Tracker." In fact, he's a forerunner of Sam Spade, the cynical, world-weary private eye from Noir fiction. Jeri calls her books "medieval noir," and for good reason. In attitude as well as luck (mostly all bad), Crispin is the perfect noir detective. As in her first Crispin book, there's a mysterious femme fatale who might know more than she's telling, and once again, Crispin stumbles upon an international political conspiracy that almost costs him his life.

We also get to learn a lot more about how Crispin came to such a low state. In Serpent in the Thorn, we get to meet one of his former co-conspirators in the treasonous plot against the king. Only this conspirator escaped detection and now lives the high life as captain of the king's archers. Not surprisingly, Crispin is determined to bring this former friend down and restore himself to favor with the king. The mystery involves a holy relic alleged to be the very crown of thorns worn by Jesus Christ. Jeri does a fantastic job of recreating the religion-obsessed atmosphere of medieval Europe, and of exposing the hypocrisy that lay beneath that era's obsession with religious icons and faith. She paints a vivid picture of life on the mean streets of medieval London - and those streets were truly mean! This is an absorbing mystery with well-drawn characters, so pick up a copy if you enjoy historical fiction.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness

Hey everyone, just a reminder that October is breast cancer awareness month. Remember to do your self-exams every month and get an annual mammogram.

Promotion for Thirty-Nine Again is at last slowing down, and I'm hoping to get back to writing some new material soon. Mostly I'm still trying to catch up on things that fell behind while I was recuperating. The Man was a big help (the Teen Tasmanian Devil not so much) - but he did have to let a few things go. He wound up taking several weeks of saved up leave time to help around the house and be the Daddy Chauffeur and Crisis Counselor to the Teen Taz. At one point, Chauffeur Dad observed that he had pretty much had to quit his job in order to be me, only he had to be "Me Lite." His version of me did not also do freelance newspaper writing, publish a novel, and run two miles a day while chauffeuring, cooking and crisis counseling. I am also discovering the hard way that his version of me did not file things or pay bills very often or balance a checkbook!

Alive and Kicking - and Reading too

Well, I've gotten through the initial phase of recovering from surgery. Now comes the "how the hell did they let the house get this filthy?" phase of the recovery. It should be noted that the phase which immediately follows is "I'm sure I'm well enough to mop these bathroom floors." And then comes the "Wow, that kind of hurt, I think I need to lay down" phase. The concluding phase is "Think I'll just have a short nap," which leads to waking up three hours later and being very annoyed at one's dismal energy level.

So, not doing a lot of writing or promoting right now - just focusing on not napping too much if I can help it.

I did a lot of reading and watching of videos while recuperating. The two most memorable things I think I read are these books:

I seem to be a sucker for young adult fiction, which is what these are considered. Maybe it's a sign I'm immature.

Or maybe, like all the adults who rob their kids' bookshelves to read the Harry Potter or Twilight stories, I've discovered a startling truth -- young adult fiction doesn't seem nearly as hung up on strict category rules as does other fiction. There may or may not be a love story; there may or may not be a happy ending. You just don't know! The stories are not rigid with formulaic conventions -- but they are stories that tend to emphasize likable characters and careful plotting. Those are two things all too often missing from so-called "adult" literature, which sometimes seems to replace strong characterization with an unrealistically perfect kick-butt heroine or a whiney, self-pitying hero.

The very limitations of the YA genre help guarantee that the author -- in this case, veteran YA writer Susan Beth Pfeffer -- will focus on developing a strong story. She can't fill the pages of her book with graphically weird sex or lots of cussing. Well, she could, but parents wouldn't let their kids read it. So she has to focus on an original story instead.

AND WHAT AN ORIGINAL STORY these two books present! They are companion pieces, not sequels. The first, Life As We Knew It, is the bleak, heartending tale of a teenaged girl whose life goes all to hell when an asteroid hits the moon, knocking it into a dangerously low orbit. A moment that was going to be a nifty TV-viewing science event turns into a catastrophe of literally Biblical proportions. One natural disaster follows another in rapid succession and young Miranda is forced to mature early and find a way to keep herself and her family alive.

The companion books, the dead and the gone, tells the equally difficult story of Alex, a boy in New York City who is living through these same events. While Miranda's world view is that of a very materialistic suburban agnostic, Alex is the devoutly Catholic son of a Puerto Rican maintenance man, attending a prestigious Jesuit academy on scholarship. When the disaster hits, Alex and his family rely on the Church's existing hierarchy to bring them news and help them stay alive.

I suspect the upcoming third book will unite the two main characters and that their opposing points of view will lead to much flying of the ol' sparks. I'm also really hoping NASA gets some kind of big moon-booster rocket operational -- but maybe that will be Book Four.

Anyway, I loved these two books and recommend them to anyone of any age who has an appetite for apocalyptic sci-fi. I'll probably post a few more reviews in the next few weeks, as I try to get back on the ball with writing, promoting and life in general.