Halloween: A Time for Snow and Santa Claus

Living in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast has the advantage of being able to view changing seasons: leaves changing color in the fall, melting ice over the creeks in the spring time, blizzards on Halloween weekend...wait, what?

Normally, Halloween around these parts is either incredibly crappy (cold and rainy) or unbelievably gorgeous (60s/70s and clear). This year, Mother Nature decided to change it up with a snowstorm. While it wasn't anything debilitating, waking up to the white stuff in late October does not bode well for the rest of this winter. The Jack O' Lanterns (pictured above) looked pretty strange covered in frost.



In addition to non-traditional Halloween antics, I just watched a little movie called Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. While it sounds like a film that should be saved for late December, it's nothing of the sort. This flick is a re-imagining of the Santa Claus mythology that harkens back to pagan tales of a blood-thirsty, child-stealing yule-time monster. Definitely worth a watch if you like your Christmas a little on the darker side.

Speaking of scary things, NaNoWriMo starts at midnight tonight! I'm anxious to get started but I'm nowhere near as ready as I was last year. Check back in for weekly updates and good luck to those who are attempting their first, fifth or fiftieth run this year!

~VK

R.L. Stine's Trick-or-Tweet Contest!

Halloween is fast approaching. (Do you have your costume picked out already? Or are you the type that wraps a sheet around yourself like a toga and calls that a costume?) I’ve got nothing spooky going on at the moment. Lucky for you, the master of “Goosebumps” has a nice Trick-or-Treat contest. Or should I say, Trick-or-Tweet?

R.L. Stine is hosting a contest through his Twitter account for one of ten signed copies of his new book, “It's the First Day of School… FOREVER.” Check out the book trailer for it here:



Pretty sweet, huh? So you can see how to enter the contest here or just look below for instructions. Good luck!

R.L. Stine’s HALLOWEEN TRICK-OR-TWEET CONTEST
THE RULES

To enter the contest, follow these step-by-step instructions.
STEP 1:

To enter, you must be following @RL_Stine on Twitter.
If you are already a Follower, go to Step 2.
To become a Follower, go to http://twitter.com/RL_Stine and click ‘FOLLOW’.

STEP 2:

You must Tweet the exact text below to enter the contest:

Enter @RL_Stine ‘s Halloween Trick-or-Tweet Contest to win an autographed book! Please RT. Info at: http://bit.ly/mYmlxb

You only need to tweet this ONE time. Tweeting multiple times will not help your chances of winning.

STEP 3:

Complete the scary story below in one tweet. Tweet your story ending with the hashtag #RLSTINE by October 28. Please make sure to put #RLSTINE at the end of your tweet so we can find your submission.

Submit as many story endings as you like. But each entry must be a single tweet.
R.L. Stine will select 10 winning entries-- his favorite story endings.

The winners will be announced on Halloween Day. Winners will receive a Direct Message on Twitter from R.L. Stine notifying them that they won.

Each winner will receive an autographed copy of the book It's the First Day of School… Forever by R.L. Stine. The winning story endings will also be featured on rlstine.com.

CAN YOU FINISH THIS STORY?

It wasn’t my idea to run through the old graveyard on Halloween night. My friends Becky and Ian are a lot braver than me. It has always creeped me out to have a graveyard at the end of my street.

But here we were in our Halloween costumes. The moon was hidden behind a blanket of clouds. A gusting wind sent dead leaves dancing over the ground as if they were alive. And Becky said, "Come on, David. Let's go running through the graveyard, howling like wolves."

"Yeah. Maybe we'll wake up the dead," Ian said.

"I… don’t want to wake up the dead," I stammered. But I had no choice. I had to run with them. And so we went running through the old gravestones, our costumes fluttering in the wind. Running and howling at the top of our lungs.

It was actually fun—until I tripped over an open grave marker and fell to my knees in the dirt. And when I looked up, I couldn't see my friends. They'd vanished into the darkness.

I climbed to my feet, brushing off dead leaves. I called to Becky and Ian. No answer.
And then I gasped as I felt icy hard fingers grab the back of my neck. Icy fingers wrapped around my skin. With a scream of horror, I spun around—and…

Finish the story in one tweet—and tweet it with the hashtag #RLSTINE by October 28. Good luck!

~VK

PS: You can see my story entries by following @vincentkale and looking for the hashtag #RLSTINE.

Rocktober!

Happy first day of October! I love everything about this month: autumn colors, piles of leaves, football, cool nights, football, hayrides, pumpkins, apple cider, jack o'lanterns, football, HALLOWEEN, and contests!

*The Oatmeal sums up the stages of Trick 'r Treating quite nicely
*Somewhat offensive language/themes, ie not for kids

But what was that I said about contests? Well I'll have more info on that (hopefully) this weekend. I'm thinking of running a very-short-story contest based off of a prompt. Mostly for fun, yes, but there will be a prize...of sorts.

My previous project, after which this blog is named, was a horror story entitled "Crawl." Some of you have read it, most of you have not, but any of you could win an autographed copy!
*"Crawl" is also pretty adult in nature with some offensive language/themes/scenes. Maybe it'll make it onto a banned booklist someday!

Like I said, more details to come...and I should probably get to revising "Crawl" and printing some copies so I actually have something to GIVE the winner!

Now, quit reading and go rake some leaves!

~VK