Celebrating Halloween with a New Story

Photo courtesy of Freestocks.org on Unsplash

This Halloween I’m celebrating for several reasons. One is simply the fact that, to me, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. When wreaths of snarled twigs and black roses show up in the stores alongside pumpkins, sugar skulls, and shelves full of candy, it signals the end of summer. And for us desert dwellers, that is a blessed relief.

Another reason to celebrate is that today I’m editing the final chapter of my book The House on Linden Way. I wrote about this work-in-progress last September, but back then I called it my maybe-novel. That’s because I often start a story with the intention of writing a book, but instead end up writing a long short story. I was thrilled when this one chose to stay with me a little longer. Now my once maybe-novel is a full-length manuscript—revised, polished, and on its way tomorrow to my beta readers.

Finally, I’m excited to announce that my short story “The Lost Girls” was published today in YA Review Net (YARN). This story was formerly known as “The Shell of Light” and won runner-up in YARN’s 2017 Halloween Fiction Contest. It’s a favorite of mine for the same reason Halloween is my favorite holiday: I love the moody imagery and Gothic gloom of October stories. I keep my Halloween screen saver on all year long, and I’m a sucker for literature and films depicting crumbling castles, misty graveyards, dark forests, decaying mansions, ghosts and goblins or, in this case, a night out trick-or-treating gone horribly wrong.

I wrote “The Lost Girls” to a prompt given to me by my then seven-year-old son, so this one’s for him, although it’ll be a few more years before he’s allowed to read it. You don’t have to wait though. Click here to read “The Lost Girls,” and Happy Halloween!