A Few of My Favorite October Stories

Posted on October 17, 2023 ·

(A version of this post appeared in The Faerie Review in 2022)

‘Tis the season for ghosts and goblins, misty graveyards, and haunted houses. When long summer days are overtaken by autumn darkness there’s nothing like curling up with a good October story, so in honor of Halloween month, here are a few of my favorites:

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

No one writes October stories quite like Ray Bradbury. The celebrated fantasy and horror author famously loved Halloween month, a fondness he indulged in books like The Halloween Tree, The October Country, and my personal favorite, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Reading Bradbury’s dark fantasy about a sinister traveling carnival spreading evil in a small Illinois town is like falling into a dream. The story is told in prose that’s more like poetry, rich with the warm hues of autumn and a deep hypnotic dread.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Written like a classic Victorian ghost story, this Gothic tale embraces requisite tropes of the genre: an isolated house shrouded in fog and ruin, a mysterious figure lurking in a graveyard, phantom cries that can only be heard at night. Wrapped in a Christmas memory, the story does take a while to warm up, but once the haunting begins it pulls you along in a slow luxury of terror. A perfect October read.

“Children of the Corn” by Stephen King (from short story collection Night Shift)

The 1984 movie adaptation of Stephen King’s classic October story was a favorite of mine as a teenager. I loved it so much, when my high school sweetheart said he had family in the little town of Salix, Iowa, where part of the movie was filmed, I immediately suggested a road trip. Unlike the film, the short story is bereft of sentiment and does not end well for our main characters. This version is as much a grim portrayal of a failing marriage and the cruelties we become capable of inflicting on those with whom we’ve fallen out of love as a story of supernatural evil.

17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma

This absolute gem of a young adult novel is set in winter but is 100% an October story. Suma, with her hazy, languid prose, skillfully weaves a tapestry of missing teenage girls whose stories haunt the main character, Lauren, in ghostly visions and terrible dreams. Lauren becomes further estranged from her real-life relationships as she’s pulled deeper into the psychic mysteries of these lost girls. A mesmerizing story with a shock of an ending that somehow works.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…” Ah, what better first line to lure a reader into the sublime gothic nightmare that is Rebecca? Fraught with mystery and dread, this slow burn of a novel settles into your bones like the chill of autumn itself. The isolation and fear that Daphne du Maurier creates for her unnamed protagonist, and the bleak, ominous atmosphere of the estate of Manderley where she is haunted, combine to grip the reader in a dark and gloomy embrace. Pure October horror.

Enjoy the season, everyone, and happy reading!

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On the Benefits of Self-Publishing and the Thrill of a Good October Story

Posted on October 2, 2022 ·

Image by Benjamin Balazs from Pixabay

I’d originally envisioned my blog tour for The House on Linden Way to take place in July. That was the month I’d promised to release the book in print, and it made sense to promote it right after publication and throughout the summer.

That didn’t quite work out. By the time I was ready to book the tour, the earliest dates Women on Writing had available were in September and October. It took about five minutes after hearing this news to reconcile my vision: of course autumn was the perfect time to promote a haunted house story! It was clearly meant to be.

Now in its second week, the blog tour has been a total blast, and I’ve enjoyed putting together the guest posts (and having extra time to write them).

Here are the links for my recent tour stops:

On Tuesday, I stopped by Mindy McGinnis’s blog to talk about the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing (and which path I prefer).

On Friday, I was over at The Faerie Review discussing the chilling comfort of October stories and offering up a few of my personal favorites.

And today I was treated to a surprise review by my incredibly dedicated and hard-working tour manager, Crystal. Thanks, Crystal! You’re the sweetest. 🙂

Next week I’ll share a few more reviews, an interview, and a guest post called “The Lingering Ghosts of Our Childhood Homes.” See you then!

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Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2021 ·

Image by Mayur Gadge from Pixabay

It’s so hard to let go of October; I always wish it would stay a little longer. Halloween night has yet to arrive and already my month has been full of treats.

I indulged in plenty of great horror movies, including a re-watch of the compulsively re-watchable Fear Street trilogy; I switched from summer dresses and sandals to cardigans and boots; and once, on an early morning walk, I spotted a coyote disappearing down a dark quiet street. The half-eaten breakfast he’d left behind on a nearby lawn was as disturbing as anything I’d seen on screen.

Another sort of scary but fun experience was posting a short story to Kindle Vella.

“The Secret Keeper” was first drafted in 2015 as part of my collection What Was Never There. I never published the collection but succeeded in placing several of the pieces in online magazines. “The Secret Keeper” was obviously not one of those; it’s nearly 8,000 words long and that far exceeds most magazines’ word count.

It’s perfect for Vella though! A clear favorite among those who’ve beta read What Was Never There, “The Secret Keeper” is about a boy named Owen and the secrets he keeps beneath an enchanted willow tree. I split the story into three parts, all of which are now available to read. I hope you enjoy this magical tale of childhood wonder, summer nights, and October promises.

Happy Halloween!

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My Accidental Fall Tradition

Posted on September 30, 2019 ·

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

Fall has finally arrived, and with it, a few of my favorite things: cool mornings, autumn scents, sweaters and boots, Halloween. No one really needs an excuse for bingeing on ghost stories for an entire month, but the long nights of October provide one anyway.

Another fall tradition I look forward to is Mothers Who Write, a ten-week writing workshop that I stumbled upon in 2011 and have taken nearly every year since. Before then, when I was still an unpublished author scribbling mostly in secret, I had no writing community and no idea what I was missing.

Mothers Who Write is structured so participants draft a two-page piece every week to a prompt, then read the piece aloud the following week for critique. There’s a deep level of trust involved with sharing our stories, but even more so when those stories are still being written. In the early stages of drafting, we know our ideas are imperfect, our sentences messy, our words unrefined—but in a room where we are all equally vulnerable, we share them anyway.

And by November, we’ve shared plenty of other things too: lots of laughter, a few tears, some pie recipes, and—because we’re mothers—probably pictures of our children. I’ve met so many extraordinary women in that class.

I’ve also come to embrace the form of flash fiction and essays. Having a 2-page limit forces you to pare a story down to its essence, and there’s an increasing market for works of brevity like these. Of the dozens of pieces I’ve written in Mothers Who Write, eleven have gone on to publication, and all three of my publications this year were started in workshop last fall.

One is a fictional story about a girl struggling through adolescence, one is an essay about a failed attempt to reconnect with my mother, and one is a reflection on my son’s tendency toward nostalgia and his ambivalence about growing older.

The best writing workshops are filled with a sense of anticipation, familiarity, and belonging. Just like the best traditions of fall.

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