Not a huge treat today, just a small link: an interview with me. Should have warned the nice interviewer not to use that photo…it’s a bit dated! Oh well. Consider it a Halloween disguise.

Had hoped to announce this Halloween treat sooner — but there was a shipping delay. In any case, our new edition of THE BONE KEY: THE NECROMANTIC MYSTERIES OF KYLE MURCHISON BOOTH by Sarah Monette is finally available in stores and online…but…I’m not putting it in the left column or saying you can buy it from us…because you can’t. We aren’t home. Well, Sean is not home and he fulfills the orders. He’s en route to the World Fantasy Convention. (We will have it for sale there.)

But bookstores have it and BN.com and Amazon have it!

Who is Kyle Murchison Booth? Possibly one of the unlikeliest of characters to gain a cult following, yet he has. Eccentric, socially awkward Booth is an introverted museum archivist, descended from a most unusual family, who frequently finds himself in the midst of most unsettling supernatural experiences and involved in strange necromantic mysteries. A gentleman and a scholar, this unwilling hero persevered through THE BONE KEY, a series of interconnected short stories, to win readers’ hearts (and possibly their souls).

This new edition—with a “puzzle” cover (by Timothy Lantz) and a new introduction by Lynne M. Thomas (one of Booth’s “successors” at the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum)—will please current fans and allow even more to discover its dark charms.

More when things get back to the mundane…

Meanwhile…

More about Booth

“White Charles” (an uncollected Booth story)

“The Replacement” (Another uncollected Booth story

Haven’t carved your jack o’ lantern yet? Now I prefer free-handing it myself, but if you want to get fancy or have had jack o’ disasters before, here’s a selection of places to find FREE stencils and patterns. If you want to do a Cthulhu o’ lantern like the one pictured, find the pattern here.

History.com
Readers Digest
DLTK
Better Homes and Gardens
Stoneykins

When looking for idea for this…probably ridiculous-to-start-with “31 Days of Halloween” idea…a son reminded me of how he used to love reading joke books and how Halloween had especially funny jokes…if you are seven or eight. Still, Halloween is for all ages, so we (not so proudly) present some seasonal laughs, snickers, giggles, and titters:

Q: How do monsters tell their future?
A: They read their horrorscope.

Q: Why do vampires need mouthwash?
A: They have bat breath.

Q: Where do vampires keep their money?
A: The blood bank

Q: What is a witch’s favorite subject in school?
A: Spelling

Q: How do you know a zombie is tired?
A: He’s dead on his feet.

Q: What instrument does a skeleton play?
A: Trombone.

Q; What do you get when you cross a vampire and a snowman?
A: Frostbite.

Q: What happens when a ghost gets lost in the fog?
A: He is mist.

Q: Why do demons and ghouls hang out together?
A: Because demons are a ghoul’s best friend.

Ba-dump-dump!

Okay, ask me my favorite books to read for the Halloween season and you’ll get a limited answer—I have so many I’m afraid I’ll forget to list some.

But it’s fairly easy for me to recommend five films for Halloween. I’m not a big horror movie buff. Shock and gore isn’t scary and for suspenseful “surprise” endings — I tend to guess endings in the first ten minutes. So, to be a favorite, a movie has to be memorable, one that I’m willing to watch more than once and still enjoy. In fact, some of my picks are more macabre—or even darkly humorous—than scary. And, yes, I cheat (there are really six films). I could cheat more and mention Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Sweeney Todd—but then we’d be having a Tim Burton-a-thon. You have to admit, though, the man is Halloween.

1. The Crow (1994)
Flawed, yet perfect. Set on Devil’s Night/Halloween and a love story to boot: “If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn. People die. But real love is forever.”

2. The Haunting (1963)
The only black-and-white movie that ever held my kids spellbound (and also scared ’em). Sounds and shadows and suspense are scarier than blood and guts any day.

3. The Witches (1990)
A sinister black comedy, Roald Dahl’s novel is a super read and the movie is almost as good. Anjelica Huston is a wonderfully terrible Eva Ernst

4. (Tie) The Others (2001) and The Sixth Sense (1999)
Okay, I did figure both of these out before the endings, but it took more than ten minutes and M. Night Shymalan deserves major credit for making two incredibly suspenseful films. The Sixth Dense owes a great deal to the script as well as the performances. In the Others, Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of an overprotective with kids allergic to light, pulls you right in. Both are visually superb.

5. Dark City (1998)
Like The Crow, directed by Alexa Proyas. Very noirish exploration of concepts of reality, identity, and more. The obvious rip-off of Clive Barker’s cenobites is sort of a bummer, though.