Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Monday, October 28, 2013

Hot Halloween Heroes Blog Hop!

Hot Halloween Heroes Giveaway Hop


Halloween is my favorite holiday. I like it better than Christmas. What other holiday allows you to dress up like your favorite character (or like a table and a lamp—yes, we had a trick-or-treater at our house a couple of years ago dressed as a table and a lamp. She was way cool.) and solicit everyone for candy? It's got to be a dentist's favorite holiday.

But there's more to love about Halloween than just the costumes, the carved pumpkins, and the treats, especially if you're a paranormal lover like I am, whether a reader or a writer. Vampires have come a long way since the days of Dracula pulling his cape around his face and whisking a damsel in distress into his coffin for a little one-on-one time that usually ended with two red dots on her neck. Nowadays, there are vampires like Wrath, Vishous, Vlad, and even my hot blood-sucking tamales from my award-winning All the King's Men Series, who make Dracula look like a pansy. These are alpha vampires with muscle, moxy, and attitudes bigger than Texas. They're also vampires with human-like problems to overcome. And we love a sexy vampire with problems, don't we? I know I do.

Today (October 29) is my birthday, and I want to celebrate it with my vampires while browsing through the other bloggers involved in this blog hop. The vampires I'm inviting as special guests to my birthday party are the hero and heroine of my new book, Return of the Assassin, book five in the AKM Series, which just released today. Malek and Gina have waited a long time for their story to be told, and I'm excited about adding their heart-wrenching love story to the mix alongside, Micah & Samantha, Severin & Arion, and Io & Miriam. Malek & Gina are two vampires who must overcome tragic, painful pasts if they are to find happiness, and I'm thrilled to have been able to tell their story in Return of the Assassin. I love me a good vampire story, don't you?

As part of the blog hop, I'm giving away a $10 Amazon gift card, as well as all five e-books in my AKM Series to one lucky winner:
  1. Rise of the Fallen
  2. Heart of the Warrior
  3. Micah's Calling
  4. Rebel Obsession
  5. Return of the Assassin
Make sure you enter your email in the comments and answer the question: What do you like most about Halloween? 



Sunday, October 14, 2012

Need a #Laugh? The Urban Dictionary Chimes in on Halloween



For kicks and giggles, I visited the Urban Dictionary ( The Urban Dictionary Website )to dig up some fun definitions related to Halloween. If you've never visited the Urban Dictionary, you should. I often find some hilarious definitions for everyday words there. It's definitely a place where you can get a good laugh (might I suggest you look up crack head/crackhead for one or two clever definitions submitted by readers).

Disclaimer: The following do not necessarily reflect my opinions or beliefs, and some of what follows includes language of an adult nature. I pulled these definition straight from the Urban Dictionary website, so they could contain misspelled words and bad punctuation. although I tried to fix where possible to improve readability.


Halloween  Definitions According to the Urban Dictionary

Vampire:
  1. High-school or college-age girl who is high-achieving, clean cut, athletic and good looking by day, and a disturbed, recreational drug or alcohol user by night. Just like the horror-movie monster, a modern vampire looks like a human, but they're blood sucking demons. You don't know about their deadly habits until it's too late. Just like the bite of count Dracula, a vampire will try to suck you into her world of darkness with a kiss or blowjob.
  2. Blond, blue eyes, tall, beautiful, gorgeous, handsome, & someone you want to have babies with so you can produce some vampire babies.
  3. For the love of God, vampires are FICTIONAL! If I see one more fucking "goth" retard on the internet claim to be a REAL VAMPYRE OMG OMG OMG I might explode.
Witch:
  1. Anyone whom we burn that weighs the same as a duck. (Also made of wood).
  2. A moody white girl.
  3. Your 3rd grade teacher.
  4. A woman who is dressed up in a pointed hat, has a long nose, has a wart, and who is made of wood. They are often burned, and can turn people into newts (but they might get better).
  5. Someone who rips their dick off and uses it as a wand. [Donya - Say what?]

Zombies: 
  1. A "safe" and offbeat excuse for guys to horde guns, ammunition, tactical gear and other survival supplies without being tagged as being a member of a militia or other extremist group (although your wife and neighbors may think you are a little crazy).
  2. Humans that at one point were turned to zombies by being bit by another zombie and eventually dying. Extreme stupidity surrounds these creatures as they mindlessly bash on the barracades of surviving humans. They can be said to not be able to "climb stairs," as my friend says...but others may say otherwise while their face is being ripped off completely after the zombie leapt up the stairs. Shotguns are most affective at close range with these beings, the only way to stop the damn thing from moving would be to shoot its brain or completely sever the head...this does not mean cut its head off because it will in fact still be "alive." So the best way I would have to say to survive a zombie attack would be to kill yourself because...you're screwed anyway...you think you can survive? No you can't. You're fucked.  

Halloween: 
  1. Celebration where little kids dress up and get candy; teens dress up, get drunk, and go get candy; and adults dress up, get drunk, and give out candy. Funny how things all work out.
  2. The day that makes the other 364 worth living.
  3. The one day of the year you can beg strangers for food and not get told to fuck off. As long as you're dressed up like a ghost/the devil/transvestite.
  4. It's when you dress up in either cheap, store-bought costumes or elaborate, self-made ones, watch Rocky Horror Picture Show, get your friends to do the Time Warp, and go on a severe candy binge. Until someone spoils your fun by reminding you that it's April.
  5. An annual excuse for girls to dress like sluts and get away with it.
  6. The only day of the year when it's acceptable for guys to dress up as girls in school.
  7. John Carpenter's best movie.
And THAT is Halloween according to the Urban Dictionary. LOL.

Friday, October 5, 2012

My Own True Ghost Story


In my last blog post, I brought up Ouija Boards, which have the ability to open portals for spirits to use to walk between realms. While I've never seriously gotten down with a Ouija board, I have had experiences with ghosts. The following is a true story.

When I was a little girl, I shared a bedroom with my brother until I got old enough for my own room. We had bunk beds, and I got the bottom bunk. So, one night, I woke up and had to go to the bathroom. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but I was pretty young. Maybe eight or nine. I know I was in elementary school. At any rate, I opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway. When I looked up, I froze. A little girl was standing there looking at me. She was in vivid color, and I described the dress she wore as floral print because it was so colorful. She just stood there and looked at me, and I stood there and stared at her, terrified to the point that I was frozen in place and couldn't move. And then I think her hand moved or something. That's what snapped me back out of it. I turned and bolted back into the bedroom, diving head-first into my bed.

After several minutes, I woke my brother up and told him what had happened and that he had to go with me so I could go to the bathroom. No way was I going back out into that hallway alone. But when he took me out there, the little girl was gone.

A few years later, when I had finally calmed down about this mysterious little girl ghost, and when I had my own room, I was ready to talk to her if I ever saw her again. I had even grown so bold as to leave my bedroom door open as a means to invite her in if she wanted to talk to me.

One night, I was sound asleep and suddenly woke up out of nowhere. I wasn't thirsty, sick, and didn't have to pee. Nothing. I was just suddenly wide awake, as if someone had flipped a switch and I had gone from being dead asleep to wide awake in an instant. Not knowing what had awakened me, I remember sort of sighing and rolled my head over the pillow. My bed was positioned so that if I was lying down, I could look to the right and see out my bedroom door to the bathroom down the hall.

So, I had rolled my head to the right, and I was looking down the hall to the bathroom, and there was this faint glow. The bathroom door was opened halfway, and out from behind the door, this huge—and I mean extremely tall — hooded figure appeared. It moved around the door and began floating down the hall toward me. I say floating, because it hovered about 6 inches or so off the ground, maybe more. The robe was a greenish color, and the inside of the hood was black. I couldn't see a face or anything in there, but the robe billowed out and around as if feet were swishing it forward. I mean, the robe flowed as it would have if you or I were wearing it and walking around in it. And perhaps it could be described as more of a floor-length, hooded, cloak.

At any rate, this extremely tall figure came toward me, the top of its head passing through the door frame of the bathroom. I freaked. Again. This was no little girl, and I wanted nothing to do with it. But like before, I was frozen in place with fear. I mean, the little girl had just stood there, but this thing was walking, and it was walking toward me. I had to do something to make it go away, and I had to do it now. I threw off my covers and jumped out of my bed and "hid" behind my bedroom's door frame. I distinctly remember thinking, "If I can't see it, it will go away." Uh-huh. Yeah, sure. Shows how naive I was. The big and tall hooded creepy thing came into my room. It was seriously only a foot away from me, and even as I write this, I can feel the panic I felt then. I was petrified with fear.

The greenish, hooded, scary ghost entered my room, then began to turn toward me. I did the only thing I could think of. I sort of half-swatted, half-punched it. I don't remember feeling anything, but then again, I was beyond terrified. As I hit this whatever-it-was, it instantly disappeared, and I remember that it didn't disappear all at once. It sort of blew apart into what I can only describe as fabric-like swatches that quickly faded away.

Needless to say, I pretty much went into shock. I jumped back into bed, shivering, frozen scared, unable to move, barely able to breath. It was only by force of will that about a half-hour later I was able to dart to my brother's room and curl up in a fetal position at the foot of his bed and finally fall back to sleep.

That house always scared me after that. I dreaded being inside it alone, always feeling like someone was watching me, but never seeing any more ghosts. My brother saw someone sitting in the chair in the living room one night, but he wrote it off as our stepdad. But the next morning, our stepdad was like, "No, I went to bed. I wasn't in the living room."

At any rate, there's my brush with the paranormal. Have you had experiences with ghosts?

Thursday, October 4, 2012

More 31 Days of Halloween - Get Your Creep On



Don't like spiders? You might want to read on before you kill one on Halloween.

Creepy Tidbits

  1. If you see a spider on Halloween, it is the spirit of a loved one watching over you.
  2. Worldwide, bats are vital natural enemies of night-flying insects.
  3. The common little brown bat of North America has the longest life span for a mammal its size, with a life span averaging 32 years.
  4. In about 1 in 4 autopsies, a major disease is discovered that was previously undetected.
  5. The Ouija Board ended up outselling the game of Monopoly in its first full year at Salem. Over two million copies of the Ouija Board were shipped.
Do you own a Ouija Board? Do you believe in its power? When I was a kid, we had a Ouija board, and while I was fascinated with it, I never got it to work. However, now that I'm an adult, I know this is one toy you should never play with. It can invite bad, bad spirits into your life, and I don't need any bad spirits hanging around.

Has anyone ever had a baffling or scary experience with a Ouija Board?

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Scary Movies - Setting the Stage for #Halloween



I love a good, scary movie, don't you? Especially at Halloween. Obviously, Michael Myers and the movie, Halloween, are the #1 choice. I mean, everyone knows that mask, and it's perfect for the holiday it's named after. You can't go wrong with a classic like Michael Myers and Halloween on the spookiest holiday of the year. But the original Nightmare on Elm Street and even the cheesy slasher flick, Friday the 13th, are excellent scary movie choices, too. There's just something about putting on a scary movie and dressing up as a witch, ghost, or zombie to pass out Halloween candy to trick-or-treaters that just puts the fright in the night. So, what's your favorite scary move to watch on Halloween?

Halloween Movie Trivia

  1. "Halloween" was made in only 21 days in 1978 on a very limited budget.
  2. The movie was shot in the Spring and used fake autumn leaves.
  3. The mask used by Michael Meyers in the movie "Halloween" was actually William Shatner's mask painted white.
  4. The character Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis was named after John Carpenter's first girlfriend.
  5. While the setting for the story is in Illinois, the vehicles have California license plates.
  6. Halloween is on October 31st, the last day of the Celtic calendar. It was originally a pagan holiday, honoring the dead. Halloween was referred to as All Hallows Eve and dates back to over 2000 years ago.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Monsters - Werewolves, Vampires, and Gargoyles



As my 31 Days of Halloween continue, here is a short post about monsters. I found at least two story ideas as I read through the list. How many can you find?

Monster Trivia & Folklore

  1. Signs of a werewolf are a unibrow, hairy palms, tattoos, and a long middle finger.
  2. Vampires are mythical beings who defy death by sucking the blood of humans.
  3. In 1962, The Count Dracula Society was founded by Dr. Donald A. Reed.
  4. To this day, there are vampire clubs and societies with people claiming to be real vampires.
  5. There really are so-called vampire bats, but they're not from Transylvania. They live in Central and South America and feed on the blood of cattle, horses and birds.
  6. Many people still believe that gargoyles were created by medieval architects and stone carvers to ward off evil spirits.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

31 Days of #Halloween - Holiday Trivia



The month of October is my favorite month, and Halloween is my favorite holiday. And since I write paranormal tales of romance, I thought it would be fun to have a month of Halloween-related posts. Stick around and have some fun. There might be a prize or two in the offing, as well as some fun quizzes, trivia, and perhaps even a true story or two about ghosts. As always, feel free to share your own stories.

Halloween Holiday Trivia

  1. Orange and black are Halloween colors because orange is associated with the Fall harvest and black is associated with darkness and death.
  2. Jack o’ Lanterns originated in Ireland where people placed candles in hollowed-out turnips to keep away spirits and ghosts on the Samhain holiday.
  3. Pumpkins also come in white, blue and green. Great for unique monster carvings!
  4. Halloween was brought to North America by immigrants from Europe who would celebrate the harvest around a bonfire, share ghost stories, sing, dance and tell fortunes.
  5. Tootsie Rolls were the first wrapped penny candy in America.
  6. The ancient Celts thought that spirits and ghosts roamed the countryside on Halloween night. They began wearing masks and costumes to avoid being recognized as human.
  7. Halloween candy sales average about 2 billion dollars annually in the United States.
  8. Chocolate candy bars top the list as the most popular candy for trick-or-treaters with Snickers #1.
  9. Halloween is the 2nd most commercially successful holiday, with Christmas being the first.
  10. Bobbing for apples is thought to have originated from the Roman harvest festival that honors Pamona, the goddess of fruit trees.
  11. Black cats were once believed to be witch's familiars who protected their powers.
Come back every day in October for something else related to October and Halloween!