Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 71

My Fans May Be Few, but They Are Loyal!

Tonja Drecker has just written a fine review of A SAMPLER OF SHADOWS!
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XKWX8H4
ALWAYS SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 5 Stars 99 cents
      I've read this author's work before and enjoyed this collection as much as the other tales. 
    There were so many things to enjoy about this book. 
    The large variety of tales promises a dive into something new with each short story. 
     The characters, scenes, times and settings varied as much as the plots themselves. 
    It was fun to hop from one tale to the next, never really knowing what each one would bring. 
      Each one is thought provoking in its own way, and most endings were hard to foresee. 
     All lean in a slightly dark or/and unexpected direction...something I enjoy about this author.

     Each tale comes with a quote at the beginning as well as a photograph. 
     This helped place the setting before diving in, but never gave the story away. 
     It offered a nice introduction and add a lovely 'something extra'.
  Not to mention that these stories are great for picking up whenever a little time allows. 
   Since each one is relatively short, 
     it was nice to grab up for a short reading break without having to worry about pausing the plot.

  I enjoyed this one.

MY MOST POPULAR POST

WHEN LIFE KNOCKS YOU DOWN


The lab results that shook you to the core.  

The harsh retort that cost you a relationship.  

The needed car repair that costs more than you have.

Life has a way of continually knocking you to the ground without warning.  

Sometimes you don't know if you have it within you to get up one more time.

You don't have to continually get up.  

You just have to get up one more time than they knock you down.
And that means adapting to the present, thinking outside of our usual responses to stress.

We have been brought low by the myth of HAPPILY EVER AFTER.  

There is no such thing.


Our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. 
There is beauty, laughter, and friendship along our journey, 
but if we focus on the maybe happiness of a future with goal won, we will lose today ...
 We will have lost priceless treasures existing in our Now by the searching for Tomorrow's  fool's gold. 


The hidden thing about crossroads 
is that we never know we are at one until we have made our decision and are reaping the consequences.
Sometimes the way ahead is not clear.
Yet "Impossible" just gives birth to legends. 
* When I was abandoned at six on Skid Row in Detroit, 
* When my home burned to the ground with no insurance, 
* When the love of my life died in surgery, 
* When my whole city was forcibly evacuated from our homes --
 I hit bottom all those times.
Bottom gives us a place to stand, to rise, to reflect upon what is left ... 
to perhaps see a new path to old goals or hidden roads to new ones.

Wilde wrote that insanity was trying the same things repeatedly and expecting different results. 
We must take different steps to reach new destinations.

Each blow, each wound, each set-back has a lesson for us if we but stand back and reflect. 
Those things have shaped us and surviving them has made us stronger, wiser.

There is beauty, there is humor, there is hope ... 
perhaps those are the only lights in Man's dark world. 
In tragedy and in despair, 
when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization that the companion of night is not another night, 
that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, 
and that death rules only half of creation, life the other half.
That is the great thing about life:   Though it is often cruel, it is also mysterious, 

filled with wonder and surprise; 

sometimes the surprises are so amazing that they qualify as miracles,  
and by witnessing those miracles, a shattered person can sometimes discover a reason to live.
Often I am scared down to the marrow of my bones, 
but I keep telling myself that as long as I have laughter, I am not without hope.
In my blog, I always try to find something to laugh about.  
May laughter be our companion today, leading us to a new goal or the realization of an old one.

POKER WITH THE DEAD

The ghost of Hemingway scowled at his cards.

"Bad hand?" asked the ghost of Mark Twain, his eyes twinkling with mischief.

"Bad season" Hemingway gruffed.  

"Damn NaNoNites are wasting a whole month vomiting out quantity not quality."

"Their choice," I said, looking at a hand full of jokers I was sure Mark had double-dealt me.


F. Scott Fitzgerald sighed and sipped his champagne.  "They are making a gimmick of an art form."


The ghost of Jung frowned at his own cards, 

and I had a suspicion that Mark had jury-rigged another hand.

Jung said, 

"Perhaps it is the herd mentality which possesses mankind.  It can be harmful if the individual gives into it unthinkingly."

I said, "It gives stimulus to many to write each day."


Hemingway chewed his cigar.  

"If you need a kick in the pants to write, you are a wannabe not a writer." 



The ghost of Roger Zelazny said, 

"I made myself write three times during each day and insisted on completing at least a page each sitting.  

Not even close to 50,000 words a month, but I wrote a good many novels.  Even won an award or two."

Hemingway snorted, "And now, you are forgotten."

Roger shook his head.  "Roland still reads me."

Hemingway scowled, "Roland doesn't count."

"You must be talking to my past dates," I smiled 

and then sighed as I drew yet another Joker for the one I discarded.



Mark ignored my dirty look and said, 

"Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, 

unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which your words are trying to describe.  

And to do that, you must live not chain yourself to a desk!"

He lit his own cigar, saying

"I read that NaNo electronic page.  Why they say: 'You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing.'  

Am I the only sane person here to think 'writing a lot of crap' does not sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, 

even if it is November?"


Mark shook his head.

"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. 

Lord, to condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence is worthy of a prize just by itself."

He sighed, 
"Anybody can have ideas -- the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."


I said, "They say that they can go back and edit ...."


Hemingway looked like he was going to slug me.  

"I have gone to their site, too.  'The world needs your novel' is their motto.  

The world does not NEED badly thought-through novels.  The world only needs to breathe, eat, and sleep."


Fitzgerald nodded,

"The joy of writing is not in deadlines and word counts, but in taking time to shape your work: 

to sit and let the ideas flow and then, when they ebb away, retreat from your keyboard 

until the next surge washes new fragments of story into your head."


Jung turned to me.  "What do you think, Roland."


"I believe writing is not a sprint but a marathon, 

a way of life for every day of each year, not just a competition for a month.  But that's just me."


Jung stroked his chin.

"I believe this competition, where word counts are paramount, forms bad writing habits. 

Habits such as overusing adjectives or bloating the pages with needless description. 

It takes 28 days to form a habit, Roland, so you can see how November can become a hothouse for writing problems."


I nodded, "Many think that NaNo made writing feel achievable."


Hemingway growled, 

"I put a gun to your child's head and say 'Write 50,000 words or I pull the trigger.'  

You will write that many words.  It is all a matter of motivation.  If you do not burn to write, you are a dreamer not a writer."


Jung frowned,

"No one convinced of the worth of this contest is going to be dissuaded by your words.  

Sad fact actually.  

You see, if their goal is to increase creativity, this contest will not help them.  Research has shown that anticipating evaluation -- 

even the mild stimulus of the Winner's Badge to pin on their electronic newsletter-- 

has a negative effect on creative performance."




Fitzgerald murmured,

"I am concerned for these NanNites. 

I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than they are prepared to pay at present.

 You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. 

This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, 

when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

 This is the experience of all writers. 

It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. 

Ernest’s first stories ‘In Our Time’ went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. 

In ‘This Side of Paradise’ I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile.

And all of this takes time to distill into just the right magical words to conjure the images in the minds of the readers.  

Throwing them like dice onto the felt of the written page just will not do."




Roger nodded his head.

"Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.

 If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, 

you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, 

so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together"


Mark smiled at me.  "What do you think, Roland?"

I scowled at him.  "I think you've been dealing from a deck of 52 Jokers."

He blew a smoke ring at me.  "That's the story of life, son.  The story of life." 

HALLOWEEN: Why Are We Drawn to the Dark?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0169K0XME
Why are we drawn to horror? Why are good girls drawn to bad boys?
 
1.) The allure of the forbidden.
 
That is one of the reasons horror beckons to us from out of the shadows.

Why is that boy, that deserted mansion, forbidden?

It is as old as the blood which pulsed cold and tingling through Eve's veins as she reached for that forbidden fruit on that hauntingly lovely tree.

 
2.) Curiosity.

It is human nature to want to know what lies over the horizon. It's what drove the pioneers across wild, hostile lands.

What does that locked door conceal? That chained chest. Why those heavy links, that rusted lock?

Is this all there is? Or is there more beyond mere line of sight? We know there is more.

Science tells of us of dark matter piercing the cosmos with light-years long strands of matter invisible to the human eye. 

We are likewise blind to the world of germs. What other worlds are we blind to?

Give a nugget of uranium, a tiny stone really, to an aborigine. Tell him it is a good luck charm. Tell him to drop it in the village well.

What harm could one tiny stone do? 

Visit his village two months later. View the many corpses laying strewn like dead dreams all across the ground.

3.) Identification.
 
We watch and imagine what we would do in like situations. 

The world dissolves into chaos as random individuals descend slowly into madness.

You are picked up by the local sheriff as you are doing your morning walk with your dog. 

He orders you and your dog into the back of the car. 

He presses his gun to your dog's head and rambles on about brains looking like wet oysters. Do you want to see?

What would you do? What could you do?

Life is frightening: 

Global warming. Diseases that eat the very flesh of your body. 

We watch horor on the screen to encapsulate the horror of real life. It is not us up there.

We would be smarter, faster, more in control of our emotions.

We like the adrenaline rush sudden scares give us. 

Safer than driving fast, dating inappropriate guys or gals, and with the thrill of saying mentally, "It's not real; I'm still safe."

 
4.) The Darkness Within.

Terror versus Horror. 

Is one more physical; the other more mental? 

Does revulsion and squriming terror pierce through our mental barriers to stab deep into our unconscious fears ... and desires?

(Take the public fascination with the trilogy of the girl with the dragon tattoo:

she is repeatedly brutalized, raped, shot, and beaten. 

The books and movies are bestsellers. 

Is there a darkness in us that wants to roll around in sadism like a cat does catnip?)

You are horrified by the news of the floods in Pakistan. 

You are terrorized when you wake up one New Orleans morning to the news that the dams have burst, 

and you look out your front door to see rushing waters swallow your neighbor's home ... then your very own.    

Horror is realizing the monsters are real and are out there to get you. 

Terror is looking into the mirror, seeing yourself becoming one -- but still enough you to scream silently at the sight.

Stephen King said horror literature is a means for us to take out the monster, play with it for a while, and put it back.

But who is the monster?

Is he some squirming presence waiting on the other side of the dimensional wall waiting for a crack to appear? 

Is he the beloved president whose wife is slowly going insane at the awful reality of who he truly is?

Or does his/her eyes stare back at you from the mirror?

Carl Jung:
"Everyone carries a shadow, 

and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. 

At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."

Why do you think we read horror? 

Why are we so drawn to dressing up as monsters or as our secret identities? 

Why do you write the genres you do? 

And what role does "control" or "lack of control" play in horror/scary movies and literature?

WHAT DRIVES YOU AS A WRITER?

Many writers might say they would
want a chauffeur 
in a luxury limousine!

 But not C. Lee McKenzie
 AMAZON: 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZJNNDRD/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1,

In her blog tour for her latest,NOT GUILTY,She and I talked about motivation.

So without further delay 
here are Lee's thoughts ...

My biggest motivation to write is my love of language and my desire to tell a good story.     For me, it’s a game to see how I can express what’s in my head so that it’s understandable  And --I hope-- enjoyable for others to read.    When it comes to language, my drafts are wretched things with lots of compound sentences--one damned “and” after another!    The “justs” abound, and I can’t use “so” enough it seems.    Then after something similar to water torture, the prose starts to look and sound more like the melody I want.    However, I’m never satisfied, so I suppose I’m doomed to repeat the torturous process.   And don’t even ask about plot. I’m terrible at getting that right.  If I could lay out a plot instead of write the story by the seat of my pants, I know I’d have better luck with what happens first and next and last,    but I’ve tried, and any motivation I had to create a story vanishes in a flash.  I’m doomed to re-write a lot, to move sections around, and delete, delete, delete.   If I used a real wastebasket instead of a virtual one,  I’d be emptying it hourly some days.  I’m a reader and have read a lot longer than I’ve written stories.  Good writers intrigue me, and I think I’m motivated to keep writing so one day I can be in their company.  That would please me no end.  I have to also admit that it’s fun playing goddess. I love to decide who the good guy is,  what he looks like, and just how much trouble I can drop him into.  It’s a very powerful feeling to choose the character who winds up with the gold ring and which one loses out.   But my most favorite part of writing and often what keeps me going is  when I can re-write scenes from my real life, so they turn out much better in my stories than they did when they actually happened.   I love it when a character comes up with the perfect retorts or the best solutions,  the ones I didn’t have the presence of mind to use when I had the chance once upon a time. Thanks for asking me about my motivation, Roland.  I liked this question.

Be sure to enter Lee’s giveaway featured below.
* Not Guilty
* by C. Lee McKenzie
* Publication Date: October 25, 2019
* Genre: Young Adult
          A blood-smeared knife. One young man’s word against another. A lifetime dream crushed.          The evidence points to Devon Carlyle. He was there when it happened. Everyone knows he had it in for Renzo Costa. And Costa says Devon was the one. 

In the judge’s rap of a gavel, Devon’s found guilty of assault. The star of the Oceanside High’s basketball team loses his shot at the one thing he’s worked so hard for—the championship game where college scouts could see how good he is.          
Now he makes his great shots in Juvenile Hall with kids far different from those that have always been in his life.          Angry? Hell, yes.          He’s bent on finding who did the crime. He’s bent on making them pay because he’s Not Guilty.          
But can he prove it?
For those who aren’t familiar with Lee, here’s a bit of background on her.
C. Lee McKenzie has a background in Linguistics and Inter-Cultural Communication, but these days her greatest passion is writing for young readers. 

She has published five young adult novels: Sliding on the Edge, The Princess of Las Pulgas, Double Negative, and Sudden Secrets. Not Guilty is her most recent one.
          Sometimes she likes to jump into the world of the fantastic and when she does, she writes for the middle-grade reader. Some Very Messy Medieval Magick is the third book in the time-travel adventures of Pete and Weasel, with Alligators Overhead and The Great Time Lock Disaster being the first two. Sign of the Green Dragon, a stand-alone, takes the reader into ancient Chinese dragon myths and a quest for treasure.
          When she’s not writing she’s hiking or traveling or practicing yoga or asking a lot of questions about things she still doesn’t understand.

NOT GUILTY is available at:Smashwordshttps://www.smashwords.com/books/view/959648
Barnes & Noblehttps://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/not-guilty-c-lee-mckenzie/1133757423
Kobohttps://www.kobo.com/ww/en/search?query=Not+Guilty+C.+Lee+McKenzie

The author’s other young adult books include: Sliding on the Edge, Princess of Las Pulgas, Double Negative, Sudden Secrets

GIVEAWAY
With Halloween celebrated this week, Lee’s giving away five digital copies of NOT GUILTY and a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate. This tour-wide giveaway will end at midnight on Tuesday, Nov. 5th.
To enter the giveaway, just click on the Rafflecopter link below

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/019b32f8342/? Thanks for stopping by today during Lee’s visit. Do you enjoy stories where the underdog becomes the champion? 

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway.

The HEALING of BEING HEARD

"Nothing I say this day  will teach me anything.  So if I’m going to learn,  I must do it by listening.” - Larry King

In this #MeFirst culture, people speak a lot ...
about themselves.
Folks may listen,
but they often are merely waiting 
for us to pause for breath 
so they can jump into the conversation to speak about what concerns them most ...
themselves.

This is an isolated society, hemmed in by brick walls of  "Can you hear me?"
If everyone is texting, 
then no one is reading to pause for reflection 
to what has just been written 
and what it meant to the person sending.

When you truly listen, you tell the other person,  "This is important to me.   YOU are important to me."
When people feel heard, they feel validated ... 
feel as if they are of worth to someone other than to just themselves. 
You don't have to solve the problem, just wince at the impact of the blow to another.
You don't have to agree with the person. 
Merely acknowledge their viewpoint.

Truly hearing someone  is not a multi-task experience.  
If you are not focused on the person,  you are missing the point of  their speaking.
HAVE YOU TRULY LISTENEDTO SOMEONE TODAY?

C. Lee McKenzie at the O.K. Corral

On this day in 1881 the Earp brothers faced off against 

the Clanton-McLaury gang in the legendary O.K. Corral.

AMAZON:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZJNNDRD/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1
Now, Today Marshal AMAZON is gunning for

C. Lee McKenzie and her gang of those who love her new book and want to review it.

 Marshall AMAZON has laid down the law ... a whole slew of new laws actually.

WHAT NEW LAWS YOU ASK

DO NOT use the phrase “Free copy in EXCHANGE for an honest review”
 DO NOT use the phrase “I was given a free copy of this book by the Author”
 DO NOT use the phrase “I love this Author or this is one of my favorite Authors.”
  DO NOT use the Author’s name in the review.
 Do so  and 

AMAZON WILL DELETE  YOUR REVIEWS  according to their new Rules.

Rally to Lee's side.
Buy a copy of her new book
AND
 REVIEW it  by these strange new rules.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THEM?

Ghost of Mark Twain: LET ME HELP ROLAND

"Everything I needed to know about Life
I learned from those danged horror movies." - Ghost of Mark Twain





"You do not how right you have things
until you handle them all wrong."
- Mark Twain.
 
Just a heartbeat ago, I eased into Roland's apartment to swap tall tales 

when I came upon him dozing in front of his electronic newspaper,

Blog he calls it. 


Sounds like one of those tar pits in California those poor dinosaurs critters got stuck in.

I leaned over his shoulder and read what he wrote.

Why, what was wrong with the boy? His post depressed the beejesus out of me, and I'm dead.



What he needed was a little help from his good friend, the beloved, yet humble, genius of literature ... me

What was needed here was ... I stroked my chin. Of course, what was needed here was ... me. 



I would save Roland from his depressing folly.

I started to ruminate on all of life's follies when it came to me how much help those terrible horror movies Roland watches truly are.

Why there are some golden lessons to be found in those flickering frames,

especially for you folks not blessed to be ghosts like myself:

1) When it appears that you have killed the monster, ALWAYS get the loud-mouthed neighbor to check to see if it's really dead.

The bliss of silence in the neighborhood will be your reward.

2) Even if it seems to be the funniest thing in all creation, never read a book of demon summoning aloud. 

Your mother-in-law is demon enough, thank you.

3) When the power goes out, gals in flimsy undies will ALWAYS take a fancy to search the basement -- 

and they NEVER change their flashlight batteries.

4) If your young 'uns suddenly start to speak to you in Latin or any other language which they should not know, shoot them immediately.
 
It will save you a lot of grief in the long run. For such eventualities,

ALWAYS buy automatic handguns, since it will probably take several rounds to kill them.

A loving parent is a sure-kill parent.
 
This also applies to any tiny waifs who suddenly start to speak as if they have been gargling with lye.

They are either possessed or have been raiding Father's liquor cabinet.

Either way they deserve what they get.

5) As a general rule of thumb, don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell.

6) If appliances start operating by themselves, send your spouse to check for short-circuits, then get the hell out of the house.

Ignore the subsequent screaming -- or enjoy it, 

depending upon just how "sweet" your bitter half has been to you lately.

7) If you are offered a "steal of a deal" on a house that has been

a) built on the site of an Injun massacre,

b) the home of a family whose members had taken to dismembering one another, or

c) been an asylum whose inmates took to munching on the help --

take the real estate agent lovingly, kindly and gently by the arm --

and shove her into the basement, locking the door behind you. 

Unnatural beasties get hungry. And better they make human jerky out of her than you.

Don't mind about the body. 

It won't be there when the police arrive. 

The police won't be around long either -- if they stay.

WHY HORROR?

Only 99 cents  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HM8ZS5Q
Why are we drawn to horror? Why are good girls drawn to bad boys?

 
1.) The allure of the forbidden.
 
That is one of the reasons horror beckons to us from out of the shadows.

Why is that boy, that deserted mansion, forbidden?

It is as old as the blood which pulsed cold and tingling through Eve's veins as she reached for that forbidden fruit on that hauntingly lovely tree.

 
2.) Curiosity.

It is human nature to want to know what lies over the horizon. It's what drove the pioneers across wild, hostile lands.

What does that locked door conceal? That chained chest. Why those heavy links, that rusted lock?

Is this all there is? Or is there more beyond mere line of sight? We know there is more.

Science tells of us of dark matter piercing the cosmos with light-years long strands of matter invisible to the human eye. 

We are likewise blind to the world of germs. What other worlds are we blind to?

Give a nugget of uranium, a tiny stone really, to an aborigine. Tell him it is a good luck charm. Tell him to drop it in the village well.

What harm could one tiny stone do? 

Visit his village two months later. View the many corpses laying strewn like dead dreams all across the ground.

3.) Identification.
 
We watch and imagine what we would do in like situations. 

The world dissolves into chaos as random individuals descend slowly into madness.

You are picked up by the local sheriff as you are doing your morning walk with your dog. 

He orders you and your dog into the back of the car. 

He presses his gun to your dog's head and rambles on about brains looking like wet oysters. Do you want to see?

What would you do? What could you do?

Life is frightening: 

Global warming. Diseases that eat the very flesh of your body. 

We watch horor on the screen to encapsulate the horror of real life. It is not us up there.

We would be smarter, faster, more in control of our emotions.

We like the adrenaline rush sudden scares give us. 

Safer than driving fast, dating inappropriate guys or gals, and with the thrill of saying mentally, "It's not real; I'm still safe."

 
4.) The Darkness Within.

Terror versus Horror. 

Is one more physical; the other more mental? 

Does revulsion and squriming terror pierce through our mental barriers to stab deep into our unconscious fears ... and desires?

(Take the public fascination with the trilogy of the girl with the dragon tattoo:

she is repeatedly brutalized, raped, shot, and beaten. 

The books and movies are bestsellers. 

Is there a darkness in us that wants to roll around in sadism like a cat does catnip?)

You are horrified by the news of the floods in Pakistan. 

You are terrorized when you wake up one New Orleans morning to the news that the dams have burst, 

and you look out your front door to see rushing waters swallow your neighbor's home ... then your very own.    

Horror is realizing the monsters are real and are out there to get you. 

Terror is looking into the mirror, seeing yourself becoming one -- but still enough you to scream silently at the sight.

  
Stephen King said horror literature is a means for us to take out the monster, play with it for a while, and put it back.

But who is the monster?

Is he some squirming presence waiting on the other side of the dimensional wall waiting for a crack to appear? 

Is he the beloved president whose wife is slowly going insane at the awful reality of who he truly is?

Or does his/her eyes stare back at you from the mirror?


Carl Jung:
"Everyone carries a shadow, 

and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. 

At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."

Why do you think we read horror? 

Why are we so drawn to dressing up as monsters or as our secret identities? 

Why do you write the genres you do? 

And what role does "control" or "lack of control" play in horror/scary movies and literature?

WHY DOES HALLOWEEN STAY POPULAR?

The National Retail Federation reckons that Americans will pay

a record $3 billion-plus this season on hairy spiders, blowup Draculas and plastic maggots that glow in the dark.

Millennials are characterized by a desire for a prolonged adolescence so it is no surprise that they cling to the idea of dressing up.

In fact, two in three adults feel Halloween is a holiday for them and not just kids.



But I think it goes deeper:

The books and then movies in the 50's of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and WHO GOES THERE? (THE THING)

did not just tap into the paranoia of the Cold War

but also the paranoia of adulthood when aging children realized that their parents, 

their leaders, and those around them were not who they posed as being:


In essence those children lost their innocence in that they realized they were surrounded by people wearing masks ...

and that the real monsters lay BENEATH those masks.

Especially since September 11, 2001, the Boston Marathon Bombing, and endless school shootings,

it seems all too easy to imagine a murderer sitting in the aisle next to you.


Sociologists tell us if you want to understand a culture, look at its holidays.  

 Christmas gift-giving rituals shed light on how we manage social relationships. 

Thanksgiving feasts depend on shared understandings of family and national origin stories.

 Halloween, with its emphasis on identity, horror and transgression, can tell us about who we want to be and what we fear becoming.


Of course, that is not the only reason for the surging popularity of Halloween --

Young adults I’ve spoken with often identify this as their favorite part of the holiday – the chance to be, at least for a night, whatever they wish to be.


There’s no stress to it.

 You don’t have to travel or deal with relatives. There’s not the holiday pressure to find a date if you are single.

You can wear whatever you want and not be judged. There’s the fantasy, role-play element.

 If you think about it, it’s not surprising that 70% of people feel it’s their favorite holiday.


My friend, Darren Comeaux,

tells me that Halloween is quite an event in Japan, a country from which he has just returned.



In Japan, Halloween is not simply an end-of October event.

1.)  It is celebrated more in the form of masquerade parties and parades for adults.


2.) Halloween season in Japan runs for quite a long time.

 In amusement parks like Disneyland, Halloween-themed performances start from early September.

In schools and offices, Halloween parties and related events fill up their calendars for two months.


(While in American Politics, Trick or Treat lasts all year!)


3.) Halloween is still a growing market in Japan.



DEVIL'S NIGHT

Devil's Night is a name associated with October 30, the night before HALLOWEEN in Detroit, Michigan

(a city that both Victor Standish and I have highly violent memories of)

Devil's Night dates from as early as the 1930's.

Traditionally, city youths engaged in a night of mischievous or petty criminal behavior, usually consisting of minor pranks.

However, in the early 1970s, the vandalism escalated to more destructive acts such as arson.


The crimes became more destructive in Detroit's inner-city neighborhoods, and included hundreds of acts of arson and vandalism every year.

The destruction reached a peak in the mid- to late-1980s,

with more than 800 fires set in 1984, and 500 to 800 fires in the three days and nights before Halloween in a typical year.


ANGEL'S NIGHT

Let us resolve to counter-act the darkness a bit and make of Halloween season a time of Angel Nights where we do random acts of kindness.

Now, that's a real treat to a night of tricks, right?

Look for my collections of Halloween tales 


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVFH1PFonly 99 cents

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HM8ZS5Qonly 99 cents