Ari McKay's Blog, page 20

Halloween themed recipes

Note: These aren’t my original recipes; I found them in various cookbooks I’ve collected over the years.

Jell-O-Ween Poke brownies

1 package (19.8 oz) brownie mix

1 1/2 cups cold milk

1 package (4 serving size) vanilla instant pudding

a few drops each red and yellow food coloring

Prepare and bake brownie mix as directed on the package for 8 or 9 inch pan. Remove from oven and immediately use round handle of a wooden spoon (or something of equivalent size) to poke holes at 1 inch intervals down through brownies to pan.

Pour milk into a large bowl and add pudding mix. Beat with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. Stir in a few drops of food colorings to tint the mixture orange. Quickly, pour about 1/2 of the thing pudding evenly over warm brownies and into holes.

Tap pan lightly to fill the holes. Let remaining pudding mixture stand to thicken slightly. Spread remaining pudding over top of brownies as “frosting”.

Refrigerate one hour or until ready to serve.

 

Ghosts in the Graveyard: 

1 package of chocolate sandwich cookies (aka oreos)

3 1/2 cups cold milk

2 packages (4 serving size) instant chocolate pudding

12 oz tub of Cool Whip

Remove the filling from the cookies (eat or discard) and crush the cookies well in a plastic ziploc bag with a rolling pin or in a food processor. They should be little grains, not chunks.

Pour milk into a large bowl and add pudding mixes. Beat with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. Gently stir in 3 cups of Cool Whip and half of the crushed cookies.

You can either spoon the pudding mixture into a 13×9 dish and sprinkle with the remaining cookies, or you can do what I did: get some small clear cups and layer the pudding mixture, the crushed cookies, and Hallowe’en M&Ms.

If you’re really creative, you can create wee ghosts out of the remaining Cool Whip to go on top and maybe some Milano cookies for “tombstones”. This would look especially cool with the dish variety, especially if you got some of those little candy pumpkins that come in the bag of candy corn. They taste like crap, but they make good decorations.

Refrigerate one hour or until ready to serve.

 

Witch’s Cauldron Cake:

20 Halloween Oreo cookies, divided

1 pkg (2 layer size) yellow cake mix, batter prepared as on package

1 container (16 oz size) ready to spread chocolate frosting, divided

Black shoestring licorice and assorted Halloween candies

2 cups thawed whipped topping, tinted orange with food coloring

1 pretzel rod

Gummy worms

Chop 16 cookies. Fold chopped cookies into prepared cake batter. Pour into greased 10 inch fluted tube pan. Bake and cool according to package directions for tube pan.

Halve two cookies and decorate as bats, attaching two halves side by side with frosting to form bat wings and decorating with frosting and assorted candies for eyes. Decorate two remaining cookies as spiders, using frosting to attach 1 1/2 inch pieces of licorice as legs and assorted candies for eyes. Set aside to dry.

Place cake, flat side up, on serving plate. Frost side of cake with remaining frosting. Frost top of cake with tinted whipped topping. Place pretzel rod into center opening of cake for “wooden spoon”. Decorate cake with cookie bats, spiders and gummy worms.

Cinnamon and Seduction cover art

To enter your chance to win free e-copies of the entire Recipe for Romance series — the three previously published novellas plus “Cinnamon and Seduction” — visit our giveaway link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/6b17bb6/

A Giveaway!

To celebrate the long-awaited arrival of the fourth story in the “Recipe for Romance” series, Cinnamon and Seduction, we’re having a giveaway for a free copy! You can enter here: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/6b17bb6/

We’re very excited about telling Stephen and Robert’s story at last. Much of the feedback we’ve received on the previous three books in the series has contained an appeal for us to tell their story. So our snarky Executive Chef and his loyal PA are finally taking center stage.

On the surface, Robert Logan seems like nothing more than the perfect personal assistant, but there are hidden depths to him that he hasn’t wanted anyone else to see. His loyalty to Stephen seems absolute, but Robert is a man with needs, and in the six years he’s worked for Stephen, the irascible chef hasn’t shown any sign of being aware of Robert as a man.

Stephen Pierce has issues with a capital “I” – anyone who’s been around him for more than five minutes can figure that out. Everyone knows that Robert is the only one who can keep Stephen in line – even Stephen! For six years Robert has been his touchstone, his conscience, the one person Stephen is truly worried about driving away. Yet Stephen is hiding something as well, something not even Robert suspects.

Enter Rhys, Clay, Max, and Darius. The four men know that they owe their happiness to Robert (and even Stephen!) helping them to get past misunderstandings and insecurity. They want to help Robert and Stephen find their own happiness… but will their efforts bring the two men together, or push Stephen past his breaking point and ruin Robert’s chances forever?

Please enter the giveaway! We hope everyone will be as excited about this story as we are!

A Halloween non-fiction rec

“Call it Samhain, Summer’s End, All Hallows’ Eve, November Eve, or Witches’ Night – Halloween has its essential roots in the terrors of the primitive mind, which made no distinction between the waning of the sun and the potential extinction of the self. Ancient rituals of sacrifice and supplication were employed to guarantee a good harvest and, by extension, continued earthly existence.

“In northern climates, harvest time was, or seemed, the very death of nature. As Robert Chambers, the great Victorian chronicler of holidays characterized October: ‘As the fallen leaves career before us – crumbling ruins of summer’s beautiful halls – we cannot help thinking of those who have perished – who have gone before us, blown forward to the grave by the icy blasts of Death.’

“Because life itself was literally in the balance at harvest, the close proximity of the visible world and the spirit world was more than metaphor. And so the tradition grew: for one night each year, permission would be granted to mortals to peer into the future, divine their fates, communicate with supernatural entities, and otherwise enjoy a degree of license and liberty unimaginable – or simply unattainable – the rest of the year.

“The Halloween machine turns the world upside down. One’s identity can be discarded with impunity. Men dress as women, and vice versa. Authority can be mocked and circumvented. And, most important, graves open and the departed return.

“Of course, the ‘return of the dead’ is an evocative allegory for the return or expression of just about anything that’s been buried, repressed, or stifled by the living. What’s ‘dead’ doesn’t necessarily look like a walking corpse – just take a look at the variety of secret selves on parade at any Halloween celebration today. People ‘resurrect’ themselves, besequinned and befeathered, as glamorous movie gods and goddesses, comic-book superheroes, immortal robots, insatiable satyrs, and inflatable sex balloons. Pneumatic breasts and phalluses bounce and bob everywhere. Fantastic, towering wigs and headdresses emblematize the startling energies that lurk in the minds beneath.

But attending these lively carnival images – always – are the classic images of mortality and the grave: skeletons, vampires, zombies, and ghosts. The grand marshall of the Halloween parade is, and always has been, Death.”

From Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween, by David J. Skal, a fascinating look at the holiday, its origins, and its transformations over time.

I’ve been reading Skal’s work since I was a grad student *mumble mumble* years ago because he focuses on topics that are right up my alley: Halloween, Dracula, vampires in general. He’s fascinated by horror and has insightful things to say about horror and pop culture.  I enjoy Death Makes a Holiday and try to re-read it every October, but my favorite Skal book is The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, which delves into history, horror, and our cultural predilection for the macabre.

So if you’re looking for something new to read this Halloween season, I’d recommend Skal!

“The Quest for ‘Blank Caveringi’”, by Patricia Highsmith

My fascination with ghost/supernatural/horror stories began at a young age, and at some point, I received a copy of Alfred Hitchcock’s Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense, which anthologized several chilling tales by such authors as Raymond Chandler and Muriel Spark. I found this book again while helping my mother clean out her attic a few years ago, and I immediately snagged it, because while I found the entire book scary as hell as a child, there was one particular story that frightened me and stayed with me to this day, some thirty years later.

“The Quest for ‘Blank Caveringi’”, by Patricia Highsmith is the story in question. I didn’t remember the premise, but I remembered the “monsters” of the story, and I remembered the ending, which horrified me on some deep, primal level, although I’m not sure why.

Re-reading it as an adult, I have a different perspective, because the story is about a 48 year old academic who goes off in search of an island reported to be the home of giant, carnivorous snails, because he wants to be famous and have something named after him.

I repeat: giant, carnivorous snails.

Reading over it now, I have to admit, it has excellent pacing and a solid build-up to the ending which so horrified me as a child, but… snails? How could you not escape a snail, even a giant one? It’s like not being able to outrun a zombie. And how did they get to be carnivorous? WTF? If this were made into a film today, it would probably be a cheesy B-grade horror flick, worthy of the drive-in or MST3K, but at the same time, it’s a solid little horror tale, suitable for scaring the pants off less jaded children.

I think it’s probably more the sense of isolation and primality that create the fear factor here; civilization has no place on the island of the snails, and the professor made the standard mistake of most protagonists in horror stories: he wasn’t prepared.

And now the end of the story, which has stayed with me for so long:

“Please — here!” the professor screamed. He plunged again into the water. “Please!”

Dr. Stead was trying, that the professor could see. But the natives were rowing, paddling with hands even, and their sail was carrying them obliquely away.

The snail made a splash as it entered the sea. To drown or to be eaten alive, the professor wondered. He was waist-deep when he stumbled, waist-deep but head under when the snail crashed down upon him, and he realized as the thousands of pairs of teeth began to gnaw at his back, that his fate was both to drown and to be chewed to death. 

Halloween story now available!

Ghost of a Chance is now available from Torquere Press! 

74 pages / 22900 words 
Ebook zipped file contains – html, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, mobi, epub for $3.99

Dr. Mason Beaulieu thinks rival ghost hunter Haywood “Fort” Fortenberry is sexy but too credulous when it comes to the paranormal. Fort thinks Mason is attractive but too cynical. When they’re offered a chance to be locked up in reputedly haunted Wisteria Grove on Halloween night, however, both men jump at the chance.

Storms and mysterious sounds keep them busy during the night, and they discover a mutual respect for each other’s skills. As the investigation continues, Fort learns the truth behind Mason’s seemingly dismissive attitude, and Mason finds a new appreciation for Fort’s open-mindedness. But when an unexpected intruder derails the investigation, they learn that more than just hunting ghosts can offer them thrills and chills.

 

Wisteria Grove is loosely based on the Myrtles Plantation, which is considered one of the most haunted places in the US. Ari and I had both heard about the plantation-turned-B&B, and we both want to stay there overnight, although we’re in total agreement that we wouldn’t sleep a wink! Personally, I’d love to participate in a ghost hunt one day, but I’m not sure I’d want to start my ghost hunting career at The Myrtles. I’d probably need to work my way up to that! 

As we kick off the Halloween season, we hope “Ghost of a Chance” gives our readers a few chills and a few thrills.

Spooky story coming soon!

October is my favorite month, and Halloween is my favorite holiday, so for years, I wrote Halloween-themed stories for whatever fandom I was in at the time. Two years ago, I wrote up a series of drabbles about Evan St. John from Blood Bathory: The History of Horror. Last year, Ari and I wrote a short ghost story about Micah Harrison, who moves into a haunted house: A Hundred Lonely Halloweens.

This year, we’re continuing the theme! On October 2, “Ghost of a Chance” will be released by Torquere Press. It’s a ghost story complete with a spooky haunted house on a dark and stormy night and two men trapped inside overnight.

Dr. Mason Beaulieu thinks rival ghost hunter Haywood “Fort” Fortenberry is sexy but too credulous when it comes to the paranormal. Fort thinks Mason is attractive but too cynical. When they’re offered a chance to be locked up in reputedly haunted Wisteria Grove on Halloween night, however, both men jump at the chance.

Storms and mysterious sounds keep them busy during the night, and they discover a mutual respect for each other’s skills. As the investigation continues, Fort learns the truth behind Mason’s seemingly dismissive attitude, and Mason finds a new appreciation for Fort’s open-mindedness. But when an unexpected intruder derails the investigation, they learn that more than just hunting ghosts can offer them thrills and chills.

Get Bay Leaves and Bachelors FREE!

Starting right now! To celebrate ten years of Torquere Press, they’re giving away free books all month, and tonight, it’s one of ours! From 8:00-9:00pm CST, you can download Bay Leaves and Bachelors for FREE! Act quick, though, because it’s only free for this one hour!

You can find the other books they’re offering this month and on which days and time on their master list here.

Speak the Speech Trippingly on the Tongue

One thing that helps keep Ari and me focused is deciding what we’re going to write, in what order we’re going to write it, and then making a list. Works with deadlines get priority on The List, and we also have a shared iCal calendar just for writing deadlines. Currently, we’ve just submitted a story and crossed it off The List, and we’ll be finishing up the rough draft of a Valentine’s Day novella this week. It’ll get a few days to marinate, and then we’ll edit it and send it off.

After that, it’s time to whip the rough draft of Blood Bathory 2 into shape! The draft is finished, but we need to add scenes we skipped over, mostly brief scenes establishing what the villains are up to, and then edit it. Considering it’ll probably be 100k-ish, that’ll take a while. We’re budgeting about a month to get that done, allowing for real life interventions, and once that’s finished, we’ll move on to the next thing on our list.

One of those things is Blood Bathory 3, the third and final novel that will wrap up our trilogy, although we’ll probably revisit that world down the road. The trilogy will be stand-alone, but the world we’re building will let us come back to it if we want to, and I think we will because we’ve enjoyed it so much.

I’m looking forward to writing the primary character I’ll be writing in BB3, and I think he’ll pose an interesting challenge. He was born in the 1500s, and for plot-related reasons I can’t divulge, he spent a rather long time more or less isolated from the world. Not cut off entirely but separated enough that his language didn’t have time to catch up completely to the modern world, so he still uses a fair bit of archaic language without realizing it. So I’ve been planning for his language — word choice, sentence structure — to be different, but I hadn’t stopped to think about how his pronunciation might be different until I saw this:

I love this. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the past, and I love that there are people who are so passionate about language that they’d go to the trouble of researching and reconstructing Shakespearean pronunciation. Not only that, but now I have a pretty good idea of what my character probably sounds like. Maybe not quite to this extent but I’m sure it still impacts his speech, which should make trying to communicate with some of the other characters interesting!

Suffice to say, going to London to see an Original Pronunciation production at The Globe is going on my bucket list.

Must See TV

So the fall television schedule is starting up soon, and Ari and I have been deciding what we’re going to watch this season. Unsurprisingly, we end up watching a lot of the same shows, which makes things interesting when we’re in chat, watching the show together while living in separate states. It results in a lot of random “OMGWTF Did you see that??” and a gamut of emoticons.

This week, season 4 of Haven begins on the SyFy channel. We’ve both been watching this series since the beginning and are still squeeful fangirls over it. It’s the only show I’ve seen where an OT3 (one true threesome) between the lead characters could actually work, because while Audrey is attracted to/cares for both Nathan and Duke and vice versa, there is something going on between Nathan and Duke as well. It’s like one minutes, they’re both “I hate you so much” and the next, they’re all “OMG you’re in danger! I must save you, my woobie!” And they touch each other and get up in each other’s personal space in very non-platonic ways.

Above and beyond all that, the premise of the show is engaging, there’s an over-reaching story arc that is fascinating, and the monster of the week episodes are well-done. Haven has consistently remained on my must-see list for years, and that’s not easy to do.

Grimm will be starting up again next month, which has both me and Ari cheering because as much as we both love Nick and Monroe (such a woobie!), we are drawn to Captain Renard like moths to a flame because he’s one of those snarky, dark-haired, big-nosed antiheroes we so love. As with Haven, Grimm has an on-going arc with monster of the week type episodes. I always find it interesting to see how they’re going to incorporate new elements of fairy tales and folklore with the new creatures they introduce, and the makeup and SFX are amazingly well done. It’s rather like a police procedural meets Grimm’s fairy tales with political intrigue thrown in for good measure.

One of the new shows we’re looking forward to is Sleepy Hollow, which premieres next week. For one thing, both of us like the legend. For another, Ichabod is hot. For me personally, I’ll watch anything with Clancy Brown in it even if he only lasts five minutes, as the show’s trailer suggests. I’ve been in love with that man since seeing  Highlander back in the day. I’m hoping that a) it’s a good interpretation of the legend and b) Fox lets it last for more than one season if it is good.

One show that’s on my watch list but not Ari’s is Survivor, which I’ve been a fan of since season 1. This season brings back former participants — including Rupert, who has been one of my favorites since the Pearl Island season — paired off against their loved ones. It’s an interesting twist, although it could go horribly wrong. I hope relationships aren’t ruined over the course of the season, because this show can get brutal when people start getting caught up in the “outwit, outlast, outplay” mindset.

Then next month, I’ll start haunting (hee) TCM and AMC for classic horror movie marathons; I love it when I stumble across Hammer movie or Vincent Price marathons. I’ll also pull out my classic horror movie DVDs and watch those all month. I’m much more of a classic horror fan, meaning the 1920s-1970s. I especially avoid the modern slasher movies (Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc) and torture porn (Hostel, Saw, The Devil’s Rejects). Give me Christopher Lee grappling with Peter Cushing any day!

Which reminds me! I do plan to give Dracula a shot because it’s Dracula. ‘Nuff said. Vampires in general and Dracula in particular are my favorite horror icons, and I could write a whole post about the evolution of the vampire based on what it represents on a cultural level… but not today. Suffice to say, I’ll give anything about vampires and/or with “Dracula” in the title a fair shot. If it sucks (hee), I’ll complain bitterly about it and grab my Legosi and Lee versions to soothe my soul.