Guest Post: James N. Cook
Hello everyone, this is James N. Cook, author of the Surviving the Dead zombie series, and the upcoming Jeremiah Cain: Vampire Hunter novels.
My most recent novel is This Shattered Land, the second installment of Surviving the Dead. If you’re into the zombie apocalypse genre, TEOTWAWKI, or just plain action-adventure/horror/thrillers, then I think you will like this story.
If you haven’t checked it out already, also be on the lookout for No Easy Hope: Surviving the Dead Volume I.
As a kid growing up in rural North Carolina, October was always my favorite time of the year. The blistering heat of summer faded into chill mornings and pleasantly cool afternoons, the leaves in the oaks and maples mellowed into brown and gold, and the first nips of winter began to creep into the air. With all this idyllic pleasantness surrounding me, it always struck me as odd that so many people chose that time to celebrate the dark, mysterious side of the human experience, watch creepy movies, and generally look for ways to scare the hell out of themselves. Nevertheless, I always found myself getting caught up in the fun.
Trick-or-treating was cool, even though my father had to drive an hour to find enough neighbors to make it worth his while, but eventually I got too old for it. Lacking the ravenous pursuit of a five-day sugar binge, I started looking for other ways to get into the Halloween spirit. Costume parties were out—given that I lived in the middle of nowhere and couldn’t find one if my life depended on it—so I inevitably turned to books and movies to while away the long evening hours of Halloween night.
Stephen King novels have always been a favorite of mine, as well as The Howling werewolf movies, Fright Night, Creepshow, and the Cook family perennial favorite, An American Werewolf in London. That agonizing sequence where David transforms into the wolf to the tune of Sam Cooke’s version of Blue Moon has always stood out in my mind as one of the most memorable scenes from any movie, ever.
If I had to pinpoint a specific period of my life that, more than any other, captured my imagination and planted the seeds of storytelling that would eventually bear fruit, I would have to say it was those cool, early fall weeks leading up to October 31st, and all the ghouls, goblins, fangs and beasties that went along with it. There was always the sense that maybe, just maybe, there was something to all those old nonsense fairy tales of monsters, and boogeymen, and things that go bump in the night.
Or maybe it was more practical than that. Maybe it was a simple acknowledgment that we don’t know everything that there is to know. That evil might just be real, and that to ignore the dark, scary side of existence is to give it power. Maybe we figure that by making light of it we can diminish its ability to frighten us. It is also possible that people are simply accepting the fact that we can’t have light without the darkness, and that spending a night walking in the other side’s shoes is an important reminder of the power and allure of our baser urges. The ones that make people do terrible things when they are frightened, or desperate, or angry. It’s a powerful thing, Halloween.
Even now that I’m well into my thirties, married, and raising a son of my own, I still find a certain magic in this time of the year. The air is as cool as it ever was, the leaves are, if anything , brighter, and a cold beer in hand whilst wearing a Roman centurion costume on the patio at a grown-up costume party is way more fun than family movie night ever had a chance to be. At least until the little guy gets old enough to appreciate scary movies.
When the time comes, I’ll make sure that he is well versed in the classics. Happy Halloween everyone.
* * * * *
All five of us – Tonia Brown, James N Cook, John O’ Brien, Armand Rosamilia and Mark Tufo – hope you have been following along on the Haunted Halloween Blog Tour 2012. We love to see comments after the posts, and we also love to pick a random commenter and give away a free eBook or even a signed print book, so maybe you’ll get lucky!
We have centralized all the upcoming dates and blog posts on a Facebook event page. Feel free to join us there and see what is coming up next!
https://www.facebook.com/events/211796112284317/
