Happy Halloween! I hope you're enjoying the deliciously dark holiday and have the opportunity to dress up in a costume, if you so desire.
To celebrate, I interviewed the Paranormal Investigation Society of Central Alabama over at Suburban Vampire. If you've ever wondered which types of locations produce the most paranormal activity—or how ghost hunters spend Halloween—check out the interview here.
To further celebrate, here's one of my favorite ghost songs:
Head over to Suburban Vampire to check out my chat with Kristen Lawrence. Kristen is a highly talented writer/musician/composer who decided Halloween needed more music to call its own.
I've been collecting blackbird, crow, and raven items ever since I started working on In the Shadow of Blackbirds, and my daughter found this new little friend for me at our grocery store tonight. Winifred is eerily realistic for a cheap find in the Halloween discount section, but I'll keep her by my side during my journey with this book.
As hesitant as I am about seeing the new John Cusack movie, The Raven, I have to say I love the artwork on the poster. The freaky dark bird/spilled ink motif, along with the use of black and red, pretty much matches the look of my website, so I suppose it's not surprising I'm drawn to the image.
In case you're unfamiliar with this new movie, The Raven is a fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe's life, in which the poet pursues a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer's stories.
In August, I offered my two cents on the movie (as well as three other Poe films in the works) over at Suburban Vampire in a post called "Here Come the Poes." In a nutshell, I said, "I'm happy Poe is having his moment in the modern cinematic spotlight, but the guy married his thirteen-year-old cousin, made a huge impact on the horror genre, invented the modern detective story, and struggled with drinking and depression. Do we really need a fictionalized version of him? Isn't he interesting enough as is?"
You know you're a historical fiction-writing geek when you feel pangs of guilt about your attraction to the splashy new, historically inaccurate Edgar Allan Poe thriller coming to your theater.
In case you're also experiencing that curious attraction, here's the newest trailer for The Raven. (Sorry about the ad at the beginning, but the trailer is too new to show up on YouTube.)
