Happy Halloween, NaNo, & News

This is the last post for October. In just two days it will be Halloween, the spookiest, creepiest, giggle-fest of the year. I decorate on October 1 and I do enjoy the ghoul-fest, despite not having children. I have such great memories of trick-or-treating, but I think the reason my joy remains is the care Mother took in explaining WHY we did the things we did. Understanding helped make the holiday indelible and I thought I’d share with you.

Since the 1920s, kids in North America have been doing trick or treating. The idea is to dress up (so the real ghosts and goblins think you are part of them and don’t bother you), then you go door to door and ask for treats in lieu of a trick being played on the owner. Those who don’t give treats are tricked with soap or toilet paper (in the more gentle and benign tricks).  In those countries where they dress up, the costumes must be scary. Only in America will you find the custom has been altered to include the sexy, cute and Disney. 

Give good treats to appease the spirits. Long ago, the food was left on the doorstep and the spirits were invited to take what they wished and be happy. Can you imagine leaving unguarded chocolate on your front porch? Yikes! I don’t know what would be worse, the melting, the ants or the stampede!

Don’t forget to leave out a glowing Jack-O-Lantern! The lighted gourd actually began long ago in Europe. You carved out a turnip (not a pumpkin) and put an ember in it so that it told the roaming spirits that the house was taken or protected. Without the lighted lantern, you might be possessed! It was the Irish who brought the custom to America and found the pumpkin, then changed the custom.  The Jack-O-Lantern is named after the will-o-the-wisp, or the jacks, who were believed to spirts who hung out in the marshes and bogs.

Knowing some of the Halloween customs gave the holiday life for the little kid in me and I learned to love and not fear the fun. I think it’s why creepy and spooky highlights my writing, because I am not afraid to go deep into the dark. For only in the dark do you see the light.

I hope you share the customs of the day with your friends and children, then have a most haunting candy-fest. Remember to stay safe, and share some of your goodies with your children. haha

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honeymoon kids

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Yesterday was my 29th wedding anniversary. Hard to believe it’s been that many years! My hubby and I spent the day being lazy and cuddly, enjoying each other’s company and then going out to dinner. I am blessed to have found such an amazing human being with whom to share my life. As with so many things in my life, I think about how I show long standing relationships with my characters and how I share the rich relationships. Nothing in my emotional life is wasted, every joy and sorrow is personal and fodder. But I must say, in this special moment of knowing and loving someone for so long, the depth of our caring is so much more mature than it has ever been and I make note how he and I manifest that love. A writer never forgets that every moment is noteable. But Happy Anniversary my love. Let’s go for another 29 years.

National Novel Writing Month

In just a couple days, National Novel Writing Month begins again! I’m in! I hope you will join me. Make your preparations now:  find a writing spot, identify your writing buddies, get all you snacks and papers together and mentally prepare for the daily write. If you are used to it, then get that outline ready to go. I’m poetphoenix on the website. Let’s hook up.

This year will be epic. I’ll give you updates at least weekly – stay tuned for videos too.

WRITER NEWS

You know what I’ve said about how important it is to market and promote, right? So here’s what’s been happening with me.

A great many events have been going on helping to market my latest release, LOVE AND BLOOD.

– Kicked off my promotion with an interview by my friend and fellow author Yvonne Mason of Off The Chain on blogspot radio. What fun! She’s showcased every book over the last few years and is a strong and generous supporter of Indie Authors. Check out her diverse archives!

– Hanging With Web Show has been a staunch supporter and hard marketer of all my books and right now they are heavily promoting Love and Blood. Check out their podcasts and see what Featured Authors they have because you might discover something new for your reading list.

–  Jennifer Wedmore of Wickedly Innocent Promotions worked a Facebook release for the book.

–  Jodi Hunley Bird of Ruby Red Romance Reviews, fostered me for Foster An Author 2018. As a fostered author, she promoted me for a week, from Oct 22-26 and wonderful promotions gave my book delicious exposure. Plus I made new contacts on Twitter, Instagram and on my Facebook page! If you haven’t done this program before (this was my first time), then I recommend you give it a try next year. #FAA4 #FosterAnAuthor #FAA2018

– On Oct 26, Laurie Kehoe interviewed me on blogspot radio program, Authors Corner. What a fun hour! If you missed the advertisement about it, please check it out. We talked writing, the new book and books we loved by others. It was a free interview and what a gracious gift to an Indie Author like me. Check into her archives too because she interviews all sorts of cool folks!

– Coming up, I’m a part of the 2018 Halloween Pub Crawl, and you can sign up! All you have to do is join a bunch of groups. Then starting Oct 31, the groups will give out passcodes which you will need to collect and then return to the main page and turn in on a form. The more passcodes you collect, the more entries you get to win. What do you win?  Some books and a $250 Amazon gift card! So what are you waiting for? The crawl only lasts 48 hours once it starts!

–Coming up on October 31, Silver Dagger Book Tours is going to do a month long showcase of my books. YOU CAN SIGN UP AND HELP! Go here and join in on the party. I will thank you!

-Finally, if you want a treat, join me for my monthly live chat, FIRESIDE WITIH THE PHOENIX, on my Facebook Author page, Hallloween day 1pm EDT for 15 min (or so) of craziness. No telling what I might do on that spooky day!

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As you can see, marketing is both a pain and important. You can’t skip it if you expect to sell books or gain visibility. I hate doing it, but doing it means someone new might learn about me. So help me by checking out these fabulous people (and maybe they will be helping you later.

If you have read any of my books, I would be very grateful for your support by leaving me a review on Amazon, Goodreads and BookBub. Your love is always best shown by reviews. Authors think of them like hugs.

NEWSLETTER!!! Going out by Halloween! Sign up NOW.

Hope your Halloween is FRIGHTFULLY fun.

Yours Between the Lines (and in the dark)

Sherry

Proof Vampires Are Real

A few days ago, I read an article in Ars Technica about some archeologists who discovered the burial of a 10 yr old child in a 5th century Roman site in Italy. The child was buried with a rock in its mouth. This practice was done to keep the body from rising from the grave. It is believed the child died from malaria and the rock was to prevent the child from returning and spreading the disease.

picture by David Picked of Stanford University

The locals are calling this corpse the Vampire of Lugnano and is believed to be one of the more unusual preventatives to a body from rising and wreaking havoc like spreading disease to the living. It goes to the belief that vampires must be, might be, could have been, were believed to be, REAL.

I’ve studied this belief of, and in, vampires for over forty years and in every major civilization in every continent around the world. The legend of the vampire, or some version thereof, is deeply seeded in every culture with stories and legends, and makes one wonder if so many believed, why is the possibility of real vampirism also dismissed as a lie?

From the Ars article: QUOTE: Pretty much every culture on Earth has some version of a vampire (or proto-vampire) myth. Chinese folklore has the Jiang shi, [corrected] which are reanimated corpses that rise from the grave to prey on the living; one type has sharp fangs, the better to bite into the neck of said prey. Russian, Albanian, Indian, and Greek folklore have similar undead monsters. Russian villagers in the Middle Ages often drove stakes into the bodies of suspected vampires upon burial to keep them from rising again. UNQUOTE

Again, if so much is believed, then there must be some truth just out of reach. Other cemeteries have odd practices, and it is believed that the Romans even used witchcraft to spell the evil to stay within the bodies. However, burials with stones in the mouth is very eerie and uncommon and drew a great deal of attention to this excavation.

There was a previous discovery of a burial where a 16th century Italian woman was buried with a brick in her mouth. She was discovered in 2009 and the discoverers named her the Vampire of Venice. (Photo courtesy of National Geographic Television)

Archeologists learn a great deal about a civilization’s culture from the way they bury their dead. The dead do not bury themselves, therefore, how a people perceive death and the possibilities of what happens after death, are telling in these discoveries.

Again, I have to ask, with so many cultures afraid of the chance of rising from the grave, of a chance that vampires may be near, why are we so quick to scoff at such a fear?

VIVISEPULTURE

You know the English used to bury their dead with a rope in the coffin tied to a bell up above. If you woke and proved you weren’t dead, you pulled the rope and it rang the bell above. Truth was there weren’t any documented cased who were saved from suffocation in their coffins. But some of those buried rose without ever ringing the bell and families have told tales. And they were never found again. Thus buried alive, vivisepulture, was the precursor to vampirism. Embalming seemed to correct this problem. Still, families did dig up their family members to check to see if they were truly dead. Many did not go back into the ground. Why not?

Picture of Safety Cross, courtesy of Kimberly Bannister

I believe Vampires are real. There are too many cultures afraid to be less than the truth. 

If you are a writer and you want to give new life to a tired trope like the vampire, consider the realities of a culture and their long-held beliefs in superstitions. There is always a bit of truth in every legend. Find it and give new life to your stories. Every day there are new discoveries that give a twist to the vampire mythos. Make use of them, be inventive, surprise us. History certainly does, so why not you?

New life. Like the vampires. A Legend that will not die because they don’t.

Something to think about late at night. Perhaps while you write. Or read. Listen for the bells.

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Yours Between the Lines,

Sherry

Aren’t You Tired?

I’m tired! Time to rant and this is personal to writers everywhere. I’ve reached a limit.

I’m tired of trying to share, explain, convince, persuade, extoll, proclaim and define my worth, abilities, writing, sales, lack of sales, reasons to try, results of failures, reasons for awards or success, writing, re-writing…

I’m just tired. I’m tired of hypocrites, two-faced friends, lazy writers, mouthy writers, backstabbers, whiners, hyperbole, deriders, dividers, promise-breakers, cheaters and pseudo friends.
I think I’m having a day when my cup overfloweth with ENOUGH.

Look. I’m a writer. I have my foibles and my strengths. Some days I’m strong and capable and flourishing while other days I’m useless, struggling, and cranky. Some days I can’t stop writing. Some days I want to stop because it sucks but I keep on plodding through it. It still sucks, though. I’m not perfect but some days I write and say things that nearly are. Little golden moments. I like to be jubilant when those moments come. Please don’t play “put-you-down” on those rare times. I tend to dislike you when you do. I know you need to feel better about you and less about me when you do that, and its ugly of you.

I’m also human. And sensitive. I don’t like it when people assume that I never have a bad day. It would be nice to be asked how I’m doing. Sometimes I’m crappy, too. But if you really don’t care how I feel, please don’t ask me. You are the worst sort of person because I always answer with truth. If you don’t want to know, then move on. And don’t ask me how I am just so you can hurry up and tell me all about your trials and miseries.

Please don’t tell me you share my passion for writing if all you do is think about it or tell others what you plan to write. Planning is good. I plan. I outline. I research (sometimes too much). But sooner or later you have start writing. If you’re still talking about it years later, please don’t try to insinuate yourself into my world just because you need to “feel” like a writer. It’s okay if you don’t write. We can still hang out. But we’ll be more real with each other if we don’t pretend.

Writers/authors are told to surround ourselves with positive people. Well, not everyone is positive all the time. I understand bad days. I have compassion for “troubled times.” I understand long-term difficulties. But if you focus solely on the bad, you’ll send me away. If you focus only on you, you’ll send me away. Sometimes you have to step into the light so that others can help. Be positive even in the face of adversity and let others reach you. And don’t forget that others may have need of you to be uplifting too. Don’t forget to ask how someone else is doing. (Unless of course, you don’t care and then you are the person I’m speaking about here).

I’m tired. I don’t like playing games with people. I don’t like ulterior motives or playing “one-up-manship.” Every writer is different. Every writer walks a solitary path with individualized goals and expectations. I can’t do what you do and I don’t expect to see or feel the same success as you do, when you do. Mine is going to come in its own time and as I work for it. Magic does not happen without effort. You cannot achieve what I do and you shouldn’t try. I cannot do what you do and must not measure myself against you. Do your thing. I will support you. I will encourage you. I will help when and where I can. I expect the same from you in support, encouragement, understanding in return. When you don’t support in kind, it will tell me a great deal about you.

Please don’t be one of these writers that only wishes to speak about self, never has time to ask about me or others. Please don’t be so self-absorbed that you forget there are others out there with projects and stuff to share, too. Don’t care? Then don’t expect me to care about you!

How about you? Haven’t you had enough crap? Aren’t you tired?

Then stop enabling! Stop “putting up with” and start demanding better. The writer community can be a golden, helpful, learning place. Choke out the weeds. Burn off the rot. Seek higher ground. Breathe fresher air. Become energized by light. Shed everything that makes you tired. And anyone.

The thing that makes me the most tired? Those who are determined not to change, those who don’t try, and those who talk a good game, empty as it is.

I’m very tired. But I have the ability to change this. So do you. Here I go. No more crap, okay? All you people with your selfish, self-serving, senseless, useless, two-faced, compassionless, pointless, narcissistic usury, go elsewhere. We’re finished. I’m officially too tired to care for you.

As Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Care or don’t. Write or don’t. But let’s stop playing and pretending. ‘Nuff said. Rant over.

Yours Between the Lines,

Sherry