"Come on, we've got a diem to carpe!"

~Flint Lockwood, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

  Just mailed out another manuscript, this time to a local publisher.  I would so love to see this particular story out in Seattle gift and bookshops and especially in classrooms around Washington!  Hoping the publishing gods will love it as much as I do :)

Spooky Stories

 

 
  With Halloween just around the corner, I'm feeling the spirit of the holiday and wanting to share some of the scarier books I loved to read at this time of year when I was a kid.  I must have checked out In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz every Halloween from the school library.  The Green Ribbon story in it is still burned in my memory, probably because the girl's head is only held in place by that titular ribbon.  I also distinctly remember my second or third grade teacher reading Bunnicula to us and being totally spellbound.  As a kid I was easily frightened but I loved to be scared! It was enthralling, mysterious, and spine-tingling fun.  One winter my family and some friends spent time in Lake Chelan and I remember cozying up in bed as the snow fell outside, and my dad telling us young girls a ghost story.  He was a great storyteller, and that night he told us the story of The Hook Man- now, I can't remember much about it, except two teenagers being trapped in a car hearing the eerie, foreboding scrape of metal against the car doors and windows as the Hook Man approached, and we were petrified. I mean full on crying, sleeping with the lights on terrified! and we loved it! The more we shrieked and screamed the better.  And that's what Halloween fun is all about.
  Wishing you all happy haunting and more treats than tricks!

  P.S. other repeated check-outs included R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series, plus Three Books to Chill Your Bones: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark/ More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark/ Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones...



"Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove..." 

~Christopher Marlowe

  Just moved in to a new place with my wonderful boyfriend of four years, Tim.  It's tiny but looks out on Elliot Bay, the Olympics and the ferry boats, which I love!  Here's to home sweet home

  I stole this quote from a family I used to babysit for in grade school. They lived just down the street from me, so I started babysitting for them before I could even drive.  They were the kind of family that had tons of interesting pictures, magnets, quotes and clippings stuck to their refridgerator and after the kids had gone to bed, I'd wait up for the parents to get home, hanging out in the kitchen with only a tiny black and white television with no stations for entertainment. So instead of watching that, I would read every single thing posted on their fridge. And this quote was at the very top, it was tiny and cut out of some old newspaper and just taped there, could almost have been skipped over. But I found it and I loved it. I memorized it and decided that when I had my own home I would use it too.