HALLOW-WINNERS

I can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that it's already OCTOBER...I still have a ton of things I was supposed to finish before the summer was over. I am kinda screwed now cause on my calendar October has it's own to do list. October is like New England's ten-minute warning, the weather has changed, the house's needs have to be catered to, things must be cleaned packed and stored, storm windows have to be lowered, etc... The leaves are kinda in limbo hanging on to tree limbs for dear life, knowing that if they hit the ground there is no cushion of their brethren to break their fall; just hard tarmac and the odd puddle.

October isn't all about Halloween, that's like sex being all about the big O. Fall has that whole foreboding thing going on, it's about evoking mood. In my minds eye the associated books are short and crisp and dark with a light black humor or melancholy scent about them. We are talking Frederic Brown, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft, with a smattering of Ambrose Bierce, Hawthorne, Washington Irving for good measure.

The master of autumnal writing is Ray Bradbury, even his titles sound like they should be hissed out by evening leaves being blown across pavement...The Halloween Tree Something Wicked This Way Comes, October Country. In the body of his universe it's always October, it's always just after dinner and just before bedtime and we are eternally eleven years old.

In October I always re-read Zelazny's Night in the Lonesome October which is like a creepy and cuddly page a day calendar. A pastiche where a lot of quasi-Universal monsters have a merry end of the world as we know it scavenger hunt. Everyone needs a little ritual in their lives.

This year I am reading Lovecraft's Herbert West, Re-animator. Almost any Lovecrqaft would do The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Dunwich Horror but the idea of a Miskatonic University turning out home grown mad scientists to pilage quiet New England graveyards just warms the cockles of my heart.

Last year I read Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, defintely a subversive form of chick-lit. come to think of it, I may reread that again.

And then there is Shirley Jackson, if Bradbury is King of autumnal writing Shirley was it's Queen. The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and enough creep sharing short ficion to keep you housebound for weeks.

Where's Poe? you ask? where are King and Koontz and Koja....where are those truly twisted minds capable of creeping you out the year round, regardless of wind and weather? Why waste a night in the lonesome October when you can read them anytime?