There’s an old legend that says if you come across a witch’s hat some place it shouldn’t be on Halloween, tip toe around it and leave it be. It’s growing. Spell by spell, hour by hour, a new witch is coming to life in the shadows protected beneath it. She’ll be fully formed by nightfall. Mark the spot, come back to it as you trick and you treat, and you might just catch her flying off on her broom.
I came upon a pixie’s wash basin hidden on the forest floor. Her laundry was hanging out to dry nearby but I didn’t want to embarrass her by photographing her unmentionables.
#
My pixie friend has inspired me to a do a little housekeeping of my own…
To begin with, I’d like to invite you to read my spooky story The Grave of Ursula Pendlethwaite, written for a local non-profit’s Halloween newsletter. It’s now up on their website where you can read it for free! Click here to head there now.
Secondly, October is almost over, and with it my Freewrite experiment. I’ve got a deadline coming up and outline work left to do before NaNoWriMo begins, so I’m tallying up my numbers and bringing the experiment to a close a few days early.
The proposed experiment was to test if using the Freewrite actually doubled my wordcount, as claimed by manufacturer Astrohaus.
Going into the experiment, I’d been writing an embarrassing 4 000 words per month since baby Nim was born. Before that, my monthly average of new words (editing doesn’t count for this experiment) was 13 645 words.
I kept track of my daily word count from September 16th until October 26th, broke it down to a daily average, and then worked out an average for a 30-day month.
Did the Freewrite double my wordcount?
*hands a bouquet to Astrohaus*
How did your October go? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo 2017?
I’ve been storyhunting again, the baby in tow. My hunt took us all over. The best October tales are spiced with spooky flavors: crusty cobwebs, graveyard dust, eye of newt. The dark comes quicker, it stays longer. The death of autumn haunts the air. The stories, naturally, turn to the macabre.
My hunt was a success.
I traveled to many ancient cemeteries in search of my October tales. The dead were most obliging and the baby enjoyed the fresh graveyard air. We soon came across an intriguing grave stone marked with nothing but my own initials. A macabre tale waited just beneath it.
In a second graveyard I found peaceful ghosts and an old tin man, but the stories had all been told. Or so I thought. When I checked through my photographs upon our return to story hunting headquarters, I discovered an odd door I somehow missed while we were there. If you follow the arrow, you’ll see it, not hiding at all, out there in the open and the ghosts.
Of course I plan to open said door in search of its story, but I will have to wait until the baby is not with me. Portals are hard on children, or so stories have led me to believe. Few are the risks I’m willing to take with her.
On a third wild hunt I found a moody universe I am only beginning to understand. For now I stare at in awe, the story an ethereal dream that isn’t willing to be translated into words as yet. I can feel it trembling, somewhere behind the image. It won’t be long now.
The stories will be scribbled down, polished, and sent out into the reading world as part of my ongoing catch and release program. One, for a certainty, will be available to read for free upon it’s publishing date somewhere before Hallowe’en. I’ll share it here as it becomes available.
Happy hunting, happy haunting, and merry October.
“My bones are rotten,” it told me. “My rooms all filled with ghosts. Come inside and see for yourself. I’ll protect you as I swallow you up and guide you through the sagging floors where footsteps used to thump. Down the creaking stairs, don’t bump your head, to see where I buried my dead. I guess you could call it a garden of sorts, but the worms are all hungry now. That’s right, my dear, nestle into the dirt, it’ll soak up what’s left of your blood. It’s not a bad place to end things, you’ll see. Plenty more ghosts than just me.”
The forest looked down the hill at the cabin. A curl of smoke wafted from the chimney.
“Legend has it,” said a sapling in a hushed voice, “that the human who lives there keeps a stack of CORPSES on his porch.”
The fir seedling listened, shivering with a delicious fear. “So that’s why there’s always ghosts coming out of the chimney!”
Jennifer Shelby 