October is here!  October is here!  

There’s a faint chill in the morning, and night is
coming earlier.  Bats are flying like mad in the evenings as the summer insects emerge and search for mates. Pumpkins are everywhere.  Flying skeletons and graveyard fences are showing up in neighborhood yards.  I’m late haunting our yard due to my writing conference and camping last weekend, but our holiday zombie has put on his trick-or-treating costume.

This is my first year participating in the Countdown to Halloween, and I’m excited to share this season with you.  I’ll be writing about where I get inspiration for my creepy stories and poetry, my many loves of autumn and Halloween, and other spooky things.  Much of my inspiration comes from remote areas, deep in the woods and marshes.  The muck is deep with layers of death and rebirth out there.

Florida is still having thunderstorms most evenings.  Everything is wet.  The ground is so saturated, it moves under your feet in the low areas.  When we camped, the puddles on the tarp drew dozens of planarians under our tent.  They were glorious little things to see, since they are usually hidden under wet leaves and logs.  And knowing they were squirming beneath us all night was delightfully unsettling.  What other creatures might’ve spent time there, but left before we broke camp?

So welcome, Halloween lovers and spooky kids, and the rest of you who are visiting.  Tell me what grisly details make you shiver in a story.  Or share what you imagine when you are writing a frightening scene.  The best stories happen around a campfire.