Winning! in Indiana

Okay, Hoosier Horror blog hoppers, allow me to wax delicatastic for a bit.  Would you just take a look at this photo above?  Who wouldn’t love a set-up like that this time of year?



I’m guessing from the trees in the distance that this is NOT Indiana, but perhaps somewhere in the Northwest (with a mountain view), but let us just pretend we can levitate this cabin to central Indiana, or maybe a hilltop in the Knobs.

Hmm…so now we’ve got our setting, what’s missing?  The smell of damn autumn air, the brown and red and yellow leaves on the trees or the ground, the smell of smoke rising out of the fire?  



Oh, yeah.  Now I’m getting good and comfy.  What happens after you get comfy in our outdoor autumn crash pad?  You get hungry.  So serve up some of Fall’s Greatest Hits, would ya?

What’s on the menu?

Chili, of course.  I make all different kinds.  White chili with chicken.  Beefy chili with lots of red beans, served with fritos and smothered in grated cheddar.  Steak chili with plenty of skillet-seared meat chunks and peppers, over rice.  I love chili.  Imagine a pot of it simmering above that fire.  Yum, yum!  (I once knew a guy who asked me to teach him how to make chili.  I tried.  He gave up and married me, instead.)

If you can’t cook, you could try this variety, I reckon:

 
Serve it in a emptied pumpkin shell just for kicks: 

Wash it down with a cold beer, maybe from the New Albanian or Upland Brewery?  Don’t mind if I do.

Ready for dessert?  After a day of apple-pickin’, I made this here caramel apple pie once already this season.   Another idea is a campfire s’more.  I made some inside ice cream cones last time we camped, and they were terrific!!!

So now that we’re winding down after a good meal, what next?  Flip on the TV?  Hell, no.  It’s scary story time!  Ghosts?  Monsters?  Any of that sound good?

Yesterday I read you The Wizard Takes a Holiday.  Today I’m encouraging you to enter to win a copy of Troll Or Derby here (ebook), or a paperback copy of either of my novels here.

And if you like scary monster tales and autumn in Indiana, and you own a phone, ipad, computer, or a Kindle, I HIGHLY ADVISE YOU TO RETURN TO THIS BLOG TOMORROW for a huge trick or treat surprise!  Is that a big enough hint?

How about an excerpt from one of my top-rated dark fantasy books?  Up for that? 

It was a matter of hours before he could take flight into the darkness, on the hunt for the woman. He could manage a few miles, if he stopped to rest on the way. A few miles were all he needed.

The woman’s pulse was calling him, but not from these woods. He’d found her scent in this locale, but except for his finding a host, it had been a dead end.

Well, she’d found a dead end, too, hadn’t she?

A smile flickered across his dimpled cheeks, and faded as he turned his head in the direction of his target’s beating heart.

Christine Grace had been here, definitely, but this was not her forest.

He closed his eyes, tilting his crested head to one leathery shoulder. He could hear the rattle of branches in a canopy across the nearby town. He was on the outskirts and she waited in the center, radiating a signal that burned in him, impossible to ignore.

Her ruah beat upward and out, into the woods, her scent wrapping languidly around her own trees, then carried to him on the breeze.

Greachin hummed, unconsciously leaning into the direction of her spirit, as the woman walked briskly across a hard paved path. His ruah flapped enormous wings high above her, then dove.

Too soon. Not yet.

His small physical eyes opened, and he wrenched himself upright. He had gone too far, too fast into the scent, into the pulse. He wrapped his chubby baby legs around the branch of the ash.

An insect bored into the trunk, and Greachin leaned forward, pawing at the emerald green bug with his tender talons.

Hunger. Torture.

Eating was a trick. Greachin leaned forward on the branch, his supple lips sucking theinsect’s spindly body into his mouth, raking the exoskeleton across his burning gums. His pointed teeth strained to burst through blackening flesh.

Distasteful meal. Teething, too. The scare had better be worth it.

Greachin mused over the power of fear as he munched another emerald ash borer.

And eating.

The humans seemed to love eating, making great rituals out of it, but Greachin had never understood their celebrations. Meals, hugging, kissing, shaking hands—and the mating. Oh, what a ritual surprise that was. The fruitless mating.

Insane.

If that doesn’t give you the flavor of the heart of my antagonist, nothing will, I’m afraid.  That’s a serving of piping hot Greachin fer ya.  Just your typical crazy kid.  

If by “crazy kid,” one means “a monster, presently morphing a purloined human child’s DNA into a form designed to terrify a young professor to death.”  

And don’t we all mean that, really?



Come on back Friday the 5th, the last day of the Hop!

Are you still here?  Awesome!  Listen to some awesome holiday music!  Hop the other blogs!  Have fun!

 

…and I’ll see you tomorrow, right?  Right!