Spooky reads for Halloween

In a previous post, I mentioned that as the nights grow darker, so does my taste in books. On those dark and stormy nights, I have a yarning to read something a bit gothic or books such as “Wuthering Heights” or “Jane Eyre”. Anything featuring wind-whipped moors or a dark, mysterious mansion seems suddenly tempting. Do autumn and the approaching Halloween affect your reading preferences? Do you have a favourite horror (or any other dark) novel or perhaps a favourite author whose work would be perfect for this time of year? In the spirit of Halloween, here's a little look of some of my favourite spooky, dark and mysterious reads.

I have never been a big fan of horror, although I did experience a brief eerie period in my teens when I read all the spooky books I could locate in the library of a small village. My favourite was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” – and while it might not appear so very frightening to a modern reader, it is, after all, a classic and holds a special place in the dark corner of my heart.

Another classic that I’m fascinated by is Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, which, with its witches and obscure prophesies, bloody murder and mist-shrouded castles seems like a perfect Halloween treat. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!

In this context, I must mention Robert R. McCammon and his excellent werewolf books, “The Wolf’s Hour” and “The Hunter from the Woods” (a collection of short stories/novellas rather than a novel) which may not be strictly horror, but work with historical fiction and lycanthrope lore to weave together stories that are a fascinating combination of adventure, action and even a bit of romance. They are gory and bloody but also rather dark and thoughtful. I’ve previously reviewed “The Wolf’s Hour”.

Another favourite of mine are the novels by Phil Rickman, whose work falls somewhere between mystery, horror and crime; in many of them, contemporary mysteries intertwine with mystical, mythological and historical elements. The writing creates an atmosphere that is hauntingly beautiful – and a bit creepy. His John Dee series is not contemporary but historical fiction steeped in mystery (my review of "The Bones of Avalon" here.)

A childhood favourite of mine, simply perfect for this time of year, is a series by an Estonian author Aino Pervik (illustrations by E. Walter). These books feature a witch, Emmeline, who lives alone on a rocky island, makes potions and gathers herbs, until she meets a sea captain called Trummi. I fear that even back when my parents read me these stories, I felt a certain affinity with the hermit witch... look, she even lives in a tree!

Last but not least – I used to love “The Witch’s Handbook” by Malcolm Bird when I was a child. Now this has become one of my daughter’s favourites, and our yearly tradition is to read it around Halloween. This is the book my daughter prefers over playing and other activities! Packed with hilarious illustrations and clever advice, this book is a must-have for anyone inspiring to become a witch.

This year, I’m also reading “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” to my daughter – and it happens to be quite appropriate (just look at the cover)!

As horror isn’t generally my preferred genre, I’ve written few horror stories. There are, however, a couple that come close. Almost exactly a year ago now, the weird tale “Entombed” I wrote with my DH appeared in the “666” horror anthology (also recommended Halloween reading material) - and quite recently, our werewolf novella, “Musta Susi” (“Black Wolf”), was published in the Finnish science fiction and fantasy magazine Portti. Since it sort of fits the theme of this post, here's the title page of our story. The illustrations are by Kari T. Leppänen, and I have to say I love them; they capture the mood of the story - and look at the detail on that ship!

Halloween 2016

Last year, I blogged about our small Halloween party, and I thought I’d share some pictures this year as well. As usual, our party was very small, only the three of us and my sister-in-law. We all dressed up a bit; nothing too complicated, just something we could easily put together. My husband was a pirate, my sister-in-law came as Harley Quinn (she looked awesome!), I was a witch and my daughter was my black cat.

While I prepared the food, my daughter and my sister-in-law took care of the decorations, and they did an excellent job of it, too!

Carving the pumpkin has become my DH’s duty, and he carved a very cute, very cheerful looking Jack-o’-lantern. (You can see it in the picture at the top of this post.)

Just like last year, my daughter was very enthusiastic about Halloween. We browsed the net for ideas and I let her pick the icky/weird/funny foods we’d prepare. This year, we had mummy pizzas with blue cheese:

And a “slimy snake” made of rolled-up Finnish flatbread, filled with chicken, tomatoes and guacamole (not particularly photogenic, I’m afraid):

Witch’s fingers, mandarin pumpkins and banana ghosts have become something of a staple on our table...

This year, we baked a pumpkin pie for dessert, and this we made totally from scratch: the Finnish grocery stores around here don’t sell canned pumpkin puré, so we had to buy a pumpkin, chop it into pieces, bake the pieces in the oven, cut out the flesh, drain it, then puré it. Then I had pumpkin for the filling... actually, I had lots of it... but still had to make the crust and the filling and bake the pie. But it was definitely worth it, it was lovely to have a real pumpkin pie for Halloween. My daughter made the pastry cut-out bat to decorate it with. It turned out almost too cute to eat. :)

Happy Halloween!

What do you think, did I manage to pick an appropriate book for the season? Also, this is one of my favourite songs at the moment:

I also thought I'd let you know that today (appropriately) is the launch day of "666", an anthology of bite-sized horror stories by Fantastic Books Publishing. Each story is 666 words long (or short, depending on how you look at it). This collection features a grave story (yes, pun intended) which I wrote together with my DH. And I'd like to welcome you to the launch party tonight! It takes place at 6:66... or 19:06 UTC in Facebook. You can find the event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1044691382276161/

Ghost writer?

It seems that the Halloween season is almost upon us... so I just wanted to share something I came across the other day. Because it's just the kind of thing I think is awesome. ;)

Halloween Party

This doesn’t have anything to do with any of the so-called themes of this blog, but since I’ve never cared about that before, why start now? ;)

Last weekend we celebrated Halloween – a fairly new custom in Finland. There are ancient Finnish traditions which are not entirely dissimilar... but fascinating though that topic is, this post is not about that. (I’m trying so hard not to digress!) Anyway. I thought I’d share some pictures with you.

I call our Halloween party the world’s smallest Halloween party, since there’s usually just three of us. Sometimes, however, we’ve received reinforcements as my sister-in-law has visited us, and she was able to join us this year too. (Apparently, we haven’t scared her off with our weirdness. Or goofy dancing to frighteningly awful Halloween party music.) That was lovely, we had a good time! :) And it also meant that I was able to delegate decorating to her and my daughter. This way, everything was organised excellently, as my sister-in-law has a good eye for things like that, being very creative, and I had more time to dedicate to the preparations in the kitchen, with my DH as my dutiful slave helpmate. In addition to obeying my “grate this”, “peel that”, “chop those” commands, he also carved our first ever pumpkin! It turned out beautifully, as you can see in the image at the top of this post (that would be the bigger pumpkin in the centre; the one behind it is actually a ceramic lantern).

We usually have some sort of icky/weird/funny foods for Halloween, such as these mice...

...but my daughter pities the poor mice too much and so I wasn’t allowed to make them. Instead, we had witches’ fingers (made of turkey sausages):

And Jack-o’-lantern shaped quesadillas:

Plus mandarin orange pumpkins and banana ghosts:

This candy platter with its skulls, worms, brains etc. delighted my daughter:

And for dessert, there was also a flourless chocolate cake (which I've made before) with a licorice spider (I should have put some thought into the web design and the spider in advance rather than just hastily throwing everything together... I mean, improvising... right before serving the cake, but, you know... you can’t plan everything. ;)) The cake turned out very moist and intensely chocolatey, and I received plenty of requests to make this cake more often... I believe the actual words were "all the time" :D