Excerpt

Another dreary, cool, cold-snap October day has me thinking a lot about Halloween. Last week I wrote this for Dream of You:

...But Halloween was none of those things. It was too many Tootsie Rolls and neighborhood children dressed as goblins and princesses. It was Paige’s pointed witch hat and Johnny Depp’s Ichabod on TV. It was ninety-nine cent spiderweb that stuck to nothing but her fingers, the crunch of fallen leaves, the sinister orange flare of the sun as it winked out over the horizon. The dancing bright faces of Jack-o-lanterns and the sharp smell of singed pumpkin where a candle flame had licked just a little too high. Vampires and werewolves. Thriller and the throaty, timeless sound of Vincent Price’s laugh. Black cats and urban legends, sharp gusts of wood smoke wind and the sense that somewhere out there in the night, something worth lifting the fine hairs on the back of her neck was happening.