We Bow to the Supremacy of Our Neighbors - We Are Not Worthy

Well. We got our asses kicked last night. Our neighbors up the street, my running partners, staged a Halloween extravaganza worthy of any Hollywood movie set.

There was a full graveyard, with rickety fences and cobwebs and dark, dangling tree limbs. Eerie green lights cast a ghoulish glow over the yard while also creating deep shadows. A long, narrow, and deep wooden coffin--Dracula style with the blunt edges and almost hexagon shape at the top--housed our neighbor, dressed as the mother of all mummies. Limp, aged rags dripped from her limbs and her face was a mixture of black, purple, and green bruises. SO COOL.

We went with with the witch and pumpkin-head man. Pumpkin-head man is simply a large orange plastic mask that Blair dons along with country clothes. He sits in a rocker and I "stuff" him with straw that pours out of his gloves, shoes, collar, and the buttons on his shirt.  Even up close, he really does look like a stuffed dummy (apologies, dearest) sitting there.  I pass out the candy and then right as the kids walk away, he raises a hand and intones, "Happy Halloooo-weeeen!"

The kids jump, the parents jump. One dad leaped back then started laughing and said, "Man, I thought that thing was fake!" What amused us is that after Blair talked and waved, the kids would still turn to me and say, "Is he real or fake?"

We went through 10 bags of candy, albeit we toss huge handfuls into each kids bag. It's worth it when after we drop the candy in we hear, "WOW--thanks!"

Two of our neighbors played soundtracks, so as kids went up and down the street they heard the sounds of moans, screams, clanking chains, and the loud ominous bongs of a clock. Across the street, a purple tarantula the size of a miniature horse lay in the yard. It's leg were paper mache and every time the wind blew, it picked the legs up and made it appear as if the spider was rearing back of crawling.

Say what you will about safety, there's still something magical about trick-or-treating house to house. It's just not Halloween unless you scare yourself by wondering if maybe some psycho stuck a razorblade in your Three Musketeers.

One bummer note--not a lot of kids walk anymore. A car would park in front of our house and parents and kids would pour out, go to 3 homes, pile in the car to drive 20 yards up the road and repeat. No wonder we're a fat nation.  Kids also didn't automatically say "Trick-or-Treat." They would more often just stick their bag out.

Who cares? I love Halloween. Cutest costume of the night went to a 3-year-old blond-hair, blue-eyed boy dressed up as Woody from Toy Story. He walked up to us grinning, kept grinning as Blair waved at him, and just stood and waved back and grinned. His dad had to pull him back down the walk as he kept grinning and waving. Unbelievably cute.

A lot of kids were a little nervous approaching us, so we're thinking our Sleepy Hollow idea of having them walk through a bridge may be too scary. I'm wondering if we can do a pirate ship and make them "walk the plank" which would be a board about 6 inches off the ground.

Until next year... here's "gouling" at you.

Time Warp & Halloween

Life as a magazine writer is such that I often find myself writing about holidays months ahead of their actual occurrence. Today, for example, I roughed out my humor column for the Florida family magazine I write for. The article is due Nov. 8th but will appear in their Jan/Feb. issue. Hence, references to "recovering from the holidays" and the "already broken promises of the 8-hour old New Year" appear.

It lends a touch of surrealism to life. I'm typically writing about Christmas in August, Halloween in June, and March is a good time to talk up the 4th of July.  I have to wonder if it sets me back, talking about already broken New Years Eve's vows in October--kind of a self-fullfilling prophecy type thing.

Blair's downstairs right now, setting up for Trick-or-Treat for tomorrow night. Sadly, we had to scrap our plans for a recreation of Sleepy Hollow. Our intent was to build a psedo-bridge, record horse hooves eerily clip-cloping in the background, carve leering faces  into at least 3 pumpkins, and then I would dress as Ichabod Crane and Blair as the Headless Horseman. Kids would have to run through the tunnel and survive an attack by the Horseman in order to win their candy (Quit your whining--there are no freebies in life).

But time ran out on us. We had guests this weekend, Blair had hoped to take a 1/2 day on Tuesday and that doesn't look like it's going to happen, and I'm hoping to find time tomorrow to carve one pumpkin, let alone three. So instead we're reviving the popular 1999 theme of "Evil Witch & PumpkinHead Man." We've got the fog machine rigged and ready to blow out "smoke" from beneath the black witches cauldron and Blair poses as a stuffed-looking "fake" scarecrow that scares kids when he comes to life and roars at them.

I spoke with a woman this week who is taking her son to a church "trunk-or-treat." It's in the early evening and only "nice" costumes are allowed.

Poor little bugger. Has no idea of the fun he's missing.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

"She Doesn't Have A Stick In Any of Her Body's Orifices"

 I do so love Melody Watson, my website designer.  Melody is the ultra-cool woman who designed the web site for my book, Lessons In Stalking. She is a woman of extreme patience combined with a true artists eye for shading, color, and technique.  When we met to talk about my site overhaul, she was very professional in her questions. I, however, was ill-prepared to answer.

Melody:  "Have you given any thought to color schemes?"

Dena: "Um, no blue. Oh, and I don't like pastels. My home is yellow and red. And I like purple. But I probably can't do purple on a professional site, huh?"

Melody: "Well, we'll see. What about pages? Do you know what pages you want for your navigation bar?"

Dena:  "Oh. Lessee...probably the same ones I have now, except I'll take out some and replace with others."

Melody, smiling serenely as she sips her coffee: "Sounds lovely. We'll come back to that as well. Now, what is the feel you want for your site? When someone, a potential client, pulls it up for the first time, what do you want them to go away thinking?"

Dena: "Professional yet fun!" (See, I actually had an answer for this one) 

Now, if someone gave me the task of creating from scratch a new website with "any color but pastels, unsure about pages, and totally professional yet fun," I'd run screaming from the room. I need much more direction than that. Melody, however, thrives on it. She loves the thrill of creating to the client's vision without the client (moi) even clearly knowing what their vision is.

So we've been hammering ideas back and forth and landed on one that we're both excited about it. As we discussed it, here's a portion of the e-mail Melody sent me and that she graciously gave me permission to post here:

And if I get it just right, your site's visitors will think "highly professional but she doesn't have a stick in any of her body's orifices" and they will think, "wow, she's incredibly sophisticated but I could throw back a beer with this woman, too!" and they will want to hire you immediately just so they can try and get anywhere close to what a kick ass woman you so clearly are, just by visiting your site. It's subtle and it's bold, all at the same time...it's aged and shows fine history, and the texture is nearly palpable. But at no point does it overwhelm or overshadow the content of the site.

 Does it get any closer to mind-reading? I almost burst a lung laughing at the line, "highly professional but she doesn't have a stick in any of her body's orifices."  I've threatened to use that as my new tag line:

"Looking for a writer to inspire and motivate your tired copy? Hire Dena Harris! She's highly professional yet doesn't have a stick in any of her body's orifices."

 

That is soooooo me.  Now admit it...aren't you kind of curious to see the new site?

So You Want to Write A Book

Everyone has a book inside them.  There is not one person who if you asked them if they had something to write about wouldn't answer "yes."  Of course, the majority of people are not writers so the books won't get written. Even people like me who are writers still may not write the book. It awaits to be seen if I have it in my to do fiction or not. Last year I was leaning toward yes. Now I'm re-evaluating.

The "standard" advice is to write what you read and I'm a non-fiction gal. I get much more excited by the thought of gathering research and conducting interviews and taking a whole mish-mash of data and creating order out of it then I do at the thought of coming up with a plotline and a character who isn't a direct knock-off of a friend in my life.

I'm also seriously considering the idea of hanging my shingle out as a ghostwriter for non-fiction.  I have a few friends who've approached me about working with them on their fiction but I tell them upfront that I still struggle with fiction writing so I don't know that I'm the best one for the job. I've agreed to "edit" or maybe even collaborate on a book and I'm excited about that prospect (why go down in flames alone - ha ha).

But, there is more non-fiction on the horizon. I'm helping a friend/associate prepare a non-fiction book proposal and if it sells, she wants me to help her write the book.  I spoke with one of my magazine editors yesterday who said she passed my name along to a big-time pet author who is looking for a collaborator on his next cat book.  For this same editor, I'm ghostwriting an article for a vet and there's interest in taking the topic and turning it into a book.  

 Then there's my book on public speaking. I alternate between great excitement about the book that turns into "What do I know? Why on earth would anyone read a book about public speaking written by me?"  But I'm so close to having a draft ready to send out that I'm not willing to give up. I keep saying I need to "find" time to work on but there is never, ever time to be found. So I'm going to have to get serious and block out time on my schedule to work on that and nothing else.

Here's what I like about what I do. All of the above projects could come to fruition or not a one of them might ever  make it off the drawing board. But it's energizing to think that "Hey yeah. Maybe I will be collaborating with that vet next year," or "Wow. I may be listed as a co-author on a book in a category that would open new doors for me."

The really fun part is that even if none of the above materializes, other things as yet unknown will. I love the not knowing, the anticipation of what will arrive to fill my days. 

I'm a firm believer that the days ahead will be filled with many, many good things.