I’d like to give you a good excuse for why I haven’t posted in six months.  But I don’t really have one.  I’m not a good blogger as a general rule, even though I enjoy doing it when I remember that it exists.  But all I can offer is this.  I’ve been distracted by two major undertakings in my life.

Since June I’ve lost thirty pounds.  Which may not seem like much in all that time but I kept relosing and gaining the same fifteen pounds for about two months haha.  Until I discovered myfitnesspal.com, which I heartily recommend if you’re a person trying to get fit.  Turns out, being healthy takes a lot of time.   In November I had to make a choice, because I have three young children, between staying up late and writing for NaNoWriMo or staying up late and exercising.  This year, I elected to work on me, and not on a novel.  I still have a lot of weight to lose and a lot of my energy will go there for the next year or so, I suspect.

But, I am working too.  Just not quickly enough to finish NaNoWriMo.  Which brings me to my second huge undertaking.  Last year, around this time of year, I started writing a very, very, very, very (I don’t think I can write enough very’s here) very complicated book.  Even though it’s a YA it has required huge amounts of research, I’m talking ten or fifteen huge books on revolutions and countless pages of notes.  It’s a book that I can’t even explain, though clearly it involves revolutions lol, because it’s just such an odd amalgamations of things.  But I hope there’s some agent somewhere willing to take a chance on something a little bit left of center.

So I will try to be better about blogging now.  But let’s not fool ourselves…

AMBER

I’ve been on a kick of watching teen movies from when I was a kid. John Hughes largely, but other things as well. And I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that promises my life is passing me by without any hope at doing something amazing. Because movies have now taught me that you have two options for changing the world. Either everything happens at prom or everything happens at a sporting event. Assuming you’re either too old or disinclined to go to prom that becomes not an option, leaving only sporting events. Except I am not into karate and I don’t belong to a scrappy underdog sports team.

All hope is lost.

I did indeed go to prom as a teenager, it was vastly over rated, and nothing amazing happened. Sadly, there were no clique fights, there was no shock over who was crowned as queen, and there was no synchronized dance numbers. I think I was gypped. I’m pretty sure.

pictured-me being gypped

And maybe I could have been saved had I taken up karate or been the solitary girl on a team of gum chewing losers. But I don’t play sports and, aside from a short stint running track before I got kicked off the team for my sucky grades, I never have. I’m all out of options. If teen movies have taught us anything it’s that if you can’t make people dance for you when you randomly participate in a parade that you don’t actually belong in, you have no hope for the future at all.

So while you still can I recommend that you join the worst sports team you can find, or join in with a group of ragtag losers from the wrong side of the tracks who just want to dance. Because otherwise you’ll be consigned to life as an accountant or a stay at home mom. And no one wants to see that crap happen.

AMBER

I’ve actually been hesitating and starting and hesitating on writing this post for weeks.  I felt like it was a little too…much.  A little too dark and a little too personal.  But then I read this post by the fabulous Joey Nichols over at Totally4ya.com where I blog once a month.  And I thought, ‘if she can share that, then I guess I can share this.  It isn’t of the same nature, but it is very personal.  And I am the type of person who balks at all things personal.

I’ve given some thought to why I write YA and there are two answers to that question.  The reason I started writing YA, which is for a different post, and the reason I continue to write it at the expense of all the adult novels that I used to write.  But I never had a definitive answer really formed out in my brain until I had an epiphany the other day.

I was listening to the radio and the early 90′s song, Runaway Train by Soul Asylum came on the radio.   I suspect that the majority of younger readers have never even heard of this song, let alone actually heard it.  But when I was in high school this was something of an anthem for me.  Along with the song Unforgiven by Metallic.  I felt this song, deeply.  Up until the moment that I went to youtube just now to get this video I had no clue this song is really about troubled youth, but at the time I felt this song was written just for me.

Here are the lyrics for those who have trouble understanding what they’re saying.  And this story is going somewhere writing related, I swear.

Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a slow torch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn’t even sleep
So many secrets I couldn’t keep
Promised myself I wouldn’t weep
One more promise I couldn’t keep

It seems no one can help me now
I’m in too deep
There’s no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

CHORUS
Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I’m neither here no there

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life’s mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just drownin’ in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything is cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don’t believe it

CHORUS

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin’ at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never comin’ back
Runaway train tearin’ up the track
Runaway train burnin’ in my veins
Runaway but it always seems the same

When I heard this song the other day, teenagehood twenty years gone, driving my kids around in my minivan, it took me right back there as though it was happening now.  I’m neither ignorant nor arrogant enough to believe I had the worst childhood ever, but things were not good.

When I was young I was the dreaded poor kid.  Incredibly poor, like on the door of homelessness poor.  We lived in a trailer that frequently didn’t have electricity or running water.  We never had a phone.  All of my food came from free lunches at school or whatever my parents got from the commodities place next to the homeless shelter in downtown Albuquerque.  There were many days we just didn’t eat.  But I learned early that books at the library were free.  And there was an escape in those books that was better than anything I could manufacture on my own.  And no one cared that I was there.  No one noticed me at all if I sat in the corner and read quietly.  And I didn’t notice that I was hungry and depressed and lonely if I was there.

Like many people living in abject poverty, there were serious issues at home.  It isn’t like people who are capable of controlling their actions typically end up in situations like that.  My parents were, themselves, runaway trains, headed through the darkness of their own endless tunnels.  My mother was too busy with her own demons to stop people taking their demons out on us children.    At the time I thought she wasn’t a great mother, or a great person.  (who doesn’t feel that way about their mothers sometimes)  But as an adult, looking back, I realized she just didn’t have any better tools to deal with life.  She did the best she could.

But growing up that way makes marks on you.  Marks that by teenagehood had directed me down an unfortunate path.  I was anorexic.  I frequently considered suicide.  I was so tired.  I felt, sometimes, like I could never make it through another day.  I was a cutter before cutting was something people talked about.  I was long into adulthood before I realized there were other people who did what I did, with crisscrosses of scars up and down their arms.  Reality was way too hard to bear.

So instead, whenever I could, I lived in world’s either of my making or of other authors making.  It was an escape that literally saved my sanity.  And it is, perhaps, not totally overdramatic to say that books saved my life.  In books not only could I be somewhere else but I could be anything but myself and that was what I desperately needed.  But it wasn’t just an escape.  Books are how I learned that there was another life out there.  That there were parents and children who related in ways that made sense or that were even healthy.  There were husbands and wives who loved each other.  There were worlds that contained logic and order and not a constant sense of spinning out of control.  It helped me to realize that somewhere, sometime, things would be different.  I didn’t have to live that life forever.

Someday there would be a different life out there and sometimes I could see it in between the pages of a book.

I want everyone to like my books.  I want everyone to pick them up and appreciate what they find between the pages.  But the truth is, I do this for the kids like me.  The people who need to escape.  The ones who never see anything beautiful unless it’s in between the pages of a novel.  The ones who have no other escape but huddled in the corner at the library hoping no one notices them and tells them they aren’t allowed to be there.  For the people who feel lost and lonely and out of control.  In hopes that I can give them the hope that other authors gave to me.  That there’s magic in the world.  That there’s order.  That some day you will be in control of you.

I used to write books for adults, and that was fine.  An adult needs to escape now and then from a hectic life of every day monotony and chores.  But they can walk away from almost any situation if it gets too bad.  There’s no trap like the trap of a child stuck in a situation out of their control.  The world is too big and no matter what you’re always too small.  I want to be the person who gives control back.

If you’re the one, like me, huddled on your bed in your trailer with all the glass knocked out of the windows, listening to people scream in the other room, making it all go away with a cheap flashlight and world of magic, I want to reach you.

I want to make you understand that some day you’ll be in control.  You’ll be in charge.  You can make your own magic.  Until then, I hope you’ll let me help you the way other authors helped me.  I hope that books can save other people they way they saved me.

And I hope this isn’t painfully personal or awkward for the people I’m not specifically talking to right now.  Because I love the idea of everyone enjoying my books.  But the reason I write YA now instead of what I wrote before is this very thing.  Sanity and promise of a better life.  I hope everyone can experience loving a book that way even once in their life.

AMBER

I’m actually not a great lover of contests.  Anyone who knows me knows this.  I like doing things the old fashioned way.   But the exception that I make is when someone doesn’t take unsolicited subs but is judging a contest.  Or, perhaps, when someone I was to query isn’t taking on new clients.  So I’ve been reading about Natalie Fischer, the new agent at Bradford, here and there around the net and decided, well, I’m just going to query her the old fashioned way.  Because that’s how I roll.  But then, gasp, I discovered she isn’t taking queries right now.  The pain, it hurts.  So I guess I’m in for this awesome contest Brenda Drake is holding anyway.  Because I really need an agent now that I have some fulls out at super exciting publishers.

________

Name: Amber Gilchrist

Title: Some Strange Magic

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Even after he was dead, my father’s obsession with magic colored my life.  I had many memories of him, but my strongest were of his sleight of hand and illusions.  Even at seventeen, I still had a perfectly clear picture of being four and my father reaching behind my ear for a coin, me laughing in delight.

Good memories didn’t sweeten the bitterness of reality.  Dad had sold us out for his addiction and then gotten himself killed.  And here we were. Stuck.

The painful thing about reality–there’s no changing it.  There’s nothing that crying, begging, praying or wishing will do. You can push against reality forever, like that Sisyphus guy pointlessly pushing the rock uphill only to see it roll back down again, but it’s immovable.  It doesn’t care what you think, do, or lose in the process of trying to change it.

This was my new reality.

“This is beautiful.”  Mom gestured to the pine and aspen trees outside the car windows.  She’d gone into overly excited, super-mom mode ever since her therapy “breakthrough”.  She had her happy face on, the one that looked like she’d shoved an upside down hanger into her mouth.

“It’s fabulous.”  The hollowness inside sucked any fake enthusiasm I might have mustered out of the statement.  She didn’t say anything.  She never said anything about my moods.  Probably something the grief counselor had told her to do.

_______

You guys can get more information about the contest from Brenda’s blog linked above.  But here’s a little bit of info on how it works.  I’m excited to get around and check out other people’s work.

On March 20 and 21, post the first 250 words of your finished manuscript (any genre) on your blog to get critiques from your followers and then hop around to the other participants’ sites and give critiques. Polish those 250 words and email them to me at brenleedrake@gmail.com with CONTEST in the subject line by 12:00AM (EST) on March 22

AMBER

So, it’s snowing in New Mexico.  Quite energetically.  To almost every other state the words, ‘it’s snowing’ will be met with one of two responses.  ‘It’s snowing again.  meh.’ or ‘More *(&)^)Y&^^ snow!  When does summer start again?’

Here in New Mexico we don’t believe in water.  Frozen or otherwise.  We have so much sun here that we’re contractually obligated to use the word ‘sun’ in every single title.

Calle del Sol, street of the sun? okay, i can dig it.

table of the sun? what does that even mean?

The airport is called the Sunport? Okay, now you're just pushing it.

We’re the state where if it rains for more than half an hour we all stand around staring at one another in terror.  So when it snows two things happen here.  First the entire state shuts down as though a mild snow storm were a massive natural disaster of Michael Bay movie proportions.

Have him pull out a titanium snow gun and open fire before he explodes in a rain of snow and guts. also get some motorcycles

Then we go out and frolic in the snow like brain damaged puppies.  Because who knows when it will happen again?  It doesn’t matter how old we are.  It repeatedly has this effect on most of us.  Apparently forgetting the fact that most of us live in New Mexico specifically because of the weather.  Because it isn’t cold and it isn’t snowy and it our weather reports rarely contain catch phrases like, ‘snowpocalypse’ or ‘froze to death.’  We don’t actually like being cold.  I often think about moving from New Mexico to a place where things grow and not everything has thorns.  But then I think about the weather and change my mind.

So I’m going to take my kids outside to make a snowman and drink some hot chocolate and admire my winter wonderland.  But if it doesn’t all melt in two days I’m going to start freaking out and hoarding water.  And maybe bombs and motorcycles.

AMBER

If you’re a child of the 80′s you’re putting on your Dionne Warwick wig right now.  Or maybe your Stevie Wonder glasses.

The other day someone I know asked me to throw one of those candle parties.  Which is all good.  I like candles.  I like things that smell good much better than I like things that smell bad.  But I was forced to tell her that I couldn’t because, frankly, I just don’t have anyone to invite.   I no longer have any friends.  At least not in the area.  They’ve all moved away or I have and somewhere along the line I seem to have forgotten how to make friends.

I’m not sure when this happened.  It used to be so much easier.  When you’re a little kid it’s super easy.  “Hey, you like chocolate chip cookies and the Chipmunks?  So do I!  Let’s be best friends forever.”

It isn’t even all that hard as a teenager or in college.  Proximity allows you to spend time getting to know people.  If someone has a similar sense of humor that’s about all it took for me.  Because I consider sarcasm a major plus in a potential friend.

When my husband was in the military it wasn’t even so hard.  Again, it’s a proximity thing.  We were all in the same situation, living in a row of identical houses, with children who were all approximately the same age, watching our husbands leave every six months.

Now, the only way I know how to relate to people is as a mother.  The only people I ever meet are other mothers.  The only reason I know them is because our kids happen to be the same age.  The likelihood we will share even a single interest is probably pretty slim since my interests are esoteric and I am, as aforementioned, a pop culture black hole.  So we usually find ourselves with nothing to talk about but teething and bowel movements.  And that’s some fun stuff right there, let me tell you.

At a really wild party we might start comparing the horror of labor and delivery.  And no one wants to miss that.

The truth is I do have some friends.  My husband is the best of friends, clever, funny, entertaining, smart and charming.  Just exactly what everyone wants in a friend.  And I get to be with him all the time.  However, I can promise you that his interest in candles is minimal at best.  I’ve had the same best friend for almost twenty years.  She’s so type A that she makes a stereotypical accountant look like a sorority girl at a kegger.  (I love you, Jessica.  Mwahh)  But she’s awesome with a side of awesome sauce.  We really have been through the worst and best of times together.

I have a lot of faraway friends from high school and college that I only see on Facebook.  And some of my very best and closest friends are in the computer.  People I’ve met on writing websites and critique groups.  I’ve met some of them, like Bria Quinlin, Rachel Jamison and Sabrina Darby.  I would easily consider these ladies, most of which I have never and will never, meet in person as some of my best friends.  It’s amazing how supportive and touching a cyberhug can be.

But, that just brings me back to the original reason for this post.  Is it just me?  Am I that socially awkward, or do all of you find it so much harder to make friends as adults?  What happened to that instinct that let us go, “You like Bath and Body Works brown sugar body scrub?  So do I!  Let’s be best friends!”  Or at the very least, what happened to my instinct to carry on a conversation about something other than diaper brands?
AMBER

Man, I’m sorry I missed, like, half of October.  I’ve been so sick.  It’s this lame cold but then it keeps coming back and kicking my butt again.  So it qualifies as the least aggressive but longest lasting cold in the history of man.  It will never, never go away.  But I’m going to try getting back on the real life wagon anyway, so hopefully you’ll be seeing more of me anyway.

Finished a book last night that has been giving me fits all year.  I don’t love it, in fact it’s a hot mess.  But at least it’s finished.  I’m going to stop looking at it for a month or so and come back to it later.  I believe it still has potential.  It just needs work.  But the real point here is that I finished a novel while my baby, Angry Baby (yes, that’s really her name.  i wonder why she’s so mad all the time…), is under a year old.  That definitely didn’t happen when my other children were young.  Childbirthing and the subsequent results destroy my brain.  But I finished.  So I’m excited.

Also I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year.  The month long writing exercise intended to help a person write a 50k novel in a month.   I’m writing my steampunk, dystopian retelling of Beauty and the Beast.  Sadly, however, there are no talking tea pots are anything like that.  Just dirigibles that drop bombs on rioting citizens a lot.

Anyway,  I hope to see more of this blog soon and I hope you’ll all forgiven me for being so losery during a month when I could have been so…winnery?

AMBER

Sorry I missed so many days of valuable terrible stories time.  I’ve been dog sick with yet another disease my children brought home from that little petri dish called school.  So I had to take a few days to hack up a lung.  But now I’m back and better than ever.  Or, I’m back anyway.

Today, I thought we’d do Russian scary stories.  I’ve always had an affinity for all things Russian.  Why I don’t know.  I have no Russian in my family history, I don’t speak Russian and I’ve never been to Russia.  But if I was a man, I’d totally buy me a Russian bride.  Not really, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.  Because if I did buy a Russian bride she might be a Rusalka.  Or just really bad tempered.  Because you really shouldn’t marry people you’ve never met.

When I was in high school I encountered the legend of the Rusalka for the first time in the book of the same name by CJ Cherryh.  I loved that book and the following stories.  And thus began my fascination with Rusalkas.

Rusalkas are a Russian ghost, if you haven’t picked that up yet.  But she isn’t just any ghost. The Rusalka is the ghost of a maiden who has drowned.  Most stories make her out to be the victim of spurned love affair and often a suicide by drowning.  Because, really, what good is a story if you can’t put a spurned love affair in there somewhere.

A Rusalka can also be the spirit of an unbaptised infant, which puts a rather depressing spin on it but makes the behavior of a typical Rusalka kind of nonsensical.  For a baby anyway.  Usually a Rusalka will take the form of a beautiful young woman with a pallid face wearing a long flowing white gown.  Which begs the question do all Rusalka look the same?  Is it the same beautiful young woman with a pallid face?

Or sometimes they take the form of a mermaid who can walk on land.  Although I’m not certain what distinguishes them as a mermaid but I do have a lovely image of someone with fins shuffling their way along a trail looking for a man to drown.

The Rusalka goes around finding dudes wandering around at night and lures them into a river and into a beautiful underwater castle, where they drown.  Really, I think there’s a story in here about how a man will follow a beautiful pallid faced, flowing gown wearing mermaid girl anywhere.  Let this be a lesson to you.

They will also drown children.  And then all the victims are forced to join the Rusalka in their underwater dances.  I guess I could think of a worse afterlife but imagine the surprise if you followed some sweet, innocent grandmother into a barn where she killed you suddenly and then made you spend eternity square dancing with her.

There is a story though of a peasant who managed to trap a Rusalka by tricking it into a magic circle and holding a cross over it.  Then he kept it and made it do chores for him until it escaped.  But I’m a little fuzzy on how he kept it from escaping at all.  How many chores could it do trapped in a magic circle?

Until the 1930’s many Russians observed Rusalka Week, the first week in June. During this week, the Rusalka was considered especially powerful, and no one dared go swimming. At the end of the week, the rusalka was driven away with the sign of the cross, garlic, incense, magic charms, and special songs. Then the river was considered safe again.

Incidentally, the first week of June is also National Fishing Week here in America.  There’s some sort of irony there, I just know it.

There’s also the Domovoy who is a house spirit.  It guards the family and their possessions and often presents itself as a hairy little man.  I don’t know about you but I’m getting shades of Dobby here.  Nice families leave things like milk and bread out for their Domovoy.  Really considerate ones will give Dobby a sock.

Orthodox Russian Christian belief holds that there is a 40-day period after death in which the soul stays near its earthly home. During the first few days of this period, in very rare cases, the dead might revive but not as a normal human. These revived corpses would become monsters harassing the living, or vampires who devoured humans and livestock.

Now, it’s more commonly believed that ghosts will visit you in a dream and not so much in a river inexplicably deep enough to house a beautiful underwater castle.  However, on the plus side, there’s dancing.  And who doesn’t love dancing?

AMBER

Jeannie Lin, author of Chinese historicals suggested a story her mother had told her about a creature made from a snake and a cat that could reanimate corpses.  A little research produced a bakeneko.   Though some of the details don’t match, the bakeneko is a cat ghost who was once a cat but became a monster through a number of possibilities including living to a certain age, growing to a certain size or being allowed to keep their tails.

It creates ghostly fireballs, torments sleepers in the house, walks around on its hind legs  and will kill the mistress of the house and devour her so that it can be in charge.  So basically, if you replace fireballs with hairballs you have a regular cat.

But this cat, if left in a room with a fresh corpse, can reanimate a corpse.  Which may or may not be a good thing, I guess.  It isn’t mentioned whether the person comes back normal or not.  It also isn’t mentioned what happens if the cat is left with a corpse that is past its expiration date. I read that it wasn’t uncommon for people to cut off their cat’s tail to prevent it from turning into a bakeneko.   Which seems pretty harsh, considering, but I guess you can’t take chances with demon cats.

However, it should be noted that not all bakeneko are bad.  Some rescue their owners, some teach them how to get rich.  Some even find a way to turn themselves into humans so they can marry their owners.   Yet another reminder that some people need to be taught the difference between loving their pets and loving their pets.

Something else I found in my search is the absolutely horrifying sounding ittan-momen,  a ghost who flies through the night and then suffocates people with layers of cloth.  Maybe this isn’t as scary sounding to other people but i have a seriously strong image of spectral cloth wrapping all around your face, flying at you from nowhere, attacking you until you can’t breathe.  shudder.

I did read this little story on wikipedia though.  One day, a handsome visiting priest named Anjin fell in love with a beautiful woman named Kiyohime, but after a time he overcame his passions and refrained from further meetings. Kiyo became furious at the sudden change of heart and pursued him in rage. The priest and Kiyohime met at the edge of the Hidaka river, where the priest asked a boatman to help him to cross the river, but told him not to let her cross with his boat. When Kiyo saw that Anjin was escaping her, she jumped into the river and started to swim after him. While swimming in the torrent of the Hidaka river, she transformed into a large serpent because of her rage.

The lesson here being, if you’re furious because your man dumps you I recommend not getting so mad that you turn into a giant murderous serpent.  You should also probably refrain from leaving antagonistic notes on his facebook wall.

There are so many really interesting Japanese myths that I’m saving some for later in the month. Because this stuff is super cool.  Seriously, I can’t believe how much of this I didn’t know.

But one last, really horrifying story for you, which is a combination of good old fashioned folk tales and today’s bedazzled version of a folk tale, the urban myth.  The very disturbing story of Kuchinsake-onna begins during the Heian period when a beautiful wife or concubine of a samurai induces him to jealously.   Either because she’s really having an affair or because he’s an over reactive douche.  Either way, he goes nuts.

The samurai, extremely jealous and feeling cuckolded, attacks her and slits her mouth from ear to ear, screaming “Who’ll think you’re beautiful now?!”

From there the story becomes an urban legend, especially popular in the 1970′s.  It was said that her ghost wanders around on foggy evenings covered with a surgical mask.  In America that would be weird enough to send possible hauntees packing, but in Japan wearing surgical masks isn’t odd at all.

The wikipedia entry shares the following, ‘When she encounters someone (primarily children, teenagers or college/high school students), she will shyly ask, “Am I pretty?” (“Watashi kirei?“). If the person answers yes, she will take off her mask and say, “How about now?” (“Kore demo?“). At this point, if the victim answers “No,” she will slay them or cut their mouths to resemble hers (in many versions, her weapon is a pair of scissors). Before she kills the victims that responded with no, she would take them to her old house where her husband cut her. If the victim tells her she is pretty a second time, she follows the victim home and slays them at the doorway to their residence, due to the fact that “kirei” (きれい), Japanese for ‘pretty,’ is a near homophone of “kire” (切れ), the imperative form of “to cut”. In other versions of the myth if you reply yes after she removes the mask she will give you a large blood soaked ruby and walk away. Another version says that if you reply yes, she will take her scissors and cut your mouth from ear to ear, making you resemble her, but may let you live. On most versions of the myth she is impossible to escape, as she can either appear in front of you no matter which way you turn or can move at superhuman speeds and catch you.’

So basically there’s no way to ditch this girl.  But wait, there is.  ‘If the victim answers “You’re average”, they are saved. When the urban legend was revived around 2000, the answer that would save you was changed to “so-so,” with the change that this answer causes the kuchisake-onna to think about what to do, and her victim can escape while she is in thought. One other way is to ask her if you are pretty, she will get confused and leave. In 2010, by telling her you have a previous engagement to attend to, she will pardon her manners and excuse herself from your presence.’

Let this creepy butt story be another lesson to you.  If weird ladies in face masks start asking you if they’re pretty just say you’ve got to be somewhere in a hurry.  Additionally, if a strange woman asks you if her butt looks big in those jeans I recommend a similar answer.  Cause that girl will cut you.

AMBER

Ah, October.  I do love you so, with your turning leaves and your crisp air and your multitude of horror stories.

Please be thinking about your favorite stories because I’ll need ya’lls help at the end.

I will admit that my dirty little secret is that if I’m going to watch a movie at all, I absolutely love horror movies.  The more ridiculous, campier, badly acted and filmed the better.  But if they take themselves seriously and then don’t follow through, well, that just pisses me off.  Like The Ring, I seriously hated that movie. It wanted to big and bad but really it was just a giant commentary on why follow-through of every idea you start is so important because otherwise continuity gets wacked and things start not making sense and pretty soon you have The Ring.  I’m big Bruce Campbell fan and the Evil Dead movies are close to my heart.  But my absolute favorite and the absolute scariest is the old black and white The Haunting of Hill House.

And I love horror novels too.  Even more than the movies.  Especially those involving the supernatural.  When I was a kid we had those Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown books and I just poured over those things.  Especially anything about ghosts.  I remember being especially freaked out by the ghost ship Mary Celeste which has a relatively reasonable explanation but as a child I didn’t know it and the idea of an entire ship full of people just *poof* well, that freaked the heck out of me.

But the reality is that anything but reality has a difficult time scaring me.  Movies and books just don’t seem to have what it takes.  But if you walk up behind me while I’m typing, well, that will scare the holy living crap out of me.  And I don’t mean those who are part ninja.  I mean herds of elephants on the stampede could come up behind me and for some reason I just don’t notice until people touch or speak to me and then, like as not, I will literally scream.  But it’s almost impossible to scare me in a movie.

I remember reading Something Wicked This Way Comes when I was something like 14 or 15.  I checked it out from the school library.  That book has the distinction of being the single most frightening thing I’ve ever read.  I was so freaked out I didn’t go to another carnival again until my kids were old enough to start complaining.  And to tell you the truth, I don’t remember much of what that book was about except the carousel.  That I remember.   But I do recall how it made me feel.  And I like that feeling.

I also like a good scary folk tale or ghost story too.  I live in New Mexico and I am half Mexican so when my family felt like it they would spread a little Mexican folk tale around.  In New Mexico it isn’t unusual for flash floods to come down off the mountains because when it rains the ground is too dry to absorb the water.  Instead it just floats on top of the soil and builds up until the floods come.  So to avoid that, Albuquerque has built an entire system of arroyos to redivert the flood waters.  Arroyos, for those who don’t know, are deep cement ditches that will fill very quickly with water in the event of a flood.  People drown in them all time.  They aren’t careful and they walk in them even though everyone knows that they could be bone dry one minute and a raging flood the next.

When I was a child and we’d hear about someone who drowned in an arroyo usually, though sometimes other places, we’d hear the whispers of La Llorona in the hallways.  Someone would inevitably say they’d been taken by La Llorona.  La Llorona, the weeping woman or the crying woman, is a tale prevalent in almost all Latin cultures.

Though the origin story varies from person to person the basic idea remains the same.  A woman either kills her children for a man or a man kills her children against her will.  She dies from her grief and spends her time wandering through the night crying for her children, “Mis ninos, mis ninos!” (My children, my children!)  And if she catches children out alone she’ll steal them as her own and drag them down into the water with her, drowning them.

The story is so pervasive in these cultures that there are songs and movies and multiple stories using La Llorona as a theme.  One folk song begins, “Don’t go down to the river child, don’t go there alone.  For the sobbing woman, wet and wild, might claim you for her own.”  The song goes on from there, progressively dark and slightly demented.  I couldn’t find a specific video of that song but there’s this one that is a traditional song for La Llorona.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbmqwC1mmaA it’s live so the sound is a little wonky at first and may need adjusted.

What I’d like to know is your favorite scary movie or book, but more so what I’d like to do is hear your scary cultural folk tales.  I’d like to write about several this October.  So leave me some stories in the comments, just the names should be okay and I can look them up myself.  And then we’ll feature them on Amber’s scary blog   I’d love to hear how your families and their families and those before them keep people in line with scary stories.

AMBER