Christine Converse's Blog

It’s that time of year again. I gleefully walk into the temporary outlets of spooky where all of my Halloween needs can be found: zombie rats, life-size skeletons, grave stones, reapers, spider webs, fog, black lights, glow paint, dripping blood, ghouls, spectres…you know, the basic necessities. And this year, I found the most frightening thing of all:

GAH!!! I’m a fan of Beetlejuice, him being a dead guy and all, but this was not the ghostest with the mostest. In fact, THIS was apparently a set of the most popular costumes of 2013. Can I say Bah Humbug?? Is there such a thing as the Halloween Grinch? If so, here I am. Halloween has gotten so far from its origins. Nowadays, the scariest thing about a prepubescent child star in a onesie featuring a drunk teddy bear is that her PR team didn’t barricade her in an office in lieu of showing up at the MTV Awards dressed like that.

Halloween. All Hallow’s Eve. Samhain. Originally, a night you didn’t want to be out and about. Why? No matter where you were raised, the origins dictate that it is the night that the dark gods, faeries and spirits of the dead walk the earth, their one chance to abscond with whomever they perceive to be living. The idea was this: “mumming” or “guising”, aka “Dress up to fool those that would do you harm”. Other fun Samhain activities: light a bonfire to protect and to cleanse. And if you had to travel, you carry a carved turnip lantern with you to ward off evil. In fact, cover your doorstep in carved gourds and let the candles burn all night for protection. If you WERE brave enough to go from home to home, you asked for food to celebrate the end of harvest and the beginning of winter (keeping in mind that, as the keeper of the household, to not donate food would bring misfortune or, possibly, a “trick”.) In the Christian influenced Hallowmas, “It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints’ Day, and All Hallows’ Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognised by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes to disguise their identities”.

So… if you’re out and about on Halloween begging for sugar while dressed as the progeny of Hollywood elite, good luck and God Speed. Don’t be surprised if you hear footsteps just behind you but you can’t see the source. Stay in the light and stick to the well trod paths. Oh, and definitely stay off the moors. Consider yourself warned.

Happy Halloween!

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I recently had an amazing opportunity. I got the chance to visit the shop of fellow monster and sci-fi aficionado, Frank Ippolito. During my visit, Frank said he could personally introduce me to one of my favorite movie stars of all time. How could I say no? He walked across the room to a set of drawers, pulled out an object and set it on the table in front of me. And there it was. I came face to face with one of the greatest movie monsters of all time. Now don’t get me wrong; there was a time where coming face to face with this particular countenance that would have caused me to soil myself and pass out. But here it was, modest and without any color to its face, cracked and worn with age. I was humbled to see it up close and in awe.


Before I go any further, I need to explain a few of my personal viewpoints on what makes a truly scary and awe-inspiring shiver inducing antagonist. There are those that would argue that Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers are the penultimate in horror. Nay, I say. While they may be “supernatural” in that they keep coming back and back and back, they are still merely in human form carrying human weapons and they muck about in fairly predictable fashion carrying fairly predictable weapons looking for random teenagers to dispatch in fairly predictable and rapid fashion. And frankly, that makes them fairly boring and annoying. Also, to what end do Misters Vorhees and Myers seek whilst spreading angsty teenager bits about? Exactly. They were once mad about somebody or other not babysitting or something. Bah. Serial killers? Nope. I can touch it, define it, and I know how to kill it. The results may be gross, but rarely terrifying.


You want a real scary nightmare to make you retreat into the furthest reaches of your couch with your buttery popcorn bucket? It should come from a place that you don’t understand and can’t put your finger on, a place that you can barely imagine or, better yet, can’t imagine at all. Beyond death’s door. Hell. These are a good start. Next, said nightmare should have a genuinely fear-inducing motivation. Its entire goal is not just to kill you. It needs to thoroughly scare the living crap out of you, make you suffer, torture you, and then… once the fright has thoroughly penetrated and enveloped your sweaty trembling self, make your final end conducive to whatever your break with morality was. In fact, if your only escape route in this life-threatening situation was to ditch your friends, hop on your motocross bike, and tear down the freeway, this antagonist would take great pleasure in watching you from the dark shadows try to start your bike over and over again, all the while grinning with wickedly pointed teeth and enjoying the futility of watching you suffer while twirling your bike’s chain on its long and twisted finger. It would then, after said drawn-out torture, smear your still-dying face back and forth across the cabin window to demonstrate to your former friends that there was more to come. Rinse, repeat.


This nightmare cannot be stopped. It is motivated by witch’s darkest magic, pure hatred and deepest despair to slowly but surely exact eye-for-an-eye revenge, and it enjoys every moment of it. It is a demon beyond comprehension, and its beginning, middle and twisted end is true horror…no one gets away, and everything that happens is tragic. Everyone pays a price, even the protagonist.


And thus, please allow me to graciously introduce all of you to one of my favorite nightmares.

"I'm bored". I have never understood this phrase. And in fact, whenever my son Kier says it, my husband and I laugh. Outside of the obvious never-ending chores that need attending to, there is so much fun to be had in the world; there are millions of fascinating stories to read, thousands of movies to see, countless games to play (video and board), toys to imagine with, puddles not yet stomped through, bugs not yet examined, places unexplored, languages and history to absorb...so many pictures not drawn or photographed, conversations not yet had, new friends not yet met, monsters in the clay not yet sculpted, stories not yet told, food to be played with (and hopefully enjoyed later), miles to be run, towering Lego structures to be built...well, hell. I'm personally ready to retire right now and kick that list off right, but it's just obtaining that winning lotto ticket that's holding me back.

This is why weekends are such a conundrum to me. This weekend, my goals outside of packing kid lunches, getting all the laundry done, ordering a couple of Alana Rose Schiro's amazing macabre Rotten Roses on Etsy, putting out the Halloween decorations with Kier in the yard, running 2 miles to train for that half-marathon in January, and writing the outline for an awesome new horror novel is to finish a Goodreads blog and put the roof on my Polgara sorceress miniature house and populate it with handmade miniature blue roses. (Please do read The Belgariad for more on that topic.) So not too much. But I did finish at least the one thing, so....success!

There has been a lot happening the last few days that I am just so excited about. First off, there was my recent move from one job to another. That was immediately followed by actually finishing writing and editing my first fiction book, which was then followed by my birthday. As you can imagine, my head is swimming with all the activity.

I am happy to report that all seem to have gone off without a hitch. The job transition, while an emotional one as I was leaving a company (and all the friends that came with it) after six years of hard work and good times to jump into a brand new experience, went surprisingly well. The new job, new crew and new surroundings are all panning out to be quite good. The book experience was a roller coaster of craziness for the time that I was focused on the writing, and then editing, but now I am back to having my evenings and weekends to myself again (for the time being). Well, as to myself as they can be with two sons running around. And the birthday ended up being great because it just so happened to coincide with the book being uploaded to the printer and getting ready to print. Exciting is really the best way to describe that feeling.

All in all things are great, I would say!