We are settling in for the final push towards Halloween. Here at the New House™ that includes some things that I didn’t have to deal with when we were in Ferndale. Primary among these is the fact that we have a swimming pool to close. I frequently boast that I learned to swim in Lake Superior so I am used to cold water, but even I’m not prepared to take a dip when its in the 40s with the wind making it feel likes it’s 33F (which is what it is right now according to my weather app).

The whole closing the pool thing was hampered a bit by the fact that of the EIGHTEEN bolts which hold the pool filter closed, one of them simply would not come off. I tried everything from pliers to a pair of monkey wrenches to the drill (which was how I got the rest of them off, what can I say, work smarter not harder, right?). Finally The Mrs borrowed an angle grinder from our neighbors and we cut the damn thing off. The process was further delayed by the necessity to replace the cover which was pretty torn up and the pillow thing which was not holding air.

Ugh.

Everything is now (mostly) covered and (mostly) put away. I will finish that all up when it’s not pissing down rain like it is today.

The pool maintenance and lousy weather, coupled with the fact that I did something unpleasant to my back (possibly straining to loosen that stupid bolt) have also delayed the finalization of the Halloween decorations. I am consoling myself with the knowledge that if we were still at the old house I wouldn’t have anything put up yet.

In much more pleasant news, I had a grand time on Saturday. The Spooktastic Book Fair was a lot of fun. Then I spent the evening handing out Halloween candy for the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers in Clawson. I really appreciate being able to participate as we don’t get any Trick or Treaters out here in the land of no sidewalks. It is great seeing the 1,500 or so kids all dressed up.

On the mead front, I have three gallons of various flavors that I will be bottling as soon as I finish this post.

Listening To: I’ve head the headphones on while working so I’ve gone through a lot of audiobooks in the past week. These included The Eyes are The Best Part by Monika Kim, Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, Root Rot by Sakia Nislow, and Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge. I’m currently listening to Scuttler’s Cove by David Barnett. Thank Cthulhu for Hoopla. I’ve also been on an old school Prince kick when not listening to books.

Currently Reading: My Ex, The Antichrist by Craig DiLouie. This one is a lot of fun.

Current Obsession: Prepping the house for the cold. The Mrs added an insulation strip in the jam of the back door to cut down on the draft (which does nothing during the day time when she’s gone and I leave the door cracked open so Tesla can go out whenever she wants to. Ssshhhh.) I’m hoping for a few more sunny days before I put plastic up on the windows in the sunroom.

As mentioned above, the Spooktastic Book Fair was great. Tons of people right from the jump, all there because they were looking for books and book related objects.

We received our copies of It’s Dark In Here so they will be available for sale in person at all of our upcoming shows, but you will have to wait until next month for those.

We have started looking at next year’s show schedule. If you have a horror or book related convention that you think we might be interested in, please reach out and we will see if we can fit it in our schedule.

We are also looking at our publication schedule for next year. We have some ideas that have been floating around for a while (and by floating around we mean jotted almost illegibly in one notebook or another). It’s now a matter of figuring out which ones we want to move forward on.

From the behind the scenes files: we are officially downsizing our storage bins. We used to bring all of our books in two large (27 gallon) HDX bins with a slightly smaller one for the ancillary material like the cashbox, table covers, etc. Every once in a while we would do a show where one of our authors was also vending. In that scenario we would not sell their books (because I’m an asshole, but I’m not that much of an asshole). This means either carrying books we weren’t planning on selling or taking them out and hoping to remember to put them back before the next show. The solution was to purchase much smaller bins and make one for each of the authors that we overlapped with. Then we could just leave those bins behind.

This lead to the revelation that while toting more bins was kind of a pain, it was much less than the pain of hefting a giant box of books all over the place. By the beginning of this year we had separated all of the books out by author. This still left one huge bin of DRP titles (the anthologies that raise money for LDDR) and my personal titles. After the show this weekend we finally decided that these can also get split up. From now on we will only have one big bin with the tablecloths and such, awkward but not heavy, and multiple smaller bins. Hopefully this will prevent further back issues.

While we don’t have any conventions on the immediate horizon, we do want to remind everyone that the Monster Mash for Literacy Bash is only a week and a half away. Information regarding the party, which raises money to fight illiteracy, can be found here along with ticket information by clicking here. Tickets are $10, but if you prepay you also get 10 tickets for the raffle.

We have just over a week until the best holiday of the year and I’ve been spending it taking in some very Halloweenie media. I usually spend my time revisiting old favorites, but this week I experienced some new fiction which may just end up added to my list of things to revisit in the future.

First up, I highly recommend Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest. This book is absolutely perfect for setting the Halloween mood. It is the story of a town which has an annual tradition to insure good crops and good fortune for the town — a town which holds on to its citizens. The teen-aged males are starved for the five days before Halloween, locked in their rooms by their families. They are then released on Halloween night with the sole objective of finding the October Boy, also known as Sawtooth Jack and Ol’ Hacksaw Face — a pumpkin-headed monstrosity filled with candy. They must stop him from reaching the town church by midnight. The boy who finds and kills the October Boy (and feasts on the confections which make-up his innards) will find his family set financially for the next year. Plus, the winner gets to leave the town. If they don’t stop him…

In a similar vein, the recent film Clown in a Cornfield (2025), based on the novel by Adam Cesare, finds a group of teens being terrorized by the clown mascot of the local corn syrup factory. The movie has a ton of hilarious references to the current generation and their inability to perform tasks that older generations grew up with. It is also terrifying, bringing to mind the best of the slasher genre but with a fresh take on the horrors while occasionally pushing against the fourth wall but not completely breaking it. It’s a great addition to your Halloween watch list.

Each of these touches on the folk horror genre, with the antagonists being driven by a need to keep things as they are, to preserve the status quo and the “traditions” of the town. I highly recommend each of these as we speed along towards Halloween.