My own scary story (one of the many) and writing news.
I have..... (Drum roll) Writing News:
1. Time Stoppers is currently on ebook sale for November. AND IT IS NOVEMBER! So you should go buy it. It's super cheap. And I really love this story. It's the story that made me decide to be a writer. The link takes you to Bloomsbury's page about it and the good press and all of that stuff. You can also check out my website to see the art I made that helped me write the book or read about me, etc. I do not promote my website much, but it's right here.
The discount will be available on Kindle, NOOK, Google Play, and iBooks.
2. I am heading to Chicago this weekend to promote FLYING and ENHANCED the fun science fiction books that I wrote that are published by Tor. I'll be visiting schools and be at the Young Adult Literature Conference (Saturday) and the YA Reading Frenzy (Sunday). More stuff about these genre-busting books full of quirky action is on my website, too. Look! I did the promotion stuff there! I deserve a gold star or candy or something.
Scary Story Time.
This is the story about the first ghost that I ever saw. . . Or the first possible-ghost I ever saw for you nonbelievers.
I grew up in what used to be rural Bedford, New Hampshire and I lived up on a hill on the corner of Hardy Road and Route 101, which was then a little two-lane highway that led from Manchester, New Hampshire (a thriving metropolis former mill town) to points west. People thought my house, a dark brown ranch with red shutters, perched up on the hill was creepy. It was the kind of house people would dare each other to go to. On a positive note, we didn't get a ton of door-to-door solicitations.
I remember when I met a girl in second grade and told her where I lived she said, “Oh. But you’re so normal. You’re not creepy at all.”
And I was like, “Huh?”
“Your house,” she said. “Your house looks scary.”
My house was scary, but my house was also home, which is sort of this weird concept for some people, a dichotomy that doesn’t make a ton of sense. How can your home be scary but also comforting? They have created entire entertainment enterprises out of this concept - things like the Addams Family where the macabre is comforting. Or the vampire family in Twilight where their vampyric nature is hidden by the clean, modern lines of wealth and big windows and good hair.
In the last ten years, I’ve incorporated a lot of the scarier things that have happened to me into books. That’s because they seem more presentable and understandable when they are fiction instead of shouting to the world, “Hey! My house was weird. Maybe haunted. Who knows?” Or, "Yeah... this happened at a seance I had in fifth grade." And the stories? They add up. You can only hear so many footsteps in so many houses before people start to think that you’re either lying or a freak. I spent a lot of time trying to quash the differences inside of me - of being poor, of slurring my s’s, of being the freak with the haunted house, the person who sometimes knew things she shouldn't logically know.
So, yeah, I grew up in this house my dad built in Bedford, NH. It was on a hill. There'd been another house there about 100 years before but it had burned down. And after that some people from Connecticut built a camp in the woods and would come there in the summer. That was in the early 1900s, I think. But those were the only known houses before ours.
Anyway, we had this great big picture window in the living room. My dad and mom were arguing at the kitchen table, so I toddled off and went into the living room. It was night time. I was really little, probably somewhere between three and five, because my parents were still married. I really hated them fighting so I waddled over to the picture window and decided to blow on it, so I could make those hand footprints in the mist that comes from your breath.
So, I started to blow on the window to see if it would frost up, but then I noticed something outside on our front lawn. Our front lawn was a big grassy hill that sloped down to the road. I cupped my hands around my eyes so I could see better and peered out because it was getting dark. There was a woman wearing a long, white dress walking across the lawn, from left to right.
That was weird. Nobody ever walked across our lawn at almost night. We were really rural, up a long driveway, up a hill.
I was little, but I knew it was funky.
But something else was wrong, too.
She was walking right above the hole for the septic tank. It was a big hole about three feet deep that was covered with two granite slabs. I knew it was there because my mom was always warning me about falling in and breaking an ankle. My mom was really, really worried about my ankles. I grew up thinking pretty much anything could break my ankle --- holes, bikes, skis, horses, soccer....
So, anyway, even though there was a hole there, the lady walked right over it.
"Mommy!"
I yelled for her but they kept arguing. The woman kept walking. She lifted her arm and waved. She seemed nice.
"Mommy!"
"What?"
"There's a lady in the lawn."
"What?"
"There's a lady..."
My mom and dad both rushed to the picture window.
"There's nothing," my dad said.
"I thought I saw something..." my mom interrupted. She turned me around to look at her. "What did the lady look like?"
"She was a lady... she was wearing white... you could see through her dress..."
My mom put me to bed, right away, but my parents stopped arguing, at least for that night.