Halloween In Retro
I love Halloween. Like any of y’all thought there was any doubt. Even when I was a little kid, I loved it. Except for when I was six and my mother made me dress as Cat in the Hat. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but most six-year-old boys don’t think that Dr. Seuss is particularly fantastic. Still, I would almost take it over the bland and dark Halloween night I’m spending.
A few jack-o-lanterns are flickering on porches (including mine), and some Halloween decorations adorn houses, but as I drove through Oklahoma City at night, I was overwhelmed by the distinct lack of Trick-Or-Treaters or anyone else ready to celebrate.
I spoke to my dad on the phone, and in my hometown they had already entertained two hundred or more candy seekers, with more continuously showing up.
It was disheartening to say the least, even if I had my traditional Halloween food and movies to comfort me, even a new writing project to edit and submit (I missed Bloodshot Books call last year, but I had one waiting this time), but I always reminisce around this time and wonder what it will be like to eventually raise children in a place that doesn’t seem to celebrate the spookiest night of the year.
Hopefully I’ll sell enough books or get a sweet Netflix deal to move me to a nice Halloween-loving town.
Man has walked on the moon; anything is possible I guess.
Still, I’ve had many good Halloween memories and costumes over the years, so now I get to lead you on a less-than-exciting road trip through the years of costumes and events that made up Halloween.
I watched a lot of Action League Now when I was a kid and for those of you who can’t remember what that is, it was a sketch on old Nickelodeon shows such as All That (SNL for Kids) and KaBlamm! It revolved around a group of incredibly crappy superheroes going about their lives. Naturally, I thought that the Lab Guy side character was cool. He was a mad scientist type, so for First Grade that’s what I went as, a mad scientist, test tubes and all. I broke every single one of those test tubes before the day was done.
Fast-forward a year and my teacher put a moratorium on our costumes: we could only dress up as a character from a book. This put a damper on my plans to be Godzilla.
I wish I had pictures of this costume that I could show you, but alas they are all Polaroids. It was papier-mâché mostly, but it had a tail, a Godzilla head helmet, and spikes down the back. Pretty much the only thing it didn’t have was the ability to breathe radioactive fire. This was in the days before commercial Godzilla costumes, so all of this was homemade.
High and low I searched through bookstores (my parents often dropped me off at Books A Million, knowing I would never leave) and I was triumphant in my search. It was picture book called Who’s Afraid of Godzilla?
I marched into my class on Halloween day, slapped that bad boy down on my teacher’s desk, and proceeded to roar and destroy miniature imaginary cities everywhere.
It was Third Grade and onward that I really began to take Halloween as my own, on account of a werewolf mask that I had purchased from Wal-Mart. This was the mask that I would wear every single Halloween until I graduated from high school. I had furred gloves and used army fatigues from a surplus store. I looked pretty scary for a four-foot-something werewolf. My friends and I would continue to Trick Or Treat like this for the next few years until we were finally too old to do it anymore.
Our first year of ceasing Trick Or Treating operations was in the Sixth Grade, but for a bunch of pre-teens still obsessed with getting candy we put our collective heads together and came up with a better candy-acquiring enterprise. We decided that there were plenty of smaller kids out going door-to-door; we just had to scare their candy sacks away from them. And that is how we began to traumatize small children by putting on an impromptu haunt in my front yard.
Cody Copeland (one of my very best friends) made a harness that would allow him to jump off my parent’s balcony, pretending to hang himself. Patrick Grissom provided a fog machine that turned the whole forty yards from the road to the house into a murky nightmare. Chris Kile dressed up as a stuffed scarecrow and sat beside the front door, motionless and ready to strike. Daniel Crumpler (another one of my very best friends), Will Brittain, Joshua Clements, Patrick Fruge, Grant Hogan, Tony King, Stephen Smith, and a whole host of others became foot soldiers that were more than eager to scare kids out of their hard-earned candy.
Naturally, none of this came with waivers, liability forms, or anything that probably would have made this legal or at least lawsuit-free. No one ever got seriously hurt, but if I did the same thing today you’d better believe I’d have enough forms to keep my butt out of the fire. After all, one year we actually did use a few burning fires to direct kids into the path we wanted.
For years we did this, with people regularly drifting in and out of our cast of characters and costumes. We’d obtain loads of candy; turns out toddlers and young kids scare easy, but sometimes it resulted in injuries.
There was this one kid who was dressed up as a knight, and when I jumped out from behind a rock and scared him, he swung that sword directly into my face. I went down hard, blood pouring out of my nose and mask as that little kid went on a rampage, whacking everyone who came near him to get to the front door.
To this day, I can still hear his battle cry.
“MUST HAVE TRICK-OR-TREAT!”
He punctuated every word with a swing of his sword and left me with a cracked nose, blood all over my mask, and a big smile on my face.
We did this for years: scaring kids, eating food, and watching scary movies, before turning in and going home (unless Halloween fell on a weekend). They were good times, but good times end, and ours were put to a stop when we all went to college.
It’s ten years to the day since we last scared kids in the yard, but my dad still tells me that for years afterward kids would ask about us.
“Where are the boys who would scare us?”
Kid, we are grown up, have families, and a mortgage.
I still think about getting in touch with the guys each Halloween, getting us back together to scare the crap out of some kids. A few of them even have kids of their own now. It’s a pipe dream, but like lots of things, you never know what could happen.
I’ve taken time off next year for Halloween; it’s on a weekend, giving me a good amount of spare time to spend in my hometown.
Maybe I’ll give the guys a call.
Current Projects
I’ve been hard at work finishing my western, The Magpie Coffin,forthcoming from Death’s Head Press. I’ve really enjoyed working on this character and on the ways in which he dispatches his quarry. I reached into some disturbing places and situations in order to kill some fictional people. It may not be a “horror western”, but I’m certain that it hits dark places and grabs the appellation of “splatter western” by the horns. At my current progress, I should be finished mid-November with a release date in February.
After that is finished, I’ll be concurrently working on two projects, one of which is a secret project for a publisher that I can’t talk much about yet. Looking at a tentative release date of early 2021 for that project.
The other is, of course, the Clickers project.
A brief history lesson: J.F. Gonzalez (an author that has heavily influenced my work) wrote the first Clickers novel with Mark Williams in 1999. A seminal work of horror, it spawned three sequels (all co-written with Brian Keene) and a tribute anthology (that I was honored to be a part of).
I never got to meet the man, he died in 2014 from cancer, but his work and legacy has had a lasting impact on me and several others. Which is why I was honored and incredibly excited to be asked to co-write the next wave of Clickers novels.
As all of the previous novels were co-written, these new Clickers novels would also be co-written by authors from the next generation. Stephen Kozeniewski and I were asked to tee off with the first one. This will be our second collaboration (look for the Perfectly Fine House from Grindhouse Press next year!), and we’ve been eagerly brainstorming ideas and settings for our project. The stories aren’t beholden to old canon, which has offered up plenty of new avenues to explore.
Our brainstorming sessions have produced some good ideas so far, even a setting, but it has also produced my chief annoyance in life: The Flying Clickers.
People asking me, “Will it have Flying Clickers?” has started to become my, “What about the ending to the Rising?” Time will tell if this variation of Clicker stars among the other ones that we have cooked up.
Besides that, there are a few other less definite things: a submitted novella to Bloodshot Books, a comic book pitch, and the occasional short story.
Busy, busy, busy, but it is a good problem to have.
Other Announcements
Catfish in the Cradle has sold well, but it can still do better. Luckily, there are places you can acquire it from.
If you like the internet and being able to make extravagant purchases from the comfort of your couch (like me), then it is available on Amazon at the following address: https://www.amazon.com/Catfish-Cradle-Wile-Young/dp/1950259021/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Catfish+in+the+Cradle&qid=1572648628&sr=8-1
For everyone else, there are a few businesses that have chosen to stock my debut novel. Atlanta, Texas folks can go to Grandma’s Attic run by Ted Brabham, a fantastic store for antiques and other knickknacks. It was also the first place I had a signing. I love the shop and Ted has been most gracious in letting me sell there.
In Uncertain, Texas (setting of Catfish in the Cradle), you can find them in the Shady Glade Café, my favorite lake eatery. I can’t tell you all the times I’ve eaten there with my father and grandfather.
Jefferson, Texas plays host to the Taste of Caddo Café, an offshoot of Shady Glade and also a proprietor of my book. Todd, Becky, and Malayna Arnold have been wonderful in stocking them and serve some of the best food in East Texas.
