Non-writers are always asking me, “Where do you get your
ideas?” as if they were fed-exed to me from the planet Jupiter.  So in the spirit of that eternal question, I’ll muse on the germination of my recently launched short story collection: Fried Zombie Dee-light! Ghoulish, Ghostly Stories.

Wanted: Certified Zombie Instructor – I’m a licensed Zumba Fitness ® instructor and my writer friends are always making puns about the similarity between the words Zumba
 and zombie.  And I thought What if there really were Zombie instructors?  And what if a Zumba instructor showed up for such a job posting wholly unprepared for actual zombies?  What, indeed?

 Fried Zombie Dee-light! – After a 15-month, four-show stint with Community Theater back in 2007-2008, two songs burbled out of me. This is one of ‘em.  Southerners will fry anything.

Zombie Hunting with my Mother – I hate to admit it, but the junky garage from my childhood home inspired the setting for this story, although I do want everyone to know my mother never performed Pilates with a chainsaw. 

Giving Up the Ghost– Dear Abby meets paranormal love woes.  

The Girl Next Door– One of my writer friends brought a science fiction story to a workshop about an advent calendar in space. I started thinking, What if someone received a wooden advent calendar and instead of candy, there were body parts inside each compartment?  Jewel Sutton, a supporting character in “The Accidental Poet” from my collection CURSED: WICKEDLY FUN STORIES demanded the lead in what became a monologue that I performed onstage for CAST Community Theater. I even used a fake eyeball as a prop. 

Crushed – inspired by every crush I’ve ever had.  
 
Finding the Way Home– How many people are haunted by a dog? Until I wrote this story, Pete haunted me.  Not physically, but emotionally.  Getting the tale on paper seemed to exorcise him from my psyche.  A few years after the incident, we
wound up adopting a dog very much like him from the animal shelter.  Coincidence?  Dunno. I do know it seemed to lay him to rest for good.   Click on the Tab: Mystery Dog to see the photo of the dog we took in.  She also appears as the ghost image in my author photo. 
 
So, there you have it and there you are.  Seven short pieces, not a single one from the planet Jupiter.  
 
So, where do you get your ideas?


 

A vampire legend is gone.

Actor Jonathon Frid, best known for playing reluctant vampire Barnabas Collins on the 1960s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, died yesterday at the age of 87.  I am deeply saddened by his passing.  Another icon has left us. 

Dark Shadows aired from 1966-1971 and I watched the show religiously between 1967 until its final demise.  I was four or five years old when I discovered it.  Every afternoon at 3PM, I'd glue myself to the black and white TV in our den for another mesmorizing episode of vampires, ghosts, warlocks, werewolves, mad scientists, reanimants, and witches.  I loved this show so much I wanted my mom to name my baby brother Barnabas when he was born in 1969.  She didn't.  She named him Rob after the main character on the Dick Van Dyke Show.

Barnabas Collins was my first vampire crush long before Frank Langella's Dracula (1979) or Brad Pitt's Louis in Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire or Gary Oldman's Dracula in Francis Ford Coppala's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) or the character of Nick Knight on Forever Knight.  Surpringinly, Frid did not look like the object of a typical school girl crush.  He was not all like the teenie bopper heart throbs of that time such as Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, and Bobby Sherman.  And he didn't even have a leading man look like Rock Hudson, Paul Newman Robert Redford.   But he brought such heart and pathos to the character of Barnabas that I couldn't help falling in love with him.  
 
With the advent of Tim Burton's forthcoming remake of Dark Shadows, I've read many reviews stating that the original show was campy.  Actually, it only *looks* campy by today's standards.  The show at that time took itself very seriously and played the supernatural stuff straight.  Which is why it worked.  Otherwise, it just would have been another Munsters or Addam's Family and it was nothing like those shows other than sharing a gothic element/storyline.  Frid was a Shakespearean actor with a Master's degree in drama from Yale.  He brought great depth to the character of Barnabas that a lesser actor would have made silly much like George Hamilton's intentional camp in Love at First Bight. 

Jonathon Frid might be gone but he has been immortalized forever on videotape and film.  And you can now acquire the original series on DVD.  A pretty good TV movie was made after the series ended: House of Dark Shadows.  Check it out sometime.  And experience the world's first TV vampire.  And the object of a little girl's crush.  A little girl all grown up now who writes about werewolves, witches, ghosts and zombies.

Here are my top twenty favorite books/series of all time because I couldn't narrow it down to just ten. 

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams

2. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

5. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

6. The Stand by Stephen King

7. Ghost Story by Peter Straub

8. Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series

9. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein

10. The Trixie Belden mystery series

11. Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon

12. Maledicte by Lane Robins

13. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

14. Book of Shadows by Phyllis Curott

15. Dune by Frank Herbert

16. The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

17. The Kitty Norville series by Carrie Vaughn

18. Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

19. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

20. The first 4 Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling

So, what are your Top Five favorite books of all time?