Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

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by Susan McBride

One of the questions that writers are asked most frequently has to be, “Where do you get your ideas?” I remember hearing Denise Swanson once tell someone, “I order mine from J.C. Penney,” which I thought was pretty funny. Personally, I pluck mine from the Idea Tree which grows right beside the Money Tree in my backyard (oh, man, don’t I wish!).

Okay, seriously, I find ideas everywhere all the time. It’s almost impossible for me to go out anymore–or to take a shower or get on the treadmill–without the seed for a plot planting itself in my mind. When I first began writing seriously post-college, I’d cut stories from the newspaper that intrigued me, usually those concerning a missing person or a baffling homicide that got me thinking, “What if it had happened this way instead?”

That’s how I wrote AND THEN SHE WAS GONE, my very first published mystery. A little girl had gone missing from a public park in broad daylight in Plano, Texas, with loads of people around watching T-ball games; yet no one had seen a thing. That bothered me to no end until I had to sit down and write about it. The next Maggie Ryan book to follow, OVERKILL, had its plot loosely based on a school bus shooting in St. Louis. Something about being able to control what happened in my fictional tales had a soothing effect on me, like justice did win out (even if it doesn’t always in real-life).

Once I started writing the humorous Debutante Dropout Mysteries, I couldn’t exactly use such heart-wrenching real-life stories as my jumping-off point. I had to tone things down a lot (although there’s no on-the-page violence or much of anything graphic except emotion in either GONE or OVERKILL). BLUE BLOOD, the first in the series to feature society rebel Andy Kendricks, involved the murder of the loathsome owner of a restaurant called Jugs (think “Hooters” with a hillbilly theme). I’d gotten so sick of seeing ginormous Hooters billboards all over Dallas that it felt pretty good to exterminate Bud Hartman, a sexist and hardly beloved character. Next, in THE GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO MURDER, I offed a Texan version of Martha Stewart after watching one too many of Martha’s holiday specials and feeling like an inadequate dolt. I must admit, that felt very cathartic, too.

When I was asked to write THE DEBS young adult series, I had to change my mind-set. I mean, I wasn’t going to kill anyone in those books (except maybe with dirty looks and reputation-destroying words). Then I got to thinking about the teens and twentysomethings I know, and I realized that technology might have changed since my high school days but emotions had not. So the ideas for the plotlines in THE DEBS; LOVE, LIES, AND TEXAS DIPS; and the forthcoming GLOVES OFF stemmed from relationship issues. Who hasn’t experienced a friend’s betrayal, a broken heart, a mother’s ultimatum, or a dream dashed? The best part about writing those novels was getting to re-enact some of my high school drama via the characters in the book…and getting to have my debs say all the witty and acerbic things that I wish I’d said in similar circumstances. Ah, sometimes it’s really therapeutic playing God, at least on the page.

When the chance came to write THE COUGAR CLUB, I leapt at it. I’d been dying to write about women my age who happened to date younger men (I only dated one but I ended up marrying him). I’d gotten sick and tired of the way the media portrays “Cougars” as desperate old hags with fake boobs, tummy tucks, spray-on tans, platinum hair, and Botoxed features. My friends in their 40s and 50s who’ve dated and/or married younger guys are smart, successful, classy, and real. So I came up with the idea of three women who’d been friends in childhood but slowly drifted apart through the years because of jobs, marriage, children, and distance. When they’re all 45, they end up coming together again as they each hit huge potholes in their respective roads. What they help each other to realize is that true friendship never dies, the only way to live is real, and you’re never too old to follow your heart. These are the middle-aged (but hardly old) women I know. Heck, the kind of woman I am.

I’ve got a zillion ideas floating around my brain for the next books I need to write (namely, a young adult novel that isn’t a DEBS book and another stand-alone novel to follow THE COUGAR CLUB). The hardest part for me is getting the ideas down on paper for my agents and editors to see in a way that makes sense and conveys all the nuances I’m imagining. But enough about my Idea Tree. I’d love to hear from y’all. Do you order from J.C. Penney like Denise? Cut out pieces from the newspaper? Eavesdrop in restaurants? Inquiring minds want to know!

A Writer’s Whirlwind

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With my current publicity photo as proof, you can see that while some authors get writer’s block, I get stumped!

Hurricane Ike was due to hit the Louisiana coast near Lake Charles on September 12, 2008. I boarded up the windows and delivered my wife Raejean and our dog to my mother’s house on higher ground. Forecasters predicted the storm surge would put River Road under three feet of water (and two feet under our house, which sits on eight-foot pilings on the Calcasieu River near the I-10 bridge). Throughout the night, I watched the water rise, rip our dock apart, and slosh past the predicted mark under our house to engulf equipment I had placed on sawhorses. Then the churning water lurched up the stairs until there was six feet of water under our house. At daybreak, I remembered promising my neighbors to feed their cat, so I waded through rushing, neck-deep water with wind-driven rain stinging my face.

Ike, the third most destructive hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States, left us with thousands of dollars worth of damage and one magnificent gift, a two-ton cypress stump that drifted over our “hurricane” fence from the swamp that had been clearcut in the 1920s. Five days later, a neighbor boated me to the head of River Road, where Raejean picked me up.

That meeting was its own miracle, because Raejean and I had dated for two months in 1983, when I was teaching at Lamar University, then didn’t hear from each other for twenty-two years. One morning, I opened my e-mail and there she was again. After a whirlwind romance, we married on January 4, 2008.

The birth of A Savage Wisdom has its own drama. By 1992 I had published two small-press novels and thought I could interest a major press in the story of the only woman executed in Louisiana’s electric chair. After researching the Valentine’s Day crime of Toni Jo Henry—a drug addict and prostitute by 14—I realized that she was not a sympathetic character.

Instead, I became interested in how an innocent person could transform into a cold-blooded murderer, so, in my “imaginative reconstruction,” I reversed much of her story, making her an ingénue and the novel a study in deception. After four years of work, I knew it was the best novel I would ever write.

I submitted it again and again to agents and editors who all said the same thing: the writing is brilliant, but we don’t think we could sell this because it’s not really true crime, nor is it a murder mystery or any other sub-genre we know of.

After seven years, I decided that my next best chance would be to secure a major-house publication through one of their contests, so I packed it off to a competition sponsored by two well-known New York publishers.

I was thrilled when I heard that Savage was one of five finalists. After another wait, I was dejected by the news of its second-place finish. But here’s the shocker: the first-place novel was not even listed among the original five. What happened? I believe the final editors saw that a friend’s manuscript was not among the finalists and overrode the initial screeners’ decisions.

Two years later, I saw that a movie based on Toni Jo’s life would be released in
2008. Thinking that interest generated by the movie would increase sales, I luckily found a small press, Thunder Rain, willing to publish Savage quickly.

The novel has done exceedingly well in Louisiana, and in May of 2009 it launched as a Kindle book on Amazon.com, climbing three times to #5 in the competitive True Crime/Murder & Mayhem category.

Dr. Norman German
Winner of the Deep South Writers’ Contest, and author of A Savage Wisdom (Thunder Rain Publishing.
http://www.asavagewisdom.com/

Writing Can Save Your Life

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We’re writing about writing this week at the Stiletto Gang. After a very happy Hallopalooza, and a great big shout-out to Southern Evelyn David for thinking this up while working her tail off at her day job, we’re settling back in to posting about the things we love, the things we think about, and the things we’d like others to love and think about. So this week it’s writing and I have a lot to say.

Not that that’s different from any other week.

The Northern half of Evelyn David and I talk about this quite a bit and she was the impetus behind a talk I gave in Tennessee last year that I called “Writing Can Save Your Life.” See, I didn’t started writing in earnest until I turned 39. It seemed like I had passed through my thirties thinking “I’ll write later” when I was finished potty training, house breaking, and doing lots of little things every day that added up to big things when the day was done. I kept putting it off until a rather round birthday approached and I realized “I am middle aged. I’d better get moving.” So I started to write and cranked out Murder 101 in a year, focusing on little else. I started Extracurricular Activities while sending out query letters to agents until the wonderful Deborah came knocking. And I continued writing while I waited to hear from the wonderful Kelley that indeed, she wanted to publish my books. I was so glad I decided to write.

Fate had a different idea of how my story would turn out, though, for on the day that I received my contracts for the first two books in the Murder 101 series, I was also diagnosed with cancer. And not just any cancer, “a bad one” as an acquaintance would say when my husband told her about the news. But instead of focusing on how bad the situation was (and it was) and how I should have been able to focus on the happiness of seeing my dream come true (that’s life, baby), I continued to write. I wrote through three rounds of chemo, one horrendous surgery, twenty radiation treatments, more chemo, two biopsies, a clinical trial, more chemo, and finally, the clinical trial that changed my prognosis from dire to positive. Because as bad as Alison Bergeron’s life may seem to those of you who read about her in every installment, she has never had cancer and she never will.

What she has is man trouble, murder trouble, and dog trouble. She falls down in too-high heels, a lot. She says the wrong thing at the wrong time and zigs when she should zag. She deals with life’s little problems, which to her, seem like huge problems. That’s why I love her. And that’s why I write.

I love writing, but in particular, I love my characters and try to do the best by them. Because as bad a day as I am having, I can make theirs that much better. I can get out of my own head and into somebody else’s. I can let them live happily ever after or make them hit a giant bump in the road, a bump that will soon by smoothed over. They have their ups and downs and hopefully, always end in “up.” But ultimately, I always know what’s going to happen to them, and that kind of control is hard to come by in the real world.

I have been on a lot of medicine and have been attended to by the smartest people the best insurance in the world can get you access to. I’m lucky that way. But I’ve also been supported by devoted family and friends and despite what I have had to go through, been able to do what I’ve always dreamed of doing: write. Writing is my passion and it gives me purpose. Without it, I don’t know how I would have survived.

Do what you love every day. It doesn’t have to be writing, but if it is, make it a point to escape for a moment or two every day and go to your other “world.” Because for me, in a very real sense, writing saved my life.

Maggie Barbieri

Some Tidbits About My Latest Book

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For the entire month of October I was on a virtual book tour where I jumped from blog to blog every day except on the weekends.

Though easier than a regular book tour in that I didn’t have to dress up and drive off to various book stores, I did have to spend a lot of time on the computer writing about Dispel the Mist and answering interview questions.

I probably had more fun writing Dispel the Mist the any of my other Deputy Tempe Crabtree mysteries. In every one of the books in this series there are always Native American elements both mystical and real. This latest book was conceived after I learned about the legend of the Hairy Man. The Tule River Indian Reservation is very near where I live. When I learned the Indians not only had a legend about a Hairy Man, there also was an ancient pictograph of him and his family in a rock shelter called The Painted Rock.

Once I started asking questions about the Painted Rock site I was invited to go on a field trip with the local anthropology class and take a look at the Hairy Man. It isn’t ever going to be a tourist attraction. The rock shelter is a huge boulder with other boulders piled ontop making the cave where this painting and many others are located on the rock surfaces. It is very difficult getting down the boulder to enter the cave like entrance. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the much younger college students who helped me down, I’d have never made it.

The paintings, though faded, are still quite discernible despite the fact they are thought to be between 500 and a 1000 years old. I was definitely inspired at that moment.

The Hairy Man has an important place in Dispel the Mist. The story centers on the suspicious death of a popular county supervisor who has roots in both the Indian and the Hispanic communities. There is controversy over a hotel complex the Indians want to build alongside the highway and a licensed group home for developmentally disabled women in an up-scale neighborhood.

Tempe is haunted by unsettling dreams that may or may not be prophetic.

For a look at the Hairy Man on the Painted Rock, take a look at the book video for Dispel the Mist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZhaJgHUxo

Marilyn

http://fictionforyou.com
http://www.mundaniapress.com

Hallopalooza Reveal & Winners!

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Thank you for joining us on our first Hallopalooza – our first Stiletto Gang Scavenger Hunt. We hope you had fun, enjoyed the mystery, and found some new blogs to visit on a regular basis!

If you’d like to read the entire mystery in one location, we are including a link to the Evelyn David website where you’ll find a PDF file of the story.

The Halloween Ball Mystery introduced a new character, Private Detective Milla Adams. Milla had to interview many suspects over the weekend, sort through many red herrings, and travel down many blind alleys. Sometimes the best way to figure out “whodunit” is by eliminating the suspects who “couldn’t have dunit.” Milla and the winners did just that.

Steven McCall killed Carla Jordan. Wearing a cape and witch’s mask, he followed her to the conservatory after she stole a file from G. Winston Howard’s study. The file contained information about McCall’s crooked construction company – Sticks & Stones. Carla Jordan tried to reveal her killer’s identiy by clutching several pebbles and a stick in her hand. Milla eliminated the other suspects based on what they were wearing during the party, their opportunity to commit the crime, and their lack of a motive.

Congratulations! The readers who solved the mystery are:
Cate Matheny
Tara Woods
Helen Kiker
Shirley Nienkark
Kathleen Spencer
Janet Cearley
Darcy Odden

A random drawing from the names above was held.

Janet Cearley is the winner of the $50 gift certificate to a book store of her choice, plus a copy of A Savage Wisdom by Dr. Norman German.

The runners up win the following:
Cate Matheny – Misa Ramirez mystery
Tara Woods – Susan McBride mystery
Helen Kiker – Rachel Brady mystery
Shirley Nienkark – Marilyn Meredith mystery
Kathleen Spencer – Maggie Barbieri mystery
Darcy Odden – Evelyn David mystery

The winners will be contacted by e-mail to make arrangements for delivery of the prizes.

As of noon on Nov. 2, 2009, we also have the following information from these blog owners about the winners of their individual blog prizes. Please check at the individual blogs for more information and for other winners:

Poe’s Deadly Daughters:
http://poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com/
Winners are:
Sandra Parshall’s Crime and Punishment mug goes to : PK the Bookeemonster
Lonnie Cruse’s signed book goes to: Helen Kiker
Sharon Wildwind’s signed book goes to: Shirley (boots9k)

Morgan Mandel’s Blog – Double M’s Take on Books, Blogs, Dogs, Networking & Life http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/
Winner of a Killer Career cap or tee shirt is Jonnie (edmontonjb) from http://momofboyswithtoys.blogspot.com/

Mysterious Musings
http://www.juliabuckley.blogspot.com/
Winners for Mysterious Musings:
Copy of The Dark Backward by Julia Buckley – kaisquared and janel
Winners should e-mail Julia with their contact information.

Meanderings & Muses
http://meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com/
The winner at Meanderings and Muses:
Copy of Sharon Potts’ In Their Blood – Penny Tuttle

America Comes Alive
http://www.americacomesalive.com/blog/
The winners from America Comes Alive:
$20 Amazon gift certificate—Anne Pichette
Copy of Election Day – boots9k

Lesa’s Book Critiques
http://www.lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/
Winners from Lesa’s Book Critiques are:
Jessica Blair won Hex in High Heels by Linda Wisdom Janewon Sharon Fiffer’s Scary Stuff.

Fang Face
http://fangplace.blogspot.com/
Winner of copy of Fang Face is: Edith Max

The Stiletto Gang

A Halloween Ball Murder

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Thanks for playing – the Scavenger Hunt is over now. Winners to be announced on Nov. 2, 2009 at noon Eastern time.

The Stiletto Gang

_________________________

Cast of Characters

Heroine – Milla Adams – private detective
Sidekick – Fletcher Jones – police detective

Victim – Carla Jordan – deceased, personal assistant to G. Winston Howard

Suspects –
G. Winston Howard – millionaire, host of Halloween Ball
Buffy St. James – librarian, current girlfriend of G. Winston Howard,
Walter Jester – aide to Carla Jordan
Alana Carter – groundskeeper
Liza Barrymore – hired by Diana Trent to do costume makeup for party
Amazing Harry – escape artist hired by G. Winston Howard for Halloween Ball
Mayor Juan Reyes and his wife Sonya – guests at the Halloween Ball
Steven McCall – owner of large construction company, friend of Howard family
Julius and Frieda Rosen – they run Rosen Catering, the catering company
Dr. & Mrs. Paul Trent – Diana is the first ex-wife of G. Winston Howard.

It was a full moon. The man in the mask waited just outside the door, the dim silver light glinting off the metal blade in his hand. He was patient, much more so than the detective chasing him.

The woman inside the house paused, her hand on the doorknob. Fear etched her features. It was obvious that she knew the odds were against her. She was chasing a serial killer. The blood from his last kill was still fresh on her mind … and her shoes.

Red stilettos.

Milla Adams woke up with a start. Her television was still on. The late night slasher movie was on its third or fourth airing in a row, some kind of a Halloween marathon. It wasn’t the screams that had awakened her, or the mixing of reality with fiction in her dreams, it was her very loud telephone.

Time to go to work.

***

Milla checked her makeup in the lighted mirror on the visor of her red Porsche Boxster convertible. The car, the shoes, the perfect makeup – she had an image to protect, even when it was inconvenient – like when making a 3 a.m. call to one of her wealthier client’s mansion.

Ducking under the yellow crime scene tape, she spied a familiar face. “Fletcher? How’s Lydia?” With her trade mark red stilettos adding three inches to her tall frame, Milla was almost eye-level with her old friend. They had gone through the police academy together more than twenty years ago. He’d married another recruit and made a career of the police department. He was the lead detective on the murder investigation.

“Sleeping, which is what I was doing before the police chief called and told me I was catching this murder. Who called you?”

“G. Winston Howard, himself. He told me he was about to be arrested for the murder of his personal assistant.” Milla had spent ten years working as a police detective before leaving to open her own private high-dollar detective and security business. By the time she’d turned forty last year, she’d established a reputation for discretion and quick results. She’d need both on this job.

“Seems like he’d have been better off calling his lawyers.”

“Oh, he’s done that too. But he thought if the real murderer could be discovered before Monday, he could avoid some of the adverse publicity. His friend the mayor thinks so too.”

“Figures. The mayor was one of the guests at Howard’s party. He fancies himself a cop because he played one on TV.” Fletcher frowned. “I wish the police chief had mentioned he was being overruled by the mayor on this case. I could have stayed in bed and let you sort it out.”

“Not party – ball. Halloween Ball. It’s an annual charity thing. And I’m not taking over. I’m just here to make some inquiries.” She gestured towards the doorway. “Will you show me the crime scene? I’m on deadline, no pun intended.”

***

She pulled out her voice recorder and spoke softly into the tiny gadget.

“3:30 a.m. Friday, October 30, 2009. Residence of G. Winston Howard, multi-millionaire, or depending on the time of day and the stock market – billionaire- adventurer, and well-known philanthropist. At approximately 2:10 a.m. Miss Carla Jordan, aged 35, was found dead in Mr. Howard’s greenhouse by a groundkeeper … note to self—these are rich people so greenhouse might be called something else. Miss Jordan was Mr. Howard’s personal assistant. Detective Fletcher Jones reported that approximately 30 people attended the annual Halloween ball as guests. In addition, the caterers brought a staff of ten to dole out the food and drinks. According to his preliminary report, Detective Jones has eliminated all but thirteen as suspects in the murder. Second note to self—make sure to cross-check their alibis against each other.”

Milla leaned over the body for a better look. Clicking on her recorder she added, “The victim is in costume—dressed as a giant sunflower. Brown leotard, yellow petaled headdress. Not a particularly attractive look for her. Her hands are dirty – like she was potting some plants. Several of her fingernails are broken. Blood is pooled on the floor near her chest and right hand. The coroner has yet to determine time of death, but witnesses put her alive and well on the dance floor at 1:30 a.m. The cause of death appears to be the large knife sticking out of her chest.”

——

To read the rest of the mystery visit Evelyn David’s website for the full text.

Hallopalooza – The Reveal

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Dear Reader –

Hopefully you have visited all the participating blog sites and you’ve returned here to solve the mystery.

Put on Milla’s stiletto shoes and solve the mystery. If you’ve visited all the blog sites, you have all the clues necessary to reveal the killer. Put your mystery solution into an email to stilettogang@gmail.com or leave it as a comment on this blog. (All comments are being moderated during the Scavenger Hunt so that solutions won’t be posted until after the winner is announced. If you choose to leave a comment, remember to provide a contact e-mail address in the body of your comment. Please submit only one mystery solution per individual. If you send more than one solution, only the first one received will be considered.)

E-mails and comments must be received by 5 p.m. ET, Sunday, November 1, 2009, to be eligible for prizes.

Prizes for solving the mystery are as follows:

The grand prize is a $50 gift certificate that the winner can use for books from any online or bricks and mortar bookstore (winner’s choice of bookstore) plus autographed books.. If multiple readers solve the mystery, we will have a drawing to select the grand prize winner.

Runners-up will receive a book from one of the authors of The Stiletto Gang. If there are more than 10 Runners Up, then there will be a drawing among the Runners Up for the books – maximum number of books to be awarded by The Stiletto Gang is ten (10).

Winners will be announced at noon ET on Monday, November 2 at the Stiletto Gang blog site. https://www.thestilettogang.com/

Thanks so much for participating! Happy Halloween!

The Stiletto Gang

Warning: Nudity

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I’m going with a theme this week with blogging. Nudist resorts. Ever been to one? Want to? Would you if it was essential for research (or some other aspect of your life)?

I’ve been to a nudist resort, all in the name of research. See, in the currently-being-written third book in the Lola Cruz Mystery Series, Bare Naked Lola, Lola must go to a nudist resort to solve the case she’s working on. The question I’m faced with is: Will she, or won’t she–get naked, that is? Now, if you’ve read Living the Vida, Lola, you might be able to give an opinion on this. I know what my gut says, but I haven’t been faced with writing that particular scene yet so I can’t say for sure which way I’ll go with it.

I sort of imagine it as a Lucy and Ethel scene from I Love Lucy…all darting behind bushes and holding big leaves up!

But before I could write a single scene about a nudist resort, I had to go there and visit. And go I did. It was October, so the place was actually pretty quiet. People walked around with their shoes on and a towel slung over their shoulders (the towels are to sit on where ever you go, something I wouldn’t have known about had I not visited). Women are allowed to cover their bottom half during a certain time of month, but otherwise, if you are there, you are expected to be unclothed.

As I mentioned over at Good Girls Who Kill For Money Club on Monday, one of the most hilarious aspects was Nudestock (ala Woodstock)–and no, the bands didn’t have to be nude, although it was encouraged. Maybe Nudestock isn’t so different from the free-loving original, but still, it is something to see.

In book two of the my series, Hasta la Vista, Lola! (coming out in just 3 short months!), Lola didn’t have to do anything outrageous (other than breaking and entering, babysitting two nephews and a niece, and keeping her hands off Jack Callaghan), but there’s something so fun about putting your characters through something you’d never in a million years do. It tests you and your own boundaries and it can definitely make for hilarious scenes.

So here’s my question. What outrageous things have you done (in the name of research, or otherwise)? Would you visit a nudist resort? Just how daring are you?!

XO Misa

Halloween Then

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It’s that time of year again, when many little children (except for the ones who have parents who think that Halloween is for pagans; I, myself, worship at the feet of the god of chocolate) don costumes and roam the streets, looking for candy. And thank goodness they do! Mama needs a 100 Grand bar to satisfy that sweet tooth.

It’s not like the old days, though, when we used to get up early, particularly if Halloween was on a Saturday like it is this year, put on our flammable costumes, and roam the streets in groups, hoping not to be picked up by a serial killer, get an apple with a razor blade in it, or worse. I remember my mother sending us out, me in charge by age seven, and going up and down every street in our development, hitting every house until our environmentally-unfriendly plastic bags were bulging with candy. The rule? When your bag was too heavy to carry, you went home. Nobody in the group was carrying your bag for you (and yes, I’m looking at you, Colleen) so if you couldn’t heft it, you were out of luck.

To illustrate just how different Halloween now was from Halloween then, I’ve brought along a few family photos. Captions will explain who is who. Enjoy.

1. This is my grandmother. She took us trick or treating this particular year; I think it’s 1968. She thought it would be funny to wear one of her dead husband’s suits and put a bag over her head. It wasn’t. She scared half of the children in the neighborhood, not to mention the grownups. We left her home the next year.


2. We call this one “Bride of the Living Dead.” This is my sister, Tricia, at four years old. I don’t think my mother was going for “recently exhumed corpse” with this look, but that’s what she got.


3. Shazam! (Need I say more?)


4. Shazam revealed! (Fooled you, huh?)

5. This one is from the “When Bad Costumes Happen to Good Children” collection, currently on display at the Smithsonian. Again, my sister and her friend, Janet, look far more sinister than I think either of their mothers intended. (Notice Tricia’s lovely bridal corsage; that definitely looks like it’s been underground for some time.) Let’s just say that my father knocked off of work from the police department early and came home only to see these two lovely creatures before they set out on their candy grab. He ended up running screaming from the house thinking that trolls had gotten loose from under a bridge.

6. I think this might be a real gypsy. Note my sister’s concerned expression in the background. I think she’s been shaken down for all of her candy but she’s not sure how or why.


7. And here I am with two of my three siblings, further cementing my youngest sister’s contention that there are NO PICTURES OF HER.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Halloween!

Maggie Barbieri

Trick or Treating Past and Now

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Halloween was always my favorite holiday. You’ll see why the past tense when you get to the end of the blog. As a kid, I was the last one to come in from trick-or-treating. Once I learned where the homemade cookies, popcorn balls and candy apples were being handed out, I was off like a streak. I didn’t have to be with anyone else–my goal was to gather up as much good stuff as possible. For those who don’t know, I was a kid during World War II and sugar was rationed. Treats were hard to come by–trick-or-treat was the opportunity to stock up.

The closest I ever ran into trouble was about five blocks from home and it was about 9 p.m. When I knocked on the door a man came out with a shotgun aimed right at me. He said, “Do you know what I do to trick-or-treaters?” My “No sir,” was squeaky and I was sure I’d soon be dead. He said, “I give them candy.” He dumped a whole bunch into my sack.

When my kids were young every costume they had was homemade. I can’t remember them all. When my first one was a baby, she was dressed in white and I said she was the little cloud who cried–she did because all the scary costumes scared her. That didn’t stop me from collecting the treats though.

One of my sons suffered being dressed like a girl when he was six. We created a bookworm costume once. The girls were good at putting on lots of bright skirts and raiding my jewelry box to become gypsies or princesses. Through the year I collected bits and pieces that could be turned into costumes. Half my hall closet was crammed with various costumes we concocted.

For those coming to our house trick-or-treating, we often thought up some scary way to hand out candy. One time they had to put their hand in a box to get the candy which was handed out by a very grizzly hand.

When the kids came home with their loot, we wouldn’t let them eat it until we checked everything for problems like hidden pins or razor blades–and we ate one or two of the best treats.

We had lots of Halloween parties too over the years for kids and grown ups. For the kids we usually had a darkened haunted house to go through, and grizzly things to touch, like cooked, cold spaghetti that we called guts. Hubby would rattle chains outside the window and wear a scary mask. The grownups tried to outdo one another with their costumes.

Now we live where all the houses are far apart and ours is down at the end of a very dark and long lane. No one comes to our house trick-or-treating. When we first moved here we had twin girls who lived next door and they were the only ones brave enough to come knocking on our door at night to say, “Trick or Treat.”

We have a granddaughter and her husband who decorate their front lawn every year with the spookiest stuff imaginable. Tombstones, coffins with lids that open, ghosts fluttering in the breeze. They live in a neighborhood full of kids–everyone looks forward to seeing what he’ll come up with every year.

Celebrating Halloween for us will be limited to watching scary movies on our TV. It’s okay, I have great memories of past Halloweens.

Celebrate Halloween with the Stiletto Gang this year by going on the scavenger hunt to follow the clues and maybe win some prizes.

Marilyn