Boo, y'all!

One more day to Halloween, and I still have a ghost to hang in the upstairs window. The graveyard in the front lawn is done, with cobwebs hung on the fence enclosure and dogwood tree, and my electric pumpkins (sorry, traditionalists) are ready to plug in at all the windows.

Yeah, I like Halloween, from greeting trick-or-treaters in my witch's hat to fixing blood red punch for friends who drop by.

So it stands to reason, I suppose, that I am a paranormal romance writer. I'm a sucker for a happy ending and I quite like things that go bump (or boo) in the night.

I blame my parents for that. My mother often reminds me of a butterfly, flitting here and there as something catches her interest. In the pre-Internet days in which I grew up, my folks indulged their curiosity in such oddities as spontaneous human combustion, UFOs and psychic phenomenon through magazines like Fate and esoteric books. Being a kid who read a lot, well, I read those things, too.

A few years ago, I had a free airplane flight, so I chose to visit a friend in New Mexico. While she was at work, I drove to Roswell, the mecca for UFO freaks, because I simply couldn't be two hours a way and not do it. And, yes, it was worth the trip, thank you very much.

Every so often, someone asks me the ubiquitous question: "How do you write what you do?"

That translates like this: If they were me, they'd follow the famous rule of "write what you know" and pen pages about the world in which they live.

I do write about what I know, even if my worlds are all in my head or, as in the case of my Ancients vampires, the pages of a book. To me, the society of the Ancients and those who populate it are as ordinary as next door neighbors. (Or, in the case of my own next door neighbors, actually more normal and believable.)

And really, is it hard that to believe there might be vampires living down the street? Or that the lady a block over, the one we catch occasional glimpses of, is actually a ghost who only comes out at certain times of the day?

What about you? Ever watch that old guy lumber down the street and secretly suspect he might be a zombine? Or wonder if the guy with the spiky beard and weird eyes could be a demon in disguise?

Anyway, tomorrow is Halloween, and we all know what that means ... time to load up on those garlic necklaces, silver crosses and wooden stakes and have a wonderful holiday!

Cammie Eicher