Happy Halloween!! I'm so excited to have discovered Month 9 Books,which specializes in Speculative fiction for Teens and Tweens, and of course Adults that have a passion for the genre. Today I'm happy to end my #Hallowreads event with a guest post from A. Lynden Rolland about Halloween. But first let's have a little cover adoration:
Here is the Wonderful/ Creepy cover to Rolland's Book
Of Breakable Things:
About the Book
Title: OF BREAKABLE THINGS
Author: A. Lynden Rolland
Release Date: April 29, 2014
Pages: 300
Publisher: Month9Books
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Goodreads
When Chase dies tragically, Alex embraces her own mortality. What she didn’t expect was that she’d have to make a choice: forget the years of pain and suffering once and for all, or linger as a spirit and get another chance at life and love.
Alex doesn’t hesitate to choose; she’d follow Chase anywhere. But the spirit world is nothing like she expected, and Alex finds she's forced to fight for her life once more. For even in a world where secrets are buried much deeper than six feet under, a legacy can continue to haunt you—and in a place this dangerous, no one is resting in peace.
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Now for the Guest Post, Also Check Out The Rafflecopter Below for a chance to win some great prizes
Hi, Kai!!
Thank you so much for having me! Your blog is so fabulous!! So Halloween. We have a love-hate relationship.
Like many people, I’m obsessed with the fall season: the leaves, the pumpkins, the colors, the cider, the bonfires. And I love Halloween – surprisingly. My parents wondered if the unfortunate location of my childhood home would traumatize me for life.
I grew up in a tiny Mayberry town where we rode our bikes after dark… a mile away from home … without wearing helmets … and didn’t get into trouble. I wish my own kids would know such freedom, to be able to explore without it warranting an Amber Alert. My sleepy town made for a very long night of trick-or-tricking because the houses were not built very close together. It took all night because the best houses (the ones with the giant candy bars) always seemed to be hidden down some long dirt road. In this day and age, it would the setting of a horror movie.
My quiet town was notorious during the fall season because in the middle of our creepy stretch of woods sat the best haunted house in the state.
Regrettably for me, my house was the other end of those woods. During the entire month of October, I went to bed with the lullaby of harmonizing chainsaw engines. Screams erupted constantly while people were chased through the woods. By the time I was old enough to visit the haunted house with my friends, I thought I was immune to any of its antics. I’d heard enough patrons shriek and cry and bellow, and no one had ever come banging on our front door saying they were being murdered.
At first, my young mind embraced logic and reason. I crept through the house and realized the blood was fake (even though it made me nauseated because it smelled like iron and salt). The murders were fake (even though they hired some pretty darn good actors). The person breathing down my neck behind me was probably a college kid with bad acne and an addiction to Tecmo Bowl.
I have one major weakness, though. Clowns. This isn’t uncommon, but my phobia began when I was still in diapers. I was a leash baby because our local mall had a clown who sold balloons and I’d bolt in the opposite direction every time I caught sight of her. I used to have nightmares that big, red feet were chasing me. I’d take a greasy hitchhiker holding a body bag over Ronald McDonald.
I was almost finished braving that stupid haunted house when a maniacal clown began to stalk me. I saw the feet first and images of childhood trauma flashed before my eyes. They tell me I threw an elbow at Bozo and then darted straight forward … where there happened to be a wall leading into a pitch-black maze. I bounced off the wall like an idiot and fell backwards. Clown boy leaned over me to see if I was okay and I became so hysterical that they had to escort me out the side door.
Worst. Night. Ever.
I haven’t gone to a haunted house since that night for fear that the freaking clowns will find me. *Side Note: I went to Vegas for a gymnastics competition when I was fifteen. We stayed at Circus, Circus. It was like a sick joke. Every morning I woke up to circus-themed wallpaper and an all-clown network on television. I’m lucky I didn’t wet the bed.
There is one positive thing that came out of this experience. For those of you who have read Of Breakable Things, yes, the haunted house in the book was inspired by the one right next to my childhood home. Except in my book, I play around with logic a little bit— in a world of the mental, my characters can easily trick, frighten, and toy with a ‘bodied’ mind. The things they do in that haunted house would probably be illegal in real life.
I knew if I wrote a book about the dead I needed to incorporate Halloween and the importance of The Day of the Dead.
Some of the favorite scenes to write were the images of the afterlife costumes and distorted sights during the masque to kick off the season and to end it. In book 2, they become even more psychedelic and elaborate as Alex’s mind is more open to seeing things that she might not have believed before. The Haunted House also becomes more maniacal. It’s fun. Maybe that’s my therapy.
I hope everyone has a fabulous season. Happy haunting. Happy reading. Happy Halloween. Happy All Souls Day. And for those of you heading out to haunted houses, poke a clown in the eye for me !
About A. Lynden Rolland:
Amy Lynden Rolland was born and raised in Annapolis, Maryland, a picturesque town obsessed with boats and blue crabs. She has always been intrigued by the dramatic and the broken, compiling her eccentric tales of tragic characters in a weathered notebook she began to carry in grade school. She is a sports fanatic, a coffee addict, and a lover of Sauvignon Blanc, thunderstorms and autumn leaves. When she isn’t hunched behind a laptop at her local bookstore, she can be found chasing her two vivacious children. She now resides just outside Annapolis with her husband and young sons.
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