Saturday, October 31, 2009

Halloween... and fall is almost over!

It's that time, y'all. I promised pictures of my little slice of America and here they are.

So, what kind of spooky things have I for you? Well, they aren't all spooky and scary, in fact none really are to me, but you know how that is. I'm jaded. So... first up is the fallen log.



I love downed trees. Especially ones that have fallen naturally. I like the moss that grows on them, I like how they almost always look like they are telling a story.

This one is not far from my house, out in the booger woods maybe seven miles from me. I just love how it looks. It makes me wonder how many kids have walked across it to get to the bigger trees on the opposite bank so they could swing on the vines in those trees.

I just love it.


So now, fall foliage! My area has gorgeous autumns... most years. This year we had an odd thing happen with the leaves and since it wasn't as beautiful as it normally is, I wanted to share how strange it was instead.

First, the leaves started falling before the trees actually changed colors. Odd yes, but not unheard of.

This little country back road goes nowhere--literally, it starts off the side of the main road and goes on for a mile or two, then stops. It leads to nothing but more woods.

What like about this little stretch of road is that you never, ever see any vehicles on it, but it still doesn't overgrow. ot that there aren't any vehicles that go down there, but really, why would they? There's nowhere to go.




So what's up next?



Ah! Tree roots that just make me giggle. These things are all over the place. When you live in the mountains, you get used to seeing tree roots that have grown above ground, usually on the side of a steep incline on a mountain. These kinda look like teeth, I think, but my imagination has artistic license here. I'm sure they don't really look that way to other people.

Foliage!!!!


After the first leaves fell, we got a little gold and yellow, but it wasn't special like most years. Most autumns around here are fan-fucking-tastic. But, with all the rains we've had and the strange weather of this summer and fall, I guess it just wasn't going to happen.

I got cheated, I tell ya!

There are some colorful pics in here, but there aren't many. You shall see, I promise.

This is down the road a stretch from my house.




And this thing is a tree.

Or was, anyway.

Just a rotted tree stump but I dig it. It sets my imagination going.

Wonder why things rot the way they do? Why they make those different shapes and such. It's wild, that's for sure.

Anyone else think that this looks like the perfect place for a mouse to live? I don't know why, but I just think it looks like a mouse house.

Nothing really special, but you know.





AND LOOK AT THIS!!!





It's a frigging headless grasshopper!



Technically, anyway. The head is laying beside the body, completely separated. I just had to include it.









Remember earlier when I said some leaves fell before the trees turned? Well, here's some turnage, but it's nothing great. A little gold, a little orange. This is the view from my kitchen window.

And just as the trees did turn to the brighter colors I know and love (like to the left here)... they all fell off. Like, within two days of fully changing color.

I.

Was.

PISSED!

I love walking through the woods when the trees are gold and maroon. But instead.





I got one color, then another.



Instead...



THIS IS ALL I GOT!!

By the time the maroons came out, there was no trace left of the incredible golds and oranges that are normally there.

That sucks!


And this....


This is the house next door. It's up the hill from my house and when I was a kid, my best friend and her family lived there. I've slept in that house and yes, it was creepy and scary. It still is.


Of course, it didn't look quite this bad when I was a kid. So, I've watched this house go from being a family home to an abandoned house, to a falling down wreck. And is it haunted, you want to know?

Yes. It's always been haunted that I know of. Way back when, in the beginnings of the 1900's, a young mother died in the upstairs giving birth to her youngest, and fourth, son. Five years later, her oldest son (by then he was 16) murdered his father on the front porch with an axe. I've actually heard the woman talk upstairs, and my friend's mother said she could feel people get in bed with her, but you know.






Sorry about the slight glare and bad quality of the photo. I took it from a moving vehicle.

Just trees and mountains. More colorful leaves!!!















Both pictures, same tree. On the left is from early July.

















The right is from last week.









It's wild seeing how much a few months can change something.


And lastly, vines that look like a giant spider. I love these... they're just too neat.



Oh... and before I forget. I had, repeat, HAD pictures of the old graveyard up the road. But, with my old pc going on to that big motherboard in the sky, I no longer have them. I'll have to replace them and share, along with the story of the graveyard.

So anyway, that's it. That's fall around my place. Hopefully next year will be a bit brighter and I can show y'all how beautiful it truly gets around here. Oh... and...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Peace & Love, y'all
~E.

Monday, October 19, 2009

New story up at the Piker Press

Hey everyone.

Go read my story, TEDDY, available now at the Piker Press. Also, a big thank you to the managing editor, Sand Pilarski, for being her. She's a great person to work with, easy going and just does an all around bang up job over at Piker.

So, that's my update. More to come soon--I'm working hard on the photos for Halloween. Coming at you soon!

Peace & Love, y'all.
~E.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Coming soon to... well, my blog.

Okay, so this is a blog post about an upcoming blog post.

Yeah.

I'm just giving everyone notice ahead of time that on Halloween, my blog will explode with all sorts of beautiful, creepy, wicked and spooky things. I've been traveling around my home and surrounding areas for about a month and a half now, taking pictures of all the fall foliage, as well as some of the stranger things I've run across, creepy places, odd natural formations that look somber and macabre. I'm just having fun with it.

You, my friends, will have the pleasure of seeing the little things that fascinate me and set my mind on fire. I'll be sharing these pictures with you, as well as some of the funny stories behind them or explanations of what they are etc. on October 31st, 2009--Halloween!

So, keep that in mind and check back on Halloween. It'll be good. (I hope!)

Peace & Love, y'all
~E.

Friday, October 2, 2009

To revisit an old work?

Okay, so work on the current novel has all but stopped. When you only manage thirty words in two days, after a long silence on that front, it's time to give it up--at least for a while. It's that thirty thousand word wall. Sometimes, it takes a bit to scale it and climb down the other side. I will get there. I just need time away from the current work in progress. I'm causing a brain freeze with it, so it's time to step away.

What to do with my time, other than writing short stories?

Well, I'm going to revisit my short novel, The Seventh Sister. The story is actually a knock-your-socks-off kind of tale. I just haven't bothered to perfect it yet because it's only fifty thousand words (roughly). One person has read this book, my friend Angel Rose Darke. I sent it to her a while back. Well, I'm thinking it may need some revising. Why?

Although the story is there, it still needs some polish. I wrote The Seventh Sister last year after I completed The Spider. By the time it was done, I was so deep into editing The Spider that Sister got left in the lurch. The fact that I hacked The Spider to pieces and turned it into something not even publishable by a Kindergartner's standards is beside the point. It's time to go back and see what Sister is all about and what needs doing with it.

Hopefully, there's not much.

Knowing me, it needs a total rewrite.

But, I'm happy to go back to it. I like the story, as all writers should with their own work, but this novel is one of my favorites by me (Funnily enough, I'm the only person who has read all of my novels, so I'm biased heh) and I think it deserves some attention. At last.

But for now...

Peace & Love, y'all.
~E.