THE SHADOW PEOPLE

Hope all that celebrate Halloween in some form or another enjoyed your day because I sure did.  Hope you enjoy the story;

THE SHADOW PEOPLE

Countdown to Halloween

Three more days 'til Halloween; my favorite holiday--even better than Christmas!  As I've said previously, I love the season, I love the spooky movies and stories, I love the CANDY!!  I love the trick or treaters and apple cider, and candy apples and turning on my fireplace and and and...OMG I just love it allllll!  *Runs around in giddy excitement*

I'm going to post my Halloween story here on Sunday evening around 6pm est.  I hope its sufficiently chilling and that you guys are not too preoccupied with passing out candy to enjoy it!

Oh, and I've noticed that you guys have slowed down with the scary stories.  Now is the most important time of all to continue with the scary stories!!!  IT'S ALMOST HALLOWEEN!  Alright, I have a story for you guys.  It's not true...it's like a campfire story but it's pretty good.  I'll post it in the comment.

  Oh I recreated this (without the liquor bottle) last year.  Sorry no pictures, but it was soooo cool!

What Scares You?

Listening to you all talk about the mice and little creepy critters that give you the creeps made me curious about other scary stories that you all might want to share.  It's Halloween and the best time for creepy tales.  It doesn't have to be a ghost story or anything, but I love sharing stories.  I'll start...

There is a mouse in the basement

My bedroom is in the basement.  My boyfriend and I had transformed my nearly 100 year old house, making the basement into a huge master bedroom, w/walk-in closet, bathroom and then the other half of the basement is a family room with a big screen tv and entertainment center.  It's nice, but still, its the basement, lol. 

I went downstairs the other day and stepped on some plaster and wondered where that had come from.  I also saw other small signs of disorder but dismissed it.  So I'm sound asleep and I hear loud scratching in the next room; the corridor outside of my bedroom. 

Let me just explain, I'm unreasonably afraid of small hairy creatures that sneak into people's houses.  If you're not then you impress and amaze me.  But if I get out of bed and 'Willard' or 'Ben' (obscure reference to movies with rats), is sitting on my dresser or scurrying across my floor I am likely to have a heart attack!  So I'm sitting up in my bed at 5 am in the morning, my sheet clutched to my chest.  Thank god my friend was over.  Thank god!  Because he was poking a broom into every nook and cranny of the basement (stumbling along sleepily and not following basic instructions like turn on the light!).  Every time he stumbled over something I'd scream.  I darted up the basement steps and my cat ran past me and I screamed.  I had my friend walk me back down into the basement so I could find clothes and things for work--and to direct him on where to place the mouse traps (non-kill, of course), I screamed when he dropped it.  I screamed literally 3 times!

I have no fear of snakes, spiders, bees, wasps...but a rodent--be it large or small--terrifies me!  So it's like 5:30 in the morning and I'm perched upstairs on my couch typing away.  This will be my bed until the mouse is trapped...and probably even after. 

BTW...I was going to place a picture of a mouse on this post...but even that creeped me out.

Writers Block is a muther fucker!

I wasn't sure if I was going to tell you all this, but Pep has writers block big time.  When you get it you try to stay calm, you try to convince yourself that you don't have it.  But as the weeks have gone on I find that I simply can not write!  I can force words on paper and it will suck...it will be a series of meaningless words that do not touch me, but that finish a story already begun.

I started writing my Halloween story, the idea is sublime (at least in my own head).  It's mapped out in such a way that it's a no brainer...and yet I have written the same five sentences over and over for two days.  The first draft I read to my 16 year old daughter--who writes also--and after two paragraphs she just huffs in annoyance and says, 'Why are you writing all of that?  Why do you have to use all of those big words, and go into so much detail; you know your readers do not want to hear all of that!'  And then she says, 'I would have just said this...' and the 16 year old proceeds to break it down into the exact words that I had been searching for.  I'm nodding my head.  Yeah, that could work.

This is writers block!  When your 16 year old listens to two paragraphs of a story that you've been struggling with and tells you in 5 or 6 lines what to write and it's perfection!

And Wheels of Steel?  It's already finished in my head (the stories come to me at night while I'm lying in bed--the missing part, the elusive ending).  My fingers are poised at the keyboard...but if I have to write the same sentence over and over a million times then it's not happening.  So I've been doing other things, having fun and not thinking about writing--though it is a distant, haunting thought in the back of my head that one day soon will have to be faced.  Today was that day.

Pep had a mini breakdown as I sat behind the lappy (still unamed...though I'm kinda leaning towards Nancy or perhaps Samuel L) as my palms began to sweat, and my stomach knotted and then the tears began.  A person like me, that has to write in order to keep my thoughts in some form of semblance, can not imagine a time when the words aren't there.  Because should that happen...well I won't have writing as my form of 'therapy'.  Then I just might need 'real' therapy.


When my father was in the hospital preparing to die, which incidentally happened one day after my birthday a year ago October 10th, he said, 'You love words.'  Sometimes he would just wake up, eyes focusing on me and say things like that.  Sometime it was 'hello beautiful', and luckily for me, once it was 'Happy Birthday.' so that I got to hear him say it one more time.

I smiled and nodded.  'Yeah, Daddy, I love words.' I see words in a way that alot of people can't understand and even being a writer I can't put into words.  I see words in my head; floating on them, burying myself into them.  I love listening to other languages so that I can feel those words--I don't even care if I don't understand them!  When I string together random words and I make people cry, laugh, horny, happy/sad...how can you not love words?

And I lost that for a while, not the love, but the ability to arrange them, weave a story using them.  And then I heard a song called Nightfall.  It's by Fila Brazillia.  It has the type of repetitive beat that allows me to write to so I began to listen to it as I struggled to find the words.  I got to three minutes into the song, it transforms at exactly the 3 minute mark.  I stopped what I was doing and I listened.  And he sang exactly what I felt about words!   He says the colors, but for me it's the words...

Thank you Fila Brazillia because I tapped into my own fear, panic and love of words to begin tapping out the Halloween story.  And I feel it again.  As long as Nightfall is streaming through my computer I can feel my words again.  NIGHTFALL~FILA BRAZILLIA

Here is a preview of the story.  It is literally 2 pages so is very short.  But if you want to see it here it is; I would show you the crap I wrote before it but I'm too ashamed.  LOL.


THE SHADOW PEOPLE

Great Weekend

Thank you all for the wonderful Happy Birthday wishes!  There is a sense of awe that I have no symptoms of withdrawal from my lack of writing.  This is the first time in nearly a year that I've allowed myself to go this long without writing.  I think of WOS often (as well as other writing projects) and of course, you all out there in blog land.  But now I've allowed myself to catch up on old friends that I've neglected, enjoy the beautiful fall weather, watch a good horror movie without the laptop stuck to my legs, and hang out with the family.

All in all this is a very good writing break.  I'll keep you up to date on the return of WOS.  Talk to you soon!

Pep

Brief Hiatus

Hi everyone and thanks for wishing me 'get well soon' .  It makes me smile that so many people from all over would think about doing that.  I need to take a break from WOS but just a brief one.  I've been on a major writing binge with that story and I just hit the wall.  I have some personal matters to take care, and with not feeling well, it's been difficult to focus on the story.

I love the story and the characters and though I am at the tail end of it, I want to do it justice by not rushing it.  The ending I have in mind is very dynamic and I want it to match the excitement of the beginning...journeying into the unpredictable. I promise not to leave you all waiting long and I will post when I'm ready to start back with it.

Oh yeah, this is October, my favorite month.  My fireplace comes on, the horror movies are watched, I splurge on Halloween candy and decorate the house with pumpkins and such.  And my birthday is on the 9th so I can celebrate reaching 1 more year.  A big sigh of contentment and appreciation for all of you readers.

With Love,
Kim (Pepper Pace)

No Sunday Update

Sorry to announce that there will not be a Sunday update.  I was literally too sick this week to write-which is saying alot considering the fact that I live to write.  I wrote some today for the first time since posting Wednesday night.  I should be back on track for the Wednesday update.  Sorry guys, but thanks for always understanding!

Pep