Boo! by Annette Blair

My favorite Halloween decorations are spread by mother earth through New England: red, orange, and yellow leaves floating through the air. Pumpkins and gourds at roadside stands beside haystacks or scarecrows. Chrysanthemums dressed in fall colors. Bittersweet and Chinese Lanterns.

I’m a full time writer now, but for 21 years, I decorated my Prep School office. A favorite decoration was a large pumpkin that could be posed, sat on my desk, his feet hanging off, and every time I returned after a trip up the hall, I found him in a different amusing pose. Once, I found him smoking a cigar. Yes, we were a smoke free school, but we were also a cell-phone free school, which didn’t stop the lockers from ringing as you walked by. Witches were a very large part of my decorating, and sometimes they got posed too, not always in poses that I left as is. Teens can be inventive.

Five years ago, my Halloween tradition changed when I was invited to become Nana to my niece’s children, because her mother, my beloved sister-in-law, had passed. When I held little Travis in my arms minutes after he was born, I fell in deep, deep love. Two years later, little Kelsey entered our lives and hearts, and now my Halloween is for them. I’m picking them up at school at noon today, and taking them to the bank where their mother works for a Halloween Party. Then in the evening, as I’ve done for the last four years, I’m going trick or treating with the family. I couldn’t live without my darlings, and they’ll be so adorable in their costumes. I’ll be dressed as a witch, by the way, which they love.

Obviously I write about witches. In A VEILED DECEPTION, January 2009, New York designer Madeira Cutler comes home to help with her sister Sherry’s wedding but when Sherry is accused of murder, Maddie turns to sleuthing. Home, she has a chance to acquire the haunted Underhill Funeral Chapel Carriage House, once the county morgue, for the vintage dress shop she’s always dreamed of. She also learns that her mother was a witch and that she can read certain vintage clothes for clues to the murder. Psychometry: a gift from her mother. Has she inherited any other witchy gifts?

In my February 2009 book, NEVER BEEN WITCHED, Destiny and Morgan’s amazing story, the last of my Triplet Witch Trilogy, the series comes together with a Samhain Ritual. Destiny has decorated the lighthouse with all of nature’s gifts, and attending the event will be two ghosts and an angel, not to mention each triplet and her hero, with an ending that always makes me cry.

In LACE AND LARCENY, August 2009, 2nd Vintage Magic Mystery, Madeira Cutler, designer sleuth is having the grand opening of Vintage Magic, her Vintage Dress Shop, on Halloween. She’s doing it with a scarecrow competition and a Witch’s Halloween Ball. So we’ll have ghosts and frights, and bumps in the night.

In November 2009, my first supernatural will feature a witch who owns an employment agency: WORKS LIKE MAGIC. From there, she places shape shifters, time travelers, and otherworldly inhabitants of Salem who’ve breached the veil between the planes made thin by human magic. Tentative title: TO LOVE A DRAGON.

We see them here
We see them there
Witches . . .
Witches everywhere

Hear them laugh
See them fly
Hear the whoosh
When Brooms go by

Please tell me how you like to decorate for Halloween or Samhain, how you spend the holiday, and what you like best about the season.

Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain to all!

Annette Blair
http://www.annetteblair.com/







Annette will pick three winners at the end of the day, each winning one copy of Gone With The Witch. You must leave a comment about Annette's post and you must leave an email addy to be entered.