I wanted to talk about ghosts tonight while my spaghetti is cooking.

I don’t know about you, but I love ghost hunting! I found a neat app for my Kindle Fire today called Ghost Radar that claims to assist in my search. It was free, so I figured, why not?!

This app measures electromagnetic fields, vibrations and sounds by using radar and something called a VOX.

So I have been wandering around the house detecting electromagnetic anomalies.

My Ghost Radar has picked up a few words:

sweet
statement
toy
introduced
handsome
coast
necessary

Not sure what it all means, but it is fun! Who else hunts ghost? I’d love to hear about your adventures…

I also wanted to share a sneak peak of my latest short story, “Ginger’s Marble.” Its about the power of a family. Its about zombies. It’s got a crazy twist on the zombie genre I have never read anywhere else! Here is the cover, CW Beier at Divine Lunacy Graphic Studio designed it for me:

So I am trying to find new ways of generating ideas. Scary ones. There has to be unique ways to weave a tale. Ideas are one of those tricky things that if you make a conscious effort to come up with ideas, they don’t seem to want to surface.

Ideas just happen.

They are magic little creatures that nibble at your ankles. A new idea can’t be a formula or a plan.

They just appear from the murky gray goo upstairs.

I am going to start trying to pull a bucket of fresh water from the well of dreams.

I have a dream journal (ok an app) that I am going to write down my dreams before the gloomy chemicals in my brain erase them.

Maybe bits and pieces of a new story will emerge. Don’t steal my idea but…. The other night I dreamed about a native American village that suddenly appears in neighborhoods and the tomahawks start flying.

I am sitting in an empty high school auditorium waiting for One Act plays to start. My daughter is the MC and creative designer. Check out this prop she designed.
…perfect for Poe’s 203rd birthday!

The Other Side of all that Stands

The bedroom door opened and I cringed. Jerry walked in and threw his dirty backpack on the bed. He looked around- looked right at me even, as he sat at his desk, and like always, flicked on his computer and started his endless ritual of key tapping.

I hated the sound of those damn keys. Clicking and clicking all evening.

I sat through this torture night after night.

We had intended on killing him right then, but the moment to strike never happened. The jerk needlessly broke two pencils that night: two more reasons to hate his guts. He also threw a wooden ruler across the room; it split down the middle as it smacked the dry wall. Jerry uncaringly tossed it back in the box.

Jerry committed atrocities like this time after time. What was he so angry about all the time? I don’t think he had any reason other being a crappy writer and took his frustrations out on his office supplies.

Well after a long time, he finally shut off the computer and the light and went to bed, whew! What a relief. We sprung to action to attend to the discarded ruler. The attack wounded the ruler badly, but it did live, saved only because the tape wrapped its shiny strips round and round the ruler and hugged it tight.

We plotted revenge again, with renewed rage. A plan we knew backward and forward but still we stayed up all night scheming.
*
I heard him first. Just as the sunlight was sneaking through the blinds, I heard footfalls down the hall, approaching. “Here he comes, get back everyone! This is it!” I shouted.

A very sharp tipped Rivera pencil stopped chanting and dancing around a circle of paperclips, which were raising hell on the desk. The paperclips snapped to attention and in turn, alerted the books at the other side of the room.

The door creaked open.

The fool was smiling.

Jerry was a happy-go-lucky man probably around the age of thirty. He had many friends, a grand social standing indeed. Very popular outside this room- his writing room. His secret passion, which he was terrible at.
Everyone inside this room hated him. He was a rat. He was inconsiderate and disrespectful. We had been plotting and fantasizing about taking him down for ages. It was a dream plan- I mean who would ever suspect a bunch of pens and pencils to kill a man?

How sublime; organized office supplies. No threat there.

In this room, Jerry was guilty of at least three crimes: needless sharpening of pencils, twisting paperclips and crumbling blank sheets of paper. With the balled paper, he fancied himself an all-star basketball player with the nearest trash can.

So wasteful.

Let me be clear: pencils don’t mind if you tap them while you’re doing some deep thinking- but don’t ever just do it for the hell of it. That was his freaking hobby! Don’t get me started about sharpening us. I mean, we are here to serve, so sharpen us as needed but come on!

Jerry sharpens us like a beaver tearing through a log.

It’s how he manages his writer’s block. I’ve seen him grind one of us down to a nub in five or ten minutes. Just last week my aunt screamed and screamed as she spun in circles while Jerry cranked the sharpener. My poor family! Torture like that has taken down many a good pencil.

Our existence is threatened.

He waltzed in wearing some fancy white suit and plopped his puffy butt on his swivel chair, pulled a pencil – it happened to be my little brother- from his faded Paul Revere’s cup, and started tapping my brother’s head on that damn desk- like a drummer beating his drums.

I felt the lead burning inside of me.

After about ten minutes of torture, he finally tossed my brother aside and resumed typing. When I say typing, I mean clicking about two or three keys per minute. Not very creative that one. What he was typing, I didn’t have the foggiest notion, and I didn’t care- I was looking at my injured baby brother.

There he lay, covered in bruises. I could tell if he was still alive or dead.

I figured, and the books that watched from the bookshelves across the room could attest to as well, that Jerry had killed about thirty pencils in the last year alone.

Thirty senseless murders. Only about twelve were actually from my family, but still they were pencils, flesh and lead pencils. He had also ruined the lives of more than three hundred sheets of paper! Paper breeds like bunnies, but still they are still deaths.

Elmer, seeing my near dead or perhaps dead brother, sounded the signal to attack. He slowly leaned his round white body over like he was bowing, pointing his hellish orange head towards Jerry. The Empire ruler slid halfway off a box that Jerry had stuffed with CDs. The Empire whistled for several Swingline staples to scurry up to one end of the ruler until the weight caused one side of the ruler to thud to the ground, like a teeter-totter armed with only one kid.

Jerry only glanced up from his screen for a moment.

In that moment, the ruler looked him dead in the eye. Jerry didn’t sense the ruler’s rage and went on typing his meaningless nonsense.

Grumbacher, a tan gum eraser, slowly slithered to the edge of a nearby shelf, away from a stuffed tiger that clutched him. He stopped directly above the unoccupied end of the ruler.

It was perfect, so utterly perfect I have to pat myself on the back, a grand masterpiece! You could tell it was going to work before we even started.

Soon there would be no more torture.

Jerry glanced at the bottle of glue pointing towards his face and smiled. He stopped typing. I felt a twinge of panic. Oh god he does sense something is amiss!

I couldn’t wait another second.

“NOW!” I screamed at the top of my lead, Jerry’s head swung around the room looking for the source of the command as five Empire pencils launched from of the cup like missiles coming out of their silos.

“Holy God, what the-” Two of the pencils hit their target- one in each of his shoulders. They sunk down about an inch and a half, blood jetted out like water from an overfilled glass. The other three fell to the carpet; there lead heads snapping- death with honor.

Jerry stumbled to his feet, knocking the chair over.

He gripped both the pencils and tried to pull them out, the pain was excruciating as I guessed from his screams of terror, and the size of his eyes on his face. The soldiers made a ripping sound as he pulled them out.

He looked at the glossy red pencils dumbly for a second, and then threw them.

The first volley was a smashing success but we weren’t done.

Before he could fully comprehend the danger he was in, Elmer vomited a wave of glue, it shot across the desk like a fire hose spraying water. The sticky glue coated his face making him look like a porcelain china doll.

His screams were so great it was almost funny because the sound gurgled from all the glue in his mouth. At nearly the same time, the ruler whistled at the eraser. The dutiful eraser dove off the shelf, landing directly on the ruler. It sprang up, allowing the waiting staples to fling through the air.

Poor Jerry tripped over his chair as several staples pierced into his hands, missing the intended target- to shut his mouth.

Then the books assaulted him. Books of all sizes and shapes launched themselves with fury from the shelves, pounding into his back and legs. I held bones cracking! Wow.

More pencils flew through the room and sunk into his body, angrily driving in as deep as they could. The pencils twitched as Jerry’s muscles contracted and squirmed.

I rolled myself off the desk and landed on his chest. I stood up tall and stared the idiot right in his glue-covered eyes and shouted, “paybacks are hell, buddy!”

“Mother of God, HELP ME’!” His voice sounded childish and pitiful. He crawled backward trying to make his way toward the door, not even bothering to pull any of the pencils out of his body. As he scooted across the red carpet, the irony of how well he blended in with the carpet did not escape me.

Elmer squirted a second wave onto him, spilling glue all over Jerry.

The stupid man died shortly after that. I watched the glue dry and glaze over his eyes, making them a milky blue. I’m just sorry the paper punch and the scissors were on vacation then.

By the time his shocked wife found him, the blood had stopped oozing from the pencil holes and had began to dry. She screamed and we stood silently watching. We had no fight with her.

The police came and turned the room in a crime scene. They saw the ruler, the dead bloated bottle of glue, the pencils, and all those books, some with blood on the binding. They took dozens of photographs, but never understood what happened.

We sat alone and undisturbed in the room for a long time. Then one night, as the gray glow from the moon lit the room, his wife appeared in the doorway. She stood there for a while then sat down at the desk and turned on the computer. I heard her sniffle as the monitor warmed up and flooded the room with bright light. She stared at the monitor briefly then started typing.

I shifted in the Paul Revere’s cup. She glanced over at the sound and pulled me out.

She stuck me in her foul smelling mouth and began grinding her teeth into my sides.

Copyright 2012 by Erik Gustafson

The Twelve Days of Creepfest blog tour was amazing! Thank you to all you stopped by to comment or guest blog! I really had a great time visiting with you!

Three of you are especially lucky, as you have won a copy Smashwords coupon code for any of my stories you choose. If you name appears below, please let me know which story you would like and I will get you a code ASAP!

Nora Peevy

bakinstuff

Sandy Wolters

You can see the list of my stories on my Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Erik-Gustafson/e/B004NYCP5M

I will leave you with a piece of flash fiction I wrote (well I expanded on it a tad since then) for a prompt from Kim Koning’s blog!

Santa pulled hard on the leather reigns and the reindeer clomped to a stop on the asphalt parking lot in front of the mausoleum, thick puffs of cold breath rose from their snouts. The moon was a bright white circle staring down as the jolly man stepped off his sleigh. He stood in the quiet night and surveyed the rest of the cemetery around the ornate stone structure. Bells jingled on his ankles, wrists, and the end of his thick red stocking cap as he walked to the back of the sleigh where massive burlap bags were stacked. The sound of the bells echoed over the shadowy headstones lining the fields around him.

This was his favorite moment of Christmas. He cried his trademark cheer. “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

The grounds seemed to move and come alive as dirty, rotting hands reached eagerly up out of the ground. Santa flung a sack over his shoulder and walked through the light snow. He strolled through the cold grounds merrily humming Jingle Bells as he unloaded his gift of brains which he had collected using his Naughty List the night before while making his traditional rounds. Undead, clenching hands greedily grabbed the gift and sunk back into the earth.

As he returned for the last bag in his sleigh, one of the reindeer snorted as he skipped past it.

At the mausoleum, a tall stone door creaked open. The massive door was etched with angels holding swords. Santa slung his sack over his shoulder and marched inside. Before the darkness swallowed him up, he turned and shouted: “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

Please enjoy learning more about Patti Larsen and her true ghost story!

Patti writes:
In honor of Creepfest, I’m sharing my most spine tingling ghost story–and yes, I swear to you, this is 100% real.

When I was sixteen, I traveled to England with my choir for a three week tour. Part of our stay left us billeted with local families. My best friend and I landed in an old church manse, recently renovated and no longer owned by the ministry.

On our second night, I went to bed early, hoping for some good rest, something none of us managed since we arrived. I fell into a sound sleep, though I woke suddenly at one point, wide awake and with no idea why I’d woken. I glanced at the clock–it read 10:25 exactly. My eyes drifted from the glowing red numbers to the other side of the room and the foot of my friend’s bed.

A woman stood there, hair in a tight bun, dark gray dress belted in tightly by a white apron. Her hands were folded before her, body poised, waiting. The only trouble with this picture? She glowed softly white, her eyes black, empty pits.

I naturally dove under the covers, terrified. I had no access to light, the switch being on the far wall near the door, far too close to her for comfort. Everyone who tells you seeing a ghost is a calming experience obviously hasn’t seen a ghost.

I lay there for quite some time, my heart beating double time, too afraid to look out. It wasn’t until I heard my friend coming to the door, she and our hostess talking quite loudly, that I felt it safe to risk another peek. After all, I’d only had one look and their proximity made me brave. I had to know if I was only seeing things.

I peeled back the covers and stared in amazement at the woman. Still there, indeed. In fact, she raised her arms toward the doorway, as if summoning my friend inside.

The light turned on and the woman disappeared. Through my sobbing, my friend and the hostess finally understood what I babbled on about. With a smile, the lady of the house told us we were staying in what happened to be the nursery and that glowing woman was most likely a family governess, trying to usher the kids to bed.

Yes, I have more ghost stories. But I’ve creeped myself out enough for now.

About the Author: Patti Larsen is a middle grade, young adult and adult author with a passion for the paranormal who writes way too much horror for someone who is afraid of the dark. Her YA thriller series, The Hunted, is available now. Books one and two of The Hayle Coven series, Family Magic and Witch Hunt are also out now, with the sequels, Demon Child and The Wild, due in December of this year. She is a full time writer and a part time teacher of her Get Your Book Done program. Patti lives on the East Coast of Canada with her very patient husband and four massive cats.

You can find her:

On her website www.pattilarsen.com
On Facebook www.facebook.com/pattilarsenauthor
Her writing blog www.pattilarsen.blogspot.com
Her book blog www.pattilarsenbooks.blogspot.com
On Twitter www.twitter.com/#!/PattiLarsen
On Amazon.com and Goodreads

Keep hopping on the Creepfest by clicking the graphic below:

My three top promotional tools..

1.) Freebies! A lot of people release free books to drum up interest in their writing. I think this is a great idea, except that it does tend to attract all those readers who are only after a freebie and have no intention of paying for an eBook. Generate interest in your novel by writing short stories including the main characters from your novel. Release the short story as a freebie, but attach half of your novel on the end for free. Remember to include as many buy links for your novel as possible! Getting freebies up on Amazon is tricky, but now you have two options. Either release the freebie on Smashwords first and get people to report the price to Amazon (where you’ll need to have it priced at $0.99) or else join the Amazon Select program for that freebie and choose 5 days out of 90 where you’ll be able to offer your book for free.

2.) Facebook Ads. I’m a big fan of facebook ads, after all, who doesn’t have a facebook account these days? It’s a great way to make contact with a huge number of people. You can decide how much you want to spend per day and for how long. If you’re smart about it, you can get your price per click down to mere cents.

3.) Giveaways! This one combines both facebook and freebies! It also works particularly well if you have a $0.99 book that is the first in a series. By offering a give away on facebook and finding out people’s email addresses and what type of ereader they have, you can not only build a list of contacts you can use to announce new releases or special offers, but you can ‘gift’ your ebook on Amazon, so pushing it up the sales ranking and getting more eyes on it! On top of this, you’re introducing more people to your writing. It’s a win-win situation!

The link to her novel, Alone is here: http://www.amazon.com/Alone-The-Serenity-Series-ebook/dp/B005J5DL66/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324467471&sr=8-

Dpn’t forget to click the link below to continue your journey on the blog fest!!

Please welcome Nora Peevy….

I asked her a couple of questions and here is what she had to say!

1. “A Christmas Story” is my favorite Christmas movie..who is your favorite character from that classic and why? How could it be turned into a horror movie?

My favorite character is Ralphie. I relate to him the best. If I made A Christmas Story into a horror movie, I think I would make the BB gun sentient and possessed by a demon. It would terrorize the neighborhood children.

2. You wake up Christmas morning and reach for your stocking only to realize it is wet and something inside seems to be moving…. inside, you find a miniature and very hungry Cthulu.

Also, here’s the link to my contest to win a signed copy of Twisted Tongue magazine with my short story, A Taste of Murder in it: http://norabpeevy.blogspot.com/2011/12/first-creepfest-winner-announced-and.html

Bio: Nora B. Peevy has a B.A. in English with a Concentration in Creative Writing from Cardinal Stritch University. She has been previously published in Deadlines: An Anthology of Horror and Dark Fiction, Twisted Tongue, and other publications. She really wishes she worked in a bookstore in Bordertown, but she hasn’t found her way to the Fae side of things, yet.

-Nora

Please stop by her blog “The Demon Stole My Pencil” at http://norabpeevy.blogspot.com/ or her website http://norabpeevy.com/

Today I am excited to announce that Ruth Barrett is guest blogging! Please hang around and make her feel welcome!

Ah, Christmas! What child doesn’t remember rising before dawn and sneaking downstairs to open their stocking? At five, I was no exception to that rule. It was still the dead of night when I rose, tip-toed down to the fireplace and reached out for my stocking.

Before my hand could grasp the bulging red toe of the stocking, I thought I saw something move. I blinked and rubbed my eyes– peering closely by the muted colorful lighting of the Christmas tree.

The stocking rustled and jerked, swaying gently to and fro on its nail in the mantelpiece. I was more curious than alarmed. I slowly reached out with one finger and poked the bulge. The stocking jolted and bounced like a puppet on a string and I jerked back, my finger now sticky and wet.

This was not good.

Inspired, I checked out my little brother Billy’s twin stocking at the other end of the fireplace. My parents were always very democratic and gifted us with identical stocking treats every year. Cautiously, I prodded the toe of his stocking. Nothing moved and it felt dry to my touch.

Moments later, I carried both stockings– mine at arm’s length– up to my brother’s room. I set the damp, wriggling one beside Billy’s pillow then leaned over to whisper in his ear: “Merry Christmas, Billy- here’s your stocking.” As he stirred awake I hurried out and went back to my room down the hall. I flicked on my bedside light and dumped the stocking contents onto my bed, happily sorting through the windfall of candy, chocolates and tiny wind-up toys.

Seconds later, Billy’s shrieks of terror broke the silent night. My parents’ footsteps tore past my closed door in the hallway. Lazily, I unwrapped a candy cane and stuck the end in my mouth as I slowly followed out after them to see what all the fuss was about…

Check out her entry in my Creepiest Christmas Ornament contest:

Ruth Barrett is the author of Base Spirits: In 1605, Sir Walter Calverley’s murderous rampage leaves a family shattered. The killer suffers a torturous execution… but is it truly the end? A noble Yorkshire house stands forever tarnished by blood and possessed by anguished spirits.

Some crimes are so horrific, they reverberate through the centuries.

As an unhappy modern couple vacation in the guesthouse at Calverley Old Hall, playwright Clara, and her scholar husband, Scott, unwittingly awaken a dark history. Clara is trapped and forced back in time to bear witness to a family’s bloody saga. Overtaken by the malevolent echoes, Scott is pushed over the edge from possessive husband to wholly possessed…

Inspired by a true-life drama in Shakespeare’s day, this is itself a play within a play: a supernatural thriller with a historical core.

Only one player can survive.

Available on Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Base-Spirits-ebook/dp/B005L38G8E/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1315163319&sr=1-1
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/84640
Paperbacks are available through Fanfare Books fanfare@cyg.net or Callan Books jcallan@orc.ca and can be personally inscribed before shipping.
Visit Ruth at her blog: http://ruth-barrett-spiritedwords.blogspot.com/
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/LadyCalverley
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Spirited-Words-Book-Co/101014656667433

There are more great writers schedule to appear on my blog so keep coming back for more!!

I have been asking authors to share their thoughts on three questions.

Today I have the pleasure of hosting Kim Koning, author of one of the short stories in Tales for Canterbury!
Here is what she has to say:

1. “A Christmas Story” is my favorite Christmas movie..who is your favorite character from that classic and why? How could it be turned into a horror movie?
Mmmh…this was a new movie to me so I had to google it…so I can’t pick a favourite character until I watch the movie…but as for horror movie…a kid wanting a bb gun for Christmas I could totally see that being horror movie…I would say the kid would be the Ghost of Christmas Past of Freddy Kruger and because he didn’t get the bb gun he swears off Christmas and decides to take revenge every year on Halloween – the perfect antidote to Christmas.

2. Finish the thought: You wake up Christmas morning and reach for your stocking only to realize it is wet and something inside seems to be moving…

I slowly turn the stocking upside down and shake it, jumping back at the same time…I hear a soft whimpering and look down at my feet. Bright green eyes in pitch black fur, soaked from last night’s rain, glare back at me. I giggle as my kitten looks at me accusingly even though I have caught her red-handed trying to steal my Christmas candy.

3. Her entry in the “The Creepiest Ornament Contest”:

Be sure you stop by her blog “Wrestling the Muse” for a chance to win a free copy of Tales for Canterbury here!!
More about Kim and her work:

Book – Tales for Canterbury – Short Story Anthology containing my debut short story “The Ring of Fire” (YA Dystopian) and 33 other authors among them a story by Neil Gaiman. All proceeds from sales for this anthology go to The Red Cross Earthquake Appeal, so not only do people get a great anthology of stories – everything from zombies to magical realism and dystopians – but their money goes to a good cause.

Here is the link to buy

Come back soon…there are more great guest bloggers lined up!

Come on in!

The Twelve Days of Creepfest Blog Hop as arrived!

I hope you look around, or at least don’t let your guard down.

Over the next twelve days, I am running a contest for a free copy of one of my horror stories. You can check out my stories by clicking on My Writings above or visiting my Amazon Author page here.

Three lucky winners will get their choice of story, via a Smashwords coupon code. Sweet swag. My contest runs until midnight on the 23rd. I will notify winners on the 24th!

This contest is easy. Just tell me about the creepiest Christmas ornament you have ever displayed in your home –on maybe someone in your family has something that creeps you out every year! Bonus points if you have a photograph! Oh and leave an email address so I can get a hold of you.

The creepiest ornament in my collection is a family heirloom that has been haunting the houses of my relatives for a few generations. I inherited three of the little buggers. I gave my daughter one to carry on the tradition, one has crumbled into ruins but one survives in my living room.

My green little elf watches silently and approves of everything I do when no one else is around. He knows things yet he keeps secrets. And every-once-in-awhile, he waves at me. I love the little guy.

So that’s mine, now let’s see yours!!

Keep coming back because I have lots of cool and creepy guest blogs scheduled over the next twelve days to keep you entertained.

Be sure to visit the other great participants in the Creepfest Blog Tour.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Take a moment to do something wonderful and amazing for somebody that needs your help!