Coffin Hop Winners!

Thank you everyone who stopped by. I was truly excited about every visit. So many cool Halloween costumes…so without further ado the winners, as determined by Random.org are:

1. Eve!!
2. Carole Gill
3. Shadow
4. KCarey
5. James Garcia Jr

Congratulations!!

Hopefully, you left your email and I will be in touch! If not, you are entitled to a free ecopy of one of my stories. Click this —> Smashwords Author Page and make your selection and I will get you a coupon code! I hope you enjoy my work and continue to visit my blog!

Erik

Happy Halloween!!

The Coffin Hop is coming to an end…I wanted to pass along a HUGE THANK YOU to all 237 people that visited my blog in the last week!!!! I am amazed and very thankful for all the attention. I hope you keep coming back. The prizes will all be given away tomorrow! I hope you win and I hope you enjoy the ebook!

My porch is all decorated…floating hand and lightening machine still work! I have three pumpkins out there that my daughter carved up…here is my favorite one: creepy man with an umbrella. I used to have nightmares about this guy and he may end up in one of my stories some day!

Time to give the Velveeta a stir and check the pizza. Kids will be wandering the streets soon!!

Happy Halloween!

Bat Hunting and Coffin Hop

Have you ever seen a bat in your house? What better time than Halloween to discuss bat hunting. Ok so its not as glamorous as being a vampire hunter like Buffy but there are a lot similarities. At times, it can be just as unnerving. It also takes bravery to hunt bats. And weapons.

My home was built in 1913 and when I moved into a few years ago, we had a bat problem. This was not disclosed by the previous owners. I think that little morsel of knowledge should be shared at the negation table.
So we woke one night to the swooshing sound in our bedroom. My wife turned on the lamp on the nightstand and a little fluttering bat was doing laps around our bedroom. We both screamed (ok I admit that I wasn’t a mighty bat hunter, at first). I screamed like a little girl. She bolted from the room. My heart was pounding and I was hyperventilating but I low crawled out of the bedroom, sprinted down the steps and found a broom (A handy bat hunter weapon? No. Brooms are poor choice, a rookie move). I ran back to the bedroom, squatting at the foot of the bed, blindly swinging the long broom.
I kept missing the bat. It kept doing laps and occasionally screeching at me. I smacked the globe on the ceiling fan. It exploded onto the bedding in a million tiny shards. At three AM. I finally got the bat. That was a big mess to clean up. Not the bat. The glass.

Thus began a campaign to seal up my home and keep the bats out.

Patching holes, fixing gutters. Covering vents with mesh. Filling cracks with that foam stuff.

I would find places that I figured were how they were getting in and seal it up only to find a bat hanging from our mantle or suddenly appear in the living room doing laps. Their little faces look like miniature people.

The ideal weapons for hunting bats are a racquetball racket and a shoebox. If we get attacked, I announce we are on red alert, go get my weapons and track the bat until it picks a place to hang from. Then I place the shoebox under the bat and gently tap it with the racket. They drop in and I shut it. No big deal.

The bats scream in protest but they usually survive the ordeal. After all, bats are a protected species and they chow down on millions of bugs.

It took over a year of hard work but we only saw one bat this year.

That is how I became Erik the Bat Hunter. I have lots of bat stories.

Don’t forget to check out my Coffin Hope blog post from the other day and enter to win one of my ebooks!! All you have to do is tell me about your favorite Halloween costume…alternatively you could tell me about your own harrowing bat-hunting tale! Either way, keep clicking on the Coffin Hop!

Coffin Hop is here!

The lightening machine is going. The fog machine is in full gear. The porch is alive with trick or treaters!! I’m so glad you stopped by for a treat…my pulse is quickening…I almost forgot, I have a huge pumpkin sitting on my porch that I have yet to carve up. Every time I pick up the carving knife I start daydreaming about…stuff. So I force myself to put the knife down.

I hope the floating hand by the candy bowl doesn’t freak you out too much.

First, let me tell you a couple cool facts about me. I spent 20 years in the Air Force and lived in many cool places around the world like Iceland, Germany and Saudi Arabia! Now I am settled down with my wife, daughter, cats and dog in small-town Iowa. To earn money, I teach psychology classes at a community college and help people with intellectual disabilities.

My debut horror novel is “Fall Leaves and the Black Dragon” I also have several short stories that cover a wide range of horrors: demonic gardens, a murder of crows, a spooky TV, a shark lover, and a pond you wouldn’t want to swim in! Click on the My Writing tab above to read more about them. Try a sample…I hope you enjoy them!

Not ready to buy one of my stories yet? That’s fine by me. How about a coupon code from Smashwords for a free copy of one. Any of my titles! You pick! How’s that for a treat? At the end of the Coffin Hop, I will randomly choose FIVE lucky people to win!! Good luck.

What do I want from you for this giveaway? No blood. No brains. Just leave a comment and tell me about your most favorite Halloween costume you ever wore. Your favorite could have been from when you were a little kid or as an adult or anytime in between. There must be at least one that stands out!

I remember when I was a kid the coolest costumes were the cheap plastic masks with a stretchy string stapled to them so they would stay on. My favorite costume as a child would have to be Spider Man. As an adult, I have to admit I loved dressing up for the evening as a woman. I used to have a collection of dresses and wigs! A little make-up here and there to get the look just right…and I always had my hairy legs prominently displayed! After the night was over, I just threw the wigs in a tote so every year the wigs became more tangled and wilder looking. I looked crazier and crazier as the years went by. I could have passed for a zombie toward the end of my dressing up as woman phase. I’m not sure what that says about me but it was fun!

One last thing, who is participating in NaNoWriMo this year? If you are, add me as a buddy and we can motivate each other to finish line! My name there is BaliTiger.

After you say hi and tell me about your Halloween memory (oh yeah please leave your email so I can notify you when you win!), there is one more thing you should do. There are tons of other blogs participating in this monstrous event so please creep back to the Coffin Hop main page and visit more great writers!

Happy nightmares!

the gory details:

1) HAVE A SPOOKY FUN TIME!

2) INVITE YOUR FRIENDS AND SPREAD THE WORD!

3) THIS TOUR STARTS: Monday, October 24, 2011 at Midnight (PST)
THIS TOUR ENDS: Monday, October 31, 2011 at Midnight (PST)
Winners will be drawn and posted November 1, 2011

4) MEET AND MINGLE WITH THE AUTHORS! EXPERIENCE A NEW DESTINATION AT EVERY STOP! PARTICIPATE IN EVERY SITE’S CONTEST AND BE ENTERED FOR CHANCES TO WIN MULTIPLE PRIZES! EVERY BLOG VISITED IS ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO WIN!

5) PARTICIPATION AT ALL SITES IS RECOMMENDED, BUT NOT REQUIRED. THE MORE SITES YOU HOP, THE BETTER YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING PRIZES.

6) DID I MENTION TO HAVE A SPOOKY FUN TIME?

***Authors have full discretion to choose an alternate winner in the event any winner fails to claim their prize(s) within 72 hours of their name being posted or after notification of win, whichever comes first. Anyone who participates in this tour is subject to these rules***