Halloween is my favorite holiday. It’s all about the COSTUMES. Last year I pulled together a group of friends to go as characters from Alice in Wonderland. After making five of the costumes, I succumbed to the flu and had to stay home. This year is J’s first Halloween. Such an auspicious event has to be perfect. What is the perfect costume for an infant? Something unique, but recognizable. Something creative, but relatively easy since I have, oh, zero time to make it. Something literary, since we love us some books. Should we go as a set, with the whole family involved? Originally we had planned to make Ryan the Man in the Yellow Hat and the baby would be George the Monkey, but that didn’t leave me any character. Finally I whittled it down to the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Ryan and I would wear pictures of all the food the caterpillar eats. I finally decided on Hedwig, Harry Potter’s snowy owl. Ryan and I are Harry and Ginny, but I didn’t quite finish our costumes or get around to dying my hair orange. She makes the cutest snowy owl you ever did see. Today we are going to the Pumpkin Bash at the zoo and trick or treating at the merchants event in our little neighborhood. Maybe tonight I’ll have a free moment to carve a pumpkin.

How do you celebrate Halloween? What are you, or your kids, dressing as? What’s your favorite type of Halloween candy?

This week is The Novel: Live! in which 36 Seattle authors will tag team writing a single blockbuster novel. Starting tomorrow at 10 am at Richard Hugo House, Jeannie Shortridge will start writing Chapter 1. After two hours she will hand it off to the next author to write chapter 2, and so on. Regency Romance goddess JULIA QUINN will be writing chapter 22 on Thursday, October 14, from 2 to 4 pm. Susan Wiggs is scheduled to finish this masterpiece on Saturday at 6 pm, so we can all expect a happy ending!

Follow along online or in person. There are happy hour, late night, and author reading events as part of the writing marathon. Check out the full schedule online. The event raises money for literacy programs in our fair city, including 826 Seattle and Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools Program.

Seattle Public Library’s Shelf Talk blog asked some of the writers what their favorite books on writing are. Classics by Donald Maass and Stephen King made the list, but the other four I haven’t heard of. I see a trip to the library in my future.

I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but WHEEEE!!! First place in the Orange Rose Contest for Unpublished Authors. I guess it’s time to go to Disneyland! enter the Golden Heart….or maybe send out a query letter or two. Entering contests is less intimidating. Maybe I could pull out some of my teeth instead.

In other news, I finished Meljean Brook’s THE IRON DUKE and was quite pleased. Go forth and read it!

My baby is six months and still not sleeping through the night. I read a book once that advocated writing before you’ve really woken up in the morning. The author said that you should write before you check email or read the newspaper or drink your coffee, that your creative mind is the most active when you are still half asleep. Perhaps this means I am in a constantly creative state these days, but all I feel is tired. I have stories buzzing around my head, but no energy to put fingers to keyboard.

I just got the call that Hearts of Darkness won FIRST PLACE in the 2010 Maggies!! The unpublished, paranormal division was judged by editor Esi Sogah from Avon. The winners aren’t up on the website yet, but one of my GSRWA chapter mates–Margaret Mallory–announced via our chapter loop that she won first place in the published, historical category for Knight of Pleasure. Congrats Margaret!