Alright, I can’t sleep.  This is happening too much lately.  I think I need to start running regularly again.  Something.  Some form of . . .er, um, exertion.  My brain just isn’t shutting off and the extra time awake never turns out very productive.  So I might as well update…

 

And so it’s October and my inner landscape is aligning with the outerscape.  It’s that time of the year when everywhere begins to look more like my room…

 

Last weekend I was a reverend and I married a couple.  Strange.  Surreal.  I’m touched that Dave and Adrienne asked me to do this.  I could tell that some of the family/friends, at the wedding rehearsal were thinking, “OK…what is this guy doing here?”  But both D. and A. said they heard nothing but good comments after the actual ceremony.  So…I think I done did OK.  CONGRATS, you two!

I now have my coffee machine set up in my room, saving trips to the kitchen when I’m working.  I keep my coffee in a jar I picked up in Disney.  It says “Deadly Nightshade” and resembles the urn Sally used in Nightmare Before Christmas.  I also got a nifty mug…

 

And speaking of that…

 

With several other folks, I went, Thursday night to the midnight showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D.  Awesome.  I brought along a flask of rum to mix with my cherry coke and it was a lot of extra dimensional October dreaming goodness.  I was especially excited because I never saw Nightmare in the theater, the first time around.

 

Wednesday night I took my laptop out on the deck and set up a fire in the new iron pit and played spooky music on the outside speakers and wrote out there for most of the night.  Splendid autumn fun.  Our yard runs into forests and lately, the deer have been coming out in droves and walking around in the neighborhood.  I’d wonder why, but, staying outside, late at night, I can hear the coyotes, many of them, howling and yipping in the woods.  Over the last several years, their numbers have been increasing and now, instead of scattered single hunters, I think they are starting to hunt in groups.  I imagine it’s because, surviving in a suburban environment, their food sources are not optimal . . . but there are plenty of deer and deer go along way and hunting something that big . . . it’s safer to hunt in a group.

 

Some folk are frightful about the multiplying coyotes and their increasing boldness (more than a few pets have ended up on the dinner plate in my area).  I say cool.  Not that those pets go eaten but that he have a large predator surviving and thriving in this place, in a suburban place (granted, we have a lot of scattered forests)…a lot of places can’t say that, certainly fewer and fewer as time goes on.  The cats in my neighborhood have pretty much killed everything that used to live at the edge of the forests where the neighborhood runs into it (we used to have all sorts of things scurrying around back there).  If the forest comes out, howling at night, and takes a few of them…well…it’s not entirely unfair.

 

(Special Note:  I like cats.  I don’t hate cats.  I likely don’t wish anything nasty to befall YOUR cat.)

 

The howl if a single coyote sounds kind of lonely, and not particularly scary (nothing like a wolf).  But, a group of coyotes sounds roughly like insanity and I heard them while I wrote outside.  So…while the experience of writing by firelight was fun, the writing itself was frustrating.  I could not get that story to work (and I’ve attempted it in the past).  It’s called “Eye, Heart, You” and it retells three Poe stories and connects them and gives a new twist.  I’ll get it to work someday.

 

Last night (Friday Night) I wrote a story called “The Cure,” for a contest.

 

Speaking of contests, the WHITE WOLF NOVEL CONTEST is still undecided, for those wondering.  But I did hear a rumor that they will announce the winner during a convention in Milwaukee that takes place on the 27^th through 29^th of this month.  Keep your extremities crossed.

 

And finally, it’s that time of year to get some spooky coffee.  I just ordered some from THE COFFEE SHOP OF HORRORS.

 

I got a bag of Graveyard Shift (a dark roast).

 

And a bag of  Sundown Blend (a medium roast).

 

And, if you’ve ever seen the movie Dead Alive (I’m thinking of you, Alex), you might get a kick out of what’s written on the bottom of this bag of Skull Island (a dark roast).