If you lived in medieval times, you were constantly trying to ward off all the evil that fairies, magical beings who lurked in the woods, could foist upon you. Legends portrayed them as looking human, with a decided bent for trickery. They might be any size from tiny to our own height, possibly with wings. Some, like the will-o'-the-wisps, appeared as nebulous ghost lights that would lure you to your death in a swamp – such dancing lights are reported all the time across Asia, Europe, Great Britain, and both North and South America.

“I’m here to stand up for Autumn!” That was my declaration at the beginning of my winning Table Topics Speech in Toastmasters one week. First, a little background: Toastmasters is a world-wide program for learning how to do public speaking. And I did. Before I joined the in-house club at the college I was working at, I seized up whenever I had to even introduce myself in job-related meetings.

I wrote my first novel during the first COVID lockdown, and I thought that was the strangest thing I’d ever been, or was going to go, through. I remember how surreal it felt to shuffle into a huge local arena with hundreds of other people to get our inoculations. To be hiding in our homes to prevent infection (while the son of a friend of mine was hanging on to life on a respirator after having contracted the disease).

Back next week with a look at the origins of faerie eroticism, the super-popular trend in fantasy sub-genres at the moment.

Maybe I am a vampire. My hubby’s been insisting for a while. For the most part, I don’t like sunny days – except for photography, and in the winter when they perk up the weeks of dreariness. I prefer my days cloud-covered and moody, and if there’s a bit of rain or fog, even better. Summer is definitely not my season; give me Fall with dense clouds and a spooky chill in the air.

Where can you go, if you’re an author, to celebrate the weirdness that inspired your own work? Try a literary festival based on a horror writer with issues: the notorious NecronomiCon conference/convention in Providence, Rhode Island. My hubby and I went this summer, and it more than lived up to its rep. Yes, we travelled into the U.S. With the tariff wars escalating again, I guess it’s become ‘elbows up’ time once more, but we enjoyed the brief opportunity to visit our neighbour country after a hiatus.

Keeping up with everyone who’s now referring to this month as ‘Augtober’, dreaming of the impending Halloween season, I thought I’d address this burning question. (At least to me, maybe not anyone else 😉) I’ve been enthralled with vampire stories and movies ever since I first saw the superb Christopher Lee as Dracula. The character of Dracula, imagined by Bram Stoker from folk tales of eastern Europe, is still the classic vampire.

Did anyone use Coles Notes, or CliffsNotes in the U.S.? Here in Canada, they’re still available through Indigo. When I was in high school, if you were of the mind to skip reading a required book, you could try to get away with basing your book report on the plot summary in the Coles Notes version. And now, we have information at our fingertips, through the internet.

But the old woman had only pretended to be friendly. She was a wicked witch who was lying in wait there for children. She had built her house of bread only in order to lure them to her, and if she captured one, she would kill him, cook him, and eat him; and for her that was a day to celebrate.