Today first pass pages for THIS IS NOT A TEST arrived at my door. I went through and made my corrections, which is the last part of the process for me as an author. Next come ARCs, publication….

For my last post of the year, I want to share with you its dedication:

So, in case you are not aware, every year since 2009, I like to make a post about horror movies you should watch. FOR HALLOWEEN! Lots of people don’t like Halloween but I LOVE it. 2009′s post is here and 2010′s post is here. I still stand by those recommendations so if you’re looking for some good movies, you should check those out.

Here are more suggestions for 2011!

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

This horror comedy is a delightful treat! It’s about a journalist, Taylor, who is making a documentary about Leslie Vernon, who is poising himself to be the next big psycho killer on the block. As Leslie plans to brutally slay a group of teens on the anniversary of his “death” he takes Taylor through the preperatory process, leading up to the night of murder mayhem itself–where everything is not as it initially seemed. This movie is a blast; tame enough for those who have a low(er) threshold for slasher flicks but enertaining enough for people who know the genre inside and out (lots of winking and nodding). It was a TINY bit over-long and the ending wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to be, but I had such a good time getting there, I’m okay with that.

Eskalofrío (aka Shiver)

Eskalofrío’s mood captured me first. Storyline second. It’s all overcast and rainy and ugh, I love that. I like this one a whole lot! It’s a Spanish horror film about a boy who is allergic to the sun. He and his mother move to this quiet village in the mountains and something lives in the woods and is killing people! And the boy who is allergic to sun gets a lot of flack for that because having gruesome murders suddenly start happening directly after you move to a place just never seems to work out in the newcomer’s favour, especially since the attacks are vaguely vampiric in nature. I was not wholly satisfied with the ending but this is the kind of horror movie you watch with a blanket around your shoulders and a bowl of caramel popcorn in your lap and a mug of apple cider at your side and that is good enough for me. Also I find myself really drawn to stories about struggling outsiders and this movie is all about that! WEIRD. Maybe I should write some YAs about such a topic.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

I went through a really brief phase where I was interested in possession earlier this year. It was an odd time. So I got The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I was not expecting anything from this movie at all honestly. When I started watching it, I saw Colm Feore was in it and I thought his sexy face was as good as it was going to get. But I was wrong! It got even better than that! This movie surprised me. It might be one of the movies I liked most this year. I would go so far as to call it almost a gem. It’s about a girl who is killed during an exorcism and the priest involved is on trial for murder. The story largely follows the lawyer representing him and Emily herself (through flashbacks) as they go over what happened and whether or not Emily was, in fact, possessed by evil. There are a couple of missteps but I found the movie nicely emotional overall. Also, the way Jennifer Carpenter contorts her body is incredibly disturbing and maybe the scariest thing of all. There’s something really realistic and understated about her possession and the flashbacks were my favourite parts. It’s not knock-your-socks off horror, I guess, but it is good quality and satisfying! Also: Colm Feore.

The Eye (2002)

I mentioned The Eye (and another pick on this list!) briefly in one of my older horror movie posts. It’s about a blind violinist who gets an eye cornea transplant and then can see again! But it seems the original corneas have enabled her to see people’s deaths and also ghosts. Perhaps you can tell where this is going. Ghostly ominous hijinx ensue! This is such a fantastic horror movie. I really love it. The scares aren’t overwhelmingly in your face but there is a scene in an elevator that gives me many chills. More than the scares, it’s the sad premise that appeals me. Getting something you’ve wanted so long and then having it turn out NOT being what you want it to be–but how can you back from that? Especially when that thing is your SIGHT? Tragically sad. This also has one of the most sympathetic lead characters ever.

Resident Evil (film series)

Yeah, I know. I hated Resident Evil when it came out. I HATED IT SO MUCH. The opening scene with the elevator really upset me and now I always have that moment of wondering whether or not an elevator operated by an evil computer is going to decapitate me whenever I step into one. But earlier this year the first installment wiggled its way into my heart and then suddenly I had to buy them all and then suddenly they were constantly playing in the background over and over again while I wrote This is Not a Test. You know how there are always those really bad movies that come on TV and you have to watch them because they are such brain candy, like Deep Blue Sea and The Devil’s Advocate? The Resident Evil series is that for me. The world, the zombies, the mutations (I used to hate mutated zombies but Left 4 Dead changed all that for me!), the bad accents, the action–Milla Jovovich kicking ass in the most amazing outfits? I am SO there! My favourite is the second installment (Apocalypse), which feels more like a horror movie to me. The fourth (Afterlife) seems to veer completely into action/adventure land but I think it is my second favourite because the fighting sequences are so GREAT.

Tremors (1990)

It seems remiss not to mention the first “scary” movie I ever saw in this post. It was this one when I was five. It is about giant worms under the ground that eat people. When I was five, I was not fully able to appreciate the snappy dialogue/chemistry between Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward. All I could think about was GIANT WORMS UNDER THE GROUND THAT EAT PEOPLE. The first time I watched it, I think I spent every night for the next five months screaming and crying and not sleeping because I was afraid “the tremors would get me.” My mom tried to explain to me that they did not exist and when that didn’t work that they certainly could not make their way up the stairs. Then my sister pointed out those weird spikes on their sides and told me they totally could, extending my sleep terrors for another five months. Everyone learned something about themselves during that time. Anyways, this movie is so great! It plays on classic monster movie tropes. An isolated town, slack-jawed locals, the scientist who can explain nearly everything and GIANT WORMS UNDER THE GROUND THAT EAT PEOPLE. This is a great scary movie for people who can’t handle scary movies, unless they are five.


fin

And if you have never heard of Marble Hornets, you should totally check it out! MarbleHornets is an ARG and it is amazingly scary and fun. It’s, well–I am going to borrow the summary from its TV Tropes page because it gives the gist better than I can:

“Marble Hornets is an Alternate Reality Game (more like an Alternate Reality Movie), following discoveries made while looking through raw footage of a trite student film. In 2006, film student Alex Kralie suddenly abandons his movie in the midst of production [...] Alex’s friend Jay rescues the taped material and [...] by digging it up again he may have reawakened sinister forces. Jay’s YouTube account chronicles material from the tapes and, increasingly, the bizarre and frightening events of his own life . A Twitter page was added some time later. Since Entry #9, he’s noted a guy named ‘totheark‘ responding to each entry, adding a whole new level to the scary.”

I used to watch these at night time and they would creep me out SO BAD! I used to not want to leave my room after I watched them. So now I only watch them in the day. If you don’t know who Slender Man is, you should find out. Start with the intro:

If you’re interested, I also blogged about the first scary book I ever read over at author Nova Ren Suma’s blog as part of a “What Scares You?” guest blog extravaganza! You can read my post here. If you comment on it and all of the guest posts, you will have the opportunity to win an amazing prize pack of books, so you should check it out.

YAY TERROR.

What scary movies OR books will you be watching or reading this Halloween?

My father-in-law gets the credit for bringing David & I together shortly after the family’s move to a farm just outside of town.

“There’s a cute girl working at the local Becker’s store, why don’t you ask her out?” he suggested to his son.

And in what was likely one of the few times David embraced parental authority he did just that, appearing during my shift, wearing a plaid shirt, dirty jeans and an uncharacteristically short haircut.

It wasn’t love at first sight. But he was persistent, a trait I would become familiar with over the years.

He showed up every day to offer me a ride home from my shift. Every day I declined.

He drove into town on his tractor. He even rode the five miles in on his horse.

Still I did not relent.

Then one day he showed up at my door. I never told him where I lived but he searched the phone book for everyone with my surname and through the process of elimination he hit the jackpot.

He came armed with his guitar and proceeded to serenade me in our gazebo …much to my parents’ alarm.

We sat by the shore of the lake and talked into the wee hours of the morning …much to my parents’ alarm.

I never once looked back.

We viewed life in pretty much the same way, just from completely different angles. We made each other laugh, got under each other’s skin and everything in between. The bond between us was stretched at times, but never broken.

The phrase ‘soul mates’ makes me cringe, but we were definitely that. My heart always skipped a beat whenever I saw him. We would have celebrated our 34th anniversary this month, and 35 years of knowing each other. I am fortunate to have had that time, but I can’t help but feel cheated.

“Ideas are clean. They soar in the serene supernal. I can take them out and look at them, they fit in books, they lead me down that narrow way. And in the morning they are there. Ideas are straight–
But the world is round, and a messy mortal is my friend.
Come walk with me in the mud…” *

My dad would have been so touched to see the faces that came out to pay their respects. His brothers. Friends he lost contact with but always thought the world of. Friends and faculty from school, who were such a large part of his world these last two years and who made the whole experience that much more rewarding. Family who drove from so far away because they couldn’t imagine not being there to say goodbye and thank you to Dave. We’ve gotten phone calls and cards and flowers from so many different people who were so shocked to hear he’d died but grateful they got the opportunity to know him. He honestly would not have believed the level of love he inspired–he really underestimated his impact–but he would have been so incredibly touched by it all. I know we were.

This was my father. I’m sorry for everyone who has lost him but after yesterday, I’m sad for everyone who won’t get to know him too.

I wanted to post this entry to thank everyone who has contacted me–be it here, my email, through comments on Facebook, replies on Twitter, private messages on both, places the blog entry fed into, sent flowers, cards… friends and readers and kind strangers… you’ve offered condolences and support, warm thoughts, prayers, some of you even shared stories of your own loss and shown understanding. My family read every last message. Every last one.

I don’t think anything about this can be made easier–now that the flurry is over, we are all bracing ourselves for what’s next–but I do want to tell you that your reaching out meant the world to us and it has made a difference. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t even really seem to cut it in return, honestly, but it’s all I’ve got. And I really mean it.

Thank you so much.

When he was 54, he decided to go back to school to be an environmental technician. It must have been hard going back to college, learning alongside young(er) students at an age in life when people probably assume you’ve got one eye toward retirement, but he did it. He wanted to be an environmental technician, so he put his nose to the grindstone for two years and graduated this last June. He graduated with honours and on the Dean’s List because it was not enough for him to go and do the minimum required, he wanted to do his absolute best and he did. It was such a big, big moment in his life and he was so proud of himself.

We were so proud of him.

He was a man of action. He genuinely wanted things to be better where they could be better and he took up causes–good ones, lost ones–and gave his all to them, for better or worse and never for want of praise and glory. I think, I will always think, for the rest of my life, he should have been appreciated so much more for what he gave.

He was passionate about the environment, about politics and world affairs. He loved to argue. He loved to present one side of an argument and wear you down until you saw his point, and then as soon as you’d conceded, he’d switch sides. There was always, “just one more thing,” to say when my father was at the head of the table discussing the topic of the day. No one thrived on these debates more than he and my papa (his father-in-law) did, I think. I hope they’re getting caught up right now. I really do. And I hope he’s with his father now, who passed away in 2003, and who he also missed so much and was devastated to lose.

He was a big reader. He loved crime dramas and bad sitcoms. He grudgingly let my sister indulge in Jeopardy at the dinner table. My dad was crazy for the arts. Passionate about theatre. One of the best moments of his life was bringing Man of la Mancha to the local stage. We still have a tape of it. I was eight or nine when I saw that play and it made me want to climb onstage and be an actor because I wanted to move people the way that I had been moved. I thought my dad was a genius to bring that world alive in our tiny town and make me believe in it, that his vision and interpretation of that musical could bring me to tears. I wanted to inspire them that way, make them laugh, make them cry. I hate musicals but I will always love that one. Later, I wanted to direct, like he did (my directorial debut was in the fifth grade, a murder mystery I also wrote and starred in cough) and then I wanted to write for the screen and eventually, it became books. I think the want to be a storyteller–and that is the one thing in my life that has remained consistent, that has inspired many of my choices–took root when I was sitting in the audience, watching Don Quixote rise from his death bed…


DON QUIXOTE: But this is not seemly, my lady. On thy knees, to me?
DULCINEA: My lord, you’re not well!
DON QUIXOTE: Not well? What is illness to the body of a knight errant? What matter wounds? For each time he falls, he shall rise and woe to the wicked! Sancho!
SANCHO PANZA: Here, your grace!
DON QUIXOTE: My armour, my sword!
SANCHO PANZA: More misadventures!
DON QUIXOTE: Adventures, old friend!


Thank you for inspiring me, Dad.

This is so difficult.

He loved my mom. LOVED. Loved her.

We found out he was sick at the beginning of September–cancer–and things progressed faster than we imagined. Hope was meted out to us sparingly, dashed as quickly as it was offered. My father, the kind of person who always had to be doing something, always had to be doing something for someone, my father the fighter, never got the opportunity to fight.

It was one of the last things he said.

“I just want to fight.”

He resisted until the end. They weren’t his terms and he held on until he couldn’t hold on anymore. Those last hours, minutes, seconds…

Those were difficult too.

The heart has been ripped right out of this family.

Everything is less interesting now, a little more meaningless, without him here. There’s nothing beautiful about it, nothing in this loss that will ever make it worthwhile. It is so unfair. He should be here.

56 years old.

Would you believe this entry is actually a cover reveal?

(Maybe the title of this entry gave that away but pretend to be shocked!)

BUT before you look I have to give a nod to the folks at St. Martin’s Press who worked so hard to put this together. Particularly my editor, Sara and the cover designer, Lisa. I saw SEVEN covers before this one. Seven! That is the most covers any of my books have ever gotten. There was a point in July where I got like five of those covers in ONE week which was so exciting actually. I love covers. I want all the covers! But anyways, add to the fact that I got to give A LOT of input on this–and I mean A LOT–well. It has been A Process…

But I think it was totally worth it.

I hope you do too.

Here’s the plot, one more time:

If anything I think you are guaranteed a novel with a pretty cover. :)

Zombies zombies zombies!

f(O_o)f f(O_o)f f(O_o)f <- zombies!