I started off enjoying a beautiful sunny day on Friday, but then it snowed on Saturday. I hope this week we will see more sunny skies. I’ve been working out à la fitness center. I also bought a new swimsuit and a Nike sweatshirt hoodie that I love. I mostly use the treadmill in the weight room where I can run a safe 2.2 miles adjusting my speed to about a 5.2.
After that, I can’t wait to get into the hot tub for some much-needed pain relief therapy and some underwater stretching in the deep end of the pool. It feels so nice. I fell on my tailbone some years ago at a rock concert and the pain has finally taken a toll.
Fraterfest kicked off this week and I finished reading In Darkness We Must Abide Book One by Rhiannon Frater. I finished The Vampire Stories by Nancy Kilpatrick on audio. I also read a graphic novel Deadly Class.
I purchased In Darkness We Must Abide #1, Death In The Shadows #2, and Ashes in the Night #3 on my kindle for the Fraterfest Readathon!
I received a few arcs from Netgalley
Texas Hold’em by George R.R. Martin
The Witch of Willow Hall by Hester Fox
As I blog mostly when I feel inspired and for fun, I can’t say exactly what I will post next because I have none scheduled. I do have some drafts though:/ However, I will probably post favourite horror movies and more Blogoween related prompts. Obviously, we will be wrapping up Fraterfest readathon on Tuesday as well.
Have a great week!
Reading this book contributed to the FraterfestRAT challenge
Will this have a happy ending? I can only hope *crosses fingers
It was Halloween 2007 that broke the last straw for Vanora Socoli. Alisha and Roman were bitten with the vampire curse but would never hurt their sister, still, Vanora felt she had to leave her vampire family after what she saw.
Vanora was young but very naïve and had unrealistic expectations regarding the true nature of vampirism, but so did Roman although they fed off of animal blood and were doing a pretty good job of it until…well.
There was some other terrible evil brewing in the background to which a very handsome and mysterious Armando was involved. dun duh dun dun
I have read other books by Rhiannon Frater and loved them. The Tale of the Vampire Bride and Pretty When She Kills are both epic vampire novels. I have not read the As The World Dies zombie trilogy nor finished her science fiction series The Last Bastion of the Living. I hope she continues writing excellent fiction horror inspired books like these.
God’s of The Nowhere is a horrific fantasy about a boy who descends from a great druid and doesn’t know it. Some bad things start happening on his 16th birthday. He has to learn the clues of who he is with the help of his best friend. They travel to the land of nowhere and encounter all sorts of terrible creatures.
The Graveyard Bookis a novel about a baby raised in a graveyard by the dead. The Owens’ entire family is murdered in the middle of the night when he is only eighteen months old. He escapes by wandering into an old graveyard and is adopted by a couple buried there for more than a hundred years. As the boy grows up, he learns all there is to know about being dead and haunting the living, but must continue to hide in the safety of the graveyard until the man who wanted him and his family dead is found. The Graveyard Book is a story of an unusual child and his unusual childhood, one that starts out frightening but ends up enlightening the unsuspecting reader.
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
After a night of partying Tana wakes up and finds that everyone at the party has been slaughtered. What compels her to rescue a vampire named Gavriel, and her ex-boyfriend Aidan from that house, I have no idea.
The story takes us on a dark and twisted journey to Coldtown where Tana lives among dangerous vampires and is at risk of turning into one. She seems to do a good job at evading it though until one of the people she meets along the way bites her…..I love the ending to what I thought was an epic vampire novel
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
I liked this book. It takes us into the strange lives of gifted children. Peculiar is a levitating girl, an invisible boy and the bird which they call Miss Peregrine. A peregrine falcon is her moniker. She is the headmistress of this home and takes good care of the children.
Jacob is different too, but everyone else thinks he’s crazy. His grandfather would tell him stories of children with different abilities. At first, he didn’t believe the stories his grandfather told were real, but only fairytales and he desperately wanted to find him. After Abe is killed, a psychiatrist was called in to help Jacob through his recurring nightmares. BUT….. Dr. Golan is a very dangerous man. Jacob journeys to Cairnholm with his father, where Miss Peregrine’s home is and where Abe spent most of his childhood, intent on investigating and resolving his many questions about the life and death of his grandfather. Abe could see monsters (Wights and Hollowgast) but so could Jacob. Seeing monsters were their gift that had an extraordinary purpose.
The Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake is the second book in the Anna Dressed in Blood duo. I didn’t think I would be so scared. Just thinking about Anna makes my hairs stand on end. The Girl of Nightmares is a gory mess, and I couldn’t turn off the lights. I made an acrostic for the title some years ago here
Nos4a2 by Joe Hill is every child’s dream fantasy come true and a parent’s worst nightmare. Charlie Manx steals the life out of innocent children by luring them and trapping them inside his Rolls Royce taking them on an adventure to Christmasland.
Heart-Shaped Box was hard to read. The old geezer Craddock was disturbing, and there is that feeling of suspense. It is creepy, and I was scared of this one. It touches on some serious subjects like child molestation and suicide.
Doctor Sleep wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Stephen King touches on the subject of child abuse and a mother who used drugs robbing her child of food, milk, and diapers. Speaking of drugs, the chilling factor comes from those people who sucked the essence of your soul particularly those who are gifted. I didn’t like reading about Danny Torrance’s alcohol addiction, but I liked Abra. I had the song “Abra abracadabra I wanna reach out and grab ya” stuck in my head for forever afterwards. Also. This. Quote. Is. Epic.
FEAR stands for fuck everything and run – Stephen King
Salem’s Lot is, of course, a book about vampires who take over a small town in Salem. The creep factor was all the clues that something terrifying was happening right under everyone’s noses. When a person was bitten, they had no idea what happened to them because their memory was erased. Oddly enough I didn’t think Mr. Barlow the vampire was too terrible.
Jenny Pox (the paranormals #1)
I really liked this YA novel. She must be avoided like the plague. I don’t know how she came to inherit this deadly plague and when she touches things the life is sucked out of them and everything she touches dies. She is the bringer of death and it’s kind of a lonely existence not being able to touch anyone or animals or plants. Nor is she able to be touched. It’s really sad. So she wears gloves. The kids at school make fun of her.
This is a great opportunity to feature some of your favourite book covers. The rules are fairly simple each week, following a predetermined list, choose a book, compare a couple of the different covers available for that particular book and choose your favourite.
This weeks theme
“The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.” – A cover for a mystery novel
The Snowman by Jo Nesbo is a mystery crime novel. ☃️ I was a little surprised at how many book covers and in different languages are published. I probably shouldn’t be but once again, I have not inserted all the covers because some of them are variants of the same.
For me personally, I like,
#18 the Arabic cover(?)
#1 mass market paperback with the cutout snowman. It’s a classic.
#11. The Ukrainian Snowman. It’s mean but cute 🙂 ☃️ Those are my top 3 picks.
It’s Day 2 and I’ve only managed to read Deadly Class, a graphic novel, listen to a 7 hr audiobookThe Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick and boy! was it a vampire erotica or what? lol. I can’t say it was amazing. I remember much about nothing really. I also read a few short stories from Tales from the Cauldron and the first episode in Rhiannon Fraters Vampire series that I am currently reading and probably will continue with until I’m finished all 3 books OR the readathon ends.
Reading this book contributed to Fraterfest Readathon 2018.
A short first episode of the supernatural serial, which takes place in the Socoli Mansion. Vanora Socoli, a young girl, watches from an upstairs window a parade of coffins at a funeral coming to their final resting place on the Socoli Estate of which Roman and Alisha Socoli inherit. Unfortunately, they mistakenly opened the coffin of a vampire, unaware of its existence. He/it is hungry for blood.
Yikes.
I WANT MORE! I don’t understand why this is in so many parts. Ugh, Why?
Payment Due is about a witch switching bodies with a cat so she would be better enabled to spy on the bailiff who had taken some of her grandmother’s belongings. In order to retrieve them, she had to enter his home as his cat. It was a risky switcheroo as the cat wasn’t very pleasant while in her body but whatever. She was able to save the day I guess.
I didn’t like the next story. A Handful of Ashes. Ugh! For gosh sakes I couldn’t stop yawning and dozing off but finally this morning I persevered. Trudged through the muck and mire of a mess. It was a terribly written short story, that happens in a witch school * unlike Harry Potters Hogwarts * Some names and things I was not familiar with like Ogham, Brythonic, geas, sizars I mean wtf?
So we’re off to a slow start in Fraterfest RAT but no worries. I slept for about 8 hours. It is 9:46 AM
I am about to begin picking up where I left off in Tales from the Cauldron in contribution to the Fraterfest Readathon which starts at 12 midnight tonight and ends next Tuesday. October 11-16. I shall begin reading a short story called Payment Due by Frances Hardinge.
A Handful of Ashes by Garth Nix
Little Gods by Holly Black
Barrio Girls by Charles De Lint
Felidis by Tanith Lee
Witch Work by Neil Gaiman
The Education of a Witch by Ellen Klages
The Threefold World by Ellen Kushner
The Witch in the Wood by Delia Sherman
Which Witch by Patricia A. McKillip
The Carved Forest by Tim Pratt
Burning Castles by M. Rickert
The Stone Witch by Isobelle Carmody
Andersen’s Witch by Jane Yolen
B is for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher
Great-Grandmother in the Cellar by Peter S. Beagle
Crow and Caper, Caper and Crow by Margo Lanagan
These are all the stories included Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron. I got this book from my library and have renewed it so I can finish it for Fraterfest. Anyway, I first heard about it through the books in the Harry Dresden series on Goodreads.
Local Supernaturals Who Demand A Book
Hosted by Camilla @ Reader In The Attic
Share your local stories of ghosts, supernaturals and what happens around your area. Either where you live, or nearby; can also share your own personal scary experience. These are the stories which you think, deserve their own novel – could add a blurb to the story. Can share as many stories as you wish as long they’re horror/supernatural/scary/ghostly etc.
The Legend of Ogopogo aka Lake Monster
It is said of this creature that inhabits Lake Okanagan, it is Canadas Loch Ness Monster.
This reminds me, in Fear The Walking Dead when John and Strand are marooned on a small island, they fear the creature in the lake and make a raft to get to the other side but fail miserably. The lake monster eats zombies. Gah!
This video is interesting. It is an episode of a tv show called “In Search of” from the 1970’s and was narrated by the late Leonard Nemoy! RIP🖖 This creature has been spotted by dozens of people over the years, dating back to the days where the Okanagan people warned their children not to go into the water unsupervised, or the creature would devour them.
Ogopogo is often described as dark and multi-humped, with green, black, brown or gray skin. The head is said to look like that of a snake, sheep, horse, seal or even an alligator. Some eyewitnesses say it has ears or horns; others don’t. Many sightings simply describe a featureless “log” that came alive. The latest was in the news recently.
David Halbauer from the Okanagan Lake area says he has seen what he thinks is Ogopogo. I thought it looked like a small snake and nothing like a big dinosaur depicted in the photos.
I love Gourds and pumpkins and warm autumn days and a harvest moon! I love October because it’s my birth month. It’s a celebration all month long! I love warm cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes and long walks. I love the crunching sound the dead leaves make under my feet kicking them up as I walk and the gorgeous colour of autumn leaves surrounding us with orange, yellow, gold, purple and red. It’s beautiful. Autumn is a time for new beginnings.
There are so many reasons to love Fall. For one, Halloween originated from a Celtic festival for the dead called Samhain. It emanates scary haunted ghosts, skeletons and graveyards. It is the day before All Saints Day. Fall is a time for hearty soups and apple OR pumpkin pie and the scent of cinnamon cloves in hot apple cider OR a pumpkin scented candle! I love mini chocolate treats, candy and decorations. O and the witches brew made with dry ice! Some of my favourite snacks are Rice Krispie treats and Frito-lay Poppables.
When I was young and use to go trick or treating, I loved to haul my candy out on the table to look at and savour it. It was in the usual manner that we prayed a blessing over dinner reciting
“Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty through Christ Our Lord. Amen”
October 8th is when we celebrate Thanksgiving this year
but I am deprived with no memories of this feast.
The Snowman by Jo Nesbo is a mystery crime novel. ☃️ I was a little surprised at how many book covers and in different languages are published. I probably shouldn’t be but once again, I have not inserted all the covers because some of them are variants of the same.
I love Gourds and pumpkins and warm autumn days and a harvest moon! I love October because it’s my birth month. It’s a celebration all month long! I love warm cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes and long walks. I love the crunching sound the dead leaves make under my feet kicking them up as I walk and the gorgeous colour of autumn leaves surrounding us with orange, yellow, gold, purple and red. It’s beautiful. Autumn is a time for new beginnings.
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