Man At Work

Isn't creative writing wonderful?

Whether you think of it as a profession, a hobby or an occasional pastime you can always claim to be working. Are you like me, either planning the next phase of your WIP or thinking up future new plots? Ernest Hemingway once said that writing is long periods of thinking and short periods of writing and that's good enough for me. I can do it lying in bed while waiting to fall asleep or when I wake up before I get up. I can do it while shopping, out on a bike ride or listening to Test Match Special.

So, as a writer, how many hours a week do you think you work? I know that many scribblers claim to always have a notepad handy so they can jot down ideas that spring to mind. Some even have them by their bed at night. Now, as a former shift worker, I know that counts as triple time.

Unfortunately my wife also claims I can do it while, hoovering, ironing or decorating. So it's not all good news.

Book Release Party Give Aways: Smoking Monkeys, Cash, Jewelry, and Books! Enter and Win!

My book is now  available on Amazon.com!  Click on the icon next to this post to check it out.  In order to celebrate my big day,  I am doing a massive give away.  I will be doing different things all week.  My first give-away will be big.   I am giving away $75 cash.   Just to make it fun,  I am going to turn this into a treasure hunt.  I will give a way four items today.   One collection of Lovecraft short stories,  one smoking monkey,  and two necklaces shown below.  In order to enter to win the money and the items you must do the following:

1.  Tweet or make a post on Facebook about this giveaway with a link back here to help me spread the word about the giveaway.

2.  Comment below saying you have tweeted or facebooked about the giveaway and you want to enter the contest.  (If you don't tweet or facebook, just let me know how you spread the word)

3.  In your comment, say which item you would like.

4.  One item will be stuffed with money and three will not.  I will draw 4 winners from the commenters below.  Although all winners will get their desired object,  only one will get the money!  If you get the money,  you are the grand prize winner.  I will have someone else stuff the object with the money so even I won't know who the winner is until you comment back and let me know. 


Good luck!  Here are the Prizes!

Holy Smoking Monkies I Am Excited! I Have to Give Stuff Away to Celebrate!

When I started blogging last December,   I was just happy to think that someone out there would be reading my stories.  I wasn't overly ambitious about the blog.   I was just happy to have a few people reading my writing.  I never once imagined  someone would like it enough to ask me to write a book.  However,  this is exactly what happened in February of this year.   An editor of the history press asked me to write a Haunted America book for him.  I was, of course, thrilled.  I really had no idea what I was in for, however.  I write fiction.   Nonfiction is an entirely different beast.  I drove all over the state.  I chased people around and struggled to get interviews.   I spent late nights up researching supposed haunted locations to find out if  the stories behind them were true.   Sometimes,  the stories were just legends, which actually just made them more interesting.    It was a journey and I learned more about Alabama history in the 4 months it took me to write this little book than in the fifteen years I'd lived here.

And now here it is.  The book that this blog made is now available for preorder on amazon.  I am dizzy with excitement.   I'm putting together a party and a give away to celebrate.  Keep your eye on this blog!  Over the next week I'll be giving away over $200 in cash and prizes to celebrate my book!   I really am thrilled. 
My blog book is now available for preorder!!!!!!!

A Eulogy

I spent my morning at a funeral today. I've been to many funerals over the last few years.  I gave the eulogy at this one.   In honor of my grandmother, who was a fantastically difficult woman but who never failed to inspire me,  here is her eulogy. She is the little girl in the picture above.  The house behind her was her family home The Newton-Allaire house.  I know her ghost has gone home to the house she loves now.

My grandma Kay, Kathleen Allaire,  was a woman with a personality that was larger than life. Whether you loved her or hated her, she always made an impression and nobody ever forgot her. Even those who met her only in passing were marked by her strength of will and her passion, even up until the end.



As a child, my best memories of my grandmother were in her spectacular house. The Newton-Allaire house has been in her family for 140 years and she spent her life renovating it and turning it into a proper Victorian mansion. To me, she seemed like a dowager empress in the old house. We would drive for hours to reach her in the very North of Michigan and there we would find her waiting in her mansion amongst the old trees. I loved the summers I spent up there with her in her house with all of my family around me. They are some of my fondest childhood memories. During these visits, I would go up and visit my grandmother in her room and she would always give me candy and tell me stories. She talked about her days as a teacher or her days as an actress. We shared our passion for ghost stories and history. While I was up there, I went through her large library of ghost stories and horror stories. She nurtured a love for all things haunted and old and beautiful in me, which I still have today.


Even in her last days, when I visited her in Harbor Chase Assisted Living or in the nursing home, she would always share stories with me. On one of my last visits to see her, she talked about her childhood in Detroit when Detroit was beautiful and grand. She told me about how she convinced her mother to let her take the street car to the old opera house to see shows. Her mother let her go only if she was with her older sister, Miriam. Together they would ride the street car as often as my Auntie Mimmie would take her and my grandmother fell in love with the theater. It is not surprising that she loved to act and that performing was one of her great passions in life. To me, she always seemed like she was on stage. I will miss her. 

The Sad Beauty of Lough Feeagh

I love stories that mix folklore and ghosts.   This story is from Ireland and it blends classic Irish folklore with a ghost story, making it delicious.  It is the story of  a beautiful young woman who lived near Mallarny Strand who was a wild flirt.  Not only was she a wild flirt and a heavy drinker, but she had a wicked reputation for using her beauty and sexuality to con men out of her money.  Her name was Reenie and she was high spirited and utterly seductive.

Young Reenie was living high on her whiles for a long time until she met a man named Rony.  Rony was not a very attractive man and in fact he was quite funny looking.  He looked as much like a horse as a man.   Reenie became quite enamored of Rony and he used her body and her money quite liberally.  That was until one day a gypsy woman saw the couple in the street and cried out, "Holy Saint Anna-fer God, Reenie, where did ye pick up like ave him?  He's a pooka."

A pooka is a creature who is fairy kind.  They are a fearful kind of creature that can change and bend shapes at will.  They are mischievous and delight in the mayhem they cause.  The most famous pook was Puck from a Midsummer's Night Dream.

After that,  Reenie and Rony separated.  It wasn't long after this that Reenie found herself with child.  Reenie seemed to believe that Rony was a pooka who had enchanted her and she became desolate and terrified.  She didn't want to bare a pooka child.   So Reenie went to the shore of Lough Feeagh at dawn and walked out into the icy water.  She walked and walked until she was submerged.  With the light of dawn,  Reenie's beautiful body could be entangled in the reeds of the still water.

Whether or not Reenie was really pregnant with a pooka aside, there are those that believe her ghost still wanders the shores of Lough Feeagh. Since that time it is said that the ghost of Reenie McCosky returns every year at the anniversary of her death.   She walks back into the icy water and drowns herself.  Others say that her ghost can be found there at other times and that she sometimes slaps those that wander to close to her on the cheek.

taken from a story by James Reynolds

The Ghost and Her Horse

Over a hundred years ago, in the rolling hills of Kentucky, there lived a famed horsewoman who was the daughter of Randolph Corbett a famous breeder.  Her family was know for breeding the finest thoroughbred race horses in the world.  Her life began like a storybook tale of love and success.  Mary was beautiful and rich and popular.  Everyone loved her.   She married a wealthy judge named Wheedon and together they continued building on her father's equine empire  She had a beautiful son named Randolph.   She raised him well and he won a scholarship to the University of Virginia.

Sadly,  even storybook tales can end in tragedy and Mary Wheedon was destined for great tragedy.  After her son left home,  he showed terrible judgement in all manners financial.  He invested in one con artist's scheme after another, bleeding Mary dry and destroying his family fortune.  She tried to keep her son's problem's secret from her husband, Judge Wheedon, but when her beloved baby boy shot himself,  all of his bad decisions came to the surface.  It wasn't  long after her son died that the stock market crashed reducing Judge Wheedon's fortune to nothing.   They say the stress was too much on the Judge's heart and he died a few days later.  Mary was destitute.   She had nothing left.  The sudden, accumulation of horror was too much for Mary.   After this, she vanished from society.   She vanished and  left everything behind but her favorite horse.

Mary's favorite horse was named Hussar's Gold and he was, in fact, the fastest race horse alive, so even after she vanished there were those that sought her out and looked for her horse.  It was twelve years before Mary was seen again.  Two lost travelers came upon her.  She found them wandering the woods by Lexington.  She walked side by side with an enormous  gold stallion.   Her horse and she guided the two lost travellers to Lexington.  Others sought Mary out after this.  They tried to convince her to sell her horse and buy back her life.  But Mary wouldn't hear it.  People who saw her said she spoke to the horse like a friend and they wandered the woods together like they were family.

Time past and it can be assumed Mary and her beautiful stallion died in the shadowy woods of old Kentucky.   However,  children and adults as well still tell stories of meeting a ghostly woman and her horse in the old woods near Covington.  Mary and her horse linger there as they did in life.  Those who see her say that Mary still talks to her horse and that he nods his head in understanding.

Story taken from James Reynold's Ghosts in American Houses, which was among my grandmother's ghost story collection.

Guest Blogger Camiel White Tells Her Story of Supernatural Intimacy

It’s not very often that put much stock into the validity of cinematic fiction. It’s sheer entertainment, which on a deeper level at least makes you think about your own spot in the universe. However, I never really took anything seriously unless it was geared as something of historic relevance. But there was a horror film of sorts that I saw when I was about 13 that, as of late, has proven to be quite true to life.

The Entity is a film shot in the early 80s that is said to be based on true events. A woman is haunted by the spirit of her dead husband in their home. I only mention it to set up some context. Becausethe spirit is that of the woman’s husband, it follows that there is a certain level of intimacy and care with which the “entity” interacts with his wife. As a result, there are some pretty disturbingly fantastic scenes in which the husband’s spirit is caressing his wife, even going so far as to make love to his wife -freaky, I know. But what if something like that were actually plausible? I mean, the film isn’t exactly Oscar worthy; however, it does raise a good question. How intimate can spirits get with their hosts?

Well, I’m here to tell you, quite intimate indeed.

Sporadically throughout the past month, there’s been a presence in my bedroom. I’m not going to say that I’m being haunted. Quite frankly, I don’t know what to think. So, more than anything I’m enlisting the help of some of the readers out there, at least a little bit of affirmation that I’m not, in fact, losing my mind all together. What happens is I’ll be sleeping and drifting between sleep and dream a(http://ghoststoriesandhauntedplaces.blogspot.com/2010/07/guest-blogger-camiele-white-shares-her.html ) a story that I’ve already told. Then there’s a surge of energy --what I can best describe as a sound like an electrical failure, then the feeling of a presence on top of me. Yes, folks...on top of me.

It only gets worse from here.

I’m unable to move, as if I’m pinned down (gently) to the bed. Then something rather unexpected happens. I feel as though this “something” has wrapped itself around me and began to push itself on me, softly caressing my back. I don’t want to get into the gratuitous details, but it is something that’s rather...I don’t want to say frightening, but certainly discomforting. It leads to me wonder if there’s such a thing as travelling entities. I’m no expert; I never would claim to be. So, I wouldn’t know if what I’m experiencing is just the result of lilting between consciousness and the mutterings of dreamspace. Is anyone else aware of any physical contact with misplaced energy? It seems to me that no matter where I am, I come in contact with some sort of something that just seems to want to get close. What are the boundaries of intimacy between us and those things that we can’t describe? It’s a mystery to me. A mystery that I need a bit of help solving, or at the very least, understanding.

Article writer by day, renegade poet by night, Camiele White loves any and everything film. She chases only the original (or incredibly funny) and has been known to talk for hours about subjects that most people just don’t care about. Right now, she gets her jabberjaw jollies writing about Halloween costumes. If you want to give her a buzz, she can be reached at cmlewhite at gmail.com. You can also find her at  http://www.starcostumes.com/