Post Halloween Hangover

Well, Halloween is over and I officially have a case of the November blahs.  Sure, I’m doing NaNoWriMo and Movember this year, but that’s hard to top a night of being your favorite superhero duo with your daughter.  Since I love this picture of us so much, I’m going to post it here.  I’m also trying to get it to trend on reddit, so won’t you help out?  If you click on the picture, you’ll be taken to its reddit page.  A simple up vote goes a long way to helping me preserve my stint as a superhero in the history of the Internet.  Who knows, maybe I’ll end up on Awkward Family Photos or become a random Internet meme.

Hope you all had a healthy and happy Halloween!  If you only come to my blog for my Halloween posts, see you next year!  If you’re in it for the long haul, thanks for sticking around!

The Dynamic Duo patrols the neighborhood making sure everyone had a safe Halloween!

 

 

31 Days of Lessons Learned: One Small Idea Can Change Your Course

31 Days of Lessons Learned:  Day Thirty

One Small Idea Can Change Your Course

 

This is one of those lessons that can affect you on a minor scale and on a global scale.  This is a lesson that can affect you as an individual, or the entire world.  When an idea gets expressed, there’s a ripple effect and you really don’t know exactly how far that idea will go.

I’m not going to get that deep with this lesson though.  We’re one day away from being done (and one day away from Halloween), so I’m going to talk about how a little idea affected how Halloween 2012 is going to play out.

I mentioned a few lessons ago that my daughter is going to be Batman for Halloween this year.  Since the only costume I had was a Giant Banana, my plan was to go as a Giant Banana wearing a Batman shirt.  Not too creative, but it’s all we had.  While at work one day, my wife got the idea that I should go as Robin.  Seems like a good idea, but the costume would be pretty tough to pull off right?  Wrong.  This little idea got into her head and she wouldn’t stop until she figured out how to make a Robin costume for me.

She ended up finding this picture…and it was on.

Bat Dudes

Based on this Robin costume, my wife knew is was a doable goal.  She went to Jo-Ann Fabrics and got the supplies, while I raided my closet to make sure I had the right clothes to construct the Robin costume.

After about $10 at Jo-Ann Fabrics and some assistance from Aunt Pam, my wife had this…

Dane, the Boy Wonder

If you ask me, it looks 100 times better than the source material.  We even watched about half of the ’60s Batman movie to make sure we had the right Burt Ward Robin look.

Because of the little idea my wife had, I’m looking forward to the best Halloween ever.  My daughter may not remember it when she grows up, but we’ll have visual proof.

Let this little Halloween blog be a lesson to you.  Don’t discount your ideas, no matter how small they are, because they could change the world…or at least the amount of fun you have on Halloween.

Thanks Rachel – I owe you one.  You outdid yourself.

31 Days of Lessons Learned: Don’t Stifle Your Child’s Creativity and Decision-Making (Girls Can Be Batman Too)

31 Days of Lessons Learned:  Day Twenty Six

Don’t Stifle Your Child’s Creativity and Decision-Making (Girls Can Be Batman Too)

Before I get started on this lesson, let me make a quick note.  While I mention it’s important to give your child the space to blossom and find their own way, if he/she is doing something wrong or potentially harmful, I would recommend stepping in and stopping the behavior and/or decision-making.

OK, on with the lesson.

I think we’re all guilty of trying to force our will on someone from time-to-time and making them be something they don’t want to be.  I’ve learned that I don’t really like it when it happens to me, so one of the conscious decisions I made when I found out I was going to be a dad was to make sure my daughter wasn’t exposed to that type of thing.  While I want to guide her and teach her right from wrong, it’s important for me to let her discover herself and her creativity by the decisions she makes in life.

I was almost guilty of this recently though when we were hunting for her Halloween costume.  At first, she wanted to be a monkey.  Then, with about two weeks to go, she changed her mind to a squirrel.  We had trouble coming up with a passable squirrel costume, so we decided to let her loose in a costume store.  We went to her section and let her choose the costumes to try on.  It was almost costume overload because she had about six costumes she was choosing from initially.  Right when we had it narrowed down to a reasonable number of costumes, Lily added one last costume to the list:  Batman.

My inner geek was extremely proud.  The Batman fanatic in me might have shed a tear.

After that initial swell of pride hit, I started to panic.

Would people confuse her for a boy?  Would people think I put her up to it?  Can I talk her into a Batgirl costume?  What would people think?

Because I had those thoughts, I tried my hardest to talk her into going with a cute little witch costume.  In the end, my daughter’s mind was made.  She was going to be Batman.

The more I thought about it, the more I chastised myself for my original thinking.  How cool is it that my daughter chose Batman as her costume?  I think that’s awesome.  And to think, I was going to impose my will on her and make her settle for a witch costume.

Want to know what’s even cooler than my daughter dressing up as Batman?

My wife is making me a Robin costume.

Watch out come Halloween because the Dynamic Duo is on the prowl.

BatLily – at today’s Detroit Zoo Boo.

31 Days of Lessons Learned: There’s a Fine Line Between Classic and Dated

31 Days of Lessons Learned:  Day Twenty Three

There’s a Fine Line Between Classic and Dated

From now until Halloween, my wife and I are watching horror movies every night to get in the spooky mood.  I love horror movies, so this is definitely my favorite time of year.  Tonight, we watched the original Carrie movie from 1976 starring Sissy Spacek, John Travolta, and the dude from Greatest American Hero (among others).

I’ve seen it on more than one occasion and I still like watching it, but this time around, I noticed a few things that just don’t jive these days.  For starters, the opening girl’s changing room scene feels like a scene out of Porky’s.  If you think about it, the actresses in that scene are all playing high school kids.  Do you think a movie filmed these days would have a scene depicting a room full of naked high school kids?  I don’t.

The clothing and the music also make this classic horror film feel pretty dated.  So much so that all the scares and mayhem feel completely telegraphed with all the music cues.

The whole time I watched the movie, I just kept swaying between thinking Carrie was a classic or just another dated flick.

What I learned is that it’s just too close to call.  I guess it’s a dated classic…

I guess that conflict is one of the reasons they’re remaking the movie…well, that and for another payday.

I just hope some of the other horror flicks I plan on watching in the next week don’t conflict me this much.

31 Days of Lessons Learned: If your dog is ripping a tennis ball apart, try harder to get it from him

31 Days of Lessons Learned:  Day Nineteen

If your dog is ripping a tennis ball apart, try harder to get it from him

 

I was all ready to use today’s lesson post to talk about how good things happen when you’re nice to people.  I went out to dinner with my family, then ran a few errands…including getting my daughter’s Halloween costume.  She decided that this year, she wanted to be Batman.  I couldn’t be more proud.

All in all, it was a great night – until we got home.

Why?

Well, when we got home, we were greeted with lots of dog puke.

Let’s rewind a little bit.  Before we went out for our night on the town, I let my dogs out to go to the bathroom one last time.  Cooper found a tennis ball that was missing it’s green exterior (the dogs chewed that off weeks ago), and there was a little tear in the rubber.  Cooper pierced another part of the rubber and starting chewing on it.  The ball started breaking off in chunks, and since he could tell I was about to try to get it from him, he ran into the wet yard.  I wasn’t wearing shoes and I was on the phone with the cable company, so I let him win.  He came in after he was done chewing the rubber to smithereens.  He may have even flashed a “Cooper Rules” smile on his way in too.

As you can imagine, the puke was filled with little chunks of rubber.  Unfortunately for me, Cooper got some on himself as well, which meant he also had a bath.  While I cleaned up the puke mess, my wife cleaned up the bathroom area and the stairway.  All the while, Cooper was running around the house like a puppy…just like he always does after a bath.  I was glad to see he was so happy (and to see he was feeling better), but man do I wish I put forth more of an effort to get that tennis ball away from him.  Oh well, you live and learn, right?

So Fresh and So Clean Clean (if he wanted a bath, he could have just told me instead of getting puke all over himself)

31 Days of Lessons Learned: I Made a (Free) Batman Pumpkin Stencil

31 Days of Lessons Learned:  Day Fourteen

I Made a  (Free) Batman Pumpkin Stencil

When my 31 Day series ended last year, I had an idea to use this year for 31 Days of Free Pumpkin Stencils.  My plan was going to be to make stencils of all makes:  pop culture, politics, cartoons, TV, movies, comics, etc. It was very ambitious, especially for a Photoshop novice like me, so it never really made it off the ground.

Tonight, I decided to give it a shot.  This year’s theme is lessons learned and we’re so close to Halloween, so I figured why not.

Making my first pumpkin stencil was a comedy of errors.  I first tried Tom Hardy as Bane.  That didn’t work out as well as I wanted.  I then moved onto several incarnations of Batman (’60s Adam West Batman, Batman Beyond, Greg Capullo).  That didn’t work that well, so I tried Heath Ledger’s Joker.  Still, a disaster.  I then got this wild idea that I could make a good Christopher Walken stencil.  It actually didn’t look half-bad, but I couldn’t get the spiky hair just right.

I then went back to the well and did a simpler version of Batman.

So, here it is.  A free Batman stencil (inspired by one of the Batman Begins movie posters) for all your pumpkin carving needs.

Today, I learned I can make a stencil, but I also learned I need a lot more practice.

Print this bad boy out and enjoy!

31 Days of Lessons Learned: People Want Free Sesame Street Elmo Pumpkin Stencils

31 Days of Lessons Learned:  Day Six

People Want Free Sesame Street Elmo Pumpkin Stencils

Based on the my site’s traffic and keyword searched, it’s clear most of my readers have one thing on their mind – carving pumpkins!  ‘Tis the season I suppose, and like Marie Antoinette before me, if my follower wants free stencils, then I say “Let them have stencils!”

First things first, last year I offered up several links for pumpkin stencils, so I’m just going to post them all here for ease.  You’ll find free Elmo stencils, free Batman stencils, free Detroit Tigers stencils, and a few more…

Free Elmo Pumpkin Stencil, plus free Batman, Joker, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Disney, and Jack Nicholson pumpkin stencils – Only Elmo is shown, but click on the picture and you’ll get access to 28 other stencils.

Free Detroit Tigers pumpkin stencils – Also, since the Tigers are playing Oakland right now, here’s the link to the Oakland A’s free pumpkin stencils.  Here’s a pro-tip – every major league baseball team is offering free pumpkin stencils on their respective websites – go check them out!

Free Batman:  The Animated Series pumpkin stencil – This link also includes other Batman – related pumpkin stencils.

Here are some new links for free pumpkin templates.

More Free Sesame Street-related pumpkin stencils.

Links to a wide variety of free pumpkin stencils of varying difficulty level.

100 Free pumpkin stencils ranging from Cookie Monster and Curious George to Harry Potter and Mickey Mouse. – Seriously, there are lots of awesome stencils here related to music, movies, cartoons, horror, and pop culture.  This is a MUST check out.

Let’s not end it here.  If you have a fun pumpkin stencil you want to share, link it in the comments below.  Let us all learn from each other.  Happy Halloween!

31 Days of Lessons Learned: I make a good Halloween-inspired music playlist

31 Days of Lessons Learned: Day Two

I make a good Halloween-inspired music playlist

Based on my site traffic, I’m getting a lot of folks checking out all the free pumpkin stencils I posted last year.  I don’t blame them…it is that time of year after all (in fact, I plan on discussing pumpkins and Halloween later this month as it pertains to a lesson I learned).  Seeing all the excitement over last year’s Halloween posts (and because Halloween is awesome), I’ve been starting to get the bug myself.  My daughter and I have already decided what we’re being this year (monkeys); I’m going to start reading a really scary book; and I’m going to start watching some scary movies.  If there’s any month that you should purposely scare yourself during, it’s October.

All this Halloween buzz also got me thinking about music (just about anything gets me thinking about music though, so that’s no surprise).  So, I set out to make a playlist that can get me in the spooky mood.  I think I did a pretty good job of it actually.  Take a listen and tell me what you think.  Be warned, there is a bit of rap on there, and the rap songs are definitely NSFW.  I had over 50 songs on this mix at one time, but I pared it down to the following 33 tracks (And before you get on my case about the lack of “Monster Mash” on this mix, I didn’t forget it.  In fact, I deliberately avoided it at all costs.  It’s a cute song and all, but doesn’t really fit the theme of this mix.

Take a listen and let me know if I really did learn that I make a mean playlist.  Comment below with your thoughts and let me know if I forgot anything!

5 Questions with New York Times Best-Selling Author Michael P. Spradlin + free Blood Riders ebook giveaway

New York Times Bestselling author Michael Spradlin is most known for his books for younger readers and zombie song and poem parodies. This week, with the release of his latest novel, Blood Riders, Spradlin can now add accomplished adult novelist to his resume as well.

I’ve been friends with Michael since 2004 during my time with Borders, and through that time, I’ve been able to see how passionate he is about the book world. Spradlin is a book person’s person and it shows every time I talk with him.

Enough about Mike though…onto Blood Riders!

Blood Riders, set in the late 1800s,tells the story of Civil War vet Jonas Hollister, a man who was falsely accused of perjury when it comes to the disappearance of his 11 men. His group was ambushed by a band of “flesh eaters” and Jonas was the only survivor. The only problem is that there is absolutely no trace of a scuffle or his team anywhere, so Jonas is sentenced to prison at Fort Leavenworth.

After four years of prison, Jonas is pardoned by real-life detective Allan Pinkerton because another attack had occurred and as the survivor of the previous attack, Jonas is uniquely talented for the task of hunting down the perpetrators in exchange for a full pardon. From there, Jonas is paired with the likes of Pinkerton, Oliver Winchester, and a familiar face to all horror fans, Van Helsing. Aside from Jonas, another person is also pursuing the vampiric Archaics who joins Pinkerton’s hunt. Her story just makes Blood Riders even better.

Spradlin’s novel is an intense blend of horror and western (with a little steampunk thrown in for good measure). If Borders were still around, I would be the buyer for this book and I would have definitely promoted it because I want everyone to know about it. Since I can’t do that, I can do the next best thing. Mike has decided to give away THREE Amazon Kindle eBook copies of Blood Riders!

Stay tuned after our 5 Question Interview for details on how you can get a chance to win a free copy of Blood Riders.

So, without further delay, here’s our interview.

Before Blood Riders, your main writing focus has been with books for young readers. What was it like to switch gears and start writing books for adults – especially a novel that blends so many genres?
Obviously writing for children is different in terms of language and themes. But the essentials of the novel are the same. You still have to tell an entertaining story. Paying too close attention to the who the audience is, can sometimes get you in trouble. It’s better to think about making the story as fun and interesting as you can.

The narrative weaves real-life people like Allan Pinkerton with famous literary figures like Van Helsing. Do you feel some sort of responsibility when using them in your book?
I try to be as accurate as I can to who they were and how they are described in my research or in Van Helsing’s case in Dracula. But it’s also fiction so I get to ‘make up the rules’ to a certain degree. Obviously it’s a little easier with a character like Van Helsing as there is only one source. But Pinkerton was a very interesting man and digging into his life added a lot to Blood Riders, I felt, even though he’s a relatively minor character.

What is it about vampires that make them so ingrained in popular culture? What are the vampires in Blood Riders like?
I think they’re ingrained in popular culture because they’re scary and we like to be scared. There is an element of the idea that a human being is taken over and only the darkest side of us remains. That’s a pretty frightening proposition. In Blood Riders my ‘vampires’ are a bit of a hybrid of a couple of different myths. I wanted to explore the idea of an early race of vampires. I wondered if, in the fictional realm, did vampires and werewolves and other monsters evolve and adapt to their environment the way humans did? And what would happen if this group of vampires made a conscious decision hundreds of years ago, to isolate themselves from humanity? In order to insure they were not overwhelmed by the sheer mass of human beings and humans greater use of technology, their cleverness, their ability to band together in a way that a race of beings whose soul purpose is to hunt and feed. They don’t invent, they don’t ‘civilize’ beyond a basic tribal structure. In order to ensure their survival they must remain hidden. That becomes a double edged sword. By remaining hidden they don’t grow, if they don’t remain hidden they risk decimation. It was an interesting question to delve into.

With Halloween just around the corner, do you have any recommendations for scary reads to get us in the mood?
I highly recommend the Richard Kadrey Sandman Slim series. And I’m constantly amazed at the number of people of who’ve never read Dracula. One of the truly scary novels of all time. And it’s always a good idea to read or reread ‘Salem’s Lot around Halloween. You know, just so you’ll be scared to take the trash out in the dark.

Any last words?
None except thanks for giving me a chance to speak to your audience and I hope they’ll buy and read Blood Riders and tell 10,000 of their closest friends!

If you’re like me, that interview grabbed your interest to see what Blood Riders is all about (thankfully, I’ve read it already so I know exactly how much fun you’re in store for). Well, now’s your chance to get an opportunity to win a copy of the ebook in Kindle format directly from the author himself!

Interested in winning a free copy of Blood Riders?

Here’s how: From now until 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, September 30th, 2012 all you have to do is comment on this post and let me know what your favorite horror novel is. Simple, right?

BUT, if you want some bonus entries, here’s what to do:

For one extra Bonus Entry, like Michael Spradlin on Facebook
For two extra Bonus Entries, follow Michael Spradlin on Twitter
For three extra Bonus Entries, follow me on Twitter
For four extra Bonus Entries, share this blog with Facebook and Twitter (there are easy to use sharing buttons below)

That’s right, you could potentially have five total entries into the free Blood Riders ebook contest.

I will randomly select three winners based on the above criteria on Monday, October 1st, 2012. If you are going for the bonus entries, please don’t forget to mention which ones you’ve completed in your horror novel comment to this blog.

Good Luck Everyone! Let the games begin!

BLOOD RIDERS Trailer from Harper Voyager on Vimeo.

Also, Blood Riders is currently available now at all major bookstores and online book retailers.

31 Days of….?

This time last year, I was prepping something I’ve never done before.

For the month of October, I blogged every single day of the month.  The catch was, I blogged about a specific topic for that entire month.  Since Halloween is my favorite time of year, I chose to write about that.  It was all part of this blog link network and it was a lot of fun to be honest.

Since my blog hits for last year’s Halloween posts are increasing by the day right now, my favorite time of year is upon us again.  Aside from the ghosts, ghouls, tricks, and treats, that also means the time is upon us for me to prep on my month-long blog-a-thon.

The only question is, what should I write about this month.  Here’s where you come in.  If you have an idea that you’d like me to write about, feel free to chime in.  Otherwise, I’m gonna pick something myself.  Should I write about books?  Movies?  Recipes?  Writing?  Social Media?  Music?  Pop Culture?  The sky’s the limit.  Chime in if you have an opinion in the comments below!