Happy Halloween!

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Halloween Party Madness

This week has been filled with planning for Halloween. Our annual Halloween party was last night and here are a few pictures of our nonsense.   I hope all of your Halloweens are as fun as ours has become!Our little mortuary before the night made it too creepy.We brought back fortune telling as a Halloween tradition.My...

Crikey!

I read in the news the other day that, because of the popularity of text speak, traditional British words are dying out. So I think it's the duty of all of us to reverse this trend and start to introduce some of this vocabulary back into our work. This is my attempt and I expect you all to follow my example. See if you can guess which are the words in danger of dying out before clicking on the link...

Five Forgotten Halloween Traditions to Bring Back

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while might remember this post.  As I hang spiders and bake mummy dogs by the dozens for tomorrow's Halloween party, I thought it might be nice to reuse my favorite Halloween post from last year. Halloween is my favorite Holiday. It has a very long history that is...

A True Horror Story

Halloween is filled with horror stories.  Horror movies are on television and writers paper the world with stories of things that go bump in the night, but fiction is always slightly less terrifying than real life.  There is little in the world of fiction that can compare with the atrocities of the holocaust or the...

Hak Wah Lau Attorney

Attorney,we have previously sent an email to you, requesting legal representation for ourdelinquent customers in the U.S.A and still no response from your Law firm.Please confirm the receipt of this mail and advise us, if your Law firm is in theposition to represent us or not in the in U.S.A; to recover money owed to us by ourdelinquent customers. So we can provide you with exact details of the legalrepresentation...

A Horror Novel for Halloween!

My first novel was my darkest.   I think I was having a dark night of the soul when I wrote this one.  It was littered with sex, violence, and old gods.  I've changed a lot since I wrote this novel, but the novel itself has remained the same.   My inspiration for this bit of horror was the state...

Why We Wear Halloween Costumes

One of the most popular parts of Halloween is the costumes.  Dressing up as a sexy maid or a horrible zombie is the Hallmark of our modern Holiday celebration.  But as Halloween creeps up on us, I always think it is fun to think back to where this tradition came from.  It is good to know why we dress up on Halloween. ...

I'm Romantic (Sometimes)

Just a short trip up the M1 to Chesterfield on Saturday to take part in Sally Quilford's workshop on pocket novels for My Weekly and People's Friend. Also there was my friend Carol from Nottingham Writers' Club. It was a fantastic day. Sally is very friendly and relaxed which rubbed off on all the attendees. As well as learning the dos and don'ts of writing romance for these magazines we all had a...

Case theories (aka: don't go chasing waterfalls)

I've read on a very good blawg (I forget the link, but I'll find it and post it eventually) that lawyers should write down phrases, words, and themes that they can use for future cases. Apparently, that stroke of genius may never hit you again, and you never know when you're going to need a good theme. I've decided to put a...

I'm Friendly (Usually)

Thanks to Angela at Fonts and Fictionfor my Friendly Blogger award. Angela is a colleague at Nottingham Writers Club and often posts examples of her poetry and prose. If you like beautifully written descriptive material and brilliant scene-setting then please go along and have a look.I think most of the blogs I follow have...

Sharing Ghost Stories at the Huntsville Public Library

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the Huntsville Public Library tonight.  I was invited to share my ghost stories and spread chilling tales for Halloween.  This was wonderful for me.  I was nervous. I'm a writer not a speaker so I wasn't sure how I'd do, but I was helped by a fabulous audience and...

I'm pretty sure this cover letter covers it all......

Click on it to make it bigger. Happy Hump Day.--Dr....

Closing arguments--don't try this in court.....

Participated in a closing argument contest recently. Of course, I won nothing....unless you include fodder for future blogs and a future nod in the Karma department to be winning. Considering the level of losing I've been achieving lately, I'm losing faith in the usually-comforting Karma (aka: since I keep losing, surely I'll eventually win at something....right? RIGHT?!?!?!?)So, in order to supplement...

The Maple Hill Cemetery Stroll

Maple Hill Cemetery is one of the largest and oldest cemeteries in the Southeast. It contains the remains of some of the most important people in Southern History and every year the dead rise to share their stories in the Maple Hill Cemetery Stroll.  I enjoyed a lovely day of history and ghosts this Sunday on this cemetery...

The Bloody Elevator

This is one of the more gruesome stories I learned about on the Gatlinburg Ghost Walk.   It is a story of the foolishness of human behavior.  According to our ghostly guide, not so long ago there was some construction work on the Space Needle in Gatlinburg.  Two workers were hired to do some basic, simple...

Occupy Reality

The law school scam bloggers have discovered new territory when it comes to making their voices heard: OCCUPY _________. I've got an idea for them: how about they occupy Common Sense Land?I generally tend try my damnedest to not pipe in on people's Facebook statuses railing against "the man." I've even (shockingly) agreed with the Rolling Stone's ideas regarding a list of goals OWS might adopt (which...

The Pizza Parlor Ghost

Tucked away in between a mini-golf course and a old cemetery there is  an old parking lot in the back of Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  This parking lot is very unremarkable.   Kudzu climbs down the walls of the embankment above the lot and covers all the parking signs.  Steep hills climb up in ever direction...

It's A Funny Old Game

It's a funny game this writing lark isn't it? At Trowell Writers we held our annual prize giving day on Sunday and it was the best turnout we'd had for a few years.Since I've been extremely busy this year with magazine submissions and various competitions I only put one entry into the short story section this time. I thought...

How to lose your trial competition

This year, I was lucky enough to make it into my school's "Sweet 16" for trial competition. However, I've heard (and had) my share of horror stories regarding one of the most stressful competitions in law school land, and figured I could share a few tips on how to lose with FLAIR!1) Fail to prepare your witnesses--in TC, you...

GIH Lawyer (with links)

Lots of links in this one. Makes it look a bit more legit. Still a scam. From: GIH Electrical Holdings Subject: LEGAL SERVICE Date: October 9, 2011 To: undisclosed-recipients:;REQUEST FOR LEGAL REPRESENTATION.This is an official request for legal representation on behalf of GIH Electrical-Holdings Berhad. Founded in 1980, our company's principal activity is to sell and develop electronics components...

Reviewing The Ghost Walk of Gatlinburg

I have developed a strong love of Ghost Walks.   There is no better way to spend a crisp autumn night than wandering through the secret histories of old cities and learning about their secrets and ghosts.   This weekend I went to one of my favorite vacation spots.   I rented a cabin high in...

Mixed Fortunes

It's been a mixed couple of weeks.Received a rejection of four stories from Yours magazine. Another rejection from an agent. Didn't get in to the top places of the Red Cross short story competition for Day of the Disappeared.As I'd hoped, the winning entries for the Didsbury Arts Festival short story competition have appeared on the website. You can read them hereStill have a few competition results...

What Kind of Haunting Do You Have?

I have written about this before, but I thought this topic was worth a revisit.  For me,  this question has come up again and again, which probably means its worth discussing more than once.  The more I write about ghosts, the more I realize how important it is to define what kind of ghosts or spiritual...

Decorating for Halloween

It is finally October and it is the season of dark clouds and ghouls.  Halloween or Samhain is in the air.  The ancients believed that the veil between worlds thinned at this time of year.  They believed that this thinning allowed for ghosts and dark spirits to cross over to our world.   Bon fires were...

The White Devil: A Ghost Story

The White Devil by Justin Evans opens with a splash.   It immediately pulls the reader into a dark and Gothic world that is riddled with ghosts and mystery.   The White Devil's protagonist is a young man,  Andrew Taylor, who has been expelled from many American boarding schools.  ...