How I Spent Halloween

Celebrating Halloween and the Holidays

We celebrated Halloween this last weekend.

My roommates and I had a lot of fun. On Saturday, we spent some time roaming the Highland Haunt in Denver, and then we went to a birthday party that evening. The haunt reminded me of an old festival with people on stilts and some a lot of actors in costumes. Vendors sold food while entertainers performed tricks. The only thing missing for it to be a medieval festival was someone breathing fire and a lot of ale. The crowds also had a lot more children than I would have expected to see at one of those.

Everyone celebrated the party with a superhero theme. Dave loves Marvel and DC characters specifically, so a lot of the decorations involved Spider-man, Superman, Batman, and so on. It fits really well with the season. Someone had the great idea to blow up balloons then put them on bottles without tying them. I should have taken a picture, but it looked really cool.

I love this time of year, since we celebrate so much, and the Highland Haunt was a great way to get it started! Some friends of mine and I get together most holidays. We usually make tacos for Halloween, Turkey for thanksgiving, and a massive feast for Christmas. Last year we made Beef Wellington, Yorkshire pudding, taco salad, stuffed olives, and opened a bottle of aged Brandy. We feast like kings during the holidays. The way we always figured it was that not everyone enjoys being home for the holidays, so we celebrate with people we know we will enjoy ^_^

These guys are cool to hang out with since they’re all geeks too. None of us have any qualms about it. We’re in our 20s and still play video games, roleplays, and watch old movies together. It’s better to live life with people you’re connected to than alone.

My roommates and I watched Nightmare before Christmas on Halloween. I love that movie. I remember watching it when I was younger and singing along to it a lot. For the last few days, the songs have been stuck in my head. My sister never enjoyed it as much. It was too macabre for her, but my dad and I watched it every few years.

Speaking about Tim Burton

Speaking of which, Did you know Nightmare Before Christmas began as a poem? I had no idea until we saw it on the DVD last night. Tim Burton talks about the fact that he got the inspiration for the poem from seeing a shop change it’s decorations from Halloween to Christmas. The idea became a poem, and the poem became a movie. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have something you wrote become a movie like that? I know Tim Burton is famous, but I definitely think that is one of his more known movies, and it started with something so simple…

Have any of you heard Tim Burton’s poetry? It sounds a lot like Dr. Seus to me. I think it’s the way he rhymes or the sounds he uses, but it seems like a children’s story instead of something as grotesque as it basically is. I enjoy poetry quite a bit, but a lot of times I don’t understand. I think good poetry needs to be mature in its sounds yet understandable. What good is something that you can only guess at its meaning?

I feel like this post is really random and moves from topic to topic, but there’s so much to write about. I found this awesome website the other day. The website is http://dailylit.com/. Apparently you find a book that you like (I think it has to be older), then you sign up to receive emails with exerpts from the book. It only sends a few pages a day, so you don’t have to read too much. So far it works out perfectly for people like me who are super busy. I signed up for Dracula since I have always wanted to read that, but I never have. I’ve seen a lot of vampire things, but I’ve always been curious as to where it all began. Now I have the chance to read it!

Update on My Novel

I haven’t really decided on any other characters except an old wizard or sorcerer of some kind. I am almost finished writing the first chapter of the book, and I will dedicate an entire post to it once I’m finished. I basically decided that the wizard person gave Natalie the daydream I had as a dream. The dream represents some future event that will happen to Natalie later on. For now, he’s using it to get her attention.

I started the story with Natalie and her sister responding to their mother’s disappearance several days after it happened. Their father comes. The necklace their mother gave to Jenny is a valuable item for some reason. I think it’s from a different world or maybe from a different plane. He wants it because he knows what it is capable of, but the girls don’t know what it can do.

I learned about using this technique in my college courses. It’s called a Chekov’s gun. Here’s the Wikipedia definition, “Chekhov's gun is a literary technique whereby an apparently irrelevant element is introduced early in the story whose significance becomes clear later in the narrative.” As I remember, Chekov’s gun is used to create interest in the reader. It sure makes me excited to use the necklace later. I hope you’re excited to see it once you read my chapter.

I haven’t decided how the wizard is going to meet Natalie and Jenny since they are in different worlds, but I imagine another world that joins all worlds together called the Netherworld. I stole the name from Norse mythology. (I decided to name the book, at least for now, after the Netherworld since it’s a concept that’s central to where I think the book will go.) The Netherworld contains part of every world, and it’s where people go when they die no matter which world they existed in. I envision a river, like Styx, that they travel along to get to their final resting place.

Anyway, maybe for some reason the wizard is able to travel through the Netherworld even though he’s not dead, so gets Natalie, or maybe he creates a portal because the Netherworld fuels magic in the other world. I’m not sure yet.

I’ll post as soon as I have the rest of the chapter done. Thanks for reading!