WEIRD WEDNESDAY

Guess this guy had a perfect tattoo for the back of the bald spot at the back of his head.

Liking My Author Page on Amazon

If you have read my books and liked them, please like my author's page on Amazon if you can.

Supernatural Friday: Monsters Don't Exist

Enjoy this original poem of mine. It is copyrighted by me, so just share the link with friends, not the poem. Thank you.

Monsters Don’t Exist

By

Pamela K. Kinney

Mother said that monsters didn’t exist

That they came from fast food or scary movies.

She lied!

And kept lying when the monster came that night

He instructed Daddy to change and attack,

To rip her throat out and tear out her heart.

Her eyes pleading as she screamed,

“Run! Don’t let the monsters catch you!”

But I didn’t run,

Why would I?

Then the monster held out its clawed paw to me,

And I took it, asking, “Can we play?”

He called me his dear child, the promised one,

“I’ll teach you all I know, how to do what I do,”

He said, “Just as the one before me taught me.”

And so among the fires and slaughter we went,

I skipped beside him, only stopping

To play catch with bodiless heads.

When we left that place near to morning

What remained of the township right behind us

Inhuman sheep leaving for desolate pastures.

Happy First Day of Summer

What are signs of summer? Temperatures rise. The water levels in ponds, lakes, and rivers drop. Lightning bugs brighten the night sky. Nature’s efforts in the spring to fully bloom prove fruitful as the green leaves of various trees shake and rattle in the cool summer breezes and flowers grace our gardens. Summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere on June 20, 7:09 P.M. EDT.

The timing of the solstice each year depends on when the Sun reaches its farthest point north of the equator. This always happens either June 20 or June 21 in North America, though it depends on the time zone, too.

The word solstice came from the Latin solstitium, from sol (sun) and stitium (to stop), reflecting the fact that the Sun appears to stop at this time. This also happens again at the winter solstice.

In temperate regions, the Sun rises higher in the sky throughout the day, and when its rays strike Earth at a more direct angle, this causes the efficient warming called summer. In the winter, just the opposite occurs: The Sun is at its southernmost point and is low in the sky. The rays strike the Northern Hemisphere at an oblique angle and create feeble winter sunlight.

The Sun hangs overhead at its most northern point at "high-noon" on the summer solstice. This then creates more sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere on this day then any other of the year.

Summer Folklore and Verse:

Deep snow in winter, tall grain in summer.–Estonian proverb

When the summer birds take their flight, goes the summer with them.

If it rains on Midsummer's Eve, the filbert crops will be spoiled.–Unknown

One swallow never made a summer.

Easterly winds from May 19 to the 21 indicate a dry summer.

If there are many falling stars during a clear summer evening, expect thunder. If there are none, expect fine weather.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: WEIRD FIRST DAY OF SUMMER

The one person with the mask--I heard of protecting your skin against the sun, but really?

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO ALL DADS

Hope all fathers have a great day today.

Supernatural Friday: Scary, Dark Young Adult Fiction

What kind of Young Adult horror/paranormal do you like to read? Or children’s or middle grad paranormal fiction? Is it something like Twilight (which by the way, I cannot get into), or darker, even end of the world stuff, with zombies or monstrous vampires, werewolves, or even worse monsters? As that is currently what I am working on, a YA paranormal (with romance-sorry, guys), where the apocalypse is coming, I figured a good topic for Supernatural Friday today. My monsters are demons and there are angels, too.

YA stuff I’ve grown up, included Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle. That had been dark—sorts—though also science fiction and fantasy in nature. If you never read it, I advise to do so as a summer read. There are three more in the aeries after it, too.  There are also a couple of books by Ray Bradbury that are YA—sorts—Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Halloween Tree, that anyone can enjoy, just as I did years ago. For years after those, it seemed that there weren’t too many par normal YA being read much, not until Harry Potter brought kids and yes, adults too, into the fold.

Young Adult is where you can become a kid again, with that innocence and wonder that is prevalent in Ray Bradbury’s stories. Only a young kid or a teenager can find the right magic to battle the monsters. There’s something about innocence and wonder that all of us need to see and feel again. As I work on my own novel, I summon my “inner youth,” so I can make the wonder believable.

Books I recommend to Read this Summer:

Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

The Wolves of Mercy Falls serie by Maggie Steifvator

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

All of the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling

Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1)  by Christopher Paolini (okay, high fantasy, but I love dragons)

Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher (science fiction)

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

Fallen by Lauren Kate

Any Rl. Stine book

There is so much more, but this is a starting point. Anyone wants to, leave a comment with me titles and the authors in them, as suggestions for others who read this post.

HAPPY SUMMER READING!

WEIRD WEDNESDAY

Really? He couldn't have parked down below?

Supernatural Friday: Tribute to a Dreamer of Halloween, October, and Martian Landscapes.

Ray Bradbury

August 22, 1920 -June 6, 2012

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

~Ray Bradbury

 

 

Just a few days ago, a great teller of fantastic tales passed away, leaving us for that October Country beyond. When I heard the news, I was in shock, One of the authors I read since I was younger, who was one of those who inspired to keep on writing, no longer stepped on the ground of the same planet as me?  Memories of the few times I met him at conventions back in California assaulted me. No doubt now, he is able to walk along the Martian canals and see the planet with his own spirit that he told tales of in The Martian Chronicles. He will be able to be a boy again in that distant October Country, visit the mysterious carnival come to town, and climb that Halloween tree. Visit the vampires. See if the Illustrated Man still traveled the dusty roads. Taste dandelion wine again with angels.

He left us a legacy of stories that will never grow old, ones we can read over and over. I plan to read them again this summer in his memory. What better tribute I figure. He painted pictures for me with his words. Hook me with a hook better than any hook used by a young boy or girl going fishing along a creek on a hot summer afternoon. There’s comfort in his tales for me. A belief I can travel anywhere. That fantastical things do exist. Most of all, he pushed me even further to pen my own tales. I hope that one day when I step upon my own path to that October Country, I too will have left behind a legacy of words for others to cherish. It’s the only real tribute I feel I should give to him as a thank you for writing for us readers. For entertaining me and others.

Thank you, Ray Bradbury, you will never be forgotten. You will always be there with the others who inspired me years ago: Edgar Allan Poe, HP. Lovecraft, Anne McCaffrey, JRR Tolkien, and Shirley Jackson, plus others.  Most of all, thank you for giving us all the gift of your imagination; a most precious gift indeed.

My Story Bottled Spirits Released on BuzzMag.Com!

Yay! Today my dark fantasy short story, “Bottled Spirits” premiered on BuzzyMag, a . You can read it free at http://is.gd/xfAoAo

Please do leave a comment as the zine likes to see that.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY

A Japanese cycle--perculiar to me.

Supernatural Friday: Vampires: Part 4

Most vampire scholars focus on the cultural roots of vampire lore, others have looked to physical origins. There is no scientific evidence of actual vampires, but there are a number of real medical conditions that might result in vampiric behavior or appearance.

One of these "vampire diseases" is porphyria. It is a rare disease, characterized by irregularities in production of heme, an iron-rich pigment in blood. People with the more severe forms of porphyria are highly sensitive to sunlight, experience severe abdominal pain and may suffer from acute delirium. One possible treatment for porphyria that might have been used in the past was to drink blood. This was suppose to correct the imbalance in the body, even though there's no clear evidence that this even did the trick. Some porphyria sufferers do have reddish mouths and teeth, due to irregular production of the heme pigment. It is hereditary, so there may have been concentrations of sufferers in certain areas throughout history.

A more likely physical root of vampirism is catalepsy. It’s a peculiar physical condition associated with epilepsy, schizophrenia and other disorders that affect the central nervous system. During a cataleptic episode, a person essentially freezes up. The muscles grow rigid, the body becomes very stiff, and the heart rate and respiration slow down. A person with acute catalepsy could very well be mistaken for a corpse.

Doctors have the knowledge and tools today that they can determine whether or not someone is alive. In the past, people decided based only on appearance. Embalming was unknown in most of the world until just recently, so a body would have been buried in the ground as is. A cataleptic episode can last many hours, even days, allowing enough time for a burial. When the person came to, he or she might have been able to dig out of their grave and return home. Others who couldn’t get out of their coffin; many skeletons have been discovered, showing they’ve awaken and scratches gouged in the coffin. If the person did suffer from a psychological disorder, such as schizophrenia, he or she might have exhibited the strange and disturbing behavior associated with vampires. Like currently, the man in Florida who attacked another and began to eat his face. Today’s society says zombie, but in days of vampire legends, vampires not only drank blood, but ate flesh too.  All the signs of an insane person.

The behavior of actual corpses might have suggested vampirism as well. After death, fingernails and hair continue to grow because the surrounding skin recedes and this may give the impression of life. Gases in the body expand, extending the abdomen, as if the body had gorged itself. If a decomposing corpse was staked, it could very well rupture, draining all sorts of fluids. Of course, this would be considered evidence that the corpse had been feeding on the living.

Maybe this might have fueled a fear of the undead; most root causes of vampire lore are due most likely to the psychological rather than physical. One kind of psychological is Renfield’s syndrome, named after Bram Stoker’s character in Dracula. Clinical vampirism is a recognizable, although rare, clinical entity characterized by periodic compulsive blood drinking and an affinity with death. The sexual element of this disorder as well as the hyper-violent behaviours displayed by numerous serial killers, the most famous being Jeffery Dahmer, has become an inherent part of the modern notion of the vampire.
Several notorious criminals in history are considered by scholars and psychologists to have been psychotic vampires, including Fritz Haarman, Gilles de Rais, the Marquis de Sade, John Haigh, and Elizabeth Bathory. These individuals appear over and over in non-fiction books about vampires. There have also been several cases of vampire crimes from the 1950s to the present. These include the Rudas, whose crime was connected with Satanic ritual, Richard Chase and Joshua Rudiger, who believed themselves to be vampires, and John George Haigh, a serial killer. There are many more in history, and most of all, modern times.


All cultures are preoccupied with death to some degree. One way to get a handle on death is to personify it -- to give it some tangible form. At their root, Lamastu, Lilith and similar early vampires are explanations for a terrifying mystery, the sudden death of young children and fetuses in the womb. The strigoi and other animated corpses are the ultimate symbols of death -- they are the actual remains of the deceased.

Vampires personify humanity’s dark side. Lilith, Lamastu and the other early vampire demonesses are the opposite of the "good wife and mother." Instead of caring for children and honoring a husband, they kill children and seduce men. Undead vampires feed on their family, instead of supporting it. It was the licing’s way of staking their own evil tendencies.

The appearance of so many vampire-like monsters throughout history, as well as our continued fascination with vampires, demonstrates that this is a universal response to the human condition. It's simply human nature to cast our fears as monsters.