Cutting Up with Costumes

 
LUCY BURDETTE:  I think my love of costumes must date back to the time I watched my parents waddle down the road to a Halloween party dressed as corn stalks, with carved pumpkins over their faces. Though I don't remember my childhood costumes, since the moment I learned to sew, I made my own.

Here's one of my favorites ever, Kermit the frog. You're not seeing the little webbed hands and feet that I also made to go along with the costume. I had a marvelous Wonder Woman (which I can no longer fit into so will not demonstrate) and a Marilyn Monroe complete with blond wig and sparkling evening dress. And here's a photo from my nephew's wedding just this past weekend...with my brother and one of my sisters...

 

Lucky for me, I will be spending Halloween this year in Key West. Fantasyfest involves an entire week of Halloween activities, some XXX rated, which I will not report on. I know that I will be riding in the zombie bike parade. I already have an appointment for my face painting and have the spooky tutu that will go with. And I would not miss the tutu party with my pals. 
And some of you probably remember the wiener dog parade from last year. The truth is, I have no shame...

How about you Reds, a yen for costumes? Any wonderful memories from your costume history?

HALLIE EPHRON: I confess, I'm costume-challenged. My go-to costume as a kid was "bum." Baggy pants, dirty shirt from my dad, and old hat, and voila. My daughters made costumes for themselves every Halloween, mostly with minimal help from me on costume and their dad on makeup. Here's what my youngest did with a red cocktail dress we bought at a rummage sale, a few props, and charcoal makeup. 



LUCY: That's brilliant Hallie!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, I am totally costume-challenged!  I can't sew, and I seem to have no imagination in that department. I'll miss Halloween this year as I'll be doing a college event, but maybe next year I'll get my daughter to help me. She always has great costumes, and I'd love to dress up as something fun, or have zombie make-up. Ideas welcome!

RHYS BOWEN: I love dressing up, but not to the extent of actually sewing things. When my kids were small I did make costumes. I remember daughter Clare wanting to be a tree one year. Lots of burlap and glue gun involved. But luckily as soon as they were in school there was pressure to buy this year's popular costumes. Always good fairies, Disney princesses and never anything scary. When they were teens they invented creative costumes on their own. Clare, always creative once went to a party as Harry Potter, carrying her baby son as Dobby, with a sock pinned to him!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I love the Dobby idea! Fabulous.  It's a challenge for me to think of something for me and Jonathan to do together. Because he has the built-in beard, which narrows the possibilities, right?  And one of my triumphs (If I do say so,) was the year we went as the Arcs.   I was Joan, and Jonathan was Noah.

The next year I didn't have time to come up with something too new, so we added cowboy hats and bandanas to the exact same costumes, and went as Noah and Joan of Arkansas. 

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE--IN YOUR FRONT YARD

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm the first to admit I fall on the downside of Martha Stewart on the holiday decor. My idea of autumn/Halloween/Thanksgiving festivity is a pumpkin and a pot of mums on the front porch and my autumn-leaf wreath on the front door. I'm sure I put my neighbors to shame, but really, when did decorating your house for Halloween get to be as big--if not bigger--than Christmas?

People spend hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars and countless hours arranging displays of orange and purple lights, ghoulies, ghosties, cobwebs, spiders, black cats (quite unfairly discriminated against, in my opinion) and all manner of things that go bump in the night.  Not to mention the requisite zombie.

Halloween stores pop up everywhere, their displays magically replaced on November 1st by Christmas decor.

 Is this burst of enthusiasm for making the most of All Hallow's Eve a reflection of the current cultural fascination with vampires, zombies, and witches? Or vice versa?

Or is it just us puny humans finding another way to thumb our noses at the coming of dark days, as we have since time immemorial? 

Whatever the reason, it's certainly an outlet for creativity, and although you may have seen this alien crash scene floating around on Facebook, I'm including it because it gets my top marks for whimsey.

So what about you, REDS and readers? Do you embrace the zombie apocalypse?

(This year I may have to at least put up a cobweb...)     

Zombie lawyer defends a vampire hooker: "Pay Me in Flesh" by K. Bennett

"The whole zombie thing is hot now, but it's all the same, zombies as slobbering, mindless monsters. What if the zombie was the hero? In fact, what if it was a lawyer practicing law in L.A.?"

That's the question author James Scott Bell (suspense writer, extraordinary writing teacher, and author of the classic, "Plot & Structure") posed to his agent, the legendary Donald Maas.

Bell spun the idea out further:
"I mean, how can you tell the difference between zombies and defense attorneys anyway? Most people think there IS no difference. And what if this lawyer specialized in defending outcasts like vampires, who never get a break?"

I'm laughing. You're laughing. Donald Maas was laughing. Immediately he wanted a proposal that he could take to publishers and sell.

So Bell put together a pitch and a tagline for the as-yet unwritten novel that would become "Pay Me in Flesh," the first in the Mallory Caine, Zombie-at-Law series by the "mysterious yet roguishly handsome" K. Bennett and published this month by Kensington.

HALLIE EPHRON: James Scott Bell, AKA K. Bennett, Bell is here with us today. Tell us the pitch you up with, Jim?

JAMES SCOTT BELL: Here it is --
Tagline: In L.A., practicing law can be hell. Especially if you’re dead.

Pitch: In an increasingly hellacious L.A., zombie lawyer Mallory Caine defends a vampire hooker accused of the crime Mallory herself committed, even as a zombie-killer closes in and the love of her former life comes back as the Deputy DA she must oppose. And as Lucifer himself begins setting up L.A. as his headquarters for a new attack on heaven and earth, Mallory slowly discovers she may be the one who has to stop him.

HALLIE: I love it! Truth: How do you craft an amazing pitch like that, and did you have to revise it after you wrote the book?

JAMES SCOTT BELL: Actually, this pitch hasn't changed since I wrote it. It's exactly what went into the proposal. This is always how I start my novel preparation. I have to have a tagline and a short pitch that is exciting enough for me to believe in the book. If I just start writing I might find out that the foundation is weak. But if I have a strong premise in this form, and I'm jazzed, then I have about half my work done.

I actually enjoy this process. I like thinking like a marketing executive. What sort of thing would go on a movie poster? That's my tagline. And then I want to write back cover copy. What pitch would compel a browser to buy the book?

HALLIE: Tell us about zombies, and what makes one a good lawyer?

JAMES SCOTT BELL: For a zombie to be a good lawyer, she would have to have to have a good law school education and experience in the courtroom. Mallory Caine has both. Unfortunately, she was murdered and brought back to life by someone who wants to control her, and is now one of the walking dead. But not the slobbering kind. Not the cliché monster we see in countless movies and books and TV shows. She's still got a will and she's still got her mind and she will not allow anyone to control her. Yes, she's got to eat human flesh and brains, but no one's perfect. Especially an L.A. lawyer.

HALLIE: I've heard you say that it's not a good idea to 'write to the market' - You end up with a book without any soul (not good, even for a zombie novel). So I'm guessing you came up with a plot that you connected with emotionally. Can you tell us how?

JAMES SCOTT BELL: That's exactly right. I've never believed in writing for the market alone. But your agent and the people who are going to pay you for your books do have an eye on the market. The key is to bring a fresh voice to that perspective. That's what you always hear agents and editors say on a panel. They want something unique and fresh with a "voice," but they also want to know that it's something that can sell. You have to put those two dynamics together.

For Pay Me in Flesh, the concept jumped out at me. I'd been thinking, What hasn't been done in zombie fiction? So much of it is the same. Then I thought, How about an actual legal thriller where the lawyer just happens to be a zombie? All sorts of intriguing possibilities started to pop up.

And then I went into my character work. I knew I wanted the lawyer to be a woman helping low level paranormals with their problems. One of the first things I do with a major character is a Voice Journal. I start a free-form document, stream of consciousness, in the voice of the character. I let the voice begin to develop on its own. When it starts to speak to me in a unique way, with attitude and singularity, I know I'm on the right track. That's when I start to connect with the character.

Then I need to bond with the character emotionally. I build some backstory for that. When I find myself thinking about the character when I'm not writing, I know I’m close to getting started.

HALLIE: Why the pseudonym?

JAMES SCOTT BELL: Simply for brand differentiation. I've got a strong readership under my own name, and this is a launch into a whole new genre. I'm not making it a secret. I just want readers to know from the cover what kind of book it is.

HALLIE: Love how you describe your doppelgänger and nom de plume: "K. Bennett boxed Golden Gloves and worked as a bouncer in Hell’s Kitchen before turning to fiction, and often imagines the past in terms that are not entirely truthful." Really?

JAMES SCOTT BELL: The cool think about a pen name is I get to make up a whole new personality. At one time I did want to be a boxer, so I gave that bit of backstory to K. Bennett -- and then dropped in the “less than truthful” part. I never boxed Golden Gloves or bounced in Hell's Kitchen, except in my dreams. But now I get to put my dreams into a bio.

HALLIE: Tell us what you're up to next? Another novel in the series, I hope.

JAMES SCOTT BELL: There will be at least two more Mallory Caine, Zombie-at-Law novels. The next one is The Year of Eating Dangerously, to come out sometime next year. Meantime, I'm working on new projects under my own name and will have a new e-book collection of suspense stories coming out in September. And a new book on writing from Writer's Digest Books, Conflict & Suspense, will be out in time for WD's big New York conference in January, where I'll be speaking.

Thanks for having me on your blog today, Hallie. What a great place to hang out.

HALLIE: Thank YOU K, er... Jim. Jim will be checking in today, so please give us your thoughts on Zombies, defense attorneys, bouncers from Hell's Kitchen, taglines... and the like.

Nancy Drew and...?

HALLIE: There it is on the best seller list: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." It begins: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

Brilliant blasphemy! If only I'd thought of it. Listening to author Seth Grahame-Smith on the radio, I was not surprised to learn that the book was his editor's brain child– he’d been noodling around with lists of classic book titles and, I assume, creatures, until BINGO: P&P and Zombies.

Trying to recreate his process, here's my list of titles (and some main characters) and creatures, and I started tyring to pair them up and realized this is not as easy as it looks. Nancy Drew and...Oompaloompas? How would you pair these up--or come up with your own title/creature pairing...(look down...can't seem to get rid of this big fat space below here)

TITLES 1984 Cherry Ames David Copperfield Don Quixote Ellery Queen Hercule Poirot Gone with the Wind The Great Gatsby The Hardy Boys Huckleberry Finn Sherlock Holmes Jane Eyre Little Women Nancy Drew Madame Bovary The Maltese Falcon Miss Marple Moby Dick Moll Flanders Nero Wolfe The Odyssey Oliver Twist Rebecca Robinson Crusoe The Scarlet Letter The Three Musketeers To Kill a Mockingbird Wuthering Heights The Valley of the Dolls War and Peace (Your choice)

CREATURES Anacondas Death eaters Demons Devils Dragons Fairies Ghosts The Jabberwock Jugglers Leprechauns Monsters Mutants Mummies Ninjas Oompaloompas Pirates Poltergeists Robots Samurai Sneetches Shape shifters Space aliens Succubi Trolls Tribbles Triffids Vampires Velocaraptors Werewolves Witches (Your choice)

Do you love it? Hate it? What would you pair up? Best pairing wins a prize!