31 Days of Spooky Stuff, October 20: The Night of the Hunter

20 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Gothic, horror movies

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nightofhunter1

This 1955 film is a strange, nightmarish depiction of evil loose in the land. As the Criterion Collection describes it,

The Night of the Hunter—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic—also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee—is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.

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I first saw this film at the recommendation of a friend who’d seen it decades earlier, and who shivered when she told me about it. The memory of it still scared her after all those years. While I watched it, my critical side noticed the slow pacing and wondered at some of the artificial-looking sets, but as the story deepened, the film took on the quality of a dream. The children couldn’t run fast enough to escape the evil man pursuing them. No matter what they did, he was still close behind them. The shadows darkened, my heart beat faster, and I couldn’t tell how the horror would end.

The Night of the Hunter is a spooky movie and I hope you like it.

(I’m including a link to Roger Ebert’s review of The Night of the Hunter because I always liked his film criticism, and because I miss his work.)

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-night-of-the-hunter-1955

Comment to enter the drawing for a signed copy of each of my Wisdom Court books: Edge of the Shadow; A Signal Shown; All In Bad Time. The drawing will occur on October 31.

Now as darkness extends its grasp…

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Ghosts, Hallowe'en

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change, shadows

Skies are blue, foliage still yellow and orange, but soon light will leach out of autumn days, dregs of darkness in its place. Leaves already fall from skeletal branches, scattering across aging gardens, gathering in sullen piles along curbstones. A few brave flowers stand their ground, deepening their colors in defiance of cold mornings.

The sun hurries across the sky, blown by a chill wind, dreading the darkness to come. Soon trappings of death will deck windows and fences. Pumpkins will shine gaping grins into black nights where the hidden wait. A cold anticipation sharpens with each passing hour. Change crouches in growing shadows. It will come.

Ereader News Today features…

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in e-books, Mysteries, Wisdom Court

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shadows

Edge of the Shadow at 99 cents. Whoot! One of the biggie ebook promoters has EOS in the spotlight, thanks to the wonderful people at ePublishing Works!

Here’s your chance to buy my brilliant ghost story for not much and to read it in anticipation of the second installment, A Signal Shown. The books are categorized as horror, but they’re more paranormal mystery, and who doesn’t enjoy that?

I’m working away on the third Wisdom Court book, All In Bad Time and scaring myself as I write. As I sit in my garret, the sounds in our old house are more noticeable when I’m describing a spirit desperate to communicate with one of the characters. A creak of the stair or a rattle from one of the lower floors incites an extra shiver, and I glance over my shoulder, wondering if that shadow behind me has moved since the last time I looked.

Do yourself a favor and sign up for Ereader News Today. ereadernewstoday.com

You’ll be introduced to new books in all kinds of categories, delivered to your email address each day. Happy reading!

Halloween is coming…

25 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Ghosts, Hallowe'en, Haunted Denver, Wisdom Court, Writing

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autumn, deep blue sky, inspiration, shadows, writing process

and I’m working on Book Three of the Wisdom Court chronicles, All In Bad Time. At times I get jittery while listening to the creaks and sighs of our old house as I tap away on my keyboard, sitting in my third floor garret. The weather has been summer-hot the last few days, and the deep blue sky heightens the yellows and reds of the autumn leaves. But when the sun goes down, and that’s early these days, the air changes as the shadows venture out from the corners. The bustle of the day gives way to the uneasy quiet of the dark.

Not far away from my garret is a former graveyard. This time of year people again recount the tales of how the bodies were dug out of the cemetery to allow for the park it became. How the contractors grew impatient, not bothering to find all of the remains, moving out headstones but leaving body parts behind. Just a couple of years ago, a sprinkler repair project turned up bones buried beneath the grassy area.

Is it any wonder that some people–those sensitive to the emanations of the past in this old neighborhood–sometimes see things from the corners of their eyes? Feel a chill brush by them as they head home when the light falls behind the mountains?

Alone in my garret, it’s not hard to imagine ghostly figures behind me, intent upon catching the attention of my wandering mind, wanting their stories to be told. I like to think that what I write is the product of only my imaginings, but there’s no way to know whose wispy thoughts break through to shape the narrative. And I see things, too, from the corners of my eyes, sometimes feel a breath of cold air move past my cheek. And I wonder.

Did I mention I got to write “The End?”

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Ghosts, Gothic, Wisdom Court

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ebooks, shadows, writing process

Although, as we know, we never really reach the end. And so I’m zipping through the manuscript of A Signal Shown, Book Two of the Wisdom Court series, adding a bit here and there so I can get it off to my beta readers. As I finished on page 301, I let out a deep breath and thought about heading to the refrigerator for the bottle of champagne I put there several days ago. I never pass up a chance to click champagne glasses because they’re not always frequent, those celebratory writing moments.

As soon as I have feedback from the readers I’ll make one more pass through the prose and then submit the book for eformatting at ePublishingWorks!. They’ve done such good work with my two mysteries Scavenger Hunt and Obstacle Course. As soon as the new book is ready, the first Wisdom Court book, Edge of the Shadow, along with A Signal Shown, will be epublished. And how will I greet that frabjous day? By telling the world about my wonderful books and–oh yeah–by plugging away on the third Wisdom Court book, All in Bad Time. You have to be true to the story arc.

So, my friends, here’s a sample from Wisdom Court Book One, my first metaphysical thriller, Edge of the Shadow:

“Mistletoe to break the lock.” The woman seated at the small table sprinkled leaves into the shallow bowl next to the candle illuminating the room.

The windows at her back were closed and curtained but the flame fluttered, deepening the red of her upswept hair and gleaming along the silver threads in her robe. Her gaze darted toward the gloom in the corners as she reached into another bag.

“I call upon the spirits.” Spiky thistle leaves fell to the pottery surface. Groping inside a leather pouch she pulled out dry needles. They dropped from her hand as she whispered, “Yew to raise the dead.”

A gauzy sack yielded graying fronds. “Balm of Gilead, manifest the one I seek.”

After a glance down at the ancient book open across her lap she murmured, “Protection born of amaranth. And borage for courage,” she added under her breath, releasing the last bits into the container.

Shadows stirred along the wall as she twisted the candle from the saucer and held it to the herbal mixture, taking care to push her flowing sleeve away from the dish. Pungent smoke drifted upward as she replaced the taper.

A breath of air touched her and she turned, half-glimpsing motion but unable to find its source. Again the flame wobbled, and behind her the curtain billowed upward. The border of the coarsely woven material brushed the wick as it fell back into place.

A tiny spark gnawed along the threads until it burned.

And that’s The End for today. Cheers!

Why I love haunted houses, and, really, aren’t they all?

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Ghosts, Hauntings, Mysteries

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Childhood, corners, shadows, Spaces

My dad was a bricklayer, and during my childhood our family lived in a total of three houses he built at the edge of Boulder. Early on I became aware of how houses were made, how the inner wooden skeleton was covered inside by plaster and the outside with brick, how the plywood floors had surfaces of tongue-in-groove oak or asphalt tile or linoleum. Windows were finished with frames and sills, the doors lintels. Wires and pipes and vents and switches were set into the spaces left for them. Eventually a brand new structure was the result, and soon the smells of wood and concrete, of paint and newly-laid carpet melded into the scent of home.

Just because I’d seen those corners created didn’t mean I was okay with what I feared might live in them. My acute peripheral vision and sharp hearing had me starting at the least motion and softest noise. And while I knew about the wood and brick and wires, I wasn’t as clear about the sounds those materials made when the lights went out. Boards creaked and windows vibrated. Even new pipes could whine. The sound of tiny feet clicking across the floor was, I later realized, the ticking of the furnace vents as they heated. But, huddling under my blankets, I imagined small, vicious creatures beneath my bed and knew if I let even a finger extend past the edge of the mattress, they would grab me and haul me far away.

I smile now at some of the kid books I read back then, but a few of them had real power when it was dark and the images they’d evoked in my mind came out to play. Television became an influence, and some of the fears of childhood were enriched by depictions of the evil people commit against each other, fictional and real. It didn’t help that my parents let me watch the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Or that my mom dropped my cousin and me off at the movies when we were twelve. The feature was Psycho. Yes, I am twisted.

I live in a house built in 1909. It has three stories and plenty of odd corners and strange sounds. Over the years we’ve lived here, I’ve grown accustomed to the nooks and crannies–cleaning once in a while will eventually calm the jitters. When I dream, it is of the house my father built for us the year I turned eleven. A modest brick ranch house on an acre of land beside a stream, it was the place he and my mother loved best. It is where they lived until their end, and if it haunts me it’s more because of their deaths than their lives. Old age and illness are far more frightening than those little creatures under my bed.

I continue to connect with the frightened child when I see a haunted house movie. (Next time I’ll write about the latest, The Conjuring.) The house, the home, the enclosed spaces where we spend our lives are haunted with our memories, our fears and triumphs, our most primitive beginnings. I’ve never made friends with the shadows, those vital shadows that feed my writing.

(Image from Spooky Places.)

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Boomer Gothic and a Year of Her Own

14 Thursday Feb 2013

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Barbara Michaels, Bronte sisters, mansions, Mary Stewart, shadows, Victoria Holt

Back in the day, my favorite fiction genre was gothic, and I read as many such novels as I could find. My favorite authors were Mary Stuart, Charlotte and Jane Bronte, Phyllis A. Whitney, Barbara Michaels, Elsie Lee, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Joan Aiken..the list is long. As an English major in college I read Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, and discovered Anne Radcliffe, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, more Poe, some of Dickens, Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Stevenson’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. You get the drift.

By the time I got serious about writing, the market for gothics had pretty much dried up, and I was reading mysteries. I decided to write one set in Denver, and after hundreds of years and thousands of revisions, I published two of them, the previously mentioned Finny Aletter mysteries, Scavengers and Obstacle Course (both soon to appear as e-books.)

But, in my heart of hearts, I still yearned for gothics. I wanted to tell myself a story set in an old house where odd things happened, and I wanted to create characters who began to regard each other with suspicion. Dark psychological overtones would match the shadowy corners and somewhere along the line, a scream would split the night. Good times would ensue. Thus was born Wisdom Court.

Set in Boulder, Colorado, Wisdom Court is an institute for accomplished women who have not yet achieved their professional goals. Each is invited to spend a year there (short trips home allowable, but most time is spent in Boulder), all expenses paid. Artist, scientist, writer, whomever the Board chooses, receives a year of her own.

Andrea Bellamy, the protagonist in book I, Edge of the Shadow, is a forensic artist who yearns to paint, and her invitation to Wisdom Court allows her to imagine a new career as a fine artist. Widowed some years earlier, she has seen her daughter through college and now has the opportunity to truly change her life. She takes a leave of absence from her job, rents out her house, and heads for Boulder. She is welcomed at Wisdom Court by the staff and other associates staying there. As she settles into bed that first night, her heart is filled with gratitude and her mind races with excitement. At last she will be able to focus on her artistic dreams. For at least this one year she can put herself first. And then she awakes screaming…

You’ll have to read Edge of the Shadow to find out what happens to Andrea and the other women at Wisdom Court. The book will be published online in the next few months. I’m writing about it now out of curiosity. Having written EOS as well as being two-thirds into the second Wisdom Court book, A Signal Shown, I’m wondering how many fellow gothic fans are out there. I don’t yet have throngs of blog followers, but I’m impatient enough to issue the question anyway: how many readers out there are interested in gothics? The Wisdom Court story arcs through three books, so I’m committed to at least the trilogy. Will I find readers to share in the pleasures? Let me know. I’ll keep writing.