KINCAID STRANGE Halloween Blog Tour with Kristi Charish: Guest Post & Giveaway

We’re just about a week away from Halloween, and I’m celebrating a little early so that I can share some Halloween spirit from one of my favorite authors, Kristi Charish! Kristi is the author of The Adventures of Owl urban fantasy series, as well as the immensely entertaining and readable The Voodoo Killings. And I couldn’t be more excited for its sequel coming out in January, Lipstick Voodoo. Today, Kristi is sharing her version of “Couch Potato Halloween,” and she’s also giving away an ARC of Lipstick Voodoo to one lucky U.S. or Canadian reader, so don’t forget to enter at the end of this post!

Please help me welcome Kristi to the blog!

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My Couch Potato Halloween

It’s been an interesting year for everyone. Predictions of doom and gloom to come on the housing and stock market front, journalist disappearances that rival penny dreadful novels, and, well, let’s face it, the entire International political front more closely resembles a 2000 era Reality TV series (I’m thinking Survivor meets Rock of Love – the stripper edition) than well thought out discussions about our world at large. And let’s not forget Venezuela. If you aren’t up on the economic disaster that is now Venezuela I highly recommend you spend a morning or evening reading up. Comparisons to Mad Max aren’t without merit.

And that’s not considering our own personal whirlwinds. Jobs, economy, rent, bills, taxes, nuclear war, POTUS midnight cocaine-soliloquy tweets, political self-censorship, deadlines – they all take their toll. While I was thrilled to see Owl and the Tiger Thieves and Voodoo Killings hit shelves this summer, January through October evaporated in a hoovering haze of edits, promotion and a mad race to finish Kincaid 3. Three ending rewrites and a handful of chapters I’m still not happy with and I’ve finally emerged for air.

I’m exhausted.

Everyone is exhausted.

My brain is itching to shut down and not think things for the next few weeks (until the next round of edits and writing start back up).

But Halloween is my jam – the costumes, the season, the jack o’lanterns, roasted pumpkin seeds, the smell of the fall air, awesome lawn and window decorations.

Yet despite my love of zombies, vampires, and all assortment of things that go bump in the night, my energy level is in the dumpster. All I really want to do now is crawl under a blanket on my couch and spend the next two weeks curled up with a good book, the reruns playing in the background.

I need comfort food. Comfort entertainment. My inner couch potato is calling. Which is exactly what I plan on filling my Halloween with this year. Below is my list of comfort food, Halloween flicks and books I plan on devouring with a good cup of hot chocolate (or pumpkin spiced latte if that’s your thing) this year. I’ve turned down the horror, amped up the nostalgia, kicked the scary, nightmare-inducing zombies out on the curb and curated my own list of comfort inducing Halloween treats.

Enjoy- and I hope you’ll add your own couch potato, comfort, Halloween treats in the comments.

Reading: Anne Rice, Interview with The Vampire

Yup. I’m kicking it old school this year with the original Anne Rice Vampire book. I might even toss in her The Mummy (aka: Ramses the Damned). I’m a child of the nineties and I remember when The Vampire Chronicles had their first revival. There was a box set, and a movie I went to see with a high school friend around Halloween I believe. I haven’t touched the book in years, but it sends warm, fuzzy, moderately terrifying vampire fuzzies through my nostalgia craving soul. I think this time around I’ll give the audiobook a shot, and see how this 90s revival classic holds up 20 years later.

TV: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 1 -4)

No list would be complete without BTVS. Why only the first four seasons? Because there is only so much time in this world and I’m vegging. Monster of the week for me, and unapologetically, thank you very much. I don’t know if it’s the forever, late nineties girl in me or that Joss Whedon (regardless of what you think of the man) knew how to pace a show, but the well-loved Buffy series still fills a nostalgic craving void in my Halloween soul. Fond memories of University evenings sitting around the communal TV with beer and roommates, waiting to see what monster of the week would be offered up for Buffy and her friends to slay, all mixed in with a side of humor and young adult angst, and my couch potato brain is salivating. I think I hear my old DVD collection calling now.

Alternate: The X Files

For those looking for more of a scare than humor (but not that much of a scare – again, vegging) the X Files is a gem. Monster of the week? Check. Decently wrought out plots? Check. Just enough of a scare to make you turn on the lights and check under your bed and in the closets (twice) before sleep? Check.

I was never a huge fan of the X Files during my high school days. A bit too scary for me. For Halloween though I’m sliding a few episodes in to my viewing cue because this show delivered on the things that go bump in the night. Looking for some nostalgia with scare over laughs? Mulder and Scully might just be your jam.

Movie: The Mummy (2000)

I put the date in just so there’d be no confusion. Anyone who follows me knows The Mummy, with Brendan Fraser, is one of my all-time favorite movies, and it delivers spectacularly on the Halloween front.  Not only is The Mummy a fantastic Indiana Jones-style adventure romp with a good helping of humor, but it delivers on a couch potato scare factor. The monster is just scary enough to get my blood running but not enough to inspire me to leave the safety and comfort of my couch. It isn’t just a no brainer for my vegging Halloween, I consider it mandatory viewing.

But it’s just not Halloween without a zombie…

I get it. I have a hard time staying away from zombies in my writing, it’s unreasonable to think they won’t manifest in my Halloween viewing. If you can’t live without a zombie chasing after someone’s brains I have two lighter hearted options to keep with the ‘no-brainer’/vegging theme. The first is Zombieland – humor and brain devouring? Count me in. The second, or course, is Shawn of the Dead, because, let’s face it, zombies aren’t quite as scary when you hunker down at the pub. I suppose you could also stick the first Resident Evil on your list – video game format and Milla Jovovich tame the zombie horror, but this year I’ll be leaving it off my list in lieu of lighter options. Plus the Umbrella Corp real life corporate parallels just makes me depressed.

So there you have it! My couch potato Halloween. Add your own favorites and what you plan on playing when the trick or treaters come calling!

Thank you Kristi! Of course, I highly approve of your plan to watch Buffy😀

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About the book:

 

Kincaid Strange, not your average voodoo practitioner, is back in the freshly imagined and hugely entertaining second installment of Kristi Charish’s urban fantasy series.

Kincaid Strange cannot catch a break. After dealing with a spate of paranormal murders, there’s barely time to recuperate—let alone sleep in—before there’s a new problem in Kincaid’s world of paranormal activity. When her roommate, Nathan Cade—the ghost of a grunge-rocker with a pathological lack of self-control—comes home bound to a dead body, it’s up to Kincaid to figure out how to free him. Ideally before her new mentor, Gideon, a powerful sorcerer’s ghost, discovers that Nate is trapped in the body he’d coveted for himself.

When Aaron, a Seattle cop on the afterlife beat—and Kincaid’s ex—calls her in to help out with a cold case, she takes the chance to mend fences with the police department. The problem: they want to interview Nate’s ghost, which she can’t produce. Then people from Nate’s past start showing up dead, and what’s killing them doesn’t seem to be human. And the way it’s killing them is especially brutal.

Nate’s hiding something, but he’s Kincaid’s friend and she wants to help him. But she also wants to stay alive….

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About the author:

KRISTI CHARISH is the author of OWL AND THE JAPANESE CIRCUS, an urban fantasy series about a modern-day “Indiana Jane” who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world, and THE VOODOO KILLINGS, an urban fantasy/mystery about a voodoo practitioner living in Seattle with the ghost of a deceased grunge rocker. She writes what she loves; adventure heavy stories featuring strong, savvy female protagonists, pop culture, and the occasional RPG fantasy game thrown in the mix.

Visit Kristi on the web: Website | Twitter | Goodreads

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And now for the giveaway! One U.S. or Canadian entrant will be randomly selected to win an ARC (advanced reader’s copy) of Lipstick Voodoo! Ready to enter? Simply fill out the Rafflecopter form below, good luck!

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