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A perfect, not too spooky, ghost adventure that kids will enjoy is the latest novel from award-winning author Beverly Stowe McClure.

Erik Burns is stuck in South Carolina with his mother and Aunt Molly after he finds a black lace bra in the glove compartment of his dad’s car. Whoops! Kept away from all his friends and the sport he loved to play in Texas, Erik is willing to do whatever it takes to get back home.

When Starry and Stormy Knight, a set of weird twins that live down the block, try to convince Erik that people have seen a light radiating from the deactivated lighthouse and a ghostly pirate ship prowling the harbor, he wants nothing to do with it. But when he witnesses these occurrences, he can’t deny the proof before him. That’s when he hatches a plan to help the ghosts rest in peace in exchange for a personalized haunting that will send his mother rushing back home to Texas so Erick can get his life back.

Beverly and I are in the same critique group, so I had the pleasure of watching this story unfold before it was published. Talented in the areas of contemporary and historical fiction, I am always amazed by how diverse her ideas are while staying true to her fan base. A Pirate, a Blockade Runner, and a Cat should be another big winner for her. Why? Because in a nutshell, no matter what Beverly is writing, she knows what relates well to her readers.

In this story, Erik has been uprooted. Not only is he away from all his friends and baseball, he’s pretty ticked his dad hasn’t tried to contact him since the move. Those emotions work their way into the unfolding stories of Major Stede Bonnet, Blackbeard, and the ghost residing in the deactivated Morris Island Lighthouse. Not only that, Erik’s mom is trying to get him to befriend a couple of odd twins, when all he wants is to be reunited with his friends in Texas.

This paranormal middle grade/tween novel has a lot to offer. A great read any time of the year, it will definitely get you in the mood for Halloween.

Rating:

File Size: 410 KB
Print Length: 265 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing (January 9, 2013)
ISBN 978-1-77127-219-3
Available in numerous digital formats. Visit the publisher’s website for more information.

I received a free digital copy of this book from the author. This review contains my honest opinions, which I have not been compensated for in any way.

Today starts the virtual book tour for Beverly Stowe McClure’s A Pirate, a Blockade Runner, and a Cat. My first chapter review of this middle grade/tween paranormal is part of that tour. The author had sent me a copy of this book when it was first released.  It’s high time I read it.

BLURB: Thirteen-year-old Erik Burks’ life is falling apart. When he discovers a lace bra in the glove compartment of his dad’s car, his mom leaves his father and drags Erik from being king of the hill in Texas to the bottom of the pits in South Carolina. No Dad, no baseball, no friends, just Starry Knight (a girl who reads minds) and her equally weird brother, Stormy, the twins that live down the block.

Just when Erik thinks life can’t get any worse, while hanging out at the beach one evening, he and the twins notice lights radiating from the lighthouse. The only problem is the lighthouse was deactivated years ago. Stranger still, a ship materializes in the moonlit harbor. Curious, the twins and a reluctant Erik investigate and discover the ghost of a blockade runner, a phantom cat, and a pirate who prowls Charleston Harbor, all searching for rest.

A former nonbeliever in the existence of ghosts, Erik cannot deny the proof before him. And he has a revelation: The ghosts may be the answer to his desire to return home. Erik soon makes a deal with the ghosts. He’ll help them find what they’re looking for so their spirits can rest in peace. In return, the ghosts will scare Erik’s mother so she’ll be on the next flight back to Texas. Star thinks his plan stinks, but Erik wants his life back, even at the cost of his mother’s sanity.

COVER: This publisher has a lot of great covers, but I have to admit this is one of my favorites. The color, the fonts, the images, they all work together nicely. Kudos to the cover artist.

FIRST CHAPTER: Erik is feeling sorry for himself. His mom has uprooted him and moved to South Carolina where he’s got no Dad, no baseball, and no friends. There are those two freaky twins, Stormy and Starry Knight, but Erik is not having a grand time. He’s kind of tired of hearing about the light coming from the lighthouse–which is not likely since the lighthouse was deactivated years ago. Then when what looks like a ship appears, he’s had enough.

KEEP READING: I had the privilege of seeing this story in the pre-published stage, so I have to admit I knew I would keep going. What McClure has always done well is capture the emotions of her characters. Here’s this thirteen-year-old boy with a great life and great friends in Texas, maybe even a girl to admire, and suddenly he’s pulled from all that and brought to South Carolina where all he has is a set of freaky twins to hang out with. His mom keeps telling him he’s going to love it, but Erik isn’t convinced. Change can be hard for children, especially a move away from friends, and McClure captures that so well with Erik.

The ending of this chapter hints at what is to come, even if Erik isn’t ready to buy into anything yet. This makes for a smooth transition into the next chapter, as Erik walks home and contemplates what Stormy and Starry are telling him about the lights and the ship. I’m definitely eager to continue. I don’t know what additional edits have been performed since I first read this book, but everything I’ve read from this author has been fantastic.

Pages  240

ISBN  978-1-77127-219-3

I received a free copy of this book from the author. This review contains my honest opinions, which I have not been compensated for in any way.

Beverly Stowe McClure, a former teacher, is now enjoying a second career: writing. She never planned to be a writer, but in the classroom she and her students did such fun activities in art and science that she decided to write about some of them. Luckily, a few magazines liked what she sent them, and her articles have appeared in Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, Ladybug, Focus on the Family Clubhouse, Jr., and others. Nine of her stories have been published as books, the latest one a MG/Tween eBook: A Pirate, a Blockade Runner, and a Cat. She also has two stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies.

Beverly enjoys discovering her ancestors in her genealogy research. She plays the piano. (Thank you, Mom, for making encouraging me to practice.) She takes long walks where she snaps pictures of wildlife and clouds, and of course she reads, usually two books at a time. She teaches a women’s Sunday school class. Watching baseball (Go Rangers) is another of her favorite activities. Retirement is fun.

You can learn more about Beverly Stowe McClure at http://beverlystowemcclure.wordpress.com or follow her blog at http://beverlystowemcclure.blogspot.com.

The Golden Key is a bi-annual journal of speculative and literary writing, inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale of the same name. We seek realist work sensitive to the magical and strange. The fantastical. Slipstream. Fabulist. Gothic. Weird tales. Work that unlocks. Work that restocks. We love writers who see familiar things in unexpected ways, and writers who revel in playing with language.

We are currently accepting unpublished fiction and poetry submissions for Issue #3 Things Unseen.

Bring out your work that invokes the cloak of night, ghosts, and hidden motivations. Poltergeists, microbes, tooth fairies all welcome here. Introduce us to characters who are often heard of, but never heard from. We want presences shaped by their outlines and negative space.

Present us with your best card trick, or a story or poem that quietly slips under our skin. Bring us to life with the scent of a stewing tomato, the barest tickle on the backs of our necks, or a strange strain of music that floats off the page.

We want work that is spectral, smoky, suggested. Work that has us weaving after it through the brume. Give us your intangibles, your stories and poems that can’t be grasped too tightly. Peel back the veil.

Deadline: The Things Unseen issue ends October 1, 2013.

Please see our website for further detail on submissions. For journal updates, follow us on Twitter @GoldenKeyLit or Facebook. We do our best to keep our response times to about 4-6 weeks
.

Today, the Late Night Work Club debuts their first project Ghost Stories, a 38-minute compilation of animated shorts by up-and-coming names in the animation world. The films and filmmakers are:
I Will Miss You by Dave Prosser
The Jump by Charles Huettner
The American Dream by Sean Buckelew
Mountain Ash by Jake Armstrong and Erin Kilkenny
Rat Trap by Caleb Wood
Loose Ends by Louise Bagnall
Phantom Limb by Alex Grigg
Asshole by Conor Finnegan
Ombilda by Ciaran Duffy
Post Personal by Eamonn O’Neill
Last Lives by Scott Benson

At a time when more animated shorts are being produced than ever before, it is increasingly difficult to get attention for individual short films. Late Night Work Club’s attempt to create a curated ‘mix-tape’ of animated shorts is an interesting attempt to draw more eyeballs to the work of independent filmmakers.

The project is ambitious in both scope and length, particularly considering that it was made with no commercial intent. The filmmakers self-funded the entire project with no crowdfunding or other forms of sponsorship. The filmmakers hope to recoup some of their costs by offering download packs and Uncanny Mystery Packs. Also unique, the film wasn’t kept offline for a festival run. It debuts on Vimeo today, just five days after its theatrical premiere in Los Angeles.

I interviewed filmmaker Scott Benson, one of Late Night Work Club’s founders, to find out more about LNWc and the unique creative and distribution strategies that they are exploring with Ghost Stories.

Cartoon Brew: Late Night Work Club began in 2012 as a collective for animation filmmakers who wanted to create non-commercial work. These type of collectives have existed before in one fashion or another, but most do not choose to release a single project around a specific theme, such as ghost stories. What made you decide to pursue this route?

Scott Benson: The themed anthology thing was a pretty direct inspiration from NoBrow I think. The general ideas for what would become Late Night Work Club had been kicking around between Charles Huettner, Eimhin McNamara, Eamonn O’Neil and I on Twitter for a few months. I was reading an issue of NoBrow at one point and was thinking, “The comics in here are like the animation I like and my friends make. Why isn’t there a place for us like this?” Something that wasn’t self-consciously highbrow or lowbrow, just a bunch of creators with strong individual voices all doing variations on a theme. That kind of thing appealed to me, and then we talked about it and the idea grew.

Cartoon Brew: How does creating a 38-minute film as opposed to a more standard short-film length increase your opportunities for visibility? Do you feel there are any downsides to this approach than if everyone had just released their films individually?

Scott Benson: Not sure, honestly. We’re making this up as we go. We didn’t want it to feel like a film festival, but more like a compilation. One album, a bunch of different bands. Go through, find someone whose work you love and seek them out individually. If we released them all separately there’d be one or two films that would get a lot of buzz here or there, and a lot of the others that might not have been picked up on this or that blog would get passed over. Doing it together binds us all into one noncompeting group. We all rise or fall together. We’re all colleagues and a lot of new friendships have developed over this project, and so it makes sense to do this all together. It’s one group project with a lot of defined voices, and that’s pretty cool. I do personally hope that doing it this way also makes it more of an event as opposed to just a curated list of affiliated shorts. We’ll see how it goes.

Cartoon Brew: I was surprised to see that you didn’t run a crowdfunding campaign. How did you convince nearly a dozen artists to create projects on a specific schedule with no financial incentive?

Scott Benson: No one needed any convincing. It was just “Hey you! You want to join up?” Never anything beyond that. Everyone immediately got it, and many seemed eager for something like this to come along (including me). We never got any outright refusals to our invites, just a few people who had to drop out because of life or couldn’t join this time but wanted in on the next one. No one even said the word Kickstarter, it just wasn’t a thought. Maybe in the future, who knows. We’d want to do this anyway, so we just did it. And hey, there is indeed a financial incentive—if we make enough from donations and sales of downloads/ mystery packs, we’ll have enough to split up fourteen ways and then we can each buy a pizza and have an international pizza party over Google Hangout.

Cartoon Brew: How much interaction was there between the collective? For example, does everybody have to pitch their idea to the group and get it approved? Or were there limits on lengths, style, content?

Scott Benson: There was a rule from the beginning that each member set their own level of involvement. If they wanted to just make their short in peace with minimal chatter, that was fine. If they wanted to get all involved with each other or the project in a broader sense, that was cool too. There are some epic-length email chains as we looked at one another’s work, gave reactions and encouragement, or just chatted about the project or our lives or whatever. There was also some cross-short help. I did the snow in the first shot of Alex [Grigg]‘s short, and he made some Photoshop brushes that I know several of us used. There were a couple of times where we all delivered our general ideas, mostly to make sure they didn’t sound like total crap to other people. The suggested length was ~2 minutes or longer. Other than that we didn’t really have a lot of guidelines and for the most part there were no discussions about content. In part that was because the group was a bunch of adults who wanted to make something personal or fun, or to stretch creatively, so with very few exceptions the content discussion didn’t need to come up. We weren’t trying to be all, “Look how ka-razy this R-rated animation is! These ain’t your DAD’S cartoons!” That kind of thing is so tired, silly and small. We just made what we liked.

Cartoon Brew: I guess one reason I wondered about that is that nearly all the shorts that were in color used a no-outline style which is a trendy look nowadays in digital animation. Was that a conscious aesthetic choice or coincidental?

Scott Benson: Stylewise, everyone also just did what they wanted to do. Much of it follows on from the styles of the work we did before Late Night Work Club. If you watch the first three shorts, for example, those are three distinct voices whose work very much flows from what they do elsewhere. My short is almost embarrassingly within my wheelhouse, I think. If there are similarities, it’s just how we roll individually, and we each got there in our own way on the road to wherever we’ll be artistically in the future. And if that’s trendy, maybe we’ll all finally have dates to the prom this year. Fingers crossed.

Cartoon Brew: Another unconventional part of this is your distribution plan in which you’re premiering the film online before a festival run. What is your release strategy and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

Scott Benson: As much as we’d love to, both Charles Huettner and I have never been able to attend a festival, though our work has played at them. We both live in Pennsylvania and probably make up about 50% of the people in that state making their own animated work. A lot of other LNWC members are out there at Annecy, Ottawa, Pictoplasma, etc. every year and they’re like, “I just watched some really cool thing after the two-hour program on sand animation or whatever, but you’ll have to wait until it goes online.” And the years go by, and I’m still waiting to see a lot of things I got super excited about when I saw the trailer years back. Now imagine you’re a teen. Those years are forever. Animation will never be as diverse, as interesting or as inspiring as it can be if the best work is only available for years at a time on specific weekends in faraway cities, accessible mostly to people with the means and ability to fly there, book hotels, and pay for passes.

Having it up on the Internet from day one was set in stone for us right from the start. We’d love to do fests and will be at them over the next year if they are good enough to have us, but our audience are the people with an Internet connection, but no ready access to the very tiny world of animation film fests. I’m one of them. Most people are. And getting this in front of them will expose them to our work and hopefully inspire others to say, “I can make things. I can say things. I want to get into this. I want to support this scene.” And that is something I feel really good about. Personally, I want people other than fellow animators and hardcore fans to see my work, longshot though that is. And a lot of the festival crowd already follows animation news, so there’s an excellent chance they’ll see it online anyway.

Cartoon Brew: What does Late Night Work Club plan to do next, and if anything, will it be the same crew of filmmakers?

Scott Benson: We’ll all probably sleep for a while. Ghost Stories will be screened in various places throughout the fall and hopefully we’ll do some fests with it for the next year or so. There are already plans and conversations happening about the next thing we’ll do together. For our big projects the idea right now is that all participants from the last one have right of first refusal. But as we’re all busy and living our lives, there will be spaces open, and we already have a pretty nice looking list of other potential members. So we’ll see. Like I said, we’re making this up as we go along. But that’s pretty exciting in and of itself.

Jake Armstrong studied at the School of Visual Arts and his student thesis film The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! has been featured on Cartoon Brew.

Jake is part of the Late Night Work Club and is producing a new short that will be included as part of their debut film anthology, Ghost Stories.

You can see more of Jake’s work on his current blog and his older blog here.

This looks so great! An animated-short anthology with films by Charles Huettner, Dave Prosser, Sean Buckelew, Louise Bagnall, Jake Armstrong & Erin Kilkenny, Eamonn O’Neil, Daniella Orsini & Joe Orton, Scott Benson, Alex Grigg, Conor Finnegan, Christen Bach, and more. These folks are doing it up right, too - when they get it all assembled this spring, you’ll be able to get a great-sounds pile of goodies along with the films, and you can follow the project on twitter and tumblr too.

NOTE: The trailer is ever-so-slightly NSFW, if your work gets upset about split-second flashes of animated non-aroused male nudity.

By the way, here’s some advice from anecdotal evidence and personal experience: make stuff you want to make - personal projects give you room to explore, and they lead to more interesting client work. Well done, Late Night Work Club animators!

charleshuettner:

Hey everyone, the trailer for our independent animation anthology ‘Late Night Work Club project #1’ just hit the internet!  Take a look and spread it around.  Check out the website for more info.

http://latenightworkclub.com/

Scott Benson has done a great job organizing it all and I couldn’t be more pleased to be included with so many great animators. 

Halloween has always been a fun time of year for me. I love dressing up in costume. It's very much like creating the characters in my stories, only in costume I become a character for real. In fact, I bring some costume pieces along with me when I do school visits and help the students devise new and interesting characters.

So today's post is a collection of interesting Halloween(ish) news I've unearthed of late.

Of course, you know I love libraries, so how cool is a haunted one? That's right, in Deep River, Connecticut, the public library (a former home built in 1881 by a local businessman) has not just one ghost but many. Wouldn't that make for some interesting storytimes?

The American Library Association's GREAT WEBSITES FOR KIDS isn't too scary, but there are a frightfully wonderful number of cool places to visit there. Take for example this website on BATS--the kind that fly in the night. That's kind of spooky.

Or try National Geographic's CAT site. Have you ever seen a cat skeleton?

So I admit, Math was always a little scary for me. That's why I've included this site here called COOL MATH--An Amusement Park of Math and More. Check it out for puzzles, games, and Bubba Man in his awesome Halloween costume.

Billy Broccoli is new to the neighborhood, and wants cool friends and a spot on the baseball team more than anything. But the one thing he never wanted is his own personal ghost. So imagine his surprise when he ends up sharing a room with Hoover Porterhouse, a funny ghost with a whole lot of attitude.

When an obnoxious school bully sets out to demolish Billy, the Hoove comes up with a plan for revenge. It’s all in the Hoove’s Rule Number Forty-Two: Stay cool. And like it or not, Billy and the Hoove have to stick together if Billy ever wants to get in style, get even, and conquer the school.

A call is out from APPLESEEDS magazine for ghost stories written by kids. Below are the details for submitting your own spooky story. One of my first published short stories was a ghost story written for a local newspaper contest. What fun it was to see my words in the newspaper for everyone to read.

So here is your chance. Scare the socks off some eager readers with your spook-tacular story!

BOO! AppleSeeds is looking for ghost stories from its readers! The October issue is all about ghosts and other spooky things, and readers probably have some great ideas for a story of their own. Have your child send us their ghost story (along with illustrations to go with it) by Nov. 15, 2011. Handwritten stories are okay, but make sure that we can read them. The winner will receive a copy of Robert San Souci's Dare to Be Scared. Send them to AppleSeeds Ghost Stories Contest, 30 Grove St., Peterborough, NH 03458.

Author Rachel Firasek is sharing some spooky stories on her blog...Swing by and get the chills...

http://www.rachelfirasek.com/2011/10/12/entry-5-voices-in-the-shadow/


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Dawn Chartier Not An Angel, May 12, 2010 www.thewildrosepress.com www.dawnchartier.com

Sherry falls into a Hollywood mystery when she, Junie and Sherry's dad travel to Hollywood where Sherry receives a prize for her "True Love" essay. Her mother wafts in on a coffee breeze to enjoy the moment of fame for Sherry and to try to crack the mystery of Marilyn Monroe's death. At the same time young celebrities' homes are being burglarized. In wafts a new smell, root beer. What does this ghost bring to the mix of mystery?

ENDERS' Rating: ****

Barrie's Blog

Image via Wikipedia

What’s your favorite ghost story?

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I am happy to tell you about Dripping Blood Cave and Other Ghostly Stories from Crickhollow Books today and to be GIVING AWAY ONE FREE COPY from the publisher. Just leave a comment on this post by Sunday, May 8 at 8:00 p.m. CST for your chance to win (U.S. and Canada mailing addresses only please). You don’t need to tell us anything special in your comment to enter the contest, but if you want to tell us your favorite ghost/spooky story or why you like spooky stories, then please do. Make sure to leave an e-mail address with your comment. Now on to the book. . .

*Middle-grade novel, paranormal
*Teenage boys as main characters
*Rating: Dripping Blood Cave is full of cute ghost stories and quite a cast of characters. Kids will love these ghostly adventures.

Short, short summary: Here’s another installment in the Hank and Clifford series. Hank is courageous and does everything right. Clifford is a coward and does everything wrong–but in a loveable sort of way. The two find themselves facing several ghosts in this sequel, along with their girlfriends, Rosie and Mary Ethyl. For example, at Dripping Blood Cave, some angry Native Americans are seeking revenge or there’s the Civil War soldiers and the island that people aren’t returning from. What happens when the four friends face these ghosts and more? Find out in this latest installment. (You do not need to read the first two novels in order to enjoy this book.) By the way, Raymond Bial has written over 100 books for kids and adults!

So, what do I do with this book?

1. The characters in this book are so strong and unique. This is a great book to do a character study with, especially comparing and contrasting Hank and Clifford. Students can start with a Venn diagram and then write a paragraph or paper about their similarities and differences.

2. Challenge your students to write their own ghost story after discussing how Raymond Bial set up his. How did he create suspense? Why do you believe his stories could actually happen? How did he set up his world? and so on. . .

3. Raymond Bial brings some history into his ghost stories. Students and children can discuss what parts of the book are based on historical stories and what part is completely made up. If students are working on ghost stories, they can bring historical facts into their stories.

Don’t forget to leave a comment for a chance to win.

The saga continues, and concludes, the love story of Lucas and Bianca that began in Evernight. The story begins in the bloody aftermath of the vampire attack in which Balthazar’s evil sister turns Lucas into a vampire. Lucas is crazed with his ingrained hate of vampires and the loss of Bianca and his blood lust. Balthazar and Bianca convince Lucas that the only place he will be safe during his volatile stage is Evernight Academy. Unfortunately, it is also the most dangerous location for Bianca. If you like a story with layered conflicts, this is the one for you. In fact, a spreadsheet of the conflicts may be useful. Just kidding. And what is going on with Mrs. Bethany, the spooky head mistress? Why is she befriending Lucas who she barely tolerated before? And Bianca’s parents, who hate wraiths, how will they respond to their daughter now? Fans will not be disappointed.

ENDERS' Rating: ****

Claudia's Website

• Strange But True
• Weird World
• Animal Antics
• Extreme Sports
• Body Oddity
• Travel Tales
• Incredible Feats
• Bizarre Mysteries
• Fantastic Food
• Artistic License
• Amazing Science
• Beyond Belief

Wow! I am honored to read such lyrical writing. Morpurgo is definitely a writer's writer. He was the Children's Laureate of Britain from 2003 to 2005 and is a captivating storyteller and prolific writer! These stories are interlaced with short commentaries about their origins and backgrounds. I cannot wait to share the supernatural "The Giant's Necklace" orally with family. And "My Father is a Polar Bear" would be appreciated by an audience full of people who have lost a father for one reason or another. "The Mozart Question" was my favorite and would be devoured in a journalism class. Nonetheless, I don't think the book will be selected by readers unless we American bloggers and librarians and reviewers actively promote it. So DO IT! I cannot wait to read War Horse, his novel about one of the millions of horses taken for soldiers during World War. Today Steven Spielberg announced his cast for the motion picture.

ENDERS' Rating: *****

Michael Morpurgo's Website

The Big Book of Horror: 21 Tales to Make You Tremble

Adapted by Alissa Heyman

Illustrated by Pedro Rodriguez

Sterling Publishing, 2006

ISBN: 978-1-4027-3860-9

Collections of 'spooky' short stories for middle-grade readers are easy to come by, but you don't frequently happen upon a collection for kids that features 19th century classic horror writers.  We were unbelievably excited to find this volume while cruising our local bookstore!

The book features 21 classic horror stories by a plethora of famous writers: The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe; The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft; The Vampire by John William Polidori; and The Hand by Guy de Maupassant, to name just a few.  The tales are separated into four sections: Death,  Disease and Madness, The Power of the Mind, and Evil.