Plot Monkeys

Well, thanks to Janelle’s post last week, I went out yesterday and bought an eye patch and hat for our Jack-o-lantern. Cross your fingers that my daughter and husband–both incredible artists–will pull this off! I’ll post a picture next week if they do.

The Jack-o-lantern is probably my least favorite Halloween decoration. I much prefer my tombstones, my bone lights, my skeleton hands, my oversized stuffed witch and the various accoutrements that are on my dining room table, including a very obnoxious orange spider web table cloth.

You see, Halloween is my family holiday. My mother hosts Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, my aunt does Christmas Day. But Halloween is mine, baby! Last year, I made a delicious Italian Shepard’s Pie and shaped all the mashed potatoes into ghosts with little peas for eyes and made spidery pigs-in-a-blanket with potato sticks for legs and piped on ketchup and mustard faces…this year, I’m on deadline.

They’re all getting a big pot of spaghetti, because I can do that with my eyes closed!

But we’ll have fun. Our neighborhood does Halloween up right…everyone is outside. Not many doorbells to ring, actually, because it’s like a big open house. One neighbor does a haunted lanai and there are kids everywhere you look! Good times.

WARNING: MINI RANT AHEAD…

I get so annoyed with people who don’t understand what Halloween really is. People who start talking about glorifying evil and crap. In fact, just a few days ago on the Oprah radio network, Dr. Oz’s wife made a similar comment…and honestly, I lost all respect for the woman. Where’s your sense of fun? I mean…get over yourself. People of faith aren’t going to go to the dark side because they dressed up as Hannah Montana and got a half dozen Snickers bars from their neighbor down the street. Honestly…

But enough about that…as you read this I’m either in my daughter’s classroom helping the kids make Rice Crispie treats, at the store picking up last minute stuff or cooking and …here’s a scary thought…cleaning my house.

Yet since I love the holiday so much, I felt like I needed to give you all a present.

Enjoy!

Well, our party Saturday night was tons of fun! I still can’t get over how much work we put into it…wish we’d had a few more people, but there were probably at least 30. A half dozen of whom were little girls who squealed in the spooky torture chamber. (One actually told me I’d better get a rag because she’d just wet her pants…lol!)

Poor Bruce worked SO hard. He’d been zombie building on weekends for several weeks. Then took off last Thursday and Friday and spent those two days, plus all day Saturday, getting ready. So much so that he NEVER got a costume for himself!!! Just ran out of time! My girls decided they were going to come up with something…and here’s what they did…

First, they took careful measurements…

Lots of precision cutting…

Just the right props and…voila! (He walked around saying, “I got a rock.” Please somebody tell me you get this reference!)

And after a short time, he took off the sheet, yet managed to remain in character…

As for the zombies you’ve been hearing about, here are a few befores…

And the way our front-yard-turned-cemetery looked afterward:

It’s easier to see in the daylight

Middle daughter was sooooo scared of the zombies! (she’s the actress)

Even Cassie got into the spirit of the holiday.

I had fun being a very mean Cruella…

Inside the torture chamber, the newest prop, the electric chair guy, was a HUGE hit. Bruce wired it up so he could flip the switch when somebody got really close and the whole thing started rattling and shaking like it was on fire. That got quite a few shrieks.

Bruce was in charge of the torture chamber…I handled the more “eerie” haunted parlor. The scene of a wake that never quite ended…

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Here are a few more stills…

All in all, quite a fun night. But, as you can imagine, a ton of work and loads of clean-up, which we still haven’t finished. At least the props & decorations are still appropriate to leave up until after Wednesday!

And lest anyone fear that we are just the worst parents in the world for all this gross and gory Halloween stuff, the next day, we went out to a local farm, rode on a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch and picked our very own pumpkin.

What a wonderful weekend spent with my favorite four people…and one favorite canine…in the world!

2007 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!

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Hubby and I went to a Halloween party on Friday night dressed as Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife Beth. For those of you who have never seen the show you are definitely missing out. I decided to swallow my pride and post photos of the party … but I’m also posting a pic of the real Dog and Beth.

SO HOW DO YOU THINK WE RATE?

We didn’t win best costume or even best couple costume
Other great costumes:

DOUG HEFERNAN from King of Queens
and a box he is delivering (aka his wife!)

JERRY LEWIS as the NUTTY PROFESSOR
… he won most original costume. How awesome is this?

The Mob Guy and his Moll … oops! Not. That’s the Matador (see below). The Mob Guy’s wife looked gorgeous but I didn’t get her picture, LOL! THIS is the Matador and his Lady …

Now remember, I promised everyone I wouldn’t post names, but they might be here anonymously so be nice!

When was the last time YOU dressed up for Halloween? And what were you? OR alternatively are you dressing up this year? As what?

FRIDAY’S CONTEST for the tote bag and bath products:

Cher (Comment #30)

FRIDAY’S CONTEST for subscribing to our newsletter (wins an autographed book!):

Email: tpate1969@ . . .

CONGRATULATIONS to the both of you! Please contact me at janelledenison@sbcglobal.net with your mailing address, and to let me know which one of my backlist books you’d liked autographed. (Depending on availability. Sorry, but BORN TO BE WILDE is not available at this time.)

And now for the Sunday funny, just in time for Halloween! I can’t take all the credit for this one. Our own Jodie sent this funny to me to use:

This was in the Washington Post… the title of the article was “Best Come Back Line Ever.”*

In summary, the police arrested Patrick Lawrence, 22 year old white male, in a pumpkin patch 11:38 p.m. on Friday night. On Monday, at the Gwinnett County courthouse, Lawrence was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, public indecency, and public intoxication.

The suspect explained that as he was passing a pumpkin patch on his way home from a drinking session when he decided to stop, “You know how a pumpkin is soft and squishy inside, and there was no one around for miles or at least I thought there wasn’t anyone around” he stated in a telephone interview. Lawrence went on to say that he pulled over to the side of the road, picked out a pumpkin that he felt was appropriate to his purpose, cut a hole in it, and proceeded to satisfy his alleged ‘need.’ “Guess I was really into it, you know?” he commented with evident embarrassment.

In the process of doing the deed, Lawrence failed to notice an approaching police car and was unaware of his audience until officer Brenda Taylor approached him.

“It was an unusual situation, that’s for sure,” said officer Taylor. “I walked up to Lawrence and he’s just banging away at this pumpkin.” Officer Taylor went on to describe what happened when she approached Lawrence .

“I said, “Excuse me sir, but do you realize that you’re having sex with a pumpkin?”

He froze and was clearly very surprised that I was there, and then he looked me straight in the face and said…

“A pumpkin? Shit…is it midnight already?”

Plotmonkey Readers, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to one of the coolest women I know. I mean…I don’t even know if cool BEGINS to scratch the surface of this amazing woman and writer. COLLEEN COLLINS is an amazing writer and a working private investigator…and has had more adventures and misadventures than anyone I know! Not only do we have her this month, but she’s coming back in December to do a second workshop on writing believable private detectives.

Today, she picked an utterly fascinating topic…I hope you all enjoy it! I’m actually at Disney this weekend, so I’ll leave it to you and the other Monkeys to make sure Colleen feels welcome! And don’t forget to check out her books…clicking the bookcover will pop you over our Amazon.

Minding Your Mannerisms: Is Your Character Lying?
by Colleen Collins

We all know the edict of “show, don’t tell” in our writing. When it comes to showing a character who’s hiding the truth, how many of us have shown this by giving the character mannerisms we’ve read or heard are sure-fire lying behaviors, such as clearing their throats, touching their noses, averting their gazes. Guess what? Recent studies have shown liars don’t clear their throats or touch their noses or shift around any more than truth tellers do. In fact, curtailing their movements may be a by-product of trying to remember what they’ve said to keep their stories straight.
So let’s talk about some new mannerisms a shifty, torn, gullible, or maybe downright evil fictional character might do to hide their secrets by looking at some studies with real people.

For starters, it seems many of us who pride ourselves on having great “bullshit detectors” have been kidding ourselves. They exist in our imaginations only. Over the past decade, Maureen O’Sullivan of San Francisco State has done truth-telling studies on more than 13,000 people from all walks of life, including therapists, police officers, law students, artists, and dispute mediators. Of these groups, only 15 people were deemed highly skilled human lie detectors (about 0.1 percent). What makes these people exceptional lie detectors? “All of them pay attention to nonverbal cues and the nuances of word usages and apply them differently to different people,” she says.

O’Sullivan compares these skillful observers to Agatha Christie’s fictional Miss Marple, who could instantly judge the veracity of someone by comparing him or her to people she’d already encountered.

This corroborates with studies by Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England, who has studied lies told by suspects in police-interrogation rooms. Vrij obtained police-recorded videotapes in which 16 suspects in the United Kingdom, charged with offenses such as arson and murder, told both lies and truths about their alleged involvement in the crimes. The police used forensic evidence, witness accounts, and the suspects’ eventual confessions to determine the actual events. Before learning the police conclusions, Vrij’s team analyzed the videotapes for signs of the suspects’ nonverbal reactions to questioning, such as gaze aversion, blinking, and hand-and-arm movements. They also looked at verbal cues, such as pauses in speech and speech disturbances, including “ahs,” stutters, and incomplete sentences.

But guess what? The only general difference Vrij found between liars and truth tellers is that the liars blinked less frequently and paused longer while speaking. Seems these longer pauses are preventative means to avoid speech errors and backtracking to fill in forgotten or incorrect details. “Their [liars] stories are too good to be true,” says Bella DePaulo of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has written several reviews of the field of deception research.

Liars may also feel fear and guilt or delight at fooling people. According to Paul Ekman, a retired psychologist from the University of California, San Francisco, such emotions can trigger a change in facial expression so brief that most observers never notice. He terms these split-second phenomena “microexpressions” and that these emotional clues are as important as gestures, voice, and speech patterns in uncovering deceitfulness.

Interesting. Might be fun to develop a character who takes great delight in misleading people by lying, or perhaps indulges a risk-taking behavior by lying to see what he/she can get away with.

And then there are the studies that claim liars’ voices become more tense or high-pitched. This approach is the foundation of voice stress analysis (VSA), which is widely used by law enforcement and insurance-fraud investigators.

So let’s review some of these recently studied mannerisms you might use to describe a character who’s lying:

• Liars blink less frequently and pause longer while speaking.
• Liars’ stories are too good to be true.
• Liars (either due to their fear, guilt, or delight at fooling people) show fleeting changes in their facial expressions that are as important as gestures, voice, and speech patterns in uncovering deceitfulness.
• A liar’s voice becomes more tense or high-pitched.
Maybe the next time you have a character who’s ready to fib, cover up something, or launch into the biggest fish story since the beginning of time, one of these techniques will do the trick. Would I lie to you?

I have a few announcements to make before I get to the main prize for our weekly Jungle Madness Contest. The Plotmonkeys don’t like to exclude anyone who lives outside of the U.S. when it comes to our contests, and we’ve come up with a solution that will hopefully work for those who live in other countries. If we should pick a name of someone who lives outside of the U.S., instead of the prize that is listed for that week, the winner will instead receive a $20.00 online gift certificate to either barnes&noble.com or amazon.com. We’ve had to snail mail a few prizes outside of the United States, and the postage ends up costing us a small fortune and at times more than the prize itself! So, this is our way of making sure all our visitors can enter our weekly contests, no matter where they live!

This week, there will be TWO different winners for TWO different contests! Whoo-Hoo! The main contest is below, but I’m doing another giveaway for an autographed book of the reader’s choice from my backlist (and other fun goodies) for anyone who signs up for our Plotmonkey newsletter (see subscription box to the right). On Saturday evening, I will have our webmistress randomly pick an email address, and part of that email address will be posted on Sunday so you can claim your prize! If you’re already signed up for our Plotmonkey newsletter, then there is no need to sign up again. You are already entered to win!

Now, for today’s main prize, I’m giving away a Bath & Body Works gift collection. Take a walk on the wild side and pamper yourself with the sensual fragrance of Japanese Cherry Blossom! This exotic leopard print tote (which would make an awesome book bag!) includes shower gel, body lotion, body splash, and True Blue softening hand lotion! Winner will also receive an autographed book of their choice from my backlist (depending on availability).

All you have to do to enter today’s main contest giveaway is post anything below (and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter, too, for another chance to win!), then check back on Sunday to see if you’re the winner!

Now that my girls are older (ages 15 & 17), we don’t carve pumpkins anymore for Halloween. They’re too busy doing other things, and they just aren’t interested, so it’s been a few years since we’ve gone to a pumpkin patch and they picked out their own pumpkins to carve. But that doesn’t stop me from admiring other people’s Jack-O-Laterns while I’m driving through the neighborhood at night. I’m truly amazed at just how talented so many people are when it comes to designing (and carving!) pumpkin faces! Ours were always the traditional triangle eyes and nose, and jagged mouths, but when the girls were younger and did the carving themselves, they loved it.

Recently I came across a few pictures of some awesome Jack-O-Lanterns and thought I’d share them here since Halloween is coming up next week (already!?!). Some of them are simple and cute, while others are really intricate and couldn’t have been easy to carve!

Okay, that last picture wasn’t carved from a pumpkin. Just checking to see if you all are paying attention!

So, how about you? Are you a simple pumpkin carver, or do you like to carve elaborate designs? Or are you more like me and have one of those plastic light up pumpkins you can sit in the window every year — no mess, no fuss?

I was surfing the other day and found this link at Hank Phillippe Ryan’s website. Check it out:

This is what it says at The Herald Sun, where I found the image.

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

I saw it counter-clockwise at first, but I was able to change it around. So I’m initially and instinctively right-brained and but can switch to left? Hm…not sure if I think that’s true or not. But hey, it’s interesting. What about you?

We interrupt this blog entry in order to…PARTY!!!

This just in from Publisher’s Lunch (which announces recent “deals” in the publishing world):

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FICTION: WOMEN’S/ROMANCE
Leslie Kelly’s THE BLACK CATS, a series about a new FBI Cyber Action Team tracking serial killers through the Internet, including a vicious murderer attempting to weed out the gene pool by luring victims with the latest email hoaxes, to Laura Cifelli at NAL, in a nice three book deal, by Pamela Harty at The Knight Agency (world).
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I know it’s going to be awhile before the books are out, but what a treat we’re all in for! Leslie, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, you guys know that Bruce and I have been going nuts getting ready for Halloween. This past weekend was utterly exhausting. Bruce spent 12 hours a day in the garage, (killing his knees) making these way cool zombies. I mean, these things are pretty serious– chicken wire base, covered with paper mache, carpet glue, paint. Life-size, complete with screaming skull heads, crawling bodies and reaching limbs

Our yard is so gonna kick ass.

Meanwhile, I was busy inside. Despite having to finish a novella that was due today (and which I finished this morning!) I started getting everything ready for the actual party. That included emptying my dining room of almost all the furniture, setting up the coffin, putting dead Grandpa in it, stuffing & placing dead Grandma, and setting the scene with cobwebs, bugs, rats, etc. Then, of course, there was all the general decorating–little touches here and there, a “witch alley” across the top of my entertainment center, tons of cutesy stuff on one set of bookshelves and gory stuff on another. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the food, I’ll be busy making–and labeling (dead man’s fingers for chicken wings, spicy brains for these sausage/cheese balls I make, moldy meatballs, gooey fingers…you know the drill)–all day Friday & Saturday.

But that really is nothing compared to what Bruce is working on. As soon as he finishes with the zombies, he’ll get to work on the torture chamber–the electric chair, pendulum, guillotine (the last two are already made, the chair will be new this year.) He works his butt off, groaning over his aches and pains at the end of the day, but going right out there the next one, right through this week when he’ll take off Thursday & Friday to finish up. I just keep supplying the coffee, hugs, Diet Cokes, and emergency trips to Lowes or Wal Mart.

At one point during the weekend, my father called, laughed at the crazy efforts we were making, and asked me why the hell Bruce puts himself through it.

Later, as I continued to go through boxes, I came across the reason I do it, which relates to the reason he does.

It’s a small box, carefully wrapped, lovingly taped, thoroughly marked. And inside it are the special costumes…the ones I hand-sewed for the girls year after year for Halloween. There’s the Snow White & Dopey ones I made for the older two when they were 2 and 5. The “Belle” from Beauty & the Beast gown I sewed for the oldest (and an identical one for her older cousin when she found out!) in gold lame, complete with hoop skirt.

Esmerelda from Hunchback, the little yellow duck that my youngest simply had to have 4 days before her 3rd Halloween. The Little Bo Peep, Jessie the cowgirl and a Green Alien Squeaky toy from Toy Story 2. Dorothy, Glenda, the wicked witch (that was me) and the Tin Man (that was Bruce.) And The Little Mermaid, which I made the same year that movie came out in theaters, complete with real oyster shells pried open, cleaned out, drilled and sewed onto a nude leotard.

I remember every stitch of every one. I remember the way my fingers started to bleed when I was trying to push a needle through the faux leather when I was making the wickedly cool Xena Warrior Princess costume. I remember their faces when they’d get to see the new creation for the first time. I still see them when I close my eyes.

Bruce goes all out with the house and decorations for the same reason I always went all out for the costumes: for the memories we’re giving our kids. (FWIW: After we moved away from our first Florida house, we’d occasionally run into the people who bought it and they said that as long four years after we moved, people would stop by on Halloween night and ask what had happened to all the neat stuff.)

I have some great memories from my childhood, typically surrounding Christmas or family get-togethers. Halloween was fun, but nothing huge. And I always remembered going trick-or-treating in last year’s costume, wishing I could be something other than a pilgrim girl. Or visiting the one house in the neighborhood that had the spooky graveyard and the noises in the yard.

Our girls had those costumes and they lived in that house. And that’s something they are never going to forget. When my girls are grown with families of their own, they’re going to talk about this. They’re going to remember the way I sewed every stitch because I didn’t have a sewing machine. They’re going to lovingly recall the way Bruce chortled when he got the guillotine to work and how awesomely scary he looked as the Grim Reaper. They’re going to tell their kids that they have never seen a Halloween until they see one like their grandparents used to do.

They’re going to appreciate it. Actually, I know they already do. It’s now become a family project that we all love to do together, a shared memory, a way to let our girls know just how much we love them, and just how special they are to us. Not to mention that we, the Kellys, are all just a little bit nuts and that is a-okay.

And that, my friends, is exactly why we do it.

PS: Didn’t have a whole lot of shots of the earlier years in jpeg, but I posted a few. Here are a few more shots of the kinds of props we do…from previous years.

Come back next week for a report on how it went…and a few pics of zombies.

My husband wouldn’t let me post this until the last out at Midnight …
WORLD SERIES BOUND!

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You should note the original title was Celebrating our Failures but after the Red Sox victory, I changed it to just Celebrating!!!! (Yes I’m a METS fan, but I’m also a Red Sox fan being married to a Bostonian, so this is a VERY good day in our house!)

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And now back to our regularly scheduled programming …

HOW DO WE FIT IT ALL IN?

Seriously. As wives, as mothers, as working women, as full time writers, as part time writers, as stay at home moms, as working moms, as students, as partners, as single women with a job . . . whatever category or categories you fall into (not to mention whichever categories I inadvertently forgot to mention), how do we fit everything into a day or even a week?

The answer is obvious, at least to me. WE DON’T. And at some point in our lives I suspect we’ve all made peace with that notion. At least I hope you have. If not, maybe now’s the time. Stop beating yourself up for what you haven’t done and congratulate yourself for what you have accomplished.

To make you all feel better, I’m going to list five things that rarely get done (and I am serious here):

1. Cooking Dinner - very very rarely if at all. No time! BAD ME!
2. Cleaning the House – I see the dust accumulating on top of the window sills so that’s going to have to change! DOUBLE BAD ME!
3. My office is piled high again with papers and junk – bills and filing aren’t happening. TRIPLE BAD ME!
4. Diet - My pants are snug and the weight I lost last year is coming back on – Need to focus more on eating less. QUADROUPLE BAD ME!

5. Exercise – I hate hate hate it. I will do anything to avoid it but my cholesterol is high and my doctor says I must do something cardio-wise. I’ve let that go for way too long. QUINTUPLE BAD ME!

OUCH! That was a nasty list of my faults and failures.

To make myself feel better, I’m going to list five things that DO get done and make slacking in the first list okay:

1. My husband, my girls and I sit down as a family and eat dinner most nights of the week so we can catch up on everyone’s day. It might be rushed, it always is take out, but it’s 99% of the time healthy (Turkey sandwiches; wraps; salads; roasted chicken from the supermarket). YEAH ME.
2. Communicating with my family – I am a master at driving all over town and while I’m doing that, I have my girls in the car going to various appointments and activities, and we can talk. My girls talk to me about enough things for me to think, “I’m doing the very best that I can for them.” DOUBLE YEAH ME!
3. Writing is happening again! OK not in huge spurts but thanks to Sven’s challenge, I’m writing in steady spurts. Not as much as I’d like but enough to motivate me to write more almost every day. TRIPLE YEAH ME because I do have deadlines! I also feel better when I am writing!
4. I may be eating too much again, but I’ve learned how to lose and what is good for me to eat and what is not. Now I just need to remind myself to eat less of it. QUADROUPLE YEAH ME because with knowledge is power. Now I must zip mouth closed portion-wise.
5. I’ve started exercising 3 days a week for twenty minutes on the treadmill. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mornings I promised myself that when the kids walk out the door for school at 7 AM I will go downstairs and walk/run. I accomplished this last week. I intend to accomplish it again this week. One day at a time. QUINTUPLE YEAH ME because I want to see my children and my children’s children grow up.

So you see, I’m a slacker in many areas. Cleaning, diet, exercise, and even writing. But I’ve decided I shouldn’t kick myself for what I don’t get done, rather celebrate what I do. And so should you!

Is there anything in particular you slack on? If so what? And how can you turn it into a positive?

(For those of us with significant others, any chance we can make THEM see the good in what we don’t do?