In honor of Halloween, we decided to take a hiatus from the norm to tell ghost stories!  But they're all true. So sit back, enjoy, and relax . . . if you can!

Buahahahaha!

Orly Konig-Lopez

A group of us were headed to a party at a friend’s house. They lived on a country road that was quite dark at night. We were caravanning in two cars. I was in the first car but in the back seat.

We weren’t driving fast—lots of ruts in the road—but still probably faster than we should have been (hey, we were in high school.)  The second car was pretty close behind us with their brights on so the driver was swerving a bit trying to keep the headlights from blinding us.

We came around a bend, just before the clearing for the house, trees on both sides of the road, when a man walked out of the woods and in front of the car. He was wearing a baseball cap, a red shirt and jeans. He stopped and looked directly at us just as the car hit him.

Needless to say we all screamed and jumped out of the car. The guys in the car behind came running and yelling, “what happened?” They saw our car lurch to a stop but didn't see why.

There wasn’t a body under the car, around the car, no sign that anyone had crawled into the woods, nothing. The only evidence was a slight dent in the front fender.

We continued to our friend’s house but didn’t stay long. On the way home, we drove very slowly, windows up, doors locked. When we reached the same bend our headlights caught a baseball cap hanging on the limb of a tree.

Laura Drake

I was a jock in High School. Competition racing, and synchronized swimming. I was one of the few on the team who had their Mom’s car, that week before Halloween, so too many piled in after practice, after dark.

It was foggy. I’m talking thick white-out fog, when your headlights just reflect back cotton. We had all the windows open and our heads out, but I still couldn’t see the edges of the road. so two giggling volunteers sat on the hood, to keep us out of the ditch.

Fog can get spooky, smothering sight and sound. And it wasn’t just me; by the time we got to Margie’s neighborhood, we had all fallen silent. How we found her house in that soup, I don’t know.  But I had just pulled up out front, and Margie was climbing out.

A massive dark shape came out of the fog, moaning – right into my face, grabbing at me. The face was pale, bloody, and scarred. In that second, I knew I was going to die. I emptied my lungs, and my bladder.  I think several of the others did, too.

Margie’s brother thought his mask and his joke was hilarious. If I hadn’t been so embarrassed about it, I’d have made him clean the seats of my mother’s car.

Sharla Rae

Ever had a vision or premonition? When I was around 19 I still lived at home with my folks. I’d been out one evening, parked my car and climbed the stoop to the front porch. But when I pulled open the screen door to unlock the front door, I blacked out.

I didn’t exactly faint though and on some level I realized I still stood with the door handle in my hand. At first there was only a terrible dark and then I realized that I hovered on the shoulder of a dark highway.

By the light of flashing emergency lights, I saw that there’d been a bad accident involving a pickup truck colliding with a semi. Everything was very quiet and I didn’t see who was driving either vehicle. I sensed I knew someone in the accident but just that quick I was back on my front porch again.

I was weirded out and when I told my mother what happened, she was too. You see, my dad drove a pickup truck to work and his job was driving a semi that hauled gas. We couldn’t help seeing the possibilities.

My mom promised to warn dad to be careful. But a week later he was driving his semi when a drunk in a pickup caused him to swerve off the road. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Guess I’ll never know if that was because he’d been warned or if it was just a very strange coincidence.

Fae Rowen

My mother had been recovering for almost a year from a broken hip. “The worst break I’ve ever seen,” according to her orthopedist. When she completed nine months of physical therapy and “graduated” from her walker to a cane, I took her on her bucket-list trip – a cruise to Scandinavia and Russia.

My kitchen was being re-modeled and we were staying with her for a few weeks, and all we heard was, “When I get to take a bath again...” She was one week short of being cane-free and excited about being cleared to take a bath again. After fifty-one weeks of showers, which she’d never liked, she was ready for a good tub soak.

Unfortunately, she died suddenly at home in that last cane-required week. One of the things I cried about was how hard she had worked for that never-to-be-taken bath.

The morning after she died, I was awakened by a thunder in the house. Not the thunder of a storm. It sounded like Niagara Falls. Inside the house. Certain that a pipe had burst, I ran into my bathroom. All was well. I ran into the kitchen. No water anywhere. Still, the thunder of a waterfall.

I ran into my mother’s bathroom to find her tub filling, the water tap opened wide. I thought something had broken and wondered where I would find a wrench in the garage. But when I turned the handle, the water stopped. I was afraid to leave the house, in case it happened again. Obviously something was wrong with the plumbing.

The plumber arrived in a couple of hours. After tapping the wall and turning knobs he pronounced the bathroom plumbing in perfect working order.

My mother was just getting her long-awaited bath.

Just that once. It never happened again.

And in case none of those tales were scary enough, here's Jenny Hansen's husband in a truly terrifying Halloween Costume:

So now? It's your turn. Tell us YOUR scary, true story!

I can't tell you how giddy we are here at WITS.  We've been sitting on an announcement, dying to blab, but having to sit on it until today (well, okay, maybe that was just me-I stink at secrets.)   You ready? 

We have a new crit partner, and full time WITS author/blogger!

Orly Konig Lopez!

You might know her from the RWA-WF or Chick Lit chapters. You might know her from Washington Romance writers or Backspace, Savvy Authors, or SCWBI. You might know her from prison . . . okay, I made that last part up. But we're already loving her sense of humor, and we think  you will too. She's going to be around the blog a lot, so I hope you all will show her some comment-love. 

Have at it, Orly!

Not long after my son was born, I made the decision to quit my corporate job and take up freelance editing, and marketing communications. At first the idea scared the crap out of me, and not necessarily just the obvious, “will I be able to make it” question.

What was going to become of me at home all day, alone, just me, alone, without the daily interaction I was so used to, alone?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never had a problem being on my own. I’m an only child, so I’m used to entertaining myself. When I was young, I had imaginary friends (the Ghost of Scotland was my partner in crime when I was six and living in the UK—he had a bad habit of breaking things though, and wasn’t allowed to stay long.) I’m perfectly happy curled up in a toasty corner with a book.

But you know what I discovered? I liked being alone. Maybe I actually liked it too much. I was becoming a happy little troll in my solitary cave.

And writing fit the new me perfectly. All I needed was my laptop and my kitty companions (and a functioning espresso machine.) Because, really, what else do you need? You read craft books and then you write, write, write.

Until someone recommended I join RWA. Ummm, an Association? That meant interacting with people, right? No need for panic, little troll, the chapter I joined was an online one. I could lurk on Yahoo loops, sponge information from the wise members, then write, write, write. I could do this.

Then I pushed the comfort zone a bit more, and joined an online critique group. The idea of sharing my work with someone other than anonymous contest judges made the troll sweat. But after that first scary step, I realized it wasn’t so bad. Okay, it was pretty darn great actually.

Hey, we were on a roll. I joined a local chapter and, tossing that comfort pillow around like I was big troll on campus, then looked at the next thing on my “Oh please don’t make me do this” list—pitching an agent. Live. In person. Not an email query. See the troll cowering in the corner?

But, hey can’t stop now. So in March, when my local chapter had their retreat, I signed up for not one, but two pitch sessions. I wrote the pitch, I practiced, I even put on lipstick. And you know what? The troll survived. I even got two requests out of the experience.

I was kicking some comfort zone booty, people.

And I learned something important. There’s nothing wrong with having the cushy safe zone. Sometimes it’s perfectly okay to roll the boulder in front of the cave and hide. But leave a tiny crack. You never know when a big hairy opportunity will stroll by.

For me, the scary, hairy comfort challenge is in putting myself out there. I’m doing that bit by bit—querying, pitching, becoming active with the RWA chapters., And now, my latest; blogging with this amazing group of ladies. My lipstick may not always be on straight, and I still prefer the safety of my cave, but hello world!

So, what scares you? And who helped you pick out your most flattering color of lipstick?

NOTE: Orly lives on the East Coast and is dealing with Hurricane Sandy at the moment. She's safe, but hit and miss in her electricity. She will respond to comments, but it might be "hit and miss" for the next day or so.

About Orly:

After years of pushing the creativity boundary in corporate communications, Orly decided it was time for a new challenge. Three women's fiction manuscripts later (plus a handful of picture books), she's found her creative outlet. Her manuscripts have finaled in the Wisconsin Romance Writers Fab Five Contest, the TARA contest, Stiletto Contest, First Coast Romance Writers Unpublished Beacon Contest, Novel Rocket Launch Pad contest, and the Greater Seattle Romance Writers of America's Emerald City Opener Contest.

When not writing fiction, she's still pushing the creativity barriers for her marketing communications clients and trying to hide from her family long enough to read "just one more page."

You are in for a treat, because we enticed a stellar new author to WITS today. I read Sharla Lovelace's debut novel, The Reason is You, after the RWA National Conference. I read. A lot. And Sharla's book is the best I've read this year. You're getting in on a Pre-NYT Bestseller here. I'm not kidding, remember you read it here first.

Read on, you'll see what I mean. Take it away, Sharla!

Hello everyone and thank you for having me!

I’m going to start this out with a shocking confession.  I don’t follow rules.  I just do it.

See, the amazing Laura Drake invited me to talk about my writing strength today, and was very kind to say that she felt that strength was in how I portray relationships.  So I thought, “Cool.  I can do that.”  Others have told me that.  It’s actually one of the things that my agent likes the most about my work.  So, no problem.

Except that what I found is that all I can say about it is “Thank you,” as I bow and sit back down.  Because I have no idea how it comes to me.

I’m one of those frightening “pantser” people that don’t plot ahead of time, don’t map out arcs or make charts, don’t plan my word choices, and I have no earthly idea what a participle or a gerund is.  (Sorry, Margie!)

I got through high school English sentence structure by ear.  In the same way that I have a natural ear for music, I also have it for the English language.  I know what sounds right.  I know how things are supposed to flow and when something is out of whack.  But don’t ask me to explain why.

I write my stories in the same way.  I mix up short and long sentences not out of design, but because that’s what I want to hear.  I create families that talk like I talk—like most people talk, I would think.  Using conversational dialogue that feels real.  I talk it out loud to hear the rhythm and the banter, sometimes doing it wrong on purpose because—well—sometimes that’s how we interact with each other in real life.  I’ve never lived in Mayberry or whatever town the Cleaver’s lived in, so my people are not June and Ward.  They’re Luke and Lorelai from The Gilmore Girls.  Or Amy and her mother and brothers with baggage in Judging Amy.

While I hear the good…I hear the bad as well.  I know when it’s lacking, or when something feels forced or flat.  When the emotion isn’t there or when it sounds like you’re talking to a vacuum cleaner salesman instead of your love interest.   When this happens, I close my eyes and walk through the scene.  Is there a special bonding between a grandfather and his granddaughter, like a little growl he does when he hugs her that he’s done all her life? (Nathaniel and Riley in THE REASON IS YOU)

Or let’s do a new one.  What do I see?  What’s on the walls?  What’s on the floor?  Is the rug old?  Was it there when the main character was a child?  Did she used to have blanket tent forts over it, and was there a Kool-Aid stain she tried to cover up by moving a chair?  Was her sister with her?  Her brother?  Did she lie for them?  Did her mother know all along?

Could any of this be a casual conversation around a dinner table with lively banter as the rolls are passed and her grown brother throws one at her, nearly spilling her glass of wine?  A family, being a family.  Someone showing up late to the monthly get-together with excuses ready, while eyes meet all around the table.

Then, I open my eyes and start coloring all that into the cracks.

Here’s an excerpt from my upcoming release, BEFORE AND EVER SINCE.

I just closed my eyes and mentally switched gears.  The current ones were going in circles.  I pulled my phone out again and read as I spoke, asking the question I could ask in my sleep.  “Okay, Mom, how does the contract read?  Please tell me there’s a contingency on you finding a home first?”

“I’m not getting another home.”

You could have heard crickets in that silence.  Holly and I both stopped breathing as we stared at the woman we once thought so wise.  I wondered if Holly’s panic journey included what room she’d have to give up in her house.  I, for one, saw my messy office go up in a frenzy of silk flowers, craft glue, and Tandy’s bean bag chair.  Aside from that, the fleeting seed of doubt about her state of mind was skipping around in there, too.

“I think I need some rum in my tea, too,” Holly said quietly.

Mom pulled the bottle from a box in the pantry, since the alcohol was evidently already packed.  She poured some in both their glasses, and then held it out for me.  Not having a glass was beside the point. 

“That’s okay, I think I need to be sober for this,” I said, holding up a finger.

“All right,” Holly said, gulping down her happy tea and sucking in a deep breath like that would prepare her for war.  “Explain.”

Mom gave each of us a look and began, “Your Aunt Bernie has that big Winnebago—”

“Oh dear God, tell me no—” Holly started.

“Mom, please say you’re not selling this house to live on the road with Aunt Bernie,” I said, finishing the thought. 

Any sentence that began with Your Aunt Bernie was a preface to some kind of lunacy.  Mom’s sister, Bernice, had been widowed for ten years and had done the very same thing.  Sold her three-bedroom house with a pool and lived out of a powder blue Winnebago, traveling the states and landing wherever the whim struck her.  When it struck her to visit home, she’d take up half the street and you could almost hear the neighbors groan.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Jesus, this is ludicrous,” I said under my breath, turning around to find some normalcy in the pictures next to the TV.  They weren’t packed yet.  They still sat in the same place they’d always sat, nestled together on the table I’d tried to paint with watercolors when I was five.  It still had a green spot at the bottom of one leg where the grain absorbed the pigment.

“Seriously?” Holly asked.  “You need reasons why you need a real home?  Not one with wheels and a port-a-potty?”

My mom grabbed a cookie from the tin and broke it in two, then halved those as well before popping a bite into her mouth and holding one down for Tandy who suddenly sprang to life again at the potential for a snack.

“You know what?” she asked around the cookie.  “I’ve been puttering around this house by myself for a long time.”

“We know, Mom,” I said.

“I’m still talking,” she said with a look that I knew too well and could instantly make me feel eight.  “Now—I’m a grown damn woman.  My kids are grown, hell, my grandkids are grown.  I have no reason to lie around this house, baking cookies or planting flowers and waiting to die.  And if I want to ride around in a big ugly tank eating Cheetos with my sister, then I can damn well do it.  I don’t need you two little mother hens telling me what I can and can’t do.”
That’s how I do it.  No formulas.  No rules.  Just filling in the colors.  It’s not for everyone!  LOL.  But it works for me in the end.

Thank you for letting me share my ramblings!

Sharla

Sharla Lovelace is the National Bestselling Author of THE REASON IS YOU, JUST ONE DAY, and the upcoming BEFORE AND EVER SINCE, which is due out in November 2012.  Being a Texas girl through and through, she is proud to say that she lives in Southeast Texas with her family, an old lady dog, and an aviary full of cockatiels.  

You can follow her as @sharlalovelace on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.