Mark Leslie might look like a tough guy, at 6'3" with a bald head, goatee and menacing glare; but he's really just a giant chicken who is still afraid of the dark and who channels many of his fears into the stories he writes.

Mark, who lives in Waterloo, Ontario, is the author of more than thirty books that include numerous story collections, the novels I, Death, A Canadian Werewolf in New York, and a half dozen books that explore the paranormal which include Spooky Sudbury, Creepy Capital, Tomes of Terror, and Haunted Hospitals. When he is not writing, or cowering under the covers, hiding from the monster under his bed, he can be found wandering awestruck through bookstores, libraries, and craft breweries.

Halloween Harvest edited by Mark Leslie

Not content to merely thrill and chill readers, these eleven Halloween stories, edited by Mark Leslie, also enthrall, intrigue, disturb, and inspire. They tell of the people and traditions, the age-old rituals that send shivers down the spines of even the most up-to-date trick-or-treaters.

From a farm family confronting the slow death of their way of life to two dead people given another day among the living, the characters in these stories, both human and nonhuman, explore the territory between living and dying.

Settle in by the light of the Harvest moon, and enjoy this enthralling harvest hayride of reading pleasures and treats.

Includes:
"Day of the Living" by Annie Reed
"Huskie and Punkin'" by David H. Hendrickson
"Death Among the Scarecrows" by Tonya D. Price
"Buy Nothing Day" by David Stier
"Offerings for Wandering Ghosts" by Tao Wong
"Harvest Bride" by Jason A. Adams
"A Place at the Table" by Suzan Harden
"Under the Samhain Moon" by Barbara G. Tarn
"Still Here" by Stefon Mears
"Heritage" by R.W. Wallace
“A Feast of Souls Beneath the Gathering Moon” by Lisa Silverthorne

CURATOR'S NOTE

This book was conceived as a calendar of stories which readers got for the days preceding Halloween. You might want to read them that way, one story at a time, starting eleven days before the big day. Or you can treat the stories like a big pile of candy corn and binge. Your choice. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Introduction

I wasn't at all surprised when Kristine Kathryn Rusch asked me if I would be interested in editing the Halloween-themed collection of the WMG Publishing Holiday Spectacular. Halloween is, after all, my favorite months of the year.

No, that's not a typo, that was deliberate.

Because I usually start celebrating Halloween mid-September and might just finish off halfway through November. There's no reason why such a fantastic holiday should be restricted to a single day.

Of course, anyone who knows me might suggest I just pulled the wool over your eyes. Because, if you've ever seen the inside and outside of my home, decorated with numerous skeletons, and my home office, rife with multiple skulls along my bookshelves, desks, and bureaus, you know I never really stop celebrating Halloween.

Or, if not Halloween, then at least some of the ritualistic things that have long been celebrated in so many different cultures around the world at that special and often magical time of year.

Take skulls, for example. They can be used to demonstrate elements of Halloween, horror and the macabre, but also as a way to honor the dead, or even to promote eternal wisdom. In Latin American culture, where the skull has become synonymous with the Day of the Dead ceremonies, the skull invokes themes of individuality, remembrance of fallen warriors, and the transience of life.

People have been decorating with skulls by displaying them on shelves, floors, and benches in the Middle East as early as 7,200 BC. They didn't start to appear in European culture until the mid 1300s, shortly after the Bubonic Plague killed nearly one quarter of the world's population. The skull represented a type of "Memento Mori" symbol, representing a combination of the recognition of mortality, but also a celebration of making the most out of one's relatively short time on this earth.

And, in the same way that the skull can take on a significance of the celebration of life, so, too can Halloween and numerous fall festivals represent such things. Because this season, which, in many ways is about the end of the life and the death of the growth that began the previous spring, it is also about celebrating the bounty of the harvest, and the mythical manner of the wondrous circle of life.

Perhaps that is why the fall season, and the many rituals and traditions that surround it have long captivated me. And I know that, through the eyes of the masterful authors you are about to experience, you, too, will be captivated. Whether the tale includes an actual historic tradition, or one made up; whether it is based on a geographic locale that we can either visit or might have been to, or is based upon a completely fictional one in a far off land or planet, they are all, ultimately tales about us and the traditions we cling to as we try to make sense of life and the mysteries of the universe.

You'll be enthralled, intrigued, disturbed, inspired, and moved by these tales of the people and the traditions, the customs, the rituals, the habits, the patterns, and the self-reflection and discovery that results if you take the time to pause and to acknowledge such special transcendental moments in time. The way that these authors did, in order to bring these stories to you.

Just like the skulls that hide beneath the flesh of all of us, those moments are always there. And these authors so brilliantly bring those experiences, those ultimately all too human moments, into the light so that you and I can fully appreciate them in all their majesty, glory, and wonder.

—Mark Leslie

Waterloo, Ontario