SCARY!

The scariest movie I ever saw was “The Haunting of Hill House.” You never saw the monster that inhabited the house, you only heard and saw the results of its moving around and making threats. It was also, I think, the scariest book I ever read.

I don’t go to scary movies anymore, though I used to be a great fan of them. The special effects are far more horrific and realistic than they used to be, but often the efforts seems as much to horrify and disgust as to scare. I don’t mind a good scare, but I’m not fond of being disgusted.

I had a super time in San Francisco, none of it scary. I kept a diary of events as they happened, and will post that on my web site, Monica-Ferris.com, under “Adventures.”

One of my favorite jokes involves a discussion among three men as to the scariest sound they ever heard. The first man says, “I woke up the other night and heard someone moving around downstairs – and I was alone in the house.”

The second man says, “I was on safari and one night I heard the cough of a lion right outside my tent.”

The third man says, “I can top both of you. I took my car to be serviced the other day and when the mechanic opened the hood, he gave this long, slow whistle.”

Random Acts of Research

You know how they say when you’re thinking about something, things that relate to it seem to keep showing up? I’m deeply involved with writing the fourth book in the crochet series for now titled Murder and the Marshmallow Stitch and yesterday along with this morning I kept running into things in the book.

We met my son’s girlfriend’s parents for the first time yesterday over Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. Just after we sat down, the father started talking about his possible allergy to shrimp and since he hadn’t brought an epi pen with, he was going to forgo eating any.

Epi pen, allergy? Wow two important words in my current book. My immediate reaction was to start asking questions about the single shot devices that are used in extreme allergic reactions. I know they contain something like adrenalin and are used to treat anaphylactic shock, but there is more I don’t know. I’m sure the father would know, too. Not only does he possibly have allergies, he is also a retired plastic surgeon. But I stopped myself before I asked a single question. It was Thanksgiving and we’d just met. I didn’t even know if they knew I write murder mysteries. How odd would it have been if out of nowhere I started asking questions about ways to kill people?

After dinner, my husband, son and I went to the movies. As we were watching I felt my eyes open wider as I took in the details on the screen. The action in the story was affected by heavy fog. Wow, sort of like in my book. In the movie it was San Francisco which is almost where it is in my story. Mine takes place near Monterey Bay. I studied what the thick fog shrouding the Golden Gate Bridge looked like and was glad that someone else thought a crippling fog was believable.

And then the capper. This morning when I got up and looked out the window, it was foggy here. Not the thick crippling fog of my book, but foggy enough to see what it tasted like and how it softened the details of the redwood trees in the back of the yard.

A few asides. Although I laughed a number of times, I didn’t care much for the movie we saw - Four Christmases. I thought the tone was uneven, but mostly I just didn’t like the main characters. But on a more positive note, my son is sure his girlfriend’s father would love to talk about the death stuff with me. Yay, another source.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who keeps running into things that relate to what they’re working on. What about the rest of you?