Halloween is next month.
For some of us, Halloween is inseparable from memories of childhood: plastic masks, drugstore costumes, jack-o’-lanterns glowing on front porches, piles of candy, and suburban streets that seemed much darker and more mysterious after sunset.
That is the world of my supernatural novel:
12 Hours of Halloween
12 Hours of Halloween takes place on Halloween night in 1980. Three friends—Jeff Schaeffer, Leah Carter, and Bobby Nagel—decide to go trick-or-treating one final time before adolescence brings their childhood Halloween traditions to an end.
They expect an evening of candy, pranks, and perhaps a few manufactured scares.
Instead, they find themselves trapped in a very different kind of Halloween.
A sinister teenager known as the “ghost boy” warns them that they will endure twelve hours of trial. Soon their familiar suburban neighborhood begins to change around them.
Haunted houses. Possessed trees. Restless spirits. And a terrifying figure called the Head Collector, who roams the nighttime streets looking for his next trophy.
But 12 Hours of Halloween isn’t only about monsters.
It is also about that strange boundary between childhood and adolescence—when old friendships begin to change, childhood certainties disappear, and feelings that were once simple suddenly become complicated.
Jeff believes he is falling in love with Leah. His longtime friend Bobby, meanwhile, is becoming someone Jeff no longer completely understands.
And all of this happens during a single long Halloween night.
A Halloween story for the Gen X generation
I wrote 12 Hours of Halloween very much in the tradition of the supernatural stories I grew up with.
If you enjoy the autumnal nostalgia and childhood wonder of Ray Bradbury—particularly stories in which the ordinary world seems only a few steps away from something strange and supernatural—you may find something familiar here.
The setting is deliberately Gen X: Halloween 1980, before smartphones, before social media, and before parents could track their children electronically.
Three kids go out into the October darkness, largely on their own.
And the darkness turns out to contain far more than they bargained for.
12 Hours of Halloween is a coming-of-age story, a supernatural thriller, and a nostalgic trip back to the Halloweens of another era.
With October almost here, this is a good time to take that trip.
12 Hours of Halloween is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions. It is also available to read through Kindle Unlimited.
Happy Halloween—and watch what follows you home.
