Postcard For Reader

Costume Madness

The best part of Halloween isn't the handing out of candy, or the spiritual connotations, or the scary stories. No. The best part is, without a doubt, dressing up.

This year, a group of my friends are going as Sweeney Todd characters - I'm going as Crazy Lucy! But what about authors, hmm? Do THEY enjoy dressing up?

Here's some authors who love dressing up - and some pictures to go with it. Hope everybody has a happy Halloween, and don't forget to enter the half dozen giveaways that end today! Feel free to post pics of you in your costume in the comments.

Gail Carriger
Author of the Parasol Protectorate series

I love dressing up for Halloween so much, I decided one year never to stop. Sadly, I seem to have applied the same policy to my candy consumption.

Heidi R. Kling
Author of Sea

My favorite part of Halloween is the costumes! I used to work at a costume shop and directed theatre for years. Halloween is huge in our family. Did you see the picture I posted on my blog of my Mummy Queen costume? This year I'm going to be Sue Sylvester from Glee. Work out suit with pearls. Oh yeah, babeee!

Lisa Mantchev
Author of the Theatre Illuminata series

Most kids are going for the candy, but Halloween always was and always will be about the costumes!

I started thinking/dreaming/planning out my costume months in advance. It usually started with a trip to the local fabric store and a long, leisurely browse through the pattern books. (Ask my husband... I can spend as much time looking at sewing patterns--despite NOT KNOWING HOW TO SEW--as I can at browsing through a bookstore!) Then came the excitement of choosing fabric and lace and ribbons and buttons. Accessories. Make-up. The entire package.

Now that I'm an "adult," Halloween is still about dressing up, and the best part is getting to pass along my excitement to my own daughter. I see the same glow in her face when she goes through the dress-up trunk, when she starts to ponder the possibilities. Now we're expecting her little brother, and her plans for Halloween are to be "a princess, and he can be the Fwog (sic.)"

Melissa Walker
Author of the Violet series

My favorite part of Halloween is being able to look fabulous in a weird way... a way that would draw the wrong kind of stares on any other night. Case in point: A costume I wore a few years ago that I called "distraught prom queen." I streaked my mascara, painted on bright red lips, tilted a tiara and borrowed a crazy yellow prom dress from the magazine I was working for (just for the night!) and people kept asking me if it was couture. It wasn't. But I felt amazing.

Pamela Keyes
Author of The Jumbee

Halloween has always been my favorite time of the year. One of my best friends owns a local shop in Tucson called Creative Costumes, and I’ve spent countless hours over the years helping her with photo shoots while trying to find the perfect disguise. (See me below as a glamour girl, a flapper, a sexy witch, a purple-haired wizard, a fifties hair model, and a tavern wench.)

So, of course, when I saw the Phantom of the Opera a few years ago, I immediately fell in love with the main character – the spookiest, yet most sympathetic phantom I have ever met. Shortly after that, I was lucky enough to move to the Caribbean. The moment I heard my first legend of a jumbee (a West Indian ghost who wants to steal your soul), I knew what I had to do. What better combination than a jumbee teamed with the most famous phantom in the world? When writing my young adult romantic thriller THE JUMBEE, I tried to create a spooky fusion of West Indian legends and Shakespeare, told through the classic plot of Phantom of the Opera. Laced with eerie mystery and the seductive scenery of the West lndies, this new Phantom is perfect for readers who like their love stories served with spine-tingling suspense.

What are YOU dressing up as?

Happy Halloween, all. Once the winners are announced, Book Spooks 2010 will be over. What did you think?