Guest Post: Mike Baron on Horror Comics

Halloween has always been my very favorite holiday. I have a brilliant memory of being four years old and dressed as a bat, holding hands with my sister (dressed as a Rubik’s cube) eating powdered sugar donuts at the local fire station. We stood beside a fire burning inside an old metal barrel, and the flames lit our faces up more beautifully than sunshine. Looking at my sister’s multi-colored smile, I realized that Halloween was the best, most terrific day of the year, and I wished it could be Halloween every day.  

But of all the terrific Halloweens””Halloweens when I partied, Halloweens when I dressed up, Halloweens when I trick or treated for charity, all the many glorious Halloweens of the past forty-plus years””the best Halloween was the first one I spent in Ash Valley, Oregon. I was a first-grader, and my family had only moved to town in August. “Town” was a strong word for our community; there was no grocery store or gas station or post office there, only a two-room schoolhouse and a pre-fab shed sheltering the volunteer fire department. About sixty-five people lived in the immediate vicinity, and every holiday they came together at the school for lavish potlucks.  

I’d been excited about Halloween right up until the moment it was decided that instead of making me the costume of my choice (I’m pretty sure that year I wanted to go as a mermaid), we were just going to borrow a costume from our neighbors so my mom would have plenty of time to prepare for her first-ever Ash Valley potluck. On Halloween, I sulked around all day, only brightening when my mom let me lick out the mixing bowl. Although when I learned she was making cupcakes””a food that I’d never gotten to eat before””my day was transformed. As was I when I tried on the borrowed costume, which was a perfectly adorable raccoon suit that I looked cute in.  

When my sister finished painting on my raccoon mask, I saw the cupcakes my mom had created and nearly burst into tears. Orange frosted and decorated with mini-marshmallow ghosts, they were the single most amazing thing I had ever seen. I couldn’t wait for my friends to see how brilliant my mother was. We did a cursory round of trick or treating (in the car, because the houses were all miles apart) and made our way to the school.  

With lights blazing and Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow whirring on the film projector, the school looked nothing like its day-lit self. After dinner (my first potluck, and the first time I ever got to eat two kinds of lasagna in one meal!), adults dressed as witches urged me to go into the basement to check out the haunted house. I held sweaty hands with my best friend and managed to wobble downstairs. More witches attempted to convince me to touch hideous, slimy things. Pirates grabbed at me. A vampire rose from its coffin, making us shriek and run toward the faceless monster rattling in the closet. At the exit, a head on a plate invited us to join them for dinner. I was so terrified I nearly puked.

“Did you recognize my dad?” another student asked, and I nodded. It hadn’t mattered that I’d recognized every face; it had been too much fun letting myself get so scared while I also knew I was perfectly safe. It was the best feeling, and one I’ve spent the rest of my life chasing.  

Then Mom gave me one of her cupcakes, and the night got even better. I’ve recreated her recipe below, although I’ve taken the liberty of jazzing up the frosting a little. You’ll notice that the recipe is vegan; it’s supposedly from the Depression, when eggs were often in short supply. This version might be a touch healthier: I’ve swapped out half the oil for applesauce, which lowers the fat a bit, and I use half as much sugar as some versions of the recipe.  

Trick or Treat Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; prepare your cupcake pan with liners (or by greasing and flouring). I made 6 regular-sized cupcakes and 12 mini cupcakes.  

In a mixing bowl, whisk together:
1 1/2 c flour
3/4 c sugar
6 tb cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt

In another bowl, whisk together:
2 tb applesauce
2 tb light-tasting oil, like corn or canola (honestly, I used part melted vegan butter & part olive, and it was fine)
1 tb vinegar (balsamic is actually a nice touch!)
1 tb Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey (or vanilla)  

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and stir to combine. A few small lumps is okay. Fill pans 3/4^th full, and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean: 12-15 minutes for minis and 15-18 minutes for full-sized.  

Halloween Peanut Butter Frosting

This tastes like a spreadable Chick-o-stick.  

Combine 2 tbs peanut butter with 2 tbs butter (vegan is fine). Add 1 tb vanilla creamer, then add enough powdered sugar to make it smooth and spreadable (about a cup, maybe). Add enough orange food coloring to look seasonal. If the frosting looks too thin, just add a bit more butter and powdered sugar; if it’s too thick, add a bit of milk”“make it the texture you like!  

Marshmallow Ghosts

I used Dandies vanilla marshmallows, which are vegan and very vanilla-y. Use scissors to make two or three small snips at the bottom of your marshmallow, giving it a “cute but ragged death shroud” look. Use a toothpick dipped in black food coloring to apply eyes.  

Assemble to your liking! My mom just put the marshmallows on top of the cupcakes, but it’s also fun to create a haunted cemetery tableau, using graham crackers as headstones and chocolate ganache as fresh churned grave dirt (a sprinkle of crushed chocolate wafers adds a nice touch). Do note that if you put these in a sealed container, the moisture in the air might make your ghosts’ eyes bleed a little, so if you make them in advance, maybe toss one of those moisture-absorbing packets in with them, or leave the lid ajar a bit.

BIO: Wendy N. Wagner is the editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine and the managing/senior editor of Lightspeed. Her short stories, essays, and poems run the gamut from horror to environmental literature. Her longer work includes the novella The Secret Skin, the horror novel The Deer Kings,  the Locus bestselling SF eco-thriller An Oath of Dogs,  and two novels for the Pathfinder role-playing game. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, two large cats, and a Muppet disguised as a dog. You can find her at winniewoohoo.com and on Twitter at wnwagner.

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“Since your book’s technological advances place it during the Renaissance, your characters are wrong because they should be speaking like Shakespeare.”

Imagine my surprise when a friend and avid fantasy reader said this to me. I can’t remember the last time I met someone who believed that level of linguistic authenticity necessary in a fantasy world. While I love Shakespeare, if every fantasy novel I read was written with historically and culturally accurate language, I’d go mad. I don’t speak German any more than I speak Old English. Egad! Not even the people of Shakespeare’s time spoke like Shakespeare.

Imagine if The Lord of the Rings trilogy were written like this:

Or like this:

Hwanne Dryhten Bilbo Baggins of Faetels Ende abeodan se he dulmúnus aer gebréfan beon he endleofan-fyrest ongean a gebéorscipe fram déore, þider beon fela acwepan end onwæcenness in Hobbiton.

Not so bad in Shakespeare’s tongue, but how enjoyable would the reading be in Old English?

It’s a common misconception that all fantasy is based upon medieval Europe, and everyone talks like they’re in a Shakespeare play.

One reason I call shenanigans on this misconception is that when the day is done, it’s fantasy. It’s up to the author to build a believable world however they wish. That’s not to say that linguistics doesn’t play a crucial role in world building, but as the author, you have some wiggle room in how you develop your world or universe.

In my fantasy novel, Amaskan’s Blood, the world of Boahim consists of twelve kingdoms. Each one has their own culture that I built from a mixture of Earth cultures. But at its core, Boahim is a fantasy world that doesn’t exist on planet Earth and never did. I can set their scientific advances to be comparable to Middle Ages France, and yet, use magic to control indoor plumbing if I wish.

But what about linguistics? More specifically, word choice? If a kingdom is based on Renaissance France, must I write the novel in Old French? Tolkien certainly didn’t, and he was a linguistics master.

Yet Linguistics is more than word choice. It’s phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and the order of parts of speech. (You can read more on each of these here.) These are all elements an author must consider as they write a story in a fantasy world.

Rather than dealing with absolutes, writers should consider linguistics as an essential piece of world building. You would no more have a character in Renaissance France talking about gigabytes or than you would a scullery maid speak with a refined and educated diction.

So how do we find balance with our linguistics?

1. Your language must be believable. It should fit the time period and culture of the society, unless it has a strong reason not to do so.
2. Don’t overdo it with newly invented words. If I need a glossary at the end of the book to translate all your made up words, I’ll be sucked out of my enjoyment to do “homework.” Harry Harrison’s West of Eden comes to mind. I made it twenty pages in before the chore of translation drove me to toss the book in the “donate” bin.
3. Don’t overdo dialects. Dialects are also indications of language and cultural status, and should be used sparingly. If over used, it can fatigue the reader. (You can read more about dialect here.)

While Tolkien sprinkled bits of Sindarin, Khuzdul, and the Black Speech throughout his trilogy, he did so sparingly enough that it became flavor text””enrichment to his world building rather than a stopping block for the reader. That should be the author’s goal as well””enrichment.

While revising my fantasy novel, I kept a running list of terms that felt modern or out of place as I reread the novel. Then I used the Online Etymology Dictionary to look up the offending words. (There were over 300 of them, but it was well worth looking them up to ensure a good reading experience.)

For example, the word faux pas, French for false-step, dates back to 1670. In Boahim, one kingdom’s culture is heavily influenced by Renaissance France. It made sense in my timeline and culture for the word faux pas to exist. All that was left was double-checking whether a particular character would know and use the word. Word choice is as much a part of who your character is as the culture in which they belong.

If the time period or culture had been wrong””say from the 1800’s””it’s my job then to research why/how the word came about. I would have to make the ultimate choice on whether that word fit into the world I’ve established and the character using it.

Ultimately, it is up to the writer to build their world and decide what the characters would and would not know. Do your homework with your world building, and we’ll gladly follow the characters on their journey.

Bio: Raven Oak is the author of the bestselling fantasy novel, Amaskan’s Blood, and the upcoming sci-fi novels, Class-M Exile and The Silent Frontier. She spent most of her K-12 education doodling stories and 500 page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet.

She lives in Seattle, WA with her husband, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach.

For more information and excerpts, visit http://www.ravenoak.net

Raven can also be found on the following sites:
Twitter: @raven_oak
Facebook: http://facebook.com/authorroak
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/raven_oak
Google+: https://www.google.com/+RavenOak
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/kaonevar/

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