Urbantasm Book Three The Darkest Road by Connor Coyne #YA #MagicalRealism #TeenNoir


An excerpt from Urbantasm, Book Three: The Darkest Road:

I didn’t have a lot of time to put a costume together, but I dressed in black, combed my hair down as flat and straight as it would go, put on a dark pair of my tea shades, and some old lady rings my Grandmother Richter had given my mother. I wrote “OZZY” across the knuckles of both hands.
“That’s your costume?” my mother asked.
“The taste of bats is really salty!” I barked. “Really salty!”
When I hopped into Chris’ minivan, Shannon gave a snort at my costume. He had dyed his hair green and was wearing green plastic gloves. He held a huge coil of chicken-wire, wrapped in green ribbon across his lap.
I said, “What’s –”
“Sea serpent,” he said.
Chris had gone for a minimalist costume: a knife thrust into one side of his head and out the other, with blood dripping down his scalp and from the corners of his mouth. Nova wore a skeleton costume. Majenta, sitting in the way back, seemed to be dressed no differently than usual.
“What’s your costume?” I asked her.
“I’m a bat,” she said.
“Baller.”
We talked strategy on our way north, and Chillout Chris weirded me out with his ice-cold battle tactics.
“There’ll be a lot of little kids,” he was saying, “but they’re slow. They’ll be like in packs with their parents, and they’ll stick to the sidewalks. So, what we do is we cut across the lawns. That way, we can get up on the porch before they do, even if they’re ahead of us.”
“Brutal, man,” said Nova.
“I’m going to get so much fucking candy tonight,” said Chris. “And I’m gonna eat it all before tomorrow.”
Majenta didn’t say much. I couldn’t tell whether she was just her usual sullen self or if she objected to my presence on Omara’s behalf. It was hard for me to believe Chris that nobody cared about the break-up.
“Hey,” I said, “you invited Omara, right?”
I imagined Majenta rolling her eyes behind me.
“Yeah, we invited her!” said Chris. “‘I’m too old for that!’ she said.” Chris’ derision of Omara’s derision came through in his high-pitched imitation of her voice. “Ken would’ve come, but his dad needs his help at some event their family is hosting in Detroit or something.”
“What about Justin?”
“I haven’t seen Justin lately.”
When we started, the sun was still shining through the tattered hems of the clouds, casting its weak light upon the last of the leaves. Silver maples. Street after broad street had already filled with kids in costumes – Power Rangers, Batman and Robin, Will Smith and Carlton Banks, the Penguin and Catwoman, the occasional Barney – and they waddled just ahead of their parents from house to house. I expected to catch some dirty looks, but I didn’t. Yeah, we were old for trick-or-treaters, but at least we were wearing costumes. At least we weren’t pushing the little kids around. At least we didn’t trample the parkway beds of cabbage, pansies, and mums. Some of the kids trick-or-treating were older than we were. Some of them were stubble-chinned adults, plastic Hefty sacks stretched wide, cigarettes dangling from the fingers.
“Trick-or-treat!” they growled.
And they received their candy and moved on. There was an unspoken truth in the air. Anderson Park was a money neighborhood, and none of our neighborhoods were money neighborhoods. So Anderson Park got its snow plowed, its trash picked up on time, and life was good enough there that they were able to worry about things like which trees the city cut down, and whether feral cats were murdering baby bunnies. Not whether live electrical wires dangled through the trees, or whether you’d get chased down the street by murderous dogs, or whether the vacant house next door would explode in the middle of the night because nobody had turned off the gas after the last eviction. And so, on one night of the year, Halloween Night, the rest of Akawe went knocking door to door and collected its poverty tax in Snickers and KitKats. Anderson Park paid up, and didn’t fuss about it too much.
The longer we were out, the more people packed into the neighborhood, with lines of kids running from the porches to the sidewalks. We saw Wednesdays and Pugsleys, Leonardos, Michelangelos, Donatellos, and Raphaels, sometimes sporting shells made from green-painted trash can lids, Splinters and Quailmen, plenty of devils, an angel or two, Vito Corleone and Marlon Brando, Woody Harrelson and Buzz Lightyear, a Sufi and some Indian princesses, a lich holding his demilich buddy in his hand as he went, swinging it like a lantern, the usual motley of vampires, ghosts, clowns, witches, and Frankenstein monsters, a band of dancing zombies, a Cher Sarkisian, and a Cher Horowitz.
While a few sullen houses greeted us with lightless windows and drawn curtains, most of the porches glowed with pumpkins, candles, Tiki torches, faux cemeteries with cheeky epitaphs – “Izzy Dead” and “Barry D. Live” – and scarecrows planted among the gourds and cornstalks, and manic spectres with flickering eyes running from second-story windows down to the lawn, and howling demons, rattling bones, broomsticks, and evil trees.
My friends and I ranged up and down the fanciest streets. On Red Arrow, at an angular mansion of raw stones and slate shingles, with a copper conservatory at the back like the house from Clue, we got the hugest Butterfingers and 3 Musketeers bars. 
In front of a more ordinary house on Peterson, an Evil Dead shack that Quanla would have admired had been erected in the front yard, while a man revved a (chainless) chainsaw and roared dismembering threats at the local kids while his wife dropped handfuls of candies in their sacks and pillowcases.
Across the street, an experimental Christian congregation had set up a pavilion where they gave away popcorn and hot cider to the kids, and beer to the adults, and tiny stapled tracts for everybody. 
“I’m gonna try for a beer!” said Nova.
“Don’t waste our time,” snapped Chris. “It’s getting late. There’s still candy to get got, but we’ve only got a half-hour left!”
The neighborhood got wild in the last minutes of trick-or-treating.
The sun went down and the temperature dropped. Sharp and gusting wind became rain, then sleet, then snow. A lot of parents, not wanting to get out of their cars in this mess, idled down the streets alongside their kids going door to door. It all turned into a traffic jam amid the narrow streets. A few parents got fed up with waiting and drove over the curbs and across lawns as the last of the trick-or-treaters dove out of their way.
“This shit’s getting nuts,” said Nova. “Wanna head back? My bag’s full, and people are running out of candy anyway.”
Everyone agreed except Chris. Chris would’ve kept on trick-or-treating until November 1st if he could have.
“It’s good to be high on life,” he said. “It’s better to be high on sugar.”
But we’d gotten turned around. The streets of Anderson Park twisted around parks, streams, and parkways. It didn’t help that the porch lights were all out, now that almost every house had exhausted its cache of candy. Nearly all of the remaining light came from the taillights of angry cars trying to escape from the neighborhood.
We thought we were making our way back toward South Street and Chris’ minivan, but we must have gone the wrong way because we found ourselves away from the crowds and approaching the expressway.
“I want to go this way,” said Majenta.
She was standing at the mouth of a slim drive – barely a road – that turned and vanished between tall, skeletal trees.
“That is not going to get us back to the car,” said Shannon.
“Is it even safe?” asked Chris.
Majenta scoffed.
“It’s Anderson Park,” she said.
Nova laughed.
“Vote?” said Majenta.
“No way,” said Chris. 
Shannon shook his head.
“I’m cold,” he said. “That’s two of us, Maj.”
“Okay. All in favor? Come on, who wants to?” asked Majenta.
I was cold. I was tired. But I also wanted to score some easy points with Majenta. Maybe she’d tell Omara how dope I’d been during trick-or-treating.
I raised my hand.
Nova imitated me, straining for heaven like a first-grader who just aced his spelling quiz and knows all the shit in the world.
Majenta flashed a rare smile.
“The Salty Allard Brothers vs. the Rest of Us. We’re going.”
The asphalt track cut between the overhanging trees and vines, all of them leaf naked, before dumping us in a frosted parking lot. Anderson Park was one of Akawe’s “rich” neighborhoods. And this was a country club. But now it was, like seemingly everything else, abandoned. The stripped tennis courts had been riven by wide cracks packed with gray weeds. The old clubhouse had been incinerated, nothing left but a Stonehenge of blackened columns. Someone had dumped an old couch at the end of the parking lot, and it was rapidly being covered with a coat of rimey snow. Beyond all of this stretched a golf course, all of it waist-deep in dead grass and studded with yearning cottonwoods, and watched over by the ever-blinking red lights of distant radio towers.
“I know where we are, yo,” said Nova. “My uncle used to go golfing down here. This is Ruth Golf Course. I didn’t know it was shut down, though.”
“Looks like it’s been shut down a while,” said Shannon.
“It’s beautiful,” said Majenta.
All I could think was that – yes – this was beautiful, and here I was on another – accidental – nightwalk, but Omara wasn’t here, and why isn’t Omara here? Then I remembered. She’s at home studying. She’s too old for trick-or-treating. And also, she dumped me.
I kicked a mound of snow. Majenta looked at me.
“It is beautiful,” I said.
She blessed me with another smile, but I knew that her mere smiles wouldn’t put me back together with Omara.
I swallowed some snot and my throat hurt. I could feel myself getting sick as we walked. It was time to come in out of the cold.


Urbantasm Book Three
The Darkest Road
Connor Coyne

Genre: General Fiction / Young Adult
Subgenres: Magical Realism, Teen Noir, Edgy YA
Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
Date of Publication: 9/22/2021
ISBN: 978-0989920292 (Print)
Page Count 639
Word Count: About 230,000
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin

Urbantasm: The Empty Room is the third book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan. It will be published in September, 2021.

Junior high was hard. John Bridge has made and lost friends, experienced and forsaken love, and discovered his true passions. But after his harrowing experience on the roof of St. Christopher’s hospital, John has decided to turn the page of his own life and plan for his future. Now he has new friends, a new girlfriend, and a powerful new goal: to get into Chicago and leave Akawe forever.

But Akawe might not want to let John go. The city is full of memories and ghosts — urbantasms, according his former friend Selby — and they leave traces of questions that John cannot easily escape: What happened to his abducted classmate Cora Braille? How does the Chalks street gang keep replenishing its stock of O-Sugar, a drug with seemingly magical properties? And why is Selby suddenly hanging out with a notorious drug dealer? Does it have anything to do with a man with a knife or some mysterious blue sunglasses?

John has a feeling that the dreadful answers to these questions might take him to a place that he does not want to go: a dark road in a forgotten corner of his dying city. Possibly the darkest road of all.


As a serial novel, Urbantasm has to be read in order. 
New readers will want to start with Book One The Dying City.
 
Urbantasm Book Two
The Empty Room
Connor Coyne

Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
Date of Publication: September 2019      
Number of pages:
Word Count: 175,000      
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin, Forge22 Design

Book Description:  

Urbantasm: The Empty Room is the second book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.

John Bridge is only two months into junior high and his previously boring life has already been turned upside-down. His best friend has gone missing, his father has been laid-off from the factory, and John keeps looking over his shoulder for a mysterious adversary: a man with a knife and some perfect blue sunglasses.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, John must now confront his complicated feelings for a classmate who has helped him out of one scrape after another, although he knows little about who she is and what she wants. What does it mean to want somebody? How can you want them if you don’t understand them? Does anybody understand anyone, ever? These are hard questions made harder in the struggling city of Akawe, where the factories are closing, the schools are closing, the schools are crumbling, and even the streetlights can’t be kept on all night.

John and his friends are only thirteen, but they are fighting for their lives and futures. Will they save Akawe, will they escape, or are they doomed? They might find their answers in an empty room… in a city with ten thousand abandoned houses, there will be plenty to choose from.



Urbantasm Book One
The Dying City
Connor Coyne
            
Genre: YA, Magical Realism, New Adult, Teen Noir, Lit Fic
Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
Date of Publication: September 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0989920230
ASIN: 0989920232
Number of pages: 450 pages
Word Count: 85,000
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin,
Forge22 Design

Book Description:

Urbantasm is a magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.

Thirteen-year-old John Bridge’s plans include hooking up with an eighth-grade girl and becoming one of the most popular kids at Radcliffe Junior High, but when he steals a pair of strange blue sunglasses from a homeless person, it drops him into the middle of a gang war overwhelming the once-great Rust Belt town of Akawe.

John doesn’t understand why the sunglasses are such a big deal, but everything, it seems, is on the table. Perhaps he accidentally offended the Chalks, a white supremacist gang trying to expand across the city. Maybe the feud involves his friend Selby, whose father died under mysterious circumstances. It could even have something to do with O-Sugar, a homegrown drug with the seeming ability to distort space. On the night before school began, a group of teenagers took O-Sugar and leapt to their deaths from an abandoned hospital.

John struggles to untangle these mysteries while adjusting to his new school, even as his parents confront looming unemployment and as his city fractures and burns.

 “A novel of wonder and horror.”— William Shunn, author of The Accidental Terrorist




About the Author:

Connor Coyne is a writer living and working in Flint, Michigan.

His serial novel Urbantasm is winner of numerous awards. Hugo- and Nebula-nominee William Shunn has praised Urbantasm as “a novel of wonder and horror.”
Connor has also authored two other celebrated novels, Hungry Rats and Shattering Glass, as well as Atlas, a collection of short stories.

Connor’s essay “Bathtime” was included in the Picador anthology Voices from the Rust Belt. His work has been published by Vox.comBelt MagazineSanta Clara Review, and elsewhere. 

Connor is Director of Gothic Funk Press.  He has served on the planning committee for the Flint Festival of Writers and represented Flint’s 7th Ward as its artist-in-residence for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town grant. In 2007, he earned his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the New School.

Connor lives in Flint, Michigan less than a mile from the house where he grew up.

Urbantasm: http://urbantasm.com

Author Website: http://connorcoyne.com

Newsletter Signup: http://eepurl.com/bzZvb5

Blog: http://connorcoyne.com/blog

Twitter: https://twitter.com/connorcoyne

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@blueskiesfalling

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/connorcoyne

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connorryancoyne

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/connorcoyne

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4218298.Connor_Coyne

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Flash Fiction & Release Day Blitz A Place of Magic by Merrie Destefano #ReleaseDayBlitz #UrbanFantasy

Flash Fiction- Waiting for Midnight by Merrie Destefano

PRIMROSE WOOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN a special place for me. Maybe because it’s right next to the cemetery and half my family’s buried there. I like to hang out down by the creek, where the dogwoods drop flowers in the water. If you sit really still you can hear the wind as it whispers through the tombstones, like it’s saying hello to all the dead folk.

That’s where I was on a dark autumn evening when she stumbled across my path. Honey blonde hair lifting in the breeze, lips parted as if she’d been speaking to herself.

The wind howled and circled, set the canopy of branches creaking above us, though the rest of the world was silent. I knew who she was in an instant, but of course she didn’t know me.

Jenna Black.

Senior at Bloomington High. Cheerleader. Class secretary. Member of the debate team.

Her father died of a heart attack last winter, two days before Christmas. I know right where he’s buried. Between Horace and Mildred Price. I wonder if he planned it, if he wanted to be stuck between those two for all of eternity. I know I wouldn’t.

Jenna stared at me. The startled look in her eyes pleased me. Especially since I was so invisible at school. I stood up, gave her a half smile. I was taller than she was, even though I was just a sophomore.

“Jake Miller,” I said with a slight nod, as if we were meeting on a dance floor. “Your sister’s in my Algebra class.”

“Oh.”

Apparently even here I wasn’t all that interesting.

“You lost?” I asked.

She nodded. “I thought this trail led to the—”

“Cemetery?”

Another nod, a bouquet of wildflowers held tight in one fist.

I ran a gaze over her, stopping at her lips, which parted as I licked mine. I moved closer until I could feel the heat from her body. She was trembling.

“That way.” I pointed toward the hill. The path was difficult enough to see in daylight, but at night it was almost invisible. “Careful you don’t turn to the left. People have disappeared and never been seen again when they accidentally went that way at night.”

Her dark eyes widened, looking for an instant like she was a fawn cornered by a wolf. Then she saw something in my expression that made her smile.

“You’re teasing,” she said.

I echoed her smile with one of my own. “Of course,” I told her as she made her way past me, toward that darkened rise of grass.

But in reality, I wasn’t teasing about the danger. Not one bit.

 

 

She came the next night and I was there, just in case. Not that I wanted to protect her from the forest or the wild spirits or the legends. I just wanted to see her again, away from her crowd of popular, we-can-do-no-wrong friends. She looked different in the woods. More vulnerable. She smiled and waved.

The next night she stopped to say hello.

The night after that we talked a little longer.

The night after that we didn’t talk at all.

It was all buttons and zips and our mouths pressed against each other, me tasting her skin, and her breath coming out in surprised little gasps. We stayed together a long time, listening to the creek and the wind and learning the language of the trees. And then finally, leaves in our hair and dirt on our clothes, we tidied ourselves up as best as we could.

She didn’t go to the cemetery that night. She left her wildflowers by the creek and the breeze tossed them into the water. Like an offering.

Every night for a month, we met at that spot, my secret place beside the creek. We’d stay together until the moon rose, covering each other with kisses, fumbling impatiently with our clothes until naked skin gleamed beneath pale silver light. We were wild gypsies, we were lost faeries, we were two teenagers caught up in the magic of a midnight wood. Nothing mattered but those moments we could be together.

Or, at least, that was how I felt.

Then one night she didn’t come. I waited until midnight, until the moon was hidden in the deep forest, before I realized she wasn’t coming.

She didn’t come the next day. Or the next.

Once again, I was invisible in the school halls.

But she didn’t know what I knew.

Together we had woken up something wild in the woods, something dangerous and primeval. Something that prowled about, hungry.

And it knew she would be back, for it spoke to her dead father on a regular basis.

They had become the best of friends.

 

 

I saw her on a Tuesday, I’ll always remember the day—it was Halloween. Her silhouette was lined in silver moonlight as she returned from that forbidden path in Primrose Wood. My blood started to thump through my veins, when I thought about the danger she had put herself in. She was laughing and singing to herself, out much later than usual, but I had grown attached to the forest since she stopped coming here. I could barely leave anymore. I rarely made it to school. I was like a ghost, haunting the cemetery one moment, a grove of willow the next. Some days I forgot to eat and had grown thin. Even my clothes were beginning to fray about the edges, for I would only wear that pair of jeans and that shirt I had on the last time she and I were together.

She was wearing a yellow dress and I smiled, for I realized it was the same thing she had worn the last time I held her. Perhaps she was as lovesick as I was and had merely taken a wrong turn on the path. Surely that was the reason for the winsome grin on her face and the blush in her cheeks.

She was coming back to me, barefoot, ruby lips aching to be kissed.

Then I realized she’d already been kissed. Many times. Her hair was a tangle, her dress grass-stained, her legs smudged with dirt.

She had been here, in my woods, with someone else.

Fire burned in my veins, hot blood pumping, heart a thunder of noise. My eyes narrowed and I hid behind a tall cottonwood, waiting for her, waiting for midnight to fill me.

And it did.

A black cold replaced my anger, my heart slowed until I could barely feel it, and when she passed, still singing, I leaped out at her. Fingers about her throat, I pushed her to the ground.

The wind swept up from the tombs, carrying a thousand voices and I knew she heard them as well as I.

My lips on hers, I took her last breath and pulled it into my lungs, I held her in my arms until her skin turned cold, as cold as my heart. All the wild gypsies and the lost faeries in the world were singing her song now, all of them dancing through the trees, making wreaths out of wildflowers and wearing them on their brows.

I took her to the creek and I laid her in the water, right where her first bouquet had fallen, the one that was supposed to go on her father’s grave. But this was her grave now.

I grinned wide at the silver moon, my thin bony legs dancing along with the gypsies and the faeries and the ghosts. I followed them up that low rising hill, toward the cemetery, but at the last moment veering to the left.

All of us laughing.

Jenna met me at the crest of the hill, where the path disappeared in midnight, dipping into the wild forest darkness. Her skin was pale and her hair wet and at first she seemed angry with me. But then neither one of us—me barely alive and her, a newborn ghost—could resist the magic of Primrose Wood.

With a wry grin, she took my hand, both of us knowing my flesh would be gone soon enough—I was that close to becoming a ghost myself—and we danced down that left path, seeing and recognizing the faces of my family and hers, all of them waiting for us.

There, in the forest deep, while the moon glistened above us, and the wind whispered about us.

And midnight reigned forever and a day.

 

A Place of Magic
Merrie Destefano

Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Fantasy
Publisher: Ruby Slipper Press
Date of Publication: October 12, 2021
ASIN:B09FNSVKZJ
Number of pages:320
Word Count: 73,000
Cover Artist: Elona Bezooshko, 
Psycat Digital Ink and Motion

Book Description:

Halloween is the wrong time to visit Ticonderoga Falls.
Dangerous monsters hunt in the nearby woods.

The Prey...

Maddie MacFaddin.
For her, the nearby forest holds many memories, some joyous, some forgotten. But she has no recollection of Ash, the dark, magnificent creature who saved her life as a child, or that his kind preys upon humanity.

The Monster...

Ash, a Darkling fae.
Trapped in Ticonderoga Falls for a century, he’s required to host a Hunt once a year. Then, hungry, shapeshifting faeries will descend upon the villagers and harvest their dreams.

The Hunt...

There are rules about harvesting humans; the poor creatures are so delicate. If you take too much, they’ll die. Without dreams, they perish. And perish they do—now and then—despite Ash's efforts to keep them safe. Then he realizes Maddie is the prey his unwanted guests are after. But, try as he might, this time he’s not strong enough to protect her. The entire village is in danger.

Soon the Hunt will begin. And no one will be safe.

Amazon

Excerpt:

He nodded, head lowered. Then he lifted his gaze until he was staring into her eyes. One hand rested on her shoulder. “I won’t tell anyone your secret, Elspeth. You’re safe with me.”

Then he leaned closer, his scent overwhelming, his thoughts like the wind through the leaves, a wild rushing, his skin like the embrace of the forest. His lips touched hers and she could hear his heart beating. She slid her arms around his waist, leaning into the kiss, suddenly wanting more. She wanted to cast an enchantment, to lead him into sleep, to harvest his dreams. Wanted to walk into a dream with him, to see the hidden world on the other side of his eyelids. Wanted to know everything about him.

The kiss had only just begun and already she wanted another.

His arms were around her then, and the winter chill disappeared. In its place, fire crackled through her limbs, from her fingertips to her feet.

She could see it then, the world inside him. Tender and gentle as a spring morning, the shadows of night lingering at the edge of the wood, a handful of stars scattered across a pale sky.

She never knew that humans could be filled with so much magic.

It was her first Hunt and she had chosen her prey wisely.



About the Author:

Multiple-award-winning author Merrie Destefano writes lyrical tales of magic, mystery, and hope. Her traditional books have been published by HarperCollins, Entangled Teen, and Walter Foster, while her indie imprint is Ruby Slippers Press. Her novels have won awards in both the science fiction and fantasy categories.

She worked for Focus on the Family, The Word For Today, Engaged Media, and PJS Publications, and her magazine experience includes editor of Victorian Homes magazine, Zombies magazine, Haunted: Mysteries And Legends magazine, American Farmhouse Style magazine, Vintage Gardens magazine and founding editor of Cottages and Bungalows magazine. Her co-authored art books include How To Draw Vampires, How To Draw Zombies, and How to Draw Grimm’s Dark Fairy Tales. Her edited books include The Man God Uses by Chuck Smith, Oil Pastel Step-By-Step by Nathan Rohlander, and The Art of Drawing Fantasy Characters by Jacob Glaser.

Born in the Midwest, Merrie now lives in Southern California, where she runs on caffeine, and shares her home with rescue dogs and cats. And although she dearly loves science fiction, in her heart of hearts, she still doesn’t believe airplanes should be able to fly.

WEBSITE: http://www.merriedestefano.com/

BLOG: http://merriedestefano.blog/

NEWSLETTER: http://www.merriedestefano.com/newsletter1.html

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/merriedestefano/

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/MerrieDestefano

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Merrie-Destefano-127750623906184/

BOOKBUB: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/merrie-destefano

AUDIOBOOKS: https://www.audible.com/author/Merrie-Destefano/B0048L6NYO



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The Ghosts We Carry and How to Banish Them with Maria DeBlassie #HauntedHalloweenSpooktacular



The Ghosts We Carry and How to Banish Them

Have you ever noticed how in haunted house stories or an occult detective tale, there’s always an object that keeps a spirit anchored to a place?  It could be a keepsake from when the ghost was a living being or a terrible artifact use to summon darker entities.  Sometimes it’s a whole room or house, the energy of the people who have lived in it soaking into the very walls.  Other times it’s the memory of a horrific incident that has bled into the earth.

In order to banish the ghost, of course, we have to destroy the object—set it on fire, break it, or, to be less dramatic, let it go or move on from it. 

Move out of the haunted house.  

Contain the dark occult artifact that can’t be destroyed so that no one will find it (until the inevitable sequel, of course….this is dramatic fiction after all!). 

These stories remind us, in one way or another, that the things we carry with us absorb the energy of our experiences.  And that, sometimes, the only way we can move forward is to let those objects go.  Otherwise, we keep that old energy—sometimes toxic energy—around and get stuck, finding ourselves in a time loop of the same draining experiences that first tainted the objects in question.


The Ghosts We Carry 

Take, for instance, the story of The Sad Birthday Dress.  It goes like this:  There once was a woman who wanted to feel beautiful.  All day long she was asked to be nothing but a talking head.  But this woman knew she had a heart and hips and a juicy center.  So she bought herself a dress to remind herself that she could be a whole person and not just a shriveled head sitting in someone’s cabinet of curiosities.  And what a dress it was!  It was stunning, with finely spun organic lilac cotton and loud bouncy yellow and white polka dots that told her that she was allowed to have color in her life—that she was allowed to be of color, no need to pass as another kind of pale specter.   The skirt was flouncy and feminine and begged to be flipped up for illicit romance or at least a lively dance.

It was the perfect birthday dress.  So she did what any woman who wanted to feel alive did—she wore it out and ate cake and drank champagne and danced until the weight of the pale city bore down on her and her loud pretty dress didn’t make her feel pretty anymore.  Just sad.  Unspeakably so.  Because, she realized, this dress didn’t make her feel pretty.  It only reminded her that she lived in a place that didn’t want her to be a flesh and blood woman.  A city that was uncomfortable with her long wild hair and her rounded hips and the way the bodice of her dress clung to her breasts.   She knew shame in that dress.  And a sadness that welled up inside her until it became heartbreak.  That heartbreak spread from her body and into the dress as surely as the bubbly drink had spread through her body only moments before.

The woman learned a hard lesson that night:  A dress couldn’t fix a city that treated her like a brown stain on a white shirt.  And cake couldn’t disguise the fact that there was no sweetness for her there. Only loneliness and a bone-deep cold.  The solution was to leave in search of warmer hands and beating hearts.

Eventually, the dress came off.  But the heartbreak stayed.  And every time the woman tried to wear her I Am Beautiful Dress, she inevitably took it off and rehung in her closet, until one day she stopped trying to wear it all together.  It moved to the back of her closet, limp and half-forgotten, like a mediocre date or half-baked wish.  It was no longer her I Am Beautiful Dress.  It was stained with the experience of that night, which is how it became The Sad Birthday Dress.

Years later, when the woman had figured how to be a breathing, living woman and not someone else’s curiosity, she pulled the dress from her closet and her heart broke all over again.  She knew there was no reclaiming the original power of the beautiful bouncy fabric.  Of cake and champagne and moonlight.  In the dress, she saw the pain of her past welling up inside of her.  Its presence was like a ghost reminding her of all the broken things she could never fix. Of the hopeless realization that the thing she wanted—thought she wanted—wasn’t for her and, in fact, had never existed at all. She had been chasing phantoms and, in the process, almost become one herself.

So she packed it up and gave it away in the hopes that it might become what it was meant to be—that I Am Beautiful Dress—for someone else who was ready to pay the price to reclaim that joy in the way she hadn’t been when she had first purchased it.  The weight of that terrible time lifted from her shoulders and the energy in her home felt lighter. 

Now the woman has a closet full of I Am Beautiful Dresses.  They are loud.  And they sparkle.  And they have hems ready to be tossed above the knee for dancing and more dancing and things that would make you blush for me to write.   And they all radiate joy.  All because she let go of the thing that was holding her back.  All because she chose to feel the pain of the past and let it go.  All because she chose to be a loud woman with a beating heart in a sun-kissed land and not a phantom shade. 

Banishing Ghosts

Lovely little story, isn’t it?  And it’s all true.  I once had an I Am Beautiful Dress that became The Sad Birthday Dress.  And when I gave it away, I was giving myself permission to be more than that sad story.  I could learn from my past and create space for joy in my present.  The truth is, we all have a proverbial Sad Birthday Dress or something that was once a profound piece of armor in our lives that became stained by experience.  Other times, we change—becoming someone that certain objects no longer feel attached to, can no longer nourish.  And in order to keep growing, transforming, evolving, we must let them go.  If we don’t, what once was beautiful or nourishing becomes toxic.  The spirit that won’t move on becomes the ghost that terrorizes the living.

Having recently completed a massive house cleansing—saying goodbye to old ghosts and old selves—I found myself thinking about one of my pieces from Everyday Enchantments, “Letting Go of Past Lives, “ about the things you hold on to even when you are ready to let go of the person you used to be.  It can be scary to let go of the past because, as stagnant as it can make us, it’s also familiar and comforting. That’s why we hold on to so much unnecessary stuff. It keeps us feeling safe—but it also keeps us stuck.  In the end, it’s better to let go and know that you are creating space for new, positive vibes to enter your life (but not necessarily more stuff!).

The first part of banishing ghosts or old selves?  Let go of the objects they are attached to.  Say goodbye to things that don’t bring you joy or that you haven’t used in over a year.   Be conscious of the energy you want in your home and life.  Then be ruthless about protecting it—get rid of anything that doesn’t contribute to your overall sense of well-being.  Ghosts hide behind sentiment and guilt to keep you trapped under their spell.  Low-level spirits are a lot like low-level people: They want you to feel as trapped and miserable as they are, so they’ll do anything to stay in your life.  Best to see them for what they are and move on.

The second part of ghostbusting?  Let go of the troubling energy you’ve been holding onto psychically.  That last one will take a little more time, but letting go of the object that keeps constellating that energy will go a long way to dispersing its psychic impact.  Give yourself permission to heal and move on from sad or seemingly unfinished histories. 

The rest will follow.

This post originally appeared on Enchantment Learning and Living, home of professor, writer, and bruja Maria DeBlassie, where true magic is in the everyday!


Weep, Woman, Weep
A Gothic Fairytale about Ancestral Hauntings 
Maria DeBlassie

Genre: Gothic Fairytale, Occult, Supernatural
Publisher: Kitchen Witch Press
Date of Publication: August 25, 2021
ISBN:978-0-578-97464-4
ASIN: B09CV9P9SH
Number of pages:150 pages
Word Count: 37,935
Cover Artist: Rachel Ross

Tagline: Nothing makes a woman brave except getting on with the business of daily life.


Book Description:


A compelling gothic fairytale by bruja and award-winning writer Maria DeBlassie.

The women of Sueño, New Mexico don't know how to live a life without sorrows.

That's La Llorona's doing.  She roams the waterways looking for the next generation of girls to baptize, filling them with more tears than any woman should have to hold. And there's not much they can do about the Weeping Woman except to avoid walking along the riverbank at night and to try to keep their sadness in check.  That's what attracts her to them: the pain and heartache that gets passed down from one generation of women to the next.  

Mercy knows this, probably better than anyone.  She lost her best friend to La Llorona and almost found a watery grave herself.  But she survived. Only she didn't come back quite right and she knows La Llorona won't be satisfied until she drags the one soul that got away back to the bottom of the river.

In a battle for her life, Mercy fights to break the chains of generational trauma and reclaim her soul free from ancestral hauntings by turning to the only things that she knows can save her: plant medicine, pulp books, and the promise of a love so strong not even La Llorona can stop it from happening.  What unfolds is a stunning tale of one woman's journey into magic, healing, and rebirth.

CW: assault, domestic violence, racism, colorism


Excerpt:

One time, I was feeling mighty fine and thought I’d try something different. I saw this ad in a magazine where a woman was in an obscenely large bathtub and covered up to the neck in bubbles. This was in a room with a marble floor, and there were candles everywhere, and she had her hair up all nice and a face mask on. Well, I got to thinking a nice long soak after a hard day’s work would be nice.

This was a few months after my run-in with Sherry, and I was trying hard to let myself enjoy things more. It occurred to me after seeing her that her fatal flaw was not believing that her future was right in front of her. Or maybe she was too afraid to take it with both hands. I began to wonder if we didn’t hold back and do half the work for La Llorona with all that we ran from life.

So I bought some bubble bath and made more beeswax candles and set about having myself a spa night. I mean, my bathroom was nowhere near as nice as the one in the picture. My tub was only long enough for me to sit upright and was right next to the toilet, but I made do.

It was lovely. I mean, divine! I could see why fancy women liked this. I put on the radio, and the music was soft and sweet, like the candlelight against the fading day. I was so relaxed, that I was about to fall asleep in that tub.

That was when I felt cold hands grip the soles of my feet and pull me under.
I should have seen it coming. Why willingly linger in a body of water? But I didn’t, and that was how I found myself drowning in bubbles and thrashing around in my tub. It’s also how I learned that evil woman could find me anywhere—and I mean anywhere—so I could never let my guard down.

Her grip was strong. Seemed like the harder I fought, the stronger she got. I was flailing about, my arms searching for anything and everything to hold on to, when I knocked one of those beeswax candles into the tub. To this day, I have no idea why that scared her, but it did. She recoiled something quick at the hiss of the flame when the wax hit water.

I didn’t waste a second—I hoisted myself out of the tub and collapsed on the bathroom floor, choking and sputtering and sopping wet. Took me forever to clean up the mess and cough up all those flower-scented bubbles. My feet were cold and sore for days, with claw marks where her bony fingers hooked into my skin.

Whoever said bubble baths were relaxing was a big fat liar.

 

About the Author:

Maria DeBlassie, Ph.D. is a native New Mexican mestiza blogger, award-winning writer, and award-winning educator living in the Land of Enchantment. Her first book, Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic and Daily Conjurings (Moon Books 2018), and her ongoing blog, Enchantment Learning and Living are about everyday magic, ordinary gothic, and the life of a kitchen witch. When she is not practicing her own brand of brujeria, she's reading, teaching, and writing about bodice rippers and things that go bump in the night. She is forever looking for magic in her life and somehow always finding more than she thought was there.


Find out more about Maria and conjuring everyday magic at https://mariadeblassie.com/

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