{"id":10094,"date":"2022-10-25T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10094"},"modified":"2022-10-24T15:35:56","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T19:35:56","slug":"halloween-countdown-the-story-behind-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10094","title":{"rendered":"Halloween Countdown: The Story Behind the Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"tiger,<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If you asked, I\u2019d say I don\u2019t write horror, but two of my published short stories do include a ghost\u2014maybe. The closest I\u2019ve come to horror is a story Kings River Life<\/em> published for Halloween 2021. (You can read it here.<\/a>) \u201cA Question of Identity\u201d is a much-reworked and rethought tale originally written in response to a request for stories about masks. Because our home is full of masks, this was a theme I could resonate with!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In it, two preadolescent girls, neighbors and best friends, each receive a box with a Halloween costume in it\u2014a fox for one and a tiger for the other. Where did they come from? No one knows. Few questions are asked. The moms are just grateful that\u2019s one shopping errand they can cross off their very long lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the girls put on the costumes, the unexpected happens, which is why it evolved into a story that\u2019s much more about identity than Halloween. When they exchange costumes, their parents don\u2019t recognize them, and even after Halloween is over and each girl has her own costume again, their effects linger. You may conclude that those new identities have a dark side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t a mystery story leading to a solution, so you never know where the costumes came from, and that uncertainty contributes to the spookiness. As Charles Baxter says in his wonderful book, The Art of Subtext<\/a><\/em>, \u201cthe half-visible and the unspoken\u2014all those subtextual matters\u2014are evoked when the action and dialogue of the scene angle downward, when by their multiplicity they imply as much as they show. A slippery surface causes you to skid into the subtext.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least, that\u2019s what I was going for!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you asked, I\u2019d say I don\u2019t write horror, but two of my published short stories do include a ghost\u2014maybe. The closest I\u2019ve come to horror is a story Kings River Life published for Halloween 2021. (You can read it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Hiding your face behind a Halloween mask? Or hiding the meaning of your story in the subtext? These are the realms that haunt the imagination.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,1160,120,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-horror","category-short-story","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2CO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10095,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094\/revisions\/10095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}