Jeri Smith-Ready

Blogtoberfest Day 25 - Rachel Vincent

Happy Halloween, everyone! I can't believe Blogtoberfest has come to an end. I hope you've had as much fun as I've had reading all the entries and comments. We've had such a great variety of posts, thanks to the imaginative authors.

The drawings will continue throughout the week, which means you can still enter all the open contests. I'll announce the winners at the beginning of each day's blog post.

The final drawing for the super-ultimo-grand prize will be Saturday, November 7, 11:59pm, and the winner will be announced in a blog post on Monday, November 9.

Speaking of drawings, the winner of a signed copy of Simone Elkeles's Perfect Chemistry is...HeatherMarie!

Our final Blogtoberguest is New York Times-bestselling author Rachel Vincent, who writes two of my favorite series, the Shifters adult urban fantasy, and the Soul Screamers young adult series. Her heroines are strong, but so easy to relate to, they feel like the younger sisters I never had (Mom, if you're reading this, it's okay--I never wanted a real little sister).

I'm thrilled Rachel was able to join us this month and share her funniest/saddest/scariest Halloween moment, depending how you look at it:


I don’t have a lot of luck with Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s one of my favorite holidays. But my track record so far is less than stunning, and the memory that sticks out the most is this:

I started wearing glasses when I was in second grade, when the teacher noticed me squinting. It turned out that I wasn’t just a little bit nearsighted. I was practically blind and badly astigmatic. In fact, the eye doctor told my mother that I’d probably have to have eye surgery before I finished high school. Fortunately, that turned out to be unnecessary. But the glasses did not. By junior high, I couldn’t see to put on makeup without my glasses unless I was literally three inches from the mirror.

What does this have to do with Halloween? My glasses (with lenses so thick the edges had to be shaved to make them fit the frames) meant that all masks were out, and face paint never looked right. Ever. And my mother was a bit of an artist, so both my sisters and my step-brothers always had awesome face paint.

The year I was ten (I think), I decided I’d had enough of the glasses. I could go without them for a couple of hours. So my mother painted my face (Oddly enough, I can’t remember what my costume was. That may have been the year I was a hobo clown.), and I squinted into the mirror, trying to make some sense out of the bright colors. Then she drove all five of us to the nearest big subdivision.

Every year, we would walk from house to house, and my mom would follow in her van. That year, she gave my middle sister (we’ll call her B) specific instructions to look out for me. I couldn’t see the ground, so steps and yard decorations were perils I’d never even notice until it was too late.

For the first few houses, B was a loyal aid to the nearly-blind. But then she made a particularly big haul and got excited. And left me. I tried to follow, but other kids got in my way, and I couldn’t tell who I was following anymore. They were all dark blurs.

Then, I took one wrong step and landed face first in a ditch. Seriously. A wet ditch. In my costume. I came up dripping and covered in leaves, and half of my candy was soaked. My mom couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry with me.

I wasn’t mad—for long, anyway. My sister was barely nine years old, and candy can have a profound influence on a third grader. But I’ve never let her live it down, either. ;-)

Labels: Blogtoberfest, Contests, guests

• posted by Jeri @ 8:00 AM
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