The Travelling Theatrical Tour ends today and how apt that it finishes at the blog of fellow Hadley Rille author Chris Gerrib . Today we have a wee tale in
The Travelling Theatrical Tour: It Always Rains Here.
Chris' space opera 'Pirates of Mars' is released next month. It looks like riotous fun and I look forward to reading it.
Many, many, and a few more many's, thanks to everyone who has hosted my blog tour and to those who have stuck with it (you are a brave and hearty few and I owe you all a drink one day).
And before I go, the awesome Carole Lanham (author of The Whisper Jar) has reviewed Theatre of Curious Acts.
"Darkly imaginative and utterly unique, Cate Gardner's Gaimanesque new book THEATRE OF CURIOUS ACTS had me the first second I fingered the moonlit beauty of it's ghostly cover." You can read the full review
here.
What I Keep in My Whisper Jar by Carole Lanham
Through the garden gate was the hump of an old cat grave and Penny told us to tap our foot on it three times for luck so that’s exactly what we did, tap tap tap, until all the luck was gathered up - luck, in this case, revolving entirely around the hope that we might find the dead body of our elderly neighbor still lying on the floor, or maybe catch a glimpse of a real living ghost. “Don’t open that thing yet,” Penny said, as we tromped over the paint-peeled hatch of a cyclone cellar on our way to the creepy house. “Let’s save it for last.”
Penny was the girl who lived down the street and while I can’t recall whose idea it was to go inside the scary house, I was all for seeing it – every cobweb, every shadow, every bone. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned scare!
Whenever someone asks what a nice girl like me is doing writing horror stories, I laugh like butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth, wipe my hands on my apron, and offer them a homemade cookie. I have a strong tendency to deny all association with the dark figures who turn up in my work. I want to pretend I don’t know those crazy characters in the least. Then I remember about the haunted house in the neighborhood where I lived when I was a little girl. Truth is, I went through that garden gate once and tapped my foot on the old cat grave, hoping with all my heart to find something scary and grim. I was four years old at the time and I brought my two year old sister along with me. Even though I had yet to begin kindergarten, I already understood that someone must always be along for the ride.
I can’t remember the names of all the kids who were with me that day but bits and pieces of our adventure have followed me down the road of life in the form of clothes-less hangers jangling in empty closets and bare nails poking from scuffed walls. There were ghosts in that house to be sure, though they were not see-through spirits of the usual moaning variety. Rather, they were dents from coffee table legs engraved in the carpet, and cabinet doors that opened on shelf-paper stained with the rings of vanished Comet cans. A dead body would have been one thing, but I had probably never seen a room without furniture before and all that abandoned space was somehow more frightening than the thought of my body keeling over dead. What happened to the old guy’s shoes, I longed to know? Where was the refrigerator where he kept his milk? And where was his milk? He’d been scrubbed and swept and dusted away so thoroughly that there was nothing left to see.
I have no idea what the other kids were feeling but I’m guessing it must have spooked them too. We ran from room to room expectantly only to stop and turn in slow circles, looking.
This blog tour has been so much fun. Also, as I'm sure you know, I've won a copy of Theatre of Curious Acts via Bloody Bookish. Hoorah!
I was so happy to see that you and James had won.
What a ride it was! I have your book queued up on my Kindle. If I ever have the time to read again, yours is the fist. ;-)
I hear you, Anthony ;)