Roland Yeomans. Whistle stop at the DON'T BUY MY BOOK! blog tour. Roland comes in from the cold...I have a photograph of Mystery Man!

Beware!

Some blogger/authors are a tad insecure about blog tours. This was evident when Roland Yeomans sent me a blog tour request. Not surprising, when you see how many cover reveals, book tours, new titles there are out there! 

When we release a new book, we're certainly a little fish in a big pond. 

How do we get noticed? 

We've worked so hard on our writing, been scrupulous with editing, either self, paid or unpaid, sweated over formatting...then comes the big release! That's Roland's position today!


But before Roland kicks off, thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh and the co-hosts of IWSG this month.

Alex's awesome co-hosts for the October 5 IWSG are Beverly Stowe McClure, Megan Morgan, Viola Fury, Madeline Mora-Summonte, Angela Wooldridge, and Susan Gourley! 

After you read Roland's guest post, please visit the co-hosts and click HERE to visit other participating bloggers.

And if you're up for a writing challenge, Write...Edit...Publish is now accepting submissions to the October WEP--CONSTELLATIONS or HALLOWEEN. More info at WEP or at the end of this post.

Thanks for stopping by at my DON’T BUY MY BOOK Blog Tour.  

One of Denise's most recent posts was on poetry, so I'll begin here with a poem which I'll explain later...

“Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me:

I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life.”  

- Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra quoted by Meilori Shinseen

Now, why do I call my Blog Tour: DON’T BUY MY BOOK?

Have you ever noticed how many people DON’T buy your book when you do a blog tour?  This way I will at least get what I ask for, right?

But if you don't buy my book, you will miss one heck of a ride:

One is the first Air/Steamship, Xanadu, on its maiden voyage taking the newly-weds, the undead Captain Samuel McCord and the alien Empress, Meilori Shinseen, across a turbulent Atlantic to France and all its deadly mysteries.

In its fantasy pages you will find Sidhe, a kidnapped Princess Victoria, a vampire Benjamin Franklin, Captain Nemo, 11 year old Nicola Tesla, Mark Twain at the start of his tempestuous career, an insane Abraham Lincoln …

Clashing Vampire Kingdoms, evolved raptors, werewolves of Paris, and

Dragons … both at the beginning and at the end in a dizzying, wild aerial combat around the Eiffel Tower and above the Louvre! 

Along the way you will discover that history lied, for it was written by the survivors, anxious to whitewash their legacy.

Take the Kensington System which was a strict and elaborate set of rules designed by Victoria, Duchess of Kent, along with her lover, Sir John Conroy, concerning the upbringing of the Duchess's daughter, the future Queen Victoria, so that they could rule England through her.

Victoria’s “protector?”  William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.

His wife had a quite public affair with Lord Byron where she proclaimed the poet, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

One of the famous passengers aboard the Xanadu is Byron’s daughter, Ada, in fact.

But back to William Lamb, Victoria’s “protector” –

The historian Boyd Hilton writes, "it is irrefutable that Melbourne's personal life was problematic. Spanking sessions with aristocratic ladies were harmless, not so the whippings administered to orphan girls taken into his household as objects of charity."

Outraged?  I am. How about you? So let's have a closer look.

Outrage:

Samuel McCord is the target of outrage from many notables: Louis Napoleon, Queen Victoria, High Fae Queen Oyggia, the undead Empress Theodora, the Azure Dragon, Qing Long to name but a few.

Outrage:

It means you haven’t been paying attention.  Outrage comes from being asleep in life and being jabbed awake.  It’s a sudden, shocking awareness that you have not been minding your surroundings, your world.

If you are wise, you know that the shock will pass.  The more you see the world and the people in it for what they truly are, both good and bad –

The better you will be able to assess life and to understand it rather than being outraged that the world does not center around you.

The outrage of the powerful, both political and supernatural, towards McCord comes from their being totally self-absorbed.

McCord is a Texas Ranger, not indifferent to their plots and to the dangers to him, but he goes out and does what must be done to protect those innocents he sees in harm’s way … for no one was there to step up when his helpless sister was killed.

Intrigue and Betrayal:

Think Game of Thrones … in fact, there is even a chapter in this Steampunk novel entitled, RED WEDDING.

Why did I quote from Antony and Cleopatra at the start of this post?  McCord sees himself and Meilori as the two star-crossed lovers:

{As Samuel sits by Meilori’s bedside as she lays exhausted by recent efforts, he tries to reassure her}

“You can rest safe now.  The Great Mystery knows, this honeymoon has all the earmarks of being even bloodier than Cleopatra’s and Antony’s.”

Meilori nestled deeper into the satin sheets and murmured, “Shakespeare entitled the play: Antony and Cleopatra, if I recall.”

I shrugged.  “What did you expect?  He was a man after all.”

She opened one sleepy eye.  “You see yourself as Antony?”

“He probably looked better in a toga.”

That one emerald eye looked about to lose its struggle to remain open.  “His love for Cleopatra led to his death, Beloved.”

I smiled sadly.  “They both died.  At least that way neither held a grudge against the other, right? And though they walked in the dark, at the end, they found they didn’t have to walk it alone.”

Her heavy-lidded jade eye was almost closed, and her words were faint.  “They died alone, Samuel.”

My smile grew sadder as I looked into the encroaching darkness.  “We all die alone, Meilori.  But if we meant something to someone, if we helped someone, loved someone and was loved back …  who knows?  Even if only one soul remembers us, perhaps we never truly die at all.”

I’ll end with the poem that starts out the chapter where this exchange takes place:

“And while she was fire,

So fierce and so wild,

I could only hope to be for her;

The forests and the winds to carry her flame.”

– Morris R. Gates

Buy on Amazon
Amazon Author Page

“Roland Yeomans is funny, charismatic and fun to read..."Mary Kirkland 

And Roland is the king of videos to deepen the atmosphere. This one is gorgeous! I've been listening to it on repeat while I prepared this post. 

Roland Yeomans!!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roland Yeomans was born in Detroit, Michigan.  But his last memories of that city are hub-caps and kneecaps since, at the age of seven, he followed the free food when his parents moved to Lafayette, Louisiana.  The hitch-hiking after their speeding car from state to state was a real adventure.
Once in Louisiana, Roland learned strange new ways of pronouncing David and Richard when they were last names.  And it was not a pleasant sight when he pronounced Comeaux for the first time.
He has a Bachelor’s degree in English Education and a Master’s degree in Psychology.  He has been a teacher, counselor, book store owner, and even a pirate since he once worked at a tax preparation firm.
He has written thirty-four books.  
You can find Roland at his web page: www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com  or at his private table in Meilori’s.  The web page is safer to visit. But if you insist on visiting Meilori’s, bring a friend who runs slower than you.

Follow him on twitter: @rxena77

• I hope you like this post of Roland Yeoman's and you consider doing the opposite of what he asked: PLEASE DO BUY HIS BOOK!
• Are you insecure when requesting a guest post? Releasing your new book?

Now Roland is a founding member of the great WEP writing group. 

On October 1, the inLinkz sign up for the new Write...Edit...Publish challenge went live. Check it out at WEP or here in my sidebar. Consider writing for us. Genres are wide open. It can be as simple as a photograph or image. This month there is a choice of themes: CONSTELLATIONS or HALLOWEEN, or if you're very, very clever, a combination of both! So get your little sci-fi, fantasy or horror brains around the next challenge. SUBMIT between Oct 19-21.

GREETINGS FROM THE “DON’T YOU HATE BOOK TOURS?” Book Tour!

Today I'm taking a 'sickie' as we call it in Australia, so I invited my long-time blogger friend and prolific author, Roland Yeomans to help out. Roland just happens to have a new book out...what a surprise! So being addicted as I am to the Reader Discussion pages at the end of novels, I asked Roland to talk about this new addition to his latest...

Anyway, I've got to be going...Here's Roland to entertain you.

Whoa!  Look at all those rolling eyes out there.  It’s worse than the audience to the last Presidential Debate.

I understand. 

It seems we are drowning in a sea of cover reveals, book tours, and guest posts.

Ah, forget I said that last one, will you?

Anyway, since my latest book has a Readers’ Discussion Guide at the end, Denise thought you might be interested in why I included that section.

www.taftpubliclibrary.org

By some estimates, Tweet: five million Americans gather in someone’s living room, a bar, a bookstore or local library for a #bookdiscussion on the finer points of “Middlemarch” or “The Brothers Karamazov.” (If you find this interesting, please TWEET).

They are always on the lookout for a new book that will make club discussions easier. Libraries often stock these books on request as a service to book clubs, which means more SALES!! (((happy dance)))

Tweet: As #writers we need to reach #READERS. (If you find this interesting, please TWEET).
We have been fishing in our little pool and wondering why our catch is so lousy.  Go where the fish are!

And it’s not just a big-city thing:

In the event that you find yourself in Waco, Texas., check out “A Good Book and a Glass of Wine,” which has 21 members (women only) and is always looking for new ones. All you have to do is go online to source one near you!

I have written a novel which includes a variety of strong women: thinkers, inventors, newspaper correspondents, leaders – all believing they are right but some are very, very wrong.

Since we live in a world where you don’t have to actually “be” anywhere, it’s not surprising that virtual clubs have lately appeared on the Internet.

ZolaBooks bills itself as a “social eBook retailer” that connects readers. 

Goodreads gives members the opportunity to read a book together, install books they’ve read on their “shelves” or find “friends” with whom to share discoveries.

But the most prevalent way of conducting a book club is still in someone’s living room.

A book club meeting is a way of interacting through books that you don’t get through any ordinary transaction in life.

It’s like sitting around the campfire toasting marshmallows, gossiping about people, only you’re gossiping about characters in fiction, which is more meaningful and won't give you indigesion.

HELLO!  ANYONE STILL LISTENING OUT THERE? 

Here are our readers waiting for us to be discussion friendly. So how about I share my foray into the Novel Study Guide...

HOW DO YOU WRITE QUESTIONS FOR YOUR OWN NOVEL’S STUDY GUIDE?

THINK THEME.

Beyond the events of the plot, what is your book about?

MUSE YOUR CHARACTERS’ JOURNEYS

What do your characters learn along the way? How do they change and grow because of the events of the story?

PONDER THE PLOT

Rehashing the events of a book does not a book club make. They’ve all read it. How else might the events play out? How did the plot events affect the characters, and the readers?

CONSIDER YOUR CHARACTERS

What are their attributes and flaws? How are they like—or unlike—people around you? How do their flaws affect the story?

ASK OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS THAT DO NOT HAVE WRONG ANSWERS

Oh, what about my own study guide for … wait for it …

A few teasers …

- Did you know that in 1998 that 200 year old skeletons of four adults and six children were found buried beneath the home that Benjamin Franklin lived in while in London?  Was Franklin a serial killer?

- How much do we really know of history?  Are there secrets in the lives of our Founding Fathers?

Franklin was a member of the infamous Hellfire Club while in London.  Was he there as a spy or a participating member?

- In the mid and late 19^th century, women were exploring where even white men feared to go.  Ada Byron Lovelace invented the first computer language 100 years before the invention of the computer.

- Margaret Fuller, first American woman foreign correspondent for Horace Greely, manned the ramparts during the bloody Italian Civil War.

- What lessons can we draw from the feminist pioneers?

- In 1858 designs were drawn up for an air/steamship.  How different would our history have been if we had achieved transatlantic flight so early?

- Abraham Lincoln engaged in ethnic cleansing of Apache, Navaho, and Dakota Indians during the Civil War.  General Sherman ordered the killing of women and children in Georgia (from his own orders to his officers). 

- How much collateral damage is acceptable in war do you think?  And is targeting non-combatant civilians ever acceptable?

- We have fun musing in my study guide for THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD.

Board the Xanadu, the first Air/Steamship when it sets sail in March for an adventure of a lifetime.  Passage is only $9.99!

See you there.

Blog / Amazon Author Page

Thanks Roland for saving me! (I've been travelling for the past month and needed a helping hand). Roland has been a loyal participant in RomanticFridayWriters and now Write...Edit...Publish since its inception. This week we announce the winners of the WEP Valentine's Day challenge, judged by my original partner for RomanticFridayWriters, Francine Howarth, now a prolific Regency Romance author. 

From the couch with Roland Yeomans.

Hi everybody!

I'm glad you enjoyed reading Ann Carbine Best's 'From the couch' last post. Today we have the passionate mysterious writer who hails from down near New Orleans, Roland Yeomans. Roland and I have been blogger friends for years. I've enjoyed reading/reviewing many of his stories and have hosted him previously. These days I can't keep up with his releases. It was hard nailing down this mysterious spirit, but I used my super powers. 

The shadows weighed heavy on us, as to our left Diana Krall was playing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”  It was Meilori’s after all … it could have been the ghost of Billie Holiday singing.

Denise shivered, “That Indian pulled me through my mirror to here! Considering I transported all the way from Oz it was no picnic!”

I shrugged, “That Indian was Apache actually.  You wanted to ask me some questions.  I wanted to do it on home ground.”

Denise flicked on her tape recorder.  “So, Roland, let’s get this party started so I can get back to Oz and write it up in time for this week's post! First question: What is your most vivid childhood memory?”

“Being abandoned in Detroit by my father on a street many called Skid Row when I was six  … running after his car, screaming, ‘Daddy! Daddy!”

“Bugger! I've heard that story before, but it doesn't get any easier with time. How long before you were found?”

“Six weeks.  I was taken under the wing of a street person, Maudie, and her little dog, Tufts.  I pay tribute to them in my FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.”

Denise looked away, dabbed her eyes, then said, “I loved that book. I think it's her spirit who turned up on the image I created for you and erased yours. Funny that. Now, back to business, what is your most treasured possession?”

I smiled sadly, “My honor.  Everything else can be taken away from you, but you have to give up your honor yourself.”

“Hmm. What is the word that best describes you, Roland?”

“Evolving.”

Denise shook her head at me.  “Here’s a question you can’t be existential about: what is your favorite smell?”

I grinned, “The new car scent since I smell it so seldom.”

Denise arched an eyebrow.  “Then I won't tell you about my smashing new Suzuki X-Cross. Moving right along. What is the song that gives you goose bumps?”

I tipped my Stetson to the ghost of Lauren Bacall as she strolled by with her husband, Humphrey Bogart.

“La Marseillaise when I watch that scene from my favorite movie, CASABLANCA.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM-E2H1ChJM

Denise said, “I can see where it would be.  I love La Marseillaise when they sing it in the stadium before the French rugby team loses to Australia. Their anthem beats ours hands down even if their players aren't quite up to the mark. Now, I see in the notes here that your first job was working at a movie theater. Is that right?”

“Yes, actually it was, but it was way past the time of black and white movies.  It was the time of George Lucas.”

“Fancy that." Denise shuffles her papers. "How did you get into writing novels, Roland?”

“I started into writing by the lure of reading.  As an elementary school student, I was lured into the magic of myth by Edith Hamilton’s MYTHOLOGY.  In junior high school, Beau Geste, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Fu Manchu, and John Carter of Mars hooked me into fantasy and science fiction.”

"Go on."

I smiled sadly, “I remember being entranced by the movie, THE THIRD MAN, I watched one Saturday night on a Golden Oldie marathon.  I handed in a short story fashioned after it to my English teacher.  You would have thought it was bleeding to death when I got it back with all the red slashes on it.”

Denise smirked. "Those English teachers can be vicious with the blood-red pencil."

I rubbed my lips with the back of a thumb.  “But I’ve always been stubborn.  So I kept right on writing through junior high to today.  Thankfully when my home burned down all those early stories and novels went up in smoke!”

“I'm glad you coped. So, Roland, what books recently have you been unable to put down?”

“The LONGMIRE mysteries by Craig Johnson: a sheriff at the end of his tenure in Wyoming tries to solve murders while attempting to ignore Native American flashes of the supernatural that will not let him alone.”

“And what is your latest book?”

“Glad you asked that. CARNIVAL OF THE DAMNED: an existential take on the Hero’s Journey that’s a meld of THE WALKING DEAD, Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury.  I can just see my old English teacher getting her red pencil out!”

Denise cocked her head, “Now listen, remember you're speaking to an English teacher here. Mind  your mouth! Now speaking of existential: what do you think the point of life is?”

“Since life is infinite, the meaning to it is also infinite.  Our finite minds cannot grasp it.  But that should not stop us from trying to understand the world around us. Perhaps, there is only the meaning each of us gives to our lives, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person. What did Robert Louis Stevenson write?  “To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

Denise got out a large white handkerchief and mopped her sweaty brow a bit like Pavarotti used to do after a performance, “Thanks for the interview, Roland. I knew you’d be hard work. Now how do I get out of here?”

So folks, I hope you enjoyed today's 'From the Couch' with Roland Yeomans. Stay tuned for next week's reclining personage on Monday, May 25th! I wonder who she/he will be?

Here is a link to Roland's Author Page on Amazon. Looks like he has 19 stories available. He's a spirit all right!


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Bohemian Rhapsody (a little bit of what you fancy does you good...)

Hello there!

I know you've missed me on the blogs (((laughs uproariously))) so I thought I'd let you know what a great Easter Holiday I'm having. No school for two weeks, so I'm up at the beach catching up with teacher friends, visiting family and beginning remodelling works on the beach house with the idea of moving back up from the city next year.

So, the bohemian life--in between cyclone watching a la Cyclone Ita, coffee and wine, and cooking and eating some amazing meals like Pork in Cider (thanks Manu Feildel, French chef turned Australian celebrity chef after living here for 20 years and hosting a fabulous cooking show My Kitchen Rules) I've been wielding a paint brush and checking out interior design shops. Peregian (Aboriginal word for emu) Beach is well equipped. For a small village of about 3,000 people it's got everything--great beaches, great surf, great shops, great people...

And as much as I've wanted to blog, there just never seemed to be the time. But most of you have been frantic with the A - Z, so I feel a little guilty for choosing to live real life over the virtual life for a couple of weeks, but just a little. I do a runaround every so often, and the posts I've visited are high quality.

I haven't managed to get much writing done, but I always find time to read late at night. Picked up Sebastian Faulks' Faulks on Fiction (the Village also has a fabulous book shop!) which is wonderful. Love his chapter on Mr Darcy especially. Faulks says reading such books as Pride and Prejudice 'made me think literature was the most important thing on earth.' 

Faulks expresses how readers relate to books:

'I felt myself unaccountably eager that Elizabeth Bennet should be united with Mr Darcy; Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye) seemed to express almost everything I had incoherently felt; and when at the end of David Copperfield, the hero turned rhetorically to the woman he loved, 'O Agnes, O my soul!', I found I was making strange snorting noises. These were caused by the fact that I was sobbing but trying to keep my eyes open so that I could read the sentences.' 

Oh yeah Sebastian Faulks! I know where you're coming from!

So as well as reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins (post-war intellectuals in Paris) I've been flipping between e-books. Reading several at the same time--Roland Yeoman's Death in the House of Life, Whiskey Sour Noir by Mickey J Corrigan, and the latest, The Paris Time Capsule by Ella Carey. I will be interviewing Ella on this blog in early May, so impressed am I by what I think is her first novel.

So lovely people, keep enjoying your life of frenzy. I'm going to enjoy this last week of holidays before jumping back on the treadmill of teaching and writing that is my life. 

So I wish you could join me for an iced coffee at Baked Poet's cafe which makes the best coffee I've ever tasted and I've tasted A LOT OF COFFEE!! 

I'll be back with a funny little story next week for the Write...Edit...Publish April challenge. Decided to go ahead even though it was A - Z month. You're welcome to join us if you have a story, poem, photograph/s or whatever that would suit the April Fool prompt. More details on the WEP blog. You can sign up right here in my sidebar.

 

Book review - The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. Roland Yeoman's first blogfest - scary reads.

My review for The Armchair Squid's Cephalopod Coffeehouse Club.

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

From Goodreads:

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist is such a book With over a million and a half copies sold in Latin America and Europe, The Alchemist has already achieved the status of a modern classic.

The American publisher Harper Collins said: "…reading the alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept.”

FOLLOWING THE LEGEND

This is a book read by American presidents. When I started reading it, I knew why these powerful men had read it. It’s a deceptively simple tale with a compelling message of the most magical of all journeys: the quest to fulfil one’s destiny. It’s full of psychological intensity and spirituality, couched in fairy tale language.

The story is of an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert. He is on a quest--in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. His journey is fraught with obstacles and peppered with intriguing characters.

Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way to reach his goal. The intriguing aspect of this novel is that what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within. The message is that the magic, dreams and treasures we all seek elsewhere are found at our doorstep.

There is a shimmering elegance in its telling. The language is lush, evocative, and the story deeply humane. The story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts. There is comic charm and dramatic tension aplenty. Overall it is a sweetly exotic tale that young and old alike can immerse themselves in. After all, it’s an adventure story full of magic and wisdom. What's not to love about that?

Why was The Alchemist such a success? Probably because we all need to be aware of our personal calling. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm we are following the legend. But we don’t all have the courage to confront our dream. Coelho relates the journey as best he can. He deals with each of the four obstacles he claims stand in the way of us realizing our dream. In his words:

1.       We are told from childhood that everything we want to do is impossible. We get to the stage when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our souls that it is invisible. But it is still there.

2.       Love. We know what we want to do but we’re afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything to pursue our dream. Those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on our journey.

3.       Fear of defeat. We fight for our dream but it doesn't work out. We cannot go back. We do want it and have staked everything on it. The path of personal calling is no easier than any other path except our whole heart is in this journey. Have patience. The Universe is conspiring in your favour even though you don’t understand how. Why is defeat necessary? Who knows? But they happen. Maybe when we first start fighting for our dream we make mistakes. The secret of life – fall seven times, get up eight times. The defeats may go on for years, eating away at our soul, until one day we are no longer able to free ourselves from bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives. Then one day we notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us.

4.       The most dangerous of obstacles--the fear of realizing the dream we’ve fought for all our lives. Oscar Wilde claims that each man kills the thing he loves. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of an ordinary man with guilt. We check out those who’ve failed and feel we don’t deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we’ve overcome, all the suffering, all the things we had to give up. Many people when their personal calling was within their grasp, commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reach their goal. They self destruct when their goal was only  a step away. The most dangerous obstacle as has a saintly aura about it. Renounce the joy and conquest. However, if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, you become an instrument of God, you understand why you are here.

Click HERE for more book reviews.

The little shepherd boy Santiago’s purpose in life was to travel, so travel he did. He was looking for treasure. His journeys were full of excitement and danger, but did he reach his goal? How did his journey end? You'll have to read it to find out.

Claim the life of your dreams.

Have you read The Alchemist? What did you think of it?

The only way I can hope to get all my blog posts done is to double up. Here is my entry for Roland's first ever blogfest.

His instructions:

You have from October 1st to Halloween to post about the book which scared you the most as a young reader and the book which scared you the most as an adult.

Okay, I've never been a fan of horror, so I avoid scary books and movies, but I've managed to read/see a few in my time. 

BOOK THAT SCARED ME AS A CHILD:

Where the Wild Things Are is a 1963 children's picture book by American writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak. It has been reprinted, animated, filmed ever since. The story, which comprises just 338 words, focuses on a young boy named Max, who, after dressing in his wolf costume, wreaks havoc through his household and is disciplined by being sent to his bedroom. As he feels agitation with his mother, Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by malicious beasts known as the "Wild Things." After successfully intimidating the creatures, Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and enjoys a playful romp with his subjects; however, he decides to return home, to the Wild Things' dismay. After arriving in his bedroom, Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him. Doesn't sound that scary, but I thought it was when I was little. 

BOOK THAT SCARED ME AS AN ADULT:

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

As an adult, I still find this book disturbing. The idea of creating a monster, then rejecting it, is a sad scenario, but it did open up new lines of thought about science. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. 

Shelley had travelled in the region of Geneva, where much of the story takes place, and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her future husband, Percy Shelley. The storyline emerged from a dream. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for weeks about what her possible storyline could be, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. She then wrote Frankenstein.

Thanks to Wikipedia for most of the information contained herein.

• Want to share some scary, creepy books with us? Join Roland's blogfest.