Monsters are creatures that evoke fear and terror—for many of us they hold a dark appeal.  Defined as “animals of strange or terrifying shape”, they lurk in dangerous and inaccessible places, at the fringes of our world; they turn up in our worst nightmares. Ancient maps often marked uncharted waters with pictures of sea serpents and/or the warning: “Here There Be Monsters” to signify the unknown.

Children are terrified of monsters, yet paradoxically they want to read about and think about things that scare them.  When I was small the things that frightened me were vampire movies, fairy tale creatures and the invisible monsters under my bed.  These were things I fed off and when I became an adult I was still fascinated by ghoulish creatures.

Monsters abound in fantasy, some benign (Suzanne Collins’ Overlander series, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are) But most monsters are terrifying, because they represent our deepest, darkest fears: the creatures in Rowling’s Harry Potter or the Nicholas Flamel books by Michael Scott, James Dashner’s ‘grievers’ in The Maze Runner, Susan Cooper’s Greenwitch.  Adult-fantasy monsters include HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, the monster Grendel from Beowulf, the orcs in Lord of the Rings.

JRR Tolkien noted that his orcs owed a good deal to “the goblin tradition”, writing how the goblin idea blended with a more modern concept: that of the evil inherent in human beings.  One of my worst fears growing up was the fear of familiar people being overtaken by some mysterious force, and turning creepy or even dangerous, from within – like what happens in Invasion of The Body Snatchers, or Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

In my books I’ve written about plague wolves, genetically-engineered creatures called skraeks, and giant scorpions.  Yet sometimes in literature the scariest monsters are not fully described (The zombies in Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands & Teeth,  & the botched experiments called misshapens in my book The Owl Keeper). These monsters are frightening because they’re shaped by the reader’s imagination.  If you describe a monster in great detail, there’s a limit to how far you can go– you want your readers to tap into their darkest fears and nightmares.

Stephen King, one of the great masters of horror, writes: “When we turn to the creepy movie or the crawly book, we are not wearing our ‘Every-thing works out for the best’ hats.  We’re waiting to be told what we so often suspect—that everything is falling apart… ”  It’s this ‘dark days are coming’ scenario which is so popular in fiction at the moment: heroes and heroines pitted in impossible situations against an all-powerful monster.

We grow into adults and deal with our anxieties & phobias the best we can.  But somewhere deep inside us we still hold on to those fears we had as children.  In reading about a heroine or hero who confronts the monster, we find a way to conquer our own fears.  And so, I hope you’ll still get those goose-bumps up and down your arms and that the hairs will continue to rise on the back of your neck, when you read a horrific book and are dumbstruck with horror.  I know you enjoy scary stories & I can assure you that you’re not alone…there are lots of us out there.

From page three: “Even now two very young creatures, named Bunting and Snunting, are sitting in a hollow of the woodwork in the belfry.  They are covered with soft white down, and are sometimes snoring in a curious manner…”

The purpose of  Bright Happy Power is: “To  place hope, happiness and empowerment into  the hands and lives of children and families  facing life-threatening and catastrophic challenges.”

You can find out more about Jessie at      http://www.brighthappypower.com and read  her family’s online journal at www.dok.com.

If you have books you’d like to donate to Children’s Hospital Boston, or if you’d like to contribute in some other way, you can contact Bright Happy Power by email: info@brighthappypower.org or telephone 978-356-3780.

You can throw your name into the hat on one or all of these sites: AuthorsNow!, Cleverly Inked, *HEADDESK*, YAthenaeum and ChicaReader!

Here’s a celebration cake for THE OWL KEEPER from Liz of Cleverly Inked:  

Wavepaint Design & Gallery

4 Market Street
Ipswich, MA
Saturday April 17th 2010

www.wavepaint.com

Below are the postcards and bookmarks I ordered.  Sitting in the middle is my lucky Argentinian owl.

Cover illustration by Fernando Juarez

The haunting cover and illustrations for THE OWL KEEPER were created by two extremely talented artists.  I made a point of getting in touch with both of them to let them know how much I loved their artwork.

Spanish artist Fernando Juarez illustrated the cover for THE OWL KEEPER.  I instantly fell in love with the owl, she’s so luminous and magical-looking; the background of silvery moonlight, the overhanging branches and houses lend a sort of dreamy Gothic quality. Fernando lives in Madrid with his wife and children, where he’s working as art director for Ilion Animation Studios on the film “Planet 51.” His illustrations are often quirky and whimsical, as you can see on this book cover he drew for Rita Murphy’s novel “Bird.“

Cover illustration by Fernando Juarez

Maggie Kneen is an architect, children’s author and children’s illustrator who grew up on the northwest coast of England.  ”Art was what I did best, so that’s what I pursued,” she explains on her website, “but every opportunity to bring history and archaeology into my life has been taken or made.”

Illustration by Maggie Kneen

Her illustrations are elegant and mysterious, somehow reminiscent of illustrations in books I read as a child..  They capture perfectly the novel’s characters and spooky atmosphere!

One of Maggie’s most charming books, which she wrote and illustrated, is “Hamlet and the Tales of Sniggery Woods,” about a young pig named Hamlet, who “lived with his family in a small house, just above Molefurrow Market, between Sniggery Woods and the river.”

Illustration from "Hamlet of Sniggery Woods" by Maggie Kneen

Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges once lived on this street

“With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he, too, was all appearance, that someone else was dreaming him.”                                           -Jorge Luis Borges, THE CIRCULAR RUINS

The apartment where I spent the month of February is located on Calle Guatemala, in Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires.  Half a block away, Guatemala is intersected by Calle Jorge Luis Borges, named for this barrio’s most famous luminary.  Born in Buenos Aires in 1899, the internationally acclaimed Argentinian writer, essayist and poet is considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.  V.S. Pritchett has written that Borges has “the art of enhancing the effects of the unbearable, the sinister, and the ineluctable.”

In the photo above is El Preferido café, which started out as an almacén in 1952, founded by Arturo Fernández from Asturias, Spain.  Borges lived across the street between 1901 and 1914.  His family lived in a large house with an English library of over one thousand books. “If I were asked to name the chief event in my life,” Borges would later remark, “I should say my father’s library”.

I was a student in college when I discovered Borges.  His writings delved into the dark corners of the human psyche, exploring the fantastic within the seemingly mundane, inventing bestiaries and arcane libraries and fables involving the nature of time, infinity, labyrinths, illusion, mirrors and identity.  New York Times’ reporter Noam Cohen described Borges this way: ”A fusty sort who from the 1930s through the 1950s spent much of his time as a chief librarian, Borges (1899-1986) valued printed books as artifacts and not just for the words they contained. He frequently set his stories in a pretechnological past and was easily enthralled by the authority of ancient texts.”  His works have had a significant impact on fantasy literature and, according to Wikipedia,”scholars have noted that Borges’s progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination since ‘poets, like the blind, can see in the dark’.”

Borges died in 1986 at the age of 86 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Bianca (Photo credit: Laura Dehler)

The Center For Wildlife in Cape Neddick, ME has sent me a Certificate of Adoption for rescue barred owl Bianca!

In 1995 Bianca was hit by a car and suffered a broken wrist; she wasn’t able to be released.  She’s been a foster parent to many other barred owlets and travels often with programs to educate the public.

Barred owls (Strix varia) are the second largest owl in the country, with brown and white feathers all over their body, and a slight golden tinge to the ends of them.  Their name comes from the barring across their chest.  They’re very vocal birds and have an amazing variety of wails, moans, cackles, hisses and laughs.

Like all owls in the Northeast, barred owls are nocturnal and hunt at night.  Their staple food is mice and small mammals, but they will eat frogs, birds, insects and crayfish.  The outer edges of their primary feathers have a fluting edge, which allows them to fly silently over their prey.

Barred Owl

If you’d like to adopt a rescue owl or other rescue wild animal, contact:

Center for Wildlife - Wild Ambassador Adoption Program

PO Box 620, Cape Neddick, ME  03902

Tel: 207-361-1400

yorkcenterforwildlife.org