This is my favorite time of the year, totally and completely. I think it is because of growing up in Florida where we never saw a change to the seasons. I love feeling Autumn come on, the crispness in the air, the wind, the storms. It's awesome. I think Ray Bradbury was dead on with his whole suggestion of "October Country" and the type of stories it entails. Want to get a good old school scare on? Read SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. It convinced me that every single thing my mother ever said about avoiding carnivals was true. (And Kate Milford's THE BONESHAKER just reinforced it.) (I should point out that my mother is not right about everything but when it comes to creepy carnies in parking lots you really have to go with her.)

This month I included two collections in my column: Darkness (2 Decades of Modern Horror) and The Best Horror of the Year, Vol 2. They are adult collections (and I highly recommend them if you want some serious scareage) but several stories also fit great for teens - those were the ones I highlighted. In particular I had to point out the work of two of my favorite current writers, Kelly Link and Liz Hand. Here's what I wrote about them:

Kelly Link contributes what has become a modern classic: "The Specialist's Hat." This exploration of childhood and games is exceptional in the way it casually builds tension over the course of a single evening with two little girls and their babysitter. Nothing obvious, nothing horrifying and then the end knocks you down with epic force. Words should not be able to accomplish such visceral reactions and yet, with Link, they often do. She's awesome -- period. As to Elizabeth Hand's "The Erl-King," all I can say is that she is the only writer, with perhaps the exception of Richard Bowes, who could possibly combine a reminiscence of Andy Warhol's Factory and Arthur Rackham's fairy tale paintings with -- bonus -- rock and roll, teen angst and the danger lurking in a hot summer night. There is also a nod to Goethe because, well, because this is Liz Hand writing about two young girls who go looking for a lost pet, and find instead a man who made a very bad deal decades before that is now coming due. "The Erl-King" has a heroine and doomed dancing girl circa Angela Chase and Rayanne Graff, a narrative that winds from scrapbooks full of dazed hippie confusion to peeks of fairy creatures slyly nodding in the wings. It is about what you would give for your fifteen minutes of fame, and will make readers ponder their own wishes and bargains. Even though this is an early tale from Hand, it continues to prove that, along with Link, she writes some of the deepest, most profound, and dazzling fiction today for teens.

What impresses me the most about Link & Hand, and why I happily reach for every single thing they write (but especially their short stories) is that they aren't obvious. They both send out stories that seem to be one thing but dance into being another. You get more than just fear or fantasy - you get art and pop culture, sorrow and sweetness, love and hate. In these two cases you have two teens laughing on the way to adulthood and two children with wide eyes being teased (perhaps) a new baby sitter. Neither of the stories seem remarkable, not when you begin. And then slowly but surely, relentlessly in fact, both authors give you more and more reasons to reconsider what you thought you were reading, what you thought you knew about where these stories were going. And then they catch you and then they have you and then they don't let you go.

And then you read the last paragraphs, the last words and you can't believe they got you like that. It's not a gotcha, it's a wow. Every single time, Link and Hand wow me.

Read "The Specialist's Hat" by Kelly Link, here. (In retrospect saying the story is about games was not really the best word choice. It's games as in the games sitters play with their charges - the stories they tell, the games they play in keeping the kids in line. But you might think it's about board games or something and that's not true! :)
A description of Ray Bradbury's October Country is here.