Anticipating Autumn

It's July and you know what that means. Scram summer! Give me that cold and rainy sweater-weather I live for.

Haha. No, seriously. July means the start of... FALL NAIL POLISH SWATCHING ON YOUTUBE!

That's right. There's a summertime bug that has me itching for fall. In anticipation of autumnal delights, I dug out our Halloween Party CD - a little hardcover book with recipes for drinks and appetizers and a sleeve for the disc.

It was too adorable. We couldn't resist buying it even though we already owned the recorded material in its older packaging.

To further confuse things, there's yet another version...

Okay, full disclosure... these renditions aren't that great. Don't get me wrong - we've played them often, especially to get our Halloween fix. The vocalist, Janice Hagen, has a very good voice and the style is what I call 'light-lounge-chic'. But it's all rather elevatorish. In other words, it's great for background music. And even though her 'I Put a Spell on You' is pleasantly sultry, it doesn't come close to generating the heat that Creedence Clearwater Revival does.

"But wait," you're saying. "What about Nina Simone and Screamin' Jay Hawkins?". I think it's well-established that those are the greatest recordings of 'I Put a Spell on You'. But my respect won't allow me to taint them with my dirty prose.

This is why, when it came time to draft a scene involving a passionate interlude and this song, I had CCR playing in the background. Honestly, in the past, I hadn't paid much attention to the band. But when comparing them and deciding which version would fit an orgasmic situation, there was no contest. CCR came out on top.*

That's a roundabout way of mentioning my current work-in-progress; a book of several short stories that take place around Halloween time. Romance and sexy times within a knitting circle, at a Victorian Inn, and between a yard-haunter and his neighbor. I'm shooting for an early October release for this one.

And just a reminder... there are only 111 days until Halloween.

* Yes, I groaned at that pun too. Bad Nina.

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