Tag Archives: Halloween movies

October Pairings (#OctPairs): Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles and Spooky Movies.

Little shop of horrors.jpg

I was writing my morning pages at the end of September (hard to believe that wasn’t even a week ago) and started thinking about things that go together with Halloween movies and books. I remembered an October when I manufactured artifact puzzles. I would put on scary movies while I separated the puzzle pieces and boxed them up.

I no longer work with the day to day of the business, but I still love the puzzles and recently designed the pieces for The Scream by Edvard Munch. So for my first October Pairing, I want to talk about which movies I think go well with my artifact puzzle designs. If you are a puzzle lover, like me, or are having a gathering for The Holiday,  you should have enough time to order a puzzle for Halloween.

starry nightArtifact Puzzles – Van Gogh Starry Night

Everyone knows this image. It’s a poster in a dorm room. So I tried to give it a twist. I swirled and whirled all of the signs of the zodiac into this puzzle then added the symbols, too.

If puzzling with the kids, I would pair this with Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and once the kids have fallen asleep I would put on Zodiac and Suspect Zero.

garden of deathArtifact Puzzles – Garden of Death

I love this image. This puzzle was one of my early designs. It includes a multi-piece monster plant and a Jack-o-Lantern. It’s a perfect pairing with Little Shop Of Horrors.

My mom gave me a great Halloween noises CD that came with a DVD of the 1960’s version of Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and I was happily surprised by a young Jack Nicholson (as pictured in the lead image).

 

creature ladder

Artifact Puzzles – Justin Hillgrove Creature Ladder

This image makes me smile. It’s fun. It’s whimsical. And monsters. I designed some of my pieces to represent these monsters, then their neighbors became their own monsters, and so on . . . The puzzle is a monsterfest!

This is a shorter puzzle, so the first time, during family fun-time, I would pair it with the monster squad

then after the kidlets have gone to bed, how about going full Cryptid with laughably horrible films like: Loch Ness Terror and Abominable

Or a Bigfoot comedy like Strange Wilderness

Artifact Puzzles – Waterhouse Lady of Shalott

Waterhouse_Lady_of_Shalott_edge_1024x1024

The Lady of Shalott is a ballad by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Like his other early poems – “Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere”, and “Galahad” – the poem recasts Arthurian subject matter loosely based on medieval sources.

I find this image haunting. So while working this puzzle, after the kids have gone to bed, I recommend:
An American Haunting and my mate’s personal favorite The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Edvard_Munch_-_The_Scream_-_Google_Art_Project_1024x1024
And of course, The Scream – you can sign up to get an email when it’s in stock!

It’s not available yet, but I worked hard on it because I love it!

At first the movie pairing is obvious:
Scream
Scream 2
Scream 3
Scream 4

But then you’ll notice the symbolism and want to watch TrollHunter.

#OctPairs

There you have it. My first offering of October Pairings. I hope you find the same joy in movies and puzzles as I do. When I started making these puzzles, I was surprised how they became the center of every family gathering. They bring people together, and they’re fun to do alone.

What fun things do you think pair up well? Let me know at #OctPairs on Twitter. Or here in the comments.

 

What are you planning for #Writober?

photograph by Maria L. Berg 2017
photo by Maria L. Berg 2017

#Writober – a writing and reading extravaganza leading to Halloween

September is flying by too quickly. I haven’t even posted my giant Summer reading review yet, but it’s already time to start looking toward October. October is a great time for writing, especially creepy fantasy and horror challenges. I’ve decided to use J.S. Nagy’s challenge name from last year #Writober to describe the whole month, because of all of the fun writing and reading challenges I’ve found to enjoy. I hope you’ll join me for a spooktacularly productive #Writober.

The Pinterest Board #Writober 2

Last year, I happened upon a great writing challenge called #Writober. The organizer, J.S. Nagy a.k.a @BrassGoblin, created a pinterest board and challenged himself to write a 101 word story inspired by one picture each day. He asked other writers to join him and read each other’s stories on Wattpad. Though I did not post my stories, I did read the other stories. I didn’t end up writing a story for each image and I collected some images of my own, but the stories inspired by the challenge were fun. One of them was even published!

This year, I got excited to add some of my own images to the #Writober board, so I contacted J.S. Nagy to see if he had started planning #Writober for this year. Sadly, for me, not him, he is headed to Japan and does not have time for it this year. So I have taken on #Writober 2 and hope you will join me. Here’s the #Writober 2 pinterest board. I have numbered each image in its description and hope you find inspiration for each day in the array of images I collected.

You don’t have to use the images to inspire daily 101 word stories as @BrassGoblin suggested. Last year, I used the images as inspiration for flash fiction of any length under 1,000 words. I also used them to inspire tweet length #microstories (#vss – very short story). This year, I plan to add poetry, a twitter flash fiction group, a reading challenge and #pessimisticmoustache to the mix.

Poetry

I took a CalArts poetry workshop online through coursera.org last month and got a lot out of it. I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to continue writing poetry with a daily poetry writing challenge. This will be the 6th year of #OctPoWriMo  poetry challenge. They have a poetry prompt for inspiration on the website every day. I wonder how my #Writober 2 images will interact with their inspirational prompts. Could be interesting. I’ll be posting my poems here on Experience Writing.

#FlashFicHive

FlashFicHive

This is a group challenge that comes up every two months. I’m glad it corresponds with #Writober. I’m hoping they will doubly inspire me to write flash fiction every day.

R.I.P. – Readers Imbibing Peril

This is the twelfth year of  Readers Imbibing Peril #RIPXII. This reading challenge has lots of different perils to choose from. It began the 1st of September, but I arrived late to the party and plan to participate for October. I’m planning to be in a lot of peril, including:

In peril the first:

The four books I want to read are:
What the Dead Know: A Novel – Thriller
Small Town: A Novel (Block, Lawrence) – Mystery
Gwendy’s Button Box – Horror
and a surprise that I’ll tell you about in about a week. I’ll be reviewing a book that isn’t released yet.

In peril of the short story:

I recommend looking for stories to read and linking your stories to #Writober.

There are also great stories at:

The Evening Theatre, Twisted Sister Lit Mag, Sick Lit Mag, Five on The Fifth, Fictional Pairings, and many, many more great online literary magazines.

Peril on the screen:

For this peril, I thought I would watch Horns based on the Joe Hill novel and that made me think of Swiss Army Man which I also haven’t seen.

And Peril of the group read:

I already have my copy of Slade House by David Mitchell

#PessimisticMoustache

I created a creative description game based on a great line from Agatha Christie. Author Diana Rose Wilson and I play it sporadically on twitter. We post pictures and GIFs and challenge ourselves to come up with an ism to describe a feature. For #Movember it’s full of mustaches, and December was full of creepy Santas, but for #Writober, I’m thinking of using the images from the pinterest board. Here are the rules of play with links to lists of isms. I hope you’ll head over to Twitter and join us. Last year we had a lot of fun through November and December as well.

Enjoy #Writober!

So there you have it. A selection of fun writing and reading events I plan to enjoy this October. From experience, I know life will get in the way, and some days, I might just run out of time, but my #Writober is all about inspiration and creation, so I hope you’ll join me in any way that works for you. Please check back here at Experience Writing for my daily poems and flash fiction ideas and I hope you like the #Writober 2 pinterest board. I look forward to hearing about how you will be spending #Writober.