Plans for today

Today’s plans? Settling in with a new book, knitting on a sock, and cuddling up under a warm blanket.

Long, long ago, I mentioned that the first couple of adult books I remember reading (or at least, remember being caught reading by adults who were probably right in assuming I was too young to be reading them) were novels by Stephen King and Jackie Collins. I still like scary books. The home library has expanded over the years.

One of the highlights from Christmas 2017 was Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. I’m currently reading through it and enjoying the heck out of it. I’ll have to remember to write a review of it once I’m done.

Because I was fairly young when I started reading scary books, I’ve developed a short list of rules for reading them.

Not before bed. Pretty self-explanatory. This rule has saved me many times from nightmares.

Not when home alone – at night. Because nothing freaks you out more than hearing the furnace kick in when you’re all alone in the house at, say, 3am. Heck, I don’t even need the added incentive of a horror novel to make me paranoid – I’ve been known to hear snow falling off the roof and think someone’s trying to break in. Best not to make the paranoia worse.

If it’s getting to you, do something else. This is the last-ditch effort of someone who can’t use stairs or go into the basement because House of Leaves OMG WHAT.

Trust me, having a few rules helps. Update them as necessary. When I was 10 years old, the word “ghost” near bedtime used to trigger nightmares for me. So I started substituting the word “it” for “ghost” whenever I was reading in bed.

Then, sometime around 1987, Stephen King wrote “It“.

Yeah.

That didn’t work out very well.