Halloween Haunts – HWA and Halloween-Inspired Horrorky by Paul Lonardo

Halloween Haunts – HWA and Halloween-Inspired Horrorky

by Paul Lonardo

As a writer whose focus has always been prose, I had never even considered attempting writing in verse. The thought of composing a poem had always been intimidating to me. Just the mention of iambic pentameter makes me break out in a cold sweat. I was of the belief that poetry was something for deep-thinking, brooding, scholarly types who possessed some arcane ability to plumb the depths of the human soul and mortal existence with strings of words that held meaning I did not understand, nor even capable of comprehending.

I just didn’t think poetry was for me, and therefore I never tried it. Until last year, anyway, when I saw a call by HWA for poetry submissions for their Horror and Hope Mental Wellness anthology. It was a great cause that I thought deserved public support, and that was what initially drew my attention. But I wasn’t really thinking about writing a poem.

Or was I?

I tried to push the notion aside and forget about it, but something kept gnawing at me. I wondered if I would be letting myself down by not at least trying to write a poem for HWA. I saw it as a personal challenge, to try something that made me uncomfortable as a writer. After all, I had taken chances with my prose through the years, delving into topics and genres that were new to me, and I learned that there is always a reward in the process, regardless of how the book was received. Trying something that is unfamiliar and little scary provides authors with an opportunity to become more well-rounded, enabling growth by expanding a writer’s literary horizons.

All right, so I was going to write a poem. Now what? I didn’t know the first thing about writing poetry, and I had read only those poems that had been on the syllabus of various English corses I’d taken in college. What was I going to do, write a Shakespearean sonnet? Or an epic poem like Homer? God, no.

What am I getting myself into?

Haiku was a form I was at least familiar with. It seemed simple enough, anyway, and with the submission call not being open all that long, it was my only option. Requiring just three lines didn’t actually make writing the poem any easier, I quickly found out. I began with some research about the art and approach to haiku writing. Examples were plentiful. And then it was time for me to begin my three-line, seventeen-syllable adventure into poetry.

To my amazement, I found that it was just writing. Not prose, but still, it was writing. It was a process that allows for a continuous flow of creativity, which has the ability to take a writer to unexpected places. Even the rewriting was the same. You may not think rewriting would be required given the economy of words in a haiku, but it requires just as much editing consideration, if not more than prose.

To that end, I did write and submit a poem to HWA, and to my utter astonishment and delight it was accepted, appearing in the 2022 Horror and Hope Mental Wellness anthology. Having conquered my fear of poetry, you may think this is where my adventure into poetry ends, but last fall when I saw calls for Halloween-themed poetry by various ezines, I sat down and wrote a batch of horrorku poems and submitted them. Five were accepted by an online publication, and from there my interest in haiku only grew. I soon put aside the fiction projects I was working on to begin writing an entire book of haiku horror poems, one representing each day of the calendar year. With a total of 365 poems, the book would retail for $3.65 and would fittingly be titled Penny Dreadfuls.

I know, a little ambitious of me. I wasn’t sure I could write one poem, now I’m going to attempt to write 365 of them. It was quite daunting. How would I even be able to come up with enough content for a collection of this size. However, I was surprised how many odd, creepy and really disturbing things exist in nature, with regard to humans as well as in the animal kingdom. It was a real eye-opener as I discovered all kinds of fears, folk monsters, myths and legends to write about that I never even knew existed.

I found that once I got going, it got easier. As I devoted more time to writing haikus, the collection took on a life of its own. I would write poems with a similar theme until it naturally took me in the direction it wanted to go, similar to the way it does when writing a piece of fiction. So, although this is a collection of many separate haiku horror poems, they are all connected, with a natural rhythm and flow. I wrote haikus relevant to the season and to specific days of the month. It was a fascinating experience.

Haikus may be short, with no rhyming required, but they are challenging in other ways. More importantly, haikus can be a lot of fun. They’re like word puzzles, in a sense, with a very specific set of parameters to follow. Some seemingly perfect words don’t fit, so you have to find just the right words, and sequence of words, that not only will elicit the meaning or mood you want, but they also have to have the right syllabic configuration. But that’s the challenge and the fun of writing haikus.

Writing is about uncovering truths, self-exploration, and pushing your personal limitations to places you never thought you could reach. HWA and Halloween were inspirations behind a new literary venture that I would like to continue to pursue, and I would recommend writers trying their hand at one or more of the many forms of poetry that interests them and see where it takes you.

Paul Lonardo is a freelance writer and author with numerous titles of both fiction and nonfiction books. He’s placed dark fiction and nonfiction articles in various genre magazines and ezines. Most recently, his collection of 365 haiku horror poems, titled Penny Dreadfuls, was published this past summer, and Small Dark Things, an anthology of new dark fantasy and horror stories, will be released in October 2023. He is a contributing writer for Tales from the Moonlit Path, and he is an active HWA member. A longtime baseball fan, when not writing, Paul helps coach his teenage son’s travel baseball team.

www.thegoblinpitcher.com

Instagram: PaulLonardo13

Amazon.com: Paul Lonardo: books, biography, latest update

—————————————————————————————-

PREVIEW OF FORTHCOMING FICTION/ANTHOLOGY

“DARK LITTLE THINGS: An Anthology of Dread and Terror”

This collection features 25 all new dark fantasy and horror tales presented in formats that include poetry, drabble, flash fiction, short stories and a novella.

Excerpt:

One thing I do know, there are a lot of retirees in this community, some of whom have been here a long time. Whoever owns this piece of land must be stinking rich because the place is constantly expanding as more and more people move in. There’s some freshly broken ground just around the corner from here in a section where a young forest full of aspens, maples, and birches once stood. They took away all the trees, along with the shade and privacy they had provided, and there are all new units on that spot now. That’s progress. What can you do? But at least I’ll have new neighbors soon. I look forward to that. I don’t even know my neighbors on either side. I can’t recall ever meeting them, come to think of it. They must be really old. Probably sleep a lot. More than me, even. The boredom can do that to a person. I understand it, believe me, but I think it’s important to get out as much as possible, if only to stretch your legs a little, see another soul once in a while. It seems the only time I see anybody is when they first move in. They always look around with confused and alarmed expressions on their faces, like they don’t want to be there. I try to tell them it’s not that bad here, and that they’ll get used to it, it just takes a little time. I don’t think I managed to convince any of them. After the first few days, I never see them again. They don’t come outside anymore, so it’s hard to remember what they even looked like.

There was someone, however, not too long ago, who came out every day from sunup to sundown. It was a teenage boy, high school age. He was a good distance away, but he was up atop a high slope, so I had a clear view of him. He was a big kid. He wore a brand-new pair of jeans and a high school football jersey with the number “8” on the back. He had only white socks on his feet. I figured he was here visiting his grandparents, but it became obvious rather quickly that he was lost. He’d pace around nervously, calling for his mother repeatedly. He’d stop for a little while, and I could hear him crying. Then he would continue calling for his mother. I felt terrible. No one seemed to want to help him.

Me?

What could I do? In some ways, I felt a lot like he did. I didn’t really want to be there myself. I started to get the feeling that nobody wanted to be there.

Anyway, after a few days, just like everyone else, the kid was gone. I haven’t seen him since. I don’t know what happened to him. I like to believe that he was reunited with his mother, or maybe someone else came for him. I hope so, because this is no place for someone that young, unless they’re visiting their grandparents.

Paul Lonardo is giving away a digital copy of his new horror anthology, SMALL DARK THINGS. Comment below or email Palonardo@aol.com with the subject title HH Contest Entry for a chance to win.

Available in October on Amazon: Amazon.com: Paul Lonardo: books, biography, latest update

www.thegoblinpitcher.com

Instagram: @PaulLonardo13