A #HALLOWEEN YOUNG ADULT #MYSTERY FROM AUTHOR NORMA HUSS

Norma Huss considers herself the Grandma Moses of Mystery. Today she joins us to discuss Halloween, circa 1946, as it relates to her young adult mystery. Learn more about Norma and her books at her website and blog.

Did kids celebrate Halloween differently in 1946 than they do today? I had to figure that out when I wrote my young adult mystery, Cherish. You see, there’s a teen ghost who really wants to live again in the 21^st century. At Halloween time.

To tell the truth, I knew what a country teen did in 1946, the year I was, ummm 16. That was absolutely nothing. No close neighbors, very small school (there were three in my grade). 

But my husband lived in a town. They had Halloween parades and trick or treating for the younger ones. He fondly remembers soaping windows, making noisemakers out of wooden sewing spools, and especially, moving door mats around so the next morning all the neighbors were out getting them back in order. 

By the time he was fifteen, he and his friends were all Boy Scouts, and they always had a Halloween Party at a nearby camp. That involved dates. The whole troop made sure everyone had a date—and every girl they knew had a date, too. It also involved costumes. In fact, after we were married, I attended one of those Halloween parties. One couple came completely wrapped as mummies. They didn’t speak, and most had no clue who they were until the grand unmasking!

I had two sources for the current Halloween celebration: the Internet, and teen grandchildren. Costumes and private parties are big with the grandkids. The Internet had mentioned school activities that benefit charities, such as Trick or Treat for UNICEF, which was something my kids were into during the 1970s, and 1980s. (Even then teens were more apt to man the candy station on the porch. Toilet-papering the trees was the late-night trick of choice.) 

Today, schools may allow younger kids to come to school in costumes, but often not. Some may have fund-raising events for UNICEF, but that may not be true in the last few years. The bigger thing is Spirit Week to support the school. It is earlier in the month. But trick or treating in costume by those younger than twelve is still popular. Often a community will set “Trick or Treat Night” which seldom seems to be October 31.

Cherish

Part ghost story, part mystery, part time travel

It’s the annual Local History cemetery visit and Kayla wishes that strangely dressed teenage ghost would go away. Instead, it’s Kayla who disappears into the 1946 life of a teen who will die in days. That teen, Cherish, takes Kayla’s place in the 21^st century, living her life. This time, she plans to survive.

Is this the new reality, or will Kayla, armed with only her cell phone, find her way home before she dies Cherish’s death?

In honor of Halloween, this seasonal e-book is reduced to $.99.

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#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR NORMA HUSS ON QUILT BARNS

A quilt barn in Harrison County, Ohio

Norma Huss, The Grandma Moses of Mystery, has written one ghost mystery (to please her grandchildren, of course) and two mysteries placed on Chesapeake Bay. Her non-fiction is her father’s true adventure. Learn more about Norma and her books at her website and blog.

Quilts and Barns

How do quilts, a handmade bedcover, and barns, a large building for cows, go together? Answer—when a barn sports a quilted decoration.

It’s a natural for the place where I live, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—the home of Amish quilts, dairy farms, fields of hay and corn. But we are sort of a Johnny-come-lately. Quilt trails are found in 48 states and Canada. A local quilting farm woman saw her first barn quilt in Ohio which inspired the one profiled in our local newspaper.

Some 7,000 wooden or Mylar quilts were created by groups such as the Grange (a farming organization I belonged to as a teenage farm girl.) They can be found following quilt trails, and they aren’t all on barns.

Here is the article from our local newspaper. And, of course, something so popular has its own Facebook page here. 

I had never before heard of quilts on barns, or quilt trails. In the summer, we have corn mazes, tours of dairy farms, and the Hershey candy factory. Do you have similar activities where you live? I’d love to hear about them.

A Knucklehead in 1920s Alaska

Nineteen-year-old Bill Collins travels to Alaska in the 1920s to work and save for college. He finds adventure, misadventure, and not much money. He faces hardships, finds friends, and has experiences that change a boy into a man.

During three summers and one winter, Bill survives hunger, earthquake, stomping caribou, and icicle frost. He learns about stopes, sluice boxes, and powder smoke. He finds friends, one willing to face a bear for him, and enemies eager to knife him or smash him with a twenty-pound sledge. He has one lucky day and more than a few really bad days.

This is the story of one hot-headed young man determined to earn his own way, but in his own words, a true knucklehead.

The e-book is free for five days, starting today. Yesterday’s News, a bonus short mystery is included.

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TRAVEL WITH SERENA--THE INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY AND DISMAL SWAMP CANAL

ICW Dismal Canal

Norma Huss, today’s guest, calls herself the Grandma Moses of Mystery. She published her first novel just before reaching her 80th birthday. She has since written and published several other books. She stops by today to talk about sailing the Intracoastal Waterway and the Dismal Swamp Canal during Hurricane Hugo. Learn more about Norma at her website. 

Sailing the Dismal Swamp Canal to Hurricane Hugo

When our group of sailboats headed south in 1989, we didn’t plan on meeting a hurricane. Our month-long plan was to sail the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) from Baltimore, Maryland, on Chesapeake Bay through the Dismal Swamp Canal to Morehead City in North Carolina before we turned back for the return trip.

My husband Dick and I sailed Cloud Nine, our 36-foot Cape Dory, accompanied by young friends Cathy and Bill. We joined an informal cruisers’ group and sailed south to Norfolk, Virginia. There we passed the United States Naval Station with sightings of lots of ships including an aircraft carrier and a submarine. We anchored overnight near the Norfolk city marina before entering the 51-mile Dismal Swamp Canal. The slowest boat in our group made only four knots. That’s four nautical miles per hour, a bit more than four miles on land. And, with two locks to raise or lower us eight feet and slow us down, it would be a long day.

There’s a lot of history about the entire ICW, but especially for the Dismal Swamp Canal. As we motored past trees, the branches sometimes nearly meeting over our heads, we appreciated the serenity of no commercial traffic, and the closeness of nature. But as we looked at that heavy stand of trees, we realized that in the late 1700s, this area was swamp land, murky and hidden.

But our young country needed a way to transport goods overland before the advent of railroads and highways. The Dismal Swamp Canal was built entirely by hand, using slaves from nearby farms who worked with saws, axes, picks, shovels, and back-breaking labor. The canal was begun in 1793 and opened in 1805. Originally the canal had five or six locks and was only deep and wide enough for flat boats or rafts. In 1829 it was widened and deepened. Today it is rated to handle boats with a six foot draft, but there have been a year or two, or three, since we traveled the canal, that it was closed due to shallow water.

anchored out

After we left Dismal Swamp Canal and continued south on the ICW, we heard about a storm, Hurricane Hugo, heading toward South Carolina. We couldn’t turn and head north with enough speed to outrun a hurricane. We headed west to Bath, NC. Our entire group tied up to a dock near a small marina, sat on the lawn, and plotted. We would strip sails and everything exposed off our boats. We would put out anchors, and tie down the boats to each other and the dock with our heaviest lines, rather like a spider web. And we did. After we had everything shipshape, the marina owner came over.

“You don’t know it,” he said, “but there used to be a wood mill here.” Since anchors couldn’t hold in a bottom of shifting wood chips, he recommended anchoring out in the waterway. He even volunteered to ferry us back to land so we could stay in the local bed and breakfast during the storm. Most of us took him up on it.

We spent a very worried night, listening to the news telling us that Hurricane Hugo was heading west. We didn’t like that one bit. However, come morning, we discovered the hurricane had shot straight through and gone so far west we were well to its east, and except for strong winds, completely out of it.

sunset on the way home

Later, after putting out boats back together, we saw damage at our next stop at a New Bern, NC, marina. Boats had sunk in their slips. One boat had bounced up and down against the deck until the friction had rubbed a hole in the bow of the boat. In South Carolina, the damage was extensive, with boats piled up across roads from the waterway, and into city yards. Five years later on another trip farther south, we stopped at a marina that had only opened that week after finally repairing all the damage from Hurricane Hugo.

That adventure didn’t scare us away from boating. That sailboat was our first, but we subsequently had two more boats, both tugboat-style cruisers. And, my love of boating inspired the amateur detective in my latest mystery, Death of a Hot Chick. She loves everything about boating, even polishing teak.

Death of a Hot Chick

A Cyd Denlinger Mystery - A young widow trying to survive, a ghost with an agenda, and the boat they share.

Violent death comes suddenly to Smith Harbor, the Chesapeake Bay fishing village with intertwined and lasting relationships.

Cyd Denlinger wants to forget her late, philandering husband, keep her family from running her life, and regain her commercial boat captain's license. What she doesn't want is to be involved with an old flame OR a ghost. But the nagging ghost offers a trade that’s hard to resist.

"Find my killer!" she demands. In exchange, Cyd will own the boat Snapdragon. Easy for a ghost to offer something she can't use. Not so easy to solve a murder with too much help from family and friends. Not too safe either, especially when Cyd wonders: was the killer's target his victim, or her boat.

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