BOOK CLUB FRIDAY - GUEST AUTHOR ESRI ALLBRITTEN

Our Book Club Friday guest today is Esri Allbritten, author of the Tripping Magazine mystery series, which covers the adventures of a low-budget travel rag that features destinations of paranormal interest. The trouble is, there always seems to be a crime behind the supposed supernatural event, making Tripping’s staff scramble to keep their story while they uncover the terrible truth. Chihuahua of the Baskervilles is now available in paperback or ebook. Book two, The Portrait of Doreene Gray, just came out in hardback and ebook. Critter from the Black Lagoon is in the works.

Esri likes nothing better than to have her characters visit real towns and wreak fictional havoc in them. You can read free chapters of her books and find out more at EsriAllbritten.com.

Esri is offering a copy of either of her current titles to one of our readers who posts a comment to the blog. -- AP

Crafting a Local Legend

A lot of us grew up with stories of a local monster or ghost – creatures that thrilled our childhood selves and gave us a sense of shared lore. Maybe your current city lacks this vital spark. Never fear; you can “discover” your own questionable creature, and summer is the perfect time to do it. All the raw materials are there: spooky noises outside a tent, murky shadows in a sun-warmed lake, and the unspeakable sounds of mating raccoons. Throw in a twelve-pack of beer on a muggy evening and you’ve got yourself a receptive audience! So what are the right ingredients to make sure generations of kids run screaming from the woods?

An unusual method of locomotion. Your average supernatural creature does not amble through the woods like a teenager at the mall. No, it crawls, floats, creeps, slithers, flies on scaly wings, or bounds along the ground in twenty-foot leaps. It can also vanish suddenly, and almost always does.

A grab bag of physical features. Excessive hair is always in fashion. Goat horns or hooves were popular in the 1800s. Wings and scales are fine, but they’ve kind of been done to death. I’m just spitballing here, but I’m seeing empty eye sockets, albino skin, and tentacles. Lots of tentacles.

Glowing eyes. You must have glowing eyes, because there are tons of things that look like glowing eyes. Car headlights, driveway reflectors at weird angles, glints off windows and chrome – even the actual glowing eyes of an animal caught in the shaky beam of your flashlight.

A fondness for authority figures. If you want your story to be believed, make sure your monster is witnessed by a police officer, a reverend, or a “prominent businessman.” Rarely are these people named or still alive, but if they are, so what? Are you going to call up Officer Robert Cullough of Atlanta, Georgia and ask if he really saw a creature that looked like “a cross between a rabbit and a seahorse”? What I heard was that he was in his patrol car one night when he saw something hopping through the trees alongside the road. It had the body of a giant rabbit, but with gauzy fins on its back and a scaly, jointed tail. Sometimes it would leap up and use that tail to grab a tree branch and swing itself forward. Also, its eyes glowed.

Cullough’s friends called it Jumping Lizzy because Liz was the name of Cullough’s ex-girlfriend. When she found out, she hanged herself, and if you sit under the right tree at midnight, you can hear her crying and stomping her large, hairy feet.  

The most popular monsters are shy. Yes, they’re frightening in some way (large, toothy, made of ectoplasm) but they’re essentially harmless. Your average bear may rip off the arms of anyone who gets between it and a convenience-store dumpster, but Bigfoot is shy. Alligators might be tacky enough to jump for raw chicken, but the Loch Ness monster, like Garbo, wants to be alone.  Real supernatural creatures are sensitive in some way.  Those ghostly teens who ask for a ride to the nearest diner? They just want to do a quick review for Yelp before going back to the spirit world. Strike up a conversation about pie and they fade through the wall.

So there you have it, the elements of a local legend. If you do it right and do it quick, you could win $2,000. The blog io9 is offering a bounty for the best photo of a mystery creature. You can also tell them a story, but they won’t pay you for that. Words are cheap.

What’s your favorite local legend? Tell us that, or anything. One lucky commenter will win a copy of Chihuahua of the Baskervilles or The Portrait of Doreene Gray, your choice. -- AP