Elizabeth Black
writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, horror,
and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son,
and her three cats. Visit her web site, her Facebook
page, and her Amazon Author Page. 

Her new m/m erotic medical thriller Roughing
It is out! This book is a sexy cross between The X Files, The Andromeda
Strain, and Outbreak. Read her short erotic story Babes in Begging For It, published by
Cleis Press. You will also find her new novel No
Restraint at Amazon. Enjoy a good, sexy read today.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Even more so than
Christmas. I love the decorations, the candy, the parties, and the movies
playing endlessly on TV all month long. I have recorded scads of Hammer Films
and even a few Universal Pictures.  Today
I’m going to watch “Horror of Dracula” and “Frankenstein Must Be
Destroyed”.

Here’s what I do for Halloween – I bake. I make gingersnaps,
pumpkin bread, maple candy, shortbread cookies, sugar cookies with sprinkles,
pizzelles and more. I buy mead. I make hot buttered rum and hot cocoa,
sometimes with a dash of cayenne. In honor of the Day Of The Dead (Mexico), I
sometimes make candy sugar skulls. Fall is soup time so I make turkey noodle,
chicken noodle, leek and potato, and oyster stew.

Here’s what else I do for Halloween – I decorate. I have a
“Biohazard Research Facility” plaque hanging on the front door. Skull
and ghost candles are scattered about the house. I don’t burn them. I keep them
as is and use them as decorations. My Yankee Candle votive holder depicting
ravens at the entrance to a cemetery looks very classy. I use festive dish
towels and oven mitts. I even have a black cat on a pumpkin magnet on the
fridge. My large terra cotta carved Jack-O-Lantern sits outside my bedroom
window. I use an electric light that flashes so that it looks like candle flame
inside the Jack-O-Lantern. You can see it front the street. I should buy mums
to place around it to give it that extra special fall look but I haven’t bought
any yet. I get out my snow globes. I have snow globes depicting scenes from the
movies “Halloween” and “Fargo”. I’m especially proud of the
“Fargo” snow globes. One depicts the car crash scene and the other
depicts the wood chipper scene. The “Halloween” snow globe depicts
heroine Laurie Straud sitting on the floor in front of  a couch reacting in terror to seeing Michael
Myers standing over her behind the couch brandishing a butcher knife.

You may think horror movies have nothing to do with romance
and sex, but oh boy do they ever! There was nothing more exciting than curling
up on my boyfriend’s arms in the movie theater when Christopher Lee homed in on
a nubile victim. It was more fun to be scared with someone to be scared with. I
later attended a horror film convention every year in my hometown of Baltimore.
I flirted amid discussions of dismemberments and decapitations in the
Australian zombie horror comedy “Dead/Alive” and debates over which
Italian director was scarier, Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci. I voted for
Argento.

I met my husband thanks in part to horror movies. I met him
at a science fiction convention that included panels on horror. When we started
dating, I made him watch “Dead/Alive”. I told him if he couldn’t get
through this movie in one piece we weren’t meant to be together. He loved it!
Every year on our anniversary we watch it. He teases me about my love for
horror movies, but he often occasionally relents and watches one with me. Then
we cuddle and I pretend to be scared. Just like when I was in college.

Horror movies and books 
have their place in romance. Sex, too. Science
proves it. Dopamine levels rise when we’re scared, even in an artificial
setting like a horror movie. Dopamine’s nickname is the “cuddle
hormone”. So the next time you want a romantic evening, ditch “When
Harry Met Sally”. Choose Hitchcock’s “Psycho” instead. And enjoy
the cuddling – and more!

UPDATE: This is a Halloween display I made about 10 years ago in front of the 200 year old house we were renting. I was into Asian horror movies, and I made a life-sized display of Sadako coming out of the well from the movie “The Ring”. I stuffed an old white gown with newspapers and plastic grocery bags and made a head out of plastic bags and duct tape. I put a long wig on her head. She wears my white leather gloves. The well was made out of boxes spray painted to look like granite. I scared the little kids silly with that display. One little girl asked me, “Will that lady eat me?” I almost said, “No. She’ll come out of your TV and chase you around your living room until she catches you and kills you,” but I’m too nice to do such a horrible thing. LOL