Loving Halloween from Ellen Byron #giveaway

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Edith/Maddie, writing from north of Boston, while I watch the leaves start to turn even as the tomatoes finally ripen.

It’s not quite Halloween, but I’m welcoming Ellen Byron back to the blog with her second fabulous release in two months! French Quarter Fright Night, her new Vintage Cookbook mystery, came out last week and it’s a great read. She’s giving away a copy of one of the first two books!

Check out the blurb: Welcome to the Bon Veeevil Festival of Fear! Prepare for the spookiest night of your life… It’s Halloween in New Orleans, and the staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum has set up a fantastic haunted house tour for their visitors. But when flashy movie star Blaine Taggart and his entourage move into the mansion next door, gift shop proprietor Ricki James-Diaz gets a fright of her own.

While Ricki is excited about the potential business the tours will bring to her vintage cookbook shop, she’s less thrilled by former friend Blaine’s arrival in town. Then Bon Vee’s prop tomb becomes a real tomb for Blaine’s nasty assistant, and suddenly everyone at Bon Vee is a murder suspect. There isn’t a ghost of a chance one of them committed the crime, but with NOPD busy tackling the mischief and mayhem generated by the spooky holiday, it falls on Ricki and her friends to catch the killer.

As the Big Easy gears up for the Big Scary, it seems everyone has skeletons in their closets. Can Ricki reveal the shadowy killer before someone else becomes part of the Halloween horror show?

Learning to Love Halloween

Hi, everyone! Does it feel like I was just here? That’s because I kind of was. You see, I’ve had the high class problem of two books launching within five weeks of each other. A Very Woodsy Murder released on July 23rd; French Quarter Fright Night came out September 3rd.

Woodsy, as I call it, was inspired by my past career as a sitcom writer and love for California’s gorgeous locations like Gold Rush Country and the Sierra Nevada mountains. French Quarter Fright Night was inspired by an almost 180 turn – the raucous, irresistible Halloween happenings in the Big Easy.

Here’s something that might surprise you. I was not a fan of Halloween as a child. All the candy in the world couldn’t make up for the fear of wandering a neighborhood in the dark, terrified a bully would jump out from behind a tree and spray me with shaving cream.

But two things taught me to love the spookiest of holidays. The first was seeing it through my daughter’s eyes. It was so much fun helping her find the right costume every year and then hitting the streets for literally buckets of candy. Eliza even generously allowed me to use some of the photos of her in costume as part of my Shameless Shilling Campaign for my first Halloween-themed mystery, Murder in the Bayou Boneyard.

But what’s made me appreciate All Hallow’s Eve from an adult perspective are the visits to New Orleans I’ve made that serendipitously coincided with the city’s celebrations. ..

Every third Sunday in October, a Mardi Gras-like parade called the Krewe of Boo rolls, and it is a blast. I have a friend in one of the marching dance troops, the Amelia Earhawts…

And one year, our visit timed to the Anne Rice Memorial Second Line, which began with a somber trip up the street from her home in the Garden District and then like most Big Easy funeral processions, erupted into a joyful second line. (The second line is made up of those following the brass band leading the procession, which is the first line.)

In French Quarter Fright Night, I tried to capture as much of the city’s Big Boo Energy as I could. It’s protagonist Ricki’s first Halloween back in NOLA since she was eight years old. But her enjoyment of the festivities is married  when the Brad-Pitt level movie star she considers responsible for her estranged husband’s death buys the mansion next door to Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, where Ricki runs Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbook and Kitchenware Shop.

I hope this post and my new mystery inspire you to add “Spend Halloween in New Orleans” to your bucket list. Take it from me, here’s nothing better than celebrating the spooky holiday in the city that proudly calls itself the most haunted in America.

Readers: Where do you stand on Halloween? For or against? In a big city or hiding out at home?

I’ll send one commenter a copy of Bayou Book Thief, the first book in the series or the second, Wined and Died in New Orleans.

Ellen Byron is a USA Today bestselling author, Anthony Award nominee, and recipient of multiple Agatha and Lefty awards for her Cajun Country Mysteries, Vintage Cookbook Mysteries, and Catering Hall Mysteries (as Maria DiRico). A Very Woodsy Murder is the first book in her new Golden Motel Mystery series. She is also an award-winning playwright and non-award-winning writer of TV hits like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly OddParents, but considers her most impressive achievement working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.

Visit her at Cozy Mysteries | Ellen Byron | Author

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Published by Edith Maxwell

Agatha Award -winning author Edith Maxwell writes the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries (Beyond the Page) and short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she writes the Dot and Amelia Mysteries, the Country Store Mysteries series, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries (all from Kensington Publishing). She lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and cat Martin, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook.

56 Thoughts

  3. Oh, I’m BIG on Halloween, I lovvvve it! I am the candy passer-outer (new word lol), we usually have well over 100 trick-or-treaters. Love your pics!

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  4. If you add the past and the present, I guess I’m more of a middle of the road person when it comes to Halloween. Loved it as a kid and even more so through the eyes of our daughter. We went all out decorating. Our daughter, while very young, enjoyed being the one to pass out the candy more than being on the receiving end. We would have tons of fun picking a costume and then getting ready on the big day. She’s go early to a few areas to get some special treats promised to her and then rush home to be the master of pasting out candy. I’ll have to agree getting to see all the characters that arrived was a blast. We also went all our decorating the outside and inside of the house. Now, years later with no little ones to help with the excitement building and also having moved to the country where there are no neighbors and too far apart for trickers to even consider stopping by, our decorating and passing out of candy has been curtailed. It makes me sad that it’s not like it once was. However, I refuse to stay home and be downcast. We take our treats and head into town to some of the trunk and treats where we can still enjoy the kiddos and the holiday.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

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  5. not a fan. too many kids just grabbing candy and/or treat and trunk that is so common now.
    fruitcrmble AT comcast DOT net

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  6. Salem born, on Halloween eve–I gotta love it! Somewhat grown up now, I like handing out generous bags of candy to trick-or-treaters while wearing my witch costume..

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  7. Not a Halloween fan. Wasn’t when I was a kid, either. Not that I remember. Picking costumes for my kids was stressful because they had to have three: one for school, one for the activity (dance or taekwondo) and one for trick-or-treating. We got very few trick-or-treaters in Pittsburgh because we were on the edge of the darker end of the street.

    The Cottage is way on the edge of town, so I’m not anticipating much. Which is good, because Koda would go crazy with every knock. Because of his size, he tends to overwhelm smaller kids.

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  8. Halloween was always an event which we looked forward to every year. Dressing up, the decorations and the kids. Now it is fun to see the neighborhood all decked out and the kids that are at the door.

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  9. I adore Halloween. My birthday is two days later, so I often had costume parties and have always loved being invited to them. Maybe I should resume the practice of throwing one! You’re all invited…

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    1. Oh,, please resume your costume party, and be sure to let me know when and where. My wife and I will be on a plane and try to be the first in attendance, with fruit in tow! 🙂 Luis at ole dot travel

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  10. As a kid I loved it because I got a lot of candy and today I still like it I just pass out candy to the little monsters or goblins even the ones that are babies yet and can’t eat candy
    Hopefully I Win

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  11. I use to be for it but it’s so dangerous for kids who go get candy you never know what’s in it. Thanks to the police department and hospitals and churches in this city. I know between all of them the kids get plenty of safe candy.

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  12. Hello dear Ellen! I love Halloween and its preceding season when I read as many Halloween-themed cozies as time permits. Sadly, I have not yet read your Vintage Cookbook Mystery Series yet (bohoo), but they are in my MUST-read list. Your latest book is a Halloween-themed cozy, so it is even more enticing for me to start! As to Halloween, I only got to experience it when I was 15 and came to the US from Chile as an exchange student. It was love at first sight…literally. I am all for clowning around, and dressing up in costumes, and this holiday was a way to get creative and get some sweet rewards to boot. Having lived this holiday through my son and then grandchildren, nowadays it is a quiet time for my wife and me, because we live in the mountains, and nobody would dare venture into the hinterlands to get a piece of candy when they can get lots of loot downtown, where the stores offer candy to trick or treaters. Thank you for sharing your funny cozy mysteries with us readers! JOY! Luis at ole dot travel

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  13. I love Halloween. As a kid I love dressing up and going trick or treating. Now I stay at home and watch It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.

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  14. Was a big fan as a kid, mixed feelings as an adult. I do love seeing the little ones in their costumes. Living where the weather is usually accommodating, My neighborhood has been hit or miss these past years. Some years we would get 10 trick or treaters, another year 100s, so these days I often join friends who always get tons of kids and we enjoy a front yard potluck, hand out candy and enjoy the festivities.

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  15. I think Halloween’s my favorite holiday of all, Ellen. But dang… don’t those bullies go around messing so many things up? I was afraid of them, too. Out I went anyway. It sure helped to have friends ( ;

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  16. Congrats on TWO new releases. Well done, Ellen.

    Big fan of Halloween. My mom made almost all of my costumes and did the make-up. My favorite was the tiger – I even had a tail and face paint. And this was in the 1950s! We had a great time going door to door and eating some of the forbidden candy before we went home. My brother was nine years older than I, he taught me that trick since he was my “escort.”

    I never heard of the Boo Krewe – love the concept, would love to see it live – bucket list item?????

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  18. I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween. There are parts I enjoy, but I don’t like how frightening it can be. But I usually stock up on horror movies from AMC to watch. As I said, love/hate.

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  19. I don’t sew and was never too creative in trying to pull together costumes for my children. When they were real little, it was easier than when they were older. Things always seemed to work out, though. One year a friend made poodle skirts for my daughter and hers. A couple of years I bought costumes. It’s much more fun now with the grandkids. They get so excited about going out to trick- or- treat and think it’s cool their dad always makes cotton candy as something different to hand out.

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  21. I enjoy Halloween and seeing the kids having fun and seeing their costumes, however, we don’t get many trick or treaters these days. I love the New Orleans settings in your books, especially the Plantation series. I haven’t read this series yet, but it’s on my TBR list.

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  22. I love Halloween and I love FRENCH QUARTER FRIGHT NIGHT, Ellen! I have so many great memories of Halloween from my youth. These days, I spend October watching not so scary horror movies. 👻

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  23. I love Halloween. My kids are older now but we always had so much fun trick of treating. We stay home and hand out candy now!

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  24. I love Halloween. Unfortunately, we don’t get kids here anymore, so we usually head to some of the trunk or treats/fall festivals in our area to have fun with our kids.

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  25. We hide out at home. We used to give out candy until my husband had issues with some older boys. We are all disabled. After that, we decided, it was no longer safe for us to give out candy. Thank you so much for sharing. God bless you.

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  26. I’m not a fan of Halloween and my husband and I hide out at home. I was a theatrical stage manager for 25+ years, so costumes are not as much of a novelty for me as they are for others.

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  28. I like the original meaning of Halloween… to dress like something spooky or ghoulish to be able to walk around on that night without being noticed by real spirits. The night when “the veil is thinnest” and the dead find it easiest to come back and walk among the living. I look forward to reading your book especially at this time of year.

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  29. Fall is my favorite season so I love everything to do with Halloween. I love seeing the little ones dressed up coming up my porch, love the cool crisp air and leaves swirling in the driveway, and sipping a hot tea on my porch. On Halloween night I look forward to watching a few fun movies, not too scary, with my daughter. We make it day of fun. I’d love to visit New Orleans as I have always heard about it at Halloween. Love your book’s cover!

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  30. I had to comment again as I just realized you write as Maria DiRico! I have read several of your books. The fact you set Long Island Iced Tea in Queens had grabbed my attention when I saw it in Barnes & Noble. I see you were born in Queens too! That’s where I come from (Richmond Hill) but I’m on Long Island now, hopefully moving to Westchester to be close to my son and his family sometime next year. It’s a small world 🙂

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  32. I love all the decorations, but with so few kids coming to our door, the trick-or-treat part is more of a hassle than it is worth. But I love pumpkin spice everything!

    Love this latest book. Picked it up from Aaron’s as soon as it came in. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

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