The Pumpkin Man

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There’s something about those old urban legends that you hear in grammar school that stick with you for life—like the slumber party dare of repeating “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a dark mirror to tempt the evil Mary Worth to appear and scratch out your eyes. The Pumpkin Man began as an original short story of the same name about kids who come face-to-face with just such an urban legend. (Thanks to Mort Castle for publishing it in Doorways magazine!) The tale set the stage for a very different novel a few years later about events set a couple decades in the future. But both takes on The Pumpkin Man were inspired by those spooky stories that haunt your childhood dreams.

The novel owes its setting to my continuing love affair with the Northern California coast. I was lucky enough to spend quite a few days there right at the start of writing it, thanks to a couple business trips I took to San Francisco. Some of the landscape behind The Pumpkin Man comes from a late 2009 drive I took up to Jenner and a brief stay at the Rio Villa Beach Resort in nearby Guerneville.

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