LindaAnn LoSchiavo's "Always Haunted: Hallowe'en Poems"

Holiday-themed publications are common around Christmas, but Halloween-themed ones tend to be lacking. If you’ve been dreaming of the perfect Halloween collection of poems, drawings, and stories, LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s latest release is for you and the Halloween fan in your life. I had the pleasure of talking with the author to get more insight on this awesome collection.

Rebecca: A Halloween collection is not the usual collection of works, is it?

LindaAnn:  Actually, Hallowe'en poetry and story anthologies are popular and have been  compiled and published every year by Penguin, McFarland & Company, and other publishers. These volumes are usually substantial --  more than 250 pages.  Amazon and Barnes & Noble online sell these as well as bookshops.  

Rebecca: I had no idea! I wish I had know that earlier! Thanks for that tip So what sparked the idea for your "Always Haunted: Hallowe'en Poems" then? Inspiration from those volumes?

LindaAnn: My illustrated collection, Always Haunted, has an intriguing origin story. As an October Scorpio, I've always loved Hallowe'en and everything about the "spooky season." However, a few years ago, I started writing poems and sonnets on cold cases, hoping to raise awareness about unsolved murders.   EX:  My "Lady of the Dunes" sonnet focused on an unidentified corpse found on July 26, 1974, in the Race Point Dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts; the victim has finally been identified as Ruth Marie Terry, age 37, who was murdered by her husband.  My sonnet gets no credit for solving the case.  But if, by any chance, my sonnet kept people talking and posting about her brutal 1974 murder, then . . .  mission accomplished.

       My previous cold case poetry inspired me to merge these two themes: Hallowe'en tropes and injustice.
       As you probably noticed in my NYC-based poem "The Hallowe'en Homicides on October 31, 1981,"  the victims were a male and a female:  Ronald Sisman, 39, and his college coed girlfriend Liz Platzman [1961-1981].  But most of the poems in "Always Haunted" turn on decades long injustices towards women. 

         As Robert Browning explains in "The Ring and the Book"  —
                          “Art,” he states “may tell a truth / Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought.”

Rebecca: Have you been a fan of Halloween since your childhood?   

LindaAnn:  As an October Scorpio, I've always loved Hallowe'en and everything about the "spooky season."  As a child growing up in NYC, I loved the costumes, masks, mystery, traditions, carving a jack-o-lantern, the autumn leaves changing.  And also celebrating my birthday in late October, a beautiful time of year.

Rebecca: Halloween is also one of my favorite times of year, both beautiful and haunting. On that subject, why do you focus on danger, death, and the afterlife in your writing? 

LindaAnn: Naturally, many poets are drawn to death for its universal relevance and emotional depth.  Death and dying  serve as a poignant lens through which poets can explore life's fleeting nature, prompting deep contemplation on mortality and the human experience.

          The twist is:   I grew up with psychic parents who communicated telepathically. 
          My parents, both ordinary run-of-the-mill NYC high school graduates, never thought of telepathic communication nor mind-reading nor ESP as an "extraordinary" ability - - - and certainly not  "exceptional."
          It was expected that any child could communicate silently in this supra-normal fashion.
          Since I inherited these abilities, and since I've been communicating with the living and the dead for a long time, my experiences with the deceased -- and my family members' experiences with ghosts -- have given us somewhat of a different perspective on the "finality" of death. 

                       Nonfiction ghost poems in "Always Haunted"
            Ghost experiences my Uncle Larry had are recounted in "Poltergeists on President Street."
            Ghost experiences my Aunt Frances had, after Uncle Larry died, are recounted in "The Widow's Missing Necklace."  Several of us went to my Aunt's apartment to search for her missing jewelry.  She was distraught, believing that someone had stolen it -- until my dead Uncle had the clasp fixed and casually dropped it off one night.

           My parents [now deceased] were still alive when my ghost uncle resurfaced in his widow's Brooklyn, NY bedroom - - -  and they never thought this ghost encounter to be "extraordinary." 
           My parents were, I guess, not easily impressed by dead people running errands.   (smile)

         Despite my own experiences with the dead, I've only started committing these to paper recently.

         But in the days before cellphones and Wi-Fi, communicating telepathically was a real problem-solver. :)

Rebecca: My favorite piece was the modern-themed vampire piece  "An Ideal Lost in Night-Mists."  Could you share more about the background of the piece?  What inspired it?

LindaAnn:  "An Ideal Lost in Night-Mists," my intricate three-part hybrid, set in a New York City college dormitory, was first published in my Elgin Award nominated book "Vampire Ventures" [Alien Buddha Press, Oct.  2023].  Jessica Dickinson did a long interview with me on why I decided to write an entire collection focused on vampire folklore and here is the link.
* * *    URL:  <https://jessicadickenson.wordpress.com/2024/02/01/author-interview-lindaann-loschiavo/>

              After doing months of research on vampirology, in order to see if there was anything new to add to this niche, I realized, for example, that no one had written a vampire narrative (or poem) told BACKWARDS.  So I envisioned "An Ideal Lost in Night-Mists," as a tour de force.
          I challenged myself to plot a drama in reverse order and create each section in another format and time-frame.
                 Thus my 16-line poem went first -- a dramatic monologue from Annabelle's point-of-view:
                                 Blood’s Kiss  —  November 2nd    nightfall. 

                The prose section went second --  now from Megan's point-of-view:
                            Missing, Classified as Undead —  November 2nd  afternoon
              The dialogue section went third --  now from Count Dracula's and Annabelle's dating app discussion on October 29th,  an important conversation that, obviously, incited the whole episode, right?
                              Dating the Undead  —  October 29th   evening

              At 1,550 words,  "An Ideal Lost in Night-Mists" was the longest piece in "Always Haunted." 
              Thanks for asking me to explain because some book reviewers for "Vampire Ventures" only seemed to notice the modern dating app aspect to it - - - instead of its other nuances such as P.O.V. changes and format variations. 
             In any story told in reverse chronology, the introduction reveals WHAT happened, leading a reader to wonder HOW it happened.  By November 2nd, vampire-Annabelle has transformed into a worldly opportunist --- quite different from the naive college co-ed of three nights before, who had believed Count D was only joking about living in a castle in the Carpathian Mountains and yet who had the supernatural power to be at her window in a flash.

             He replies I must never worry — he can be at my doorstep in a flash.
            Sure. Ha-ha, I type, playing along. Send pics of u with yr castle, I repeat.

Rebecca: Any plans for another Halloween collection? Maybe next year?

LindaAnn: In October 2022 my book "Messengers of the Macabre: Hallowe'en Poems" was released by Audience Askew.  (It's available on Amazon, B&N, etc.)  Yes, I do have plans to write another book dedicated to Hallowe'en.  I'm glad you were left feeling, "I want to read more."  That's thrilling news for any poet. 

Rebecca: Thanks for stopping by “The Writing Cat” to tell us more. Always Haunted will be released in October by Wild Ink Publishing. Be on the lookout for it!