Monsters come in many forms. There's the monstrously misshapen but initially kind creature who is turned into a real monster by humanity's intolerance. There's the beautiful, seductive monster with sinister plans or unnatural and unholy appetites. There are human monsters, man-made monsters, reptilian monsters, alien monsters, demon monsters, dream monsters... There are just a whole heck of a lot of monsters hiding between the pages of a whole heck of a lot of novels out there. And now there's apparently a monster of a hurricane hybrid, Frankenstorm, lumbering toward the east coast. Best thoughts to everyone in its wide, wide path.

So when monster can be defined in so many ways, how do you pick one as a favorite or the most terrifying or the most devious?

The difficulty of the decision makes me doubly proud that the very talented Joylene Nowell Butler, author of Dead Witness and Broken but not Dead, chose Dark Knowledge for her Monstrous Monday selection. Click the Monstrous Monday graphic to go to Joylene's blog to see what she had to say. Then bookmark her blog. It's truly a favorite of mine, even before it honored Dark Knowledge this way.

On another note, yesterday I carved my first jack o'lantern since writing "The Pumpkin Lady." I'm a little nervous, especially with the full moon due to rise tonight and Halloween so close.

So in case I get Pumpkin Ladied this year, please accept my Horror with Heart wishes now that your Halloween is fun, frightful, and safe. For your holiday reading, I remind you that my paranormal thriller, Struck, is in a Goodreads give-a-way that ends on Halloween. A signed copy of my paranormal thriller, Dark Knowledge, can be won by playing trick-and-treat with me as a Horror with Heart Newsletter subscriber.

And one more thing...BOO!