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I post on Monday with an occasional random blog thrown in for good measure. I do my best to answer all comments via email and visit around on the days I post.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

What Was Your Childhood Monster Blogfest






I'm participating in Christina Rains'  blogfest, What Was Your Childhood Monster Blogfest, and promoting her new book FEARLESS which was released on Tuesday the 7th. It is her first release. Go check it all out!


Fearless




About Fearless:

Abby White was seven years old when she killed the monster under her bed. Now she slays creatures spawned by the imaginations of children, and the number of these nightmares are on the rise. Neither she nor her guide - a stuffed hippo named Tawa - know why. With a gorgeous fae fighting at her side, she must avoid distraction and find a way to become truly fearless. 

The object of Christina's blogfest is simple, to tell  about a childhood monster. Want to know what was under my bed at night? Then, read on.

Some of you may be aware that for several years while on St. John we lived in a shack. And when I say shack, I mean shack. It was a four-room wooden house, with shingles on the walls and a tin roof that leaked. Part of the floor was concrete, another part was wooden. The wooded floor had rot holes in it I was small enough to fall through. Some of the walls grew pretty yellow mushrooms right around Christmas time. We had no electricity and no running water. We took baths outside and had a privy.

This is the best picture I have of the home we affectionately called The Castle.
I loved being at Gifft Hill. In fact it was, for my whole family, our favorite place. However... there was one thing about living in The Castle that held an element of fear for me, a seven year old, and it wasn't the family of cute mice living under our sideboard in the living room.

It was rats.

My sister and I slept in the room with the wooden floor that had a hole in it. Beneath the floor it was dirt, as that section of the house was raised up off the ground a good foot. 

I just KNEW rats lived under there. I also knew when I went to bed at night, if I let a hand or foot hang off the edge of the bed that those rats would nibble at my fingers and toes. 

But I had magic on my side. As long as my sheets were tightly tucked in all around me rats couldn't crawl up the side of my bed, nor could my hands and feet dangle over the edge. Wrapped securely in a sheet cocoon I was safe from their nibbling teeth. 

It must have worked because I never had a rat crawl on me while we lived up at Gifft Hill. But, it wasn't until I was well into my teens that I ever allowed my hands or feet to dangle over the edge of bed....

You never now, there might be rats under there, waiting patiently for a succulent finger or toe.

11 comments:

  1. Arrghh- I could drop dead just knowing that rats are in close vicinity. I despise them- I could never get over how Ron has one as a PET in Harry Potter.

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  2. I would've been sleep-deprived as a child knowing rats might get to me!

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  3. Ugh ... we also had rats and snakes and scorpions and every night I'd get into trouble for literally jumping into bed from the chair. I'm surprised that the wooden frame didn't break because yes, there were monsters underneath the bed.

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  4. Eek! Rats would have drove me to sleepless nights too. Thanks for sharing your monster with us and for helping promote my novella.

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  5. First of all- what a fascinating place to live! I bet you have all kinds of stories. I am not afraid of mice- but I am not really a big fan of rats. I can totally understand why you wanted to keep your hands and toes with the sheets. I think it was smart thinking!

    Fearless sounds like an interesting book!
    ~Jess

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  6. A character in my YA novel has a terror of rats

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  7. Well that sounds like a legitimate fear! I once worked with two children who had been living in their mother's "crack den." She had mattresses all over for all her friends to get high with her (reminded me of Trainspotting). The children had no one watching them and came to us initially with rat bites on their little bodies. Horrifying.

    My monster: http://thewarriormuse.blogspot.com/2012/08/childhood-monster-blog-fest.html

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  8. I freak out at the idea of mice. Rats would have driven me completely bonkers!

    Great picture.

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  9. That's one serious fear! I too lived in a shack--not as a child but much older, and only for a few months, but it was much smaller than what you describe, and I remember rats crawling on the beams overhead as we slept--in hammocks, no less. Took me days to be able to sleep even a wink :)

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  10. I guess I was monster-free. Especially compared to REAL rats.

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  11. Yikes! If I knew rats were around, I'd be scared for sure.

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Your Random Thoughts are most welcome!