Ready for more Halloween fun? This month we're featuring KC for the Signature background with his story A Grim Fairytale. Have you read it yet? You can check out my review of his story here. What about his themed desktop background? It's spookily fitting for this time of year! But first, you can't miss this interview where KC shares a little information of the... naughty variety.

What’s your favorite Halloween tradition?

With a name like Grim, Halloween has to be my favorite Holiday! Growing up, Halloween was a big event in our house. Our entire neighborhood was always decked out with lots of creepy crawly things and my family had a huge costume party that everyone came to. It was THE party of the year! If you missed it, you’d hear about it for weeks.

Ever been on the wrong side of an egging? The right side?
I plead the Fifth! LOL

Oh yeah, as a kid we did it all. Egging houses, toilet papering trees, ding-dong-ditch, flaming bags of poop….you name it, we did it and now that I have a teenager I’m getting payback for all my years as a hellion. We’ve only had our house egged once (knock-on-wood) but we live really far out in the country so it’s a lot harder to pull those pranks than when I was a kid growing up in the city.

Do you have a favorite ghost, ghoul, or gruesome creature? Or do you prefer cuddly creatures?
There’s enough time to be cute and cuddly the rest of the year. Halloween is for ghouls!! The scarier the better. I love special effects make-up. The entire month of October I work at a local Haunted House called Shocktober and I’ve gotten really good at torn flesh, bloody gashes, and faces being ripped off. It’s so much fun scaring people.

What inspired you to write the story A Grim Fairytale?
This story was written as a birthday gift for a very dear friend of mine. He loved it ((and I saved money on wrapping paper! )) I’ve always wanted to write my own twisted fairytale and this story was so much fun to create. I tried to keep in the style of the Brothers Grimm, but of course with my own Grim flair.

Do you have a favorite scene or static image from the plot?
There are so many scenes I like, but my favorite is when Magda kills the piglet and Marcus brings it back to life. Even at a young age, it’s clear that Marcus is a pure soul and his mother can’t tarnish who he really is inside, no matter how much she tries.

Magda means ‘maiden’ and Marcus is ‘dedicated to Mars’, the Roman god of fertility. Given how Marcus was conceived, were those name chosen as a subtle tweak of the characters for the storyline?
I always put way too much thought into character development. Even if it’s a short story and I’m just scratching the surface on paper, I always have a complete backstory, even if only for myself. Not only do the names need to fit the character, I want it to feel like they have morphed into the personification of who they were made to be.

Your story brings into a question of the duality of good and evil—how does each come into being and do they exist only with or without each other? How do you view that aspect of the A Grim Fairytale?
I’m a big believer of the duality of good and evil, yin and yang, light and dark. You can’t have one without the other. My favorite lines from the story: “Everyone knows the tales of All Hallows Eve. On this night, the boundary between our world and the spirit world thins. For one night alone, demons can pass through to our realm. Yet as dark and terrifying as this night might be, out of the deepest darkest blackness comes the purest light.”
Magda’s dark heart is balanced by Marcus’s wholesomeness.

Do you have any other holiday-themed stories you’d like to mention, maybe ones that go beyond the spooky season?
Yes! I have a Christmas story floating around out there called, “Mistletoe and Handgrenades.” It’s a flash fiction story about what happens after your life explodes and you now have to pick-up the pieces. It is a happy holiday treat. Check it out.