I love how literary spooky season gets. I’ve already been to a theater-and-cocktails retelling of Poe stories (end of summer but close enough), and over the weekend was a walk-through retelling of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Groups of people stumbled through dark backstreets and across church lawns to hear actors portraying Brom Bones, Katrina Van Tassel, and Ichabod Crane tell us their part of the story and solve the mystery of what happened to old Ichabod once and for all. Also: the Headless Horseman on an actual horse! Not a rearing horse, though. Too many cars in the parking lot.

I love this story. It’s one of America’s first ghost stories, even if it was probably less of a ghost and more a really good prank on Brom’s part. Chester is no Sleepy Hollow, but it’s got a cute downtown with some rambling old buildings so it made a good stand-in. The actors were all fun, especially Brom—who jump-scared us by appearing out of the darkness—and the Horseman was polite enough to pose for photos afterward. Such a nice evil headless specter. Alas, I did not get to pet the spectral horse.

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This time of year is dark for other reasons. Just before the third anniversary of Oct. 7 this week comes this report on the state of Jewish inclusion in the arts. It’s a difficult read. Please read it.

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I have officially completed the first draft of my fantasy novel, but I’m not celebrating since I’m massively rewriting the thing as I type it in. The first draft was more of a suggestion, apparently. I’m keeping the characters, the premise and the major plot points, and everything else is subject to change. A new character just popped up out of nowhere and I’m liking her a lot. I’m hoping to have this more or less together in the next few months, at which point I can fine-tune with further revisions per my critique group. After that, I’ll look at querying.

I’ve also sent a few new short stories into the ether to join the ones already circulating. One has been shortlisted and we’ll see what happens with that. Another one got yet another rejection today, in a long string of them, and I will be boomeranging it back out shortly. My stories must earn their keep.