Get Wicked with Entangled Blog Hop -- Halloween Excerpt

Happy Fall, Y'all!

This is my favorite time of year—sweater weather and pumpkin spice everything! Halloween is maybe my favorite holiday. I love the costumes, candy, warm cider, and magic of changing seasons. Decorating for Halloween is serious business around my house! 

The only thing I don't love about the holiday is the possibility for malicious mischief. I'm a fan on innocent shenanigans, but I hate the sight of smashed pumpkins and toilet paper on tree limbs. And I really hate the idea of stink bombs, which made writing a Halloween scene for Charlie and his buddies especially difficult for me.

I figured though that a kid like Charlie would have long ago experimented with the chemistry involved in making a stink bomb. So when he needed to raise a little hell on Halloween night to distract a certain English teacher, I knew without a doubt this is what he'd do.

Excerpt from Love and Other Unknown Variables 

(Halloween edition!) 

We’re taking James’s two littlest sisters trick-or-treating as adorable decoys, so we meet at his house at dusk Sunday night. They run around the kitchen in their costumes. Ella is a black cat. Her curly hair is tied in two poufs on top of her head and Greta has drawn a cat nose and whiskers on her using eyeliner. Melody is a witch with a tall pointy hat that flops at the tip since it got crushed when the girls were wrestling.

Greta is stress eating Mrs. Thomas’s Halloween candy. James grabs the Tootsie Roll she’s just unwrapped and jams it in his mouth. “Look, Gret,” he says. “We aren’t going to do any permanent damage to Finch’s house. We’re just going to make it smell like a jock’s junk.” He’s trying to convince himself as much as her. We’re all feeling jittery.

“And we’ve got the cover of Halloween, a night known for hell-raising,” I say as I press a mostly-frozen steak to the bridge of my nose. It still throbs like a distant drum beat. The steak is Greta’s idea—a diversion for the hellhound. I’m supposed to lob it and run, but it feels awfully good pressed against my face.

Ella runs up to James and hands him his zombie mask. “Let’s go. Can’t we go, Jamie?” she whines, rubbing her hand across her nose and smearing the paint of her tiny black cat nose.

James looks at Greta and me. I tug on Becca’s hat. I’m ready. Greta grabs another candy bar.

“Okay, kiddos.” James pulls his mask on. “Let’s trick-or-treat.”

The little girls burst into squeals and run for the front door. They sprint from house to house, eating most of the candy before it even sees the inside of their buckets.

By the time we reach Ms. Finch’s street, the girls are tired, and Ella is feeling sick to her stomach. We’re two doors from Ms. Finch’s house when Ella begins to cry.

“Jamie, I want to go home,” she whimpers. “I’m done trick-or- treating.”

Greta and I exchange wide-eyed glances. James bends down on one knee and pats Ella’s shoulder. 
“We’re almost done, El. Just a few more?” Her whimpering ceases when he hands her another piece of candy.

Anything for candy.

We steer them straight to Ms. Finch’s front walk. James pulls on his mask and Greta and I disappear around the side yard. Our plan is to infiltrate the house via the doggie door. We peek into the backyard.

No sign of the dog. Still, I pull the steak out of the plastic baggie.

Greta takes it from me whispering, “We both know I’ve got better aim.”

She’s right.

She hands me the stink bomb, in a small, lidded box we nicked from the recycling bin outside Charlotte’s and Becca’s school this afternoon. The school’s name is on an address label on the lid. I’m hoping this will make it seem more like it’s one of the morons at Sandstone behind this. It’s a thin veil, but I’ve got a lot riding on it.

A tremor runs through my hands, making the box shake. Screw Dr. Whiting getting pissed. Ms. Finch will know it’s me, and she’ll either bury me in poetry or just go ahead and fail me. Either way, I’m a dead man. Well, not dead dead. What lit term is that again? The exaggeration one? I’m all about the exaggeration one.

“We don’t have to do this,” Greta says, noticing my wobbly hands.

The night is cool and damp, so our breath puffs around us, making our own atmosphere—physical evidence that we are alive. 

“Yes,” I say, my hands calm, my jaw tense. “I do.” I don’t understand this war between sisters, but I’ve chosen my side.

I nod at Greta, and we take off running toward the lit back door. I skid to a halt in front of it and open the box. My pulse thrums in my ears.

I unscrew the lid on the jar, my eyes watering instantly. The smell is so potent Greta gags behind me. I try to shove the lid on the box, but my blurry vision makes it difficult.

“Holy stink, Batman,” I mutter.


Fatal mistake.


The stench drifts into my mouth so I can taste its foulness. Greta is backing away from me, looking pale.
I finally manage the lid and am about to shove the thing in the doggie door, when a huge gray head pokes out from inside the house, nose aquiver.

The beast eyes me. I can hear a faint growl in its throat.

“Greta,” I choke. The fumes are making me lightheaded. “The meat. Throw the meat.”

Greta’s good arm does us no good when she’s terrified. She drops the steak and covers her eyes with her hands. Peeking between fingers, she hisses, “Run, Chuck. Leave it and run.”

I smile at the dog. The dog stares at me like I’m the last piece of kibble on earth. Its low growl shifts to a whimper as its left ear twists backward, listening to something I can’t hear inside the house.

“Nice doggie?” I say. Effective because the nice doggie pulls its head back in the door and disappears. I look at Greta and shrug before lifting the flap to peek inside. I can see Ms. Finch’s clean and empty kitchen.

Without further hesitation, I shove the putrid box through the door and I am withdrawing my head when I hear Ms. Finch’s voice coming down the hallway.

“Let me get you a towel. Oh, you poor thing,” she says.


I freeze.


James’s voice, full of panic calls, “She’s fine. Really. We’ve got to go.”

“She’s not fine. She’s covered in vomit.”


One of James’s sisters has vomited on Ms. Finch’s front porch and I’ve just shoved a stink bomb in her back door.

Half of me thinks, Yesssss!


The other half thinks, GET OUT, FOOL. But it’s like I’m watching bad reality TV. I can’t turn away until I know if the country bumpkin with questionable intelligence will shoot himself in the foot.

Ms. Finch gasps and clasps her hands over her mouth and nose as she steps into her kitchen. “The hell?” she gasps behind her hands. Luna starts to howl.

Greta decides now is the time to put her good arm to use. She snatches my collar and yanks me up, dragging me through the yard and along the greenway, coming out to the street at the end of the block.

Panting, she asks, “Did she see you?”


“No.”


Greta’s body thaws with relief, but mine stays taut, each muscle pulled tight with the lie I’ve just told. 

Did Ms. Finch see me?

Yes. 

Want to read more? Get your copy of Love and Other Unknown Variables today to enjoy it for Halloween!

Charlie Hanson has a clear vision of his future. A senior at Brighton School of Mathematics and Science, he knows he’ll graduate, go to MIT, and inevitably discover solutions to the universe’s greatest unanswered questions. He’s that smart. But Charlie’s future blurs the moment he reaches out to touch the tattoo on a beautiful girl’s neck.

The future has never seemed very kind to Charlotte Finch, so she’s counting on the present. She’s not impressed by the strange boy at the donut shop—until she learns he’s a student at Brighton where her sister has just taken a job as the English teacher. With her encouragement, Charlie orchestrates the most effective prank campaign in Brighton history. But, in doing so, he puts his own future in jeopardy.

By the time he learns she’s ill—and that the pranks were a way to distract Ms. Finch from Charlotte’s illness—Charlotte’s gravitational pull is too great to overcome. Soon he must choose between the familiar formulas he’s always relied on or the girl he’s falling for (at far more than 32 feet per second squared).

As an All Hallow's Read gift to you, I'm running a Rafflecopter giveaway from today until Thursday, October 30th, 11:59pm. On Friday, a winner will be chosen to receive Maggie Steifvater's The Raven Boys for Kindle, which is a perfect Halloween read if you ask me!

Blurb (from Amazon): 

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue never sees them--until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her.

His name is Gansey, a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She doesn't believe in true love, and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.

Enter to win here!
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Want more prizes? Visit the other Get Wicked blogs participating in this hop!