Halloween by Julie Mulhern

 I love Halloween.

Truly, I love it.

It is the perfect holiday. No big meal to fix or digest. Instead, a pot of chili simmers on the stove. Gifts? Bags of bite-sized candy bars, opened and shared with all comers. Stress? Practically non-existent.

When my children were little, a groups of dads would escort our crew of princesses, goblins and Jedi knights around the neighborhood. The moms stayed home to pass out candy. The reality? We drank wine.

Show me another holiday where men do the lion’s share of the work.

As I said, the perfect holiday.

Add to that the inexplicable fact that my children don’t like Snickers. I do. When they emptied their pillow cases I was waiting. While they traded for Milky Ways and Kit Kats, I collected Snickers.

Now that they’ve outgrown trick or treating, I buy my own. Don’t bother asking, I’m not sharing.

This year, there’s a Halloween mystery rattling around my brain. I’m thinking about a haunted house (the kind with fake zombies, scary people with chain saws, and lines of screaming teens), an all too real corpse, and an unfortunate amateur sleuth who has an uncanny knack for finding bodies. There will also be Snickers bars. I am going to start writing it as soon I complete the draft for my third Country Club Murders mystery.

So, this Halloween, I wish you pots of chili, happy children, plenty of wine, and lots of Snickers bars. If you don’t like Snickers, you know who’ll take them.

Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders. She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.