Goldilox and the Three Scares Event and Giveaway: What Scares Us?

Welcome!

Here at Goldilox and the Three Weres we LOVE Halloween! So we wrangled up some willing authors and put together some fun posts and giveaways for you all! 

Our theme for the event this year is What Scares You? 

Check back every weekday between October 20th and October 31st to see which authors are visiting and the awesomeness they are each giving away!

Today's Post is Brought To You By:

Goldilox, Gretl, and Rose Red

Soooooo, what scares Gretl?

As a child, I had nightmares about escalators. As soon as I stepped on, they would accelerate to what my ten-year-old self would surely call a hundred miles an hour. They would twist and turn into hills and drops and loop-de-loops as though they were roller coasters. And even though there were no cars to sit in or handles to hold, I never fell off, but was trapped on the rampaging escalator until I woke up.

In real life I would always hesitate before I stepped on to the escalator, as though I were in a game of Frogger and would die if I didn’t time it just right. I don’t think I ever actually expected those steps to whisk me away, but I never really trusted them.

In college, I started working in a mall and taking the escalators several times a day. Eventually I learned to board them without looking like I was playing the world’s strangest game of Double Dutch. I got over the fear, more or less through immersion therapy, and haven’t had the dreams in years. 

But over the course of my many years in retail, I heard all the horror stories. Though maybe some of them are more like urban legends. Little boys who got their shoelaces caught between the steps and wound up with severed fingers. I even witnessed a few falls down the escalator. I learned that it’s really hard to get all the blood out from between those little grooves. And I’ve decided maybe it wasn’t such an unreasonable fear after all.

Soooooo, what scares Goldilox?

I have a lot of silly stupid fears. But the one we shall discuss today is the most terrifying and horrific of them all.

       Cockroaches: Ewwwwwwww. I have seen a lot of authors during this event discuss their fear and hatred of spiders. But, for me, its all about the roaches. They are disgusting looking...and SO FAST!!! A friend's mom told us a story when I was little about waking up with a palmetto bug in her mouth one morning. IN HER EVER-LOVING MOUTH! For those of you who don't live in an area, like Florida, with every damn kind of roach under the sun, a palmetto bug is one type of cockroach and its the big one that flies. Can you imagine anything more horrible than waking up with that in your mouth!?!? 

       And then, several years ago when I first started teaching, a 'Bug Man' came to do a presentation at the school and picked me out of the crowd to hold a mystery creature. Being strong for my students, I went up to the front of the room the presentation was in and held my hands out in front of me as instructed. Which is when the man, whom was henceforth known as The Devil, placed two Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches in my hands. They were real, they were huge, and they really did HISS at a level I could clearly hear! They crawled UP AND DOWN MY HANDS AND ARMS and hissed the whole time! If I hadn't been terrified of roaches before, that pretty much solidified my terror as well as traumatized me. 

Soooooo, what scares Rose Red?

Do you remember that part in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones is looking into the snake room? Do you remember what he says?

My sentiment exactly. I hate snakes! They creep me the heck out! I had an incident in college that made my fear of snakes ten times worse than what it was.

I went to university in the west so we had several biology professors who studied rattlesnakes. They would go out into the mountains surrounding the campus, trap the snakes, and would bring them back to study in what everyone referred to as the “Rattlesnake Room”. This room was home to about fifteen rattlesnakes living in their little glass aquariums. That room was nightmare inducing!

I worked for the campus' inventory division and my job required me to work with each department on campus to keep track of all of their computers and expensive equipment. This involved me having to go through all of their offices, closets, and storage rooms to scan all of the inventory bar codes. One day I was working with the biology department scanning all of the equipment and the last room left was the one with all of these snakes. It happened to be weigh in day for the snakes so they were taking them out of their tanks.

I was a bit nervous about the whole thing but they assured me that it was safe to be in there while they were handling the snakes. They were using snake-handling tongs to move them from their tanks to this giant metal tub. Well, the tongs broke midway between the tank and the tub. The result was one pissed off rattlesnake having free rein of the room because they didn't have a spare set of tongs to pick it back up. They quickly locked down the room so the snake wouldn't escape to terrorize the unsuspecting students down the hall. But when they locked the room down, they also locked us in there with the dratted thing. 

It was one of the worst days of my life. I spent three hours on top of a table watching a mad rattlesnake slither angrily around the room while we waited for animal control to come catch it. After they caught the snake, it took twenty minutes for one of my friends who worked in the bio building to talk me off the table. That incident has scarred me for life. I can't even walk through the snake exhibits in the reptile houses at zoos without becoming a nervous wreck. *shudders*

For our giveaways we have several prize packs that you can win! All winners for this giveaway will need to live in the US and be 13 or older.

All giveaways for Goldilox and the Three Scares will end on November 7th at 11:59pm.

Prize packs:

• #1 - 1 signed copy of any book in Jenn Bennett's Arcadia Bell series OR her Roaring Twenties series PLUS a $10 e-gift card to Bath and Body Works to buy the Fall scent of your choice!

 OR 

• #2 - 1 copy of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Tucholke AND 1 copy of Half Bad by Sally Green!

 

• #3 - 1 ebook copy of Against the Dawn by Amanda Bonilla PLUS a skull themed swag pack including a tote and candle!

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