This month, my favorite short story was "Dear Ms. Moon" by Liz Argall. It's a cute story about a young woman who's just trying to look out for her brother. The ending made me laugh so hard, but other parts did, too.

I only finished one non-fiction book this month, Become a Successful Indie Author: Work Toward Your Writing Dream by Craig Martelle. Craig is one of the powerhouse indie authors behind the 20Booksto50K paradigm, originally coined by Michael Anderle. It's a useful book in many ways, though to be quite honest, most of the information he shares is already online, if you're willing to chase it down. Also, the content isn't as organized as I would've expected; it reads almost like a stream-of-consciousness narrative, which some readers may find less than useful. Still, Become a Successful Indie Author contains lots of interesting tidbits.

Industrial Magic is the fourth installment in Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld Series. I really love the series for a lot of reasons, not least of which because they're easy reads (as in, well-written).

Paige Winterbourne, the narrator, and her growing, oddball family run into a lot of difficulties in Industrial Magic, sometimes too many. At one point, the story dragged a little (there were just too many obstacles in the way), but overall, it's a fun, entertaining read.

I finished watching Bitten (the TV series based on Armstrong's Otherworld) not long after finishing Industrial Magic. It ended oddly, and while I was never overly fond of the actress playing Elena, I would definitely recommend the TV series to anyone who enjoys the books.

First Grave on the Right, the first book in the Charley Davidson Series by Darynda Jones, started strong with clever dialogue and a smart protagonist. Charley is a PI who can see and interact with ghosts. Pretty cool, huh?

Unfortunately, the coolness fades as the story progresses and is nearly lost to the mid-book doldrums, along with the cleverness, which becomes sheer snark. Clever, I enjoy; snark, not so much. The story became muddled after the midpoint and ended on a confused whimper. I'm not sure if I'll continue the series, though I would recommend that readers give this one a fair shake rather than relying solely on my opinion.

First Grave on the Right temporarily ended my Urban Fantasy reading streak. I'm sure I'll swing back around to it at some point in the near future.

I was a huge fan of the TV series Haven when it first came out, so when I stumbled across The Colorado Kid by Stephen King in my local library a few weeks ago, I just had to read it.

The Colorado Kid is part of the Hard Case Crime Series published by Simon & Schuster, but while the story revolves around a mysterious death (a murder?), the crime itself, if there ever was one, is never solved.

That put a lot of readers on edge. After all, the whole point of a murder mystery is to figure out whodunnit in the end.

But the beauty here isn't the murder, but the characters involved in explaining the mystery to readers, Dave Bowie and Vince Teague, the only overlapping characters between the book and the TV series (other than the Colorado Kid himself).

For my part, I didn't mind the lack of a resolution, probably because I do enjoy Haven so much.

Along about mid-month, I transitioned into Horror (ish) beginning with A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.

Now, the reason I added that "ish" in there is because while A Dirty Job definitely belongs in the Dark Fantasy side of Horror, it's also quite funny. I'm a huge fan of Horror Comedy (especially Zombie Comedy), so this one was a natural for me. While there were no zombies in A Dirty Job, there were plenty of grim reapers and lots of other interesting if dysfunctional characters. The story is twisty and humorous enough that I had a hard time putting it down long enough to sleep or work (though I did take showers; let's not get crazy here).

I loved A Dirty Job so much, in fact, that I went back to my local library and picked up another Christopher Moore story as soon as I'd finished this one.

The Stupidest Angel, also by Christopher Moore, is another irreverent Horror Comedy, this one set at Christmas time. A young boy sees "Santa" being killed (it was an accident) and wishes with all his might that God would bring Santa back so there'll be a Christmas. His wish brings down one of God's archangels, who's looking to redeem himself, and hilarity ensues in a most unexpected fashion.

Now, I don't want to give anything away, so I'll not tell you exactly why I was so delighted with this story (Hint: It involves monsters.), but I loved the awesomely quirky characters and the way the story played out. This is a must-read during the holidays, though I probably wouldn't gift or recommend it to anyone lacking a flexible sense of humor.

I rounded October's fiction out with Horns by Joe Hill. I had never read anything by Hill before, but his books are recommended so heavily in the Horror Facebook book club I belong to that I finally broke down and borrowed one from the library.

Horns is another twisty story and, like many of my own stories, takes its sweet time getting where it needs to go. This is both good and bad, good because it provides a very real sense of the characters being portrayed, and bad because Hill occasionally falls into the same sort of rambling his father does.

That would be Stephen King, if you're unfamiliar with the familial connection and have never seen a picture of Hill, who favors his father.

The plot is so twisty, it's really hard to summarize without giving the entire thing away, but my takeaway is this: What wouldn't you do for love?

There. That's nice and vague, isn't it?

Horns is most definitely a Dark Fantasy. Though not scary (to me anyway), it's definitely not for the faint of heart. That isn't a trigger warning, just a note between friends. Hill has been placed on my list of must-read authors. His book NOS4A2 is supposed to be even better, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

I'm almost finished reading Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by Philip Athans. When I dropped Horns, etc. off at the library, I picked up a small stack of Juvenile and Young Adult Dark Fantasy and Horror, including Coraline by Neil Gaiman, which I'm reading now.

That's it for this month. Next month, I hope to resume the strip of books held in my personal library on my to-be-read shelf.