The Scariest Movie I Watched When I was Kid Has Become My Reality!

I was 12 years old. My sister Karen was 10. Our parents had gone out that night, leaving our older sister, Laura, in charge. Which meant we could eat whatever we wanted and stay up past our bedtime watching TV. Pretty much the perfect evening for the 12-year-old me until the movie we were watching, the original 1950’s version of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, scared the living daylights out of me. I remember thinking that would be my worst nightmare: Having an alien being take over my body while I was asleep. (For years afterward, I checked every night under the bed before I went to sleep to make sure an alien pod wasn’t lurking there waiting to become the pod-person me).

The evening took an even scarier turn when we heard the doorbell ring after the movie ended and a stranger’s voice called through the door, “My car broke down. May I use your phone?” We stood mute and frozen, staring at the locked door between us and…God knows what. An ax murderer? An alien in human form?

Flash forward 50 years and I’m now living my worst nightmare. When did the good health I took for granted all my life desert me? When did the body I nurtured with a healthy diet and regular exercise get taken over by an alien being’s? An alien being that apparently was a life-long smoker with a poor diet who never heard of sunblock and who is walking Petrie dish for every bacteria that enters it.

In my sixties I discovered good health is not a given but a gift after a certain age. One that doesn’t necessarily keep on giving, however hard you work it. I won’t bore you with the details and none of my current health woes are life-threatening, thank goodness. I’m also aware it could be way, way worse.

But damn. The days when I woke up feeling great every morning are a thing of the past. I’ve reached the stage where I’m very, very grateful for the days when nothing hurts, aches or causes a flareup of heartburn or makes me cough. Still hoping to get back to the spectacular health I enjoyed in my younger years but these days it seems more of a prayer than a promise.

That said, I’m happy to report my imagination is as active as ever. I’m coming down the home stretch with my current work-in-progress. It’s a bit of a departure from the women’s fiction novels for which I’m known. A novel of romantic suspense, it’s set in the small town of Grantsburg, Wisconsin, that has become my home away from home and where I go twice a year to write in solitude. It’s about a man returning to his hometown, after spending twenty years in prison for a murder he’s innocent of, and falling for the sister of the girl he was convicted of killing. More details to come, but suffice it to say there’s no shortage of drama and hopefully it’ll provide some chills. I don’t yet have a pub date but you’ll be among the first to know when I do.

The original Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, starring Kevin McCarthy still scares the living daylights of me. I’ve watched it multiple times since my first, searing childhood experience with the movie, and it never fails to deliver the goose bumps. Especially the part toward the end where the hero and his girlfriend are desperately trying to stay awake so their bodies don’t get overtaken by the aliens that have invaded their hometown and are preparing to take over planet Earth. I dare you to try to get to sleep after watching the hair-raising climax with the “heavenly” choir from hell!

Now if only I could switch channel son my health. I’d only be one click away from Fixer-Upper with the happy reveal at the end.

P.S. For some chills to thrill the reader, you might want to try Books One and Two of my Cypress Bay mystery series, BONES AND ROSES and SWIMSUIT BODY. No aliens, I promise!