However you want to say and/or spell it—Halloween, Hallowe'en, All Hallows Eve, Candy Corn's Time to Shine—October 31 is indisputably the candy industry's spookiest time of year. That in mind, we asked a few Goose Lane authors past and present, for some personal, highly suggestive lists of Halloween recommendations, avoidances, and/or reminiscences. We make no guarantees, save one: if you don't read the whole of each list, something bad will happen to someone, somewhere, at sometime.

Arley McNeney is the author of Post and The Time We All Went Marching. She also teams up with a co-author to write the Fraser Springs romance novel series (as Laine Ferndale). Book 1 of that series, The Scandalous Mrs. Wilson, is available now. Book 2, The Infamous Miss Ilsa, is due out in December.

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TOP 10 REASONS WHY CANDY CORN IS THE GREATEST HALLOWEEN CANDY OF ALL TIME

It’s Halloween, the ultimate holiday for those of us whose candy palate is less ‘dark chocolate and sea salt’ and more ‘corn syrup and regret.’ In that spirit, I set out to taste test the best limited-edition Halloween candies: those sweets that are so delicious/terrible that they can only be served in fun-size on one day of the year.

Unfortunately, the new Halloween marketing trend is apparently to just rename existing candies: Smarties become Scaries, Coffee Crisp becomes Coffin Crisp, etc. Gone are the Halloween Kisses (those tooth-breaking molasses-y crimes against candy), the wax fangs with sugar “blood” inside, and most disappointingly of all, the candy corn.

True, candy corn’s ghost haunts other Halloween products like candy corn-flavoured Peeps, (go back to Easter, Peeps. No one wants you), but the real thing was nowhere to be found.

I’m not sure if the six stores I visited speak to a larger trend, but just in case, I refuse to let candy corn go gentle into that good night. Here, then, is my ultimate list of why candy corn is the greatest Halloween candy of all time.

10) Candy corn can be used as festive décor for your Thanksgiving or Halloween table. Make a classy and delicious tablescape worthy of Sandra Lee. 

9) Candy corn is a little bit salty, meaning it pairs well with pretzels, peanut butter, chocolate, etc. Other candies have to be eaten alone (see: that time some monster mixed Skittles with M&Ms in the staff candy bowl at work), but candy corn is a friend to all other Halloween treats. Add it to a candy bowl or trail mix and enjoy.

8) According to wine experts, candy corn pairs well with Riesling. You think you’re “beasting off the Riesling” now, Jay-Z? Wait until you add the sugar high of a nice handful of candy corn.

7) According to the Jelly Belly Company, the recipe for candy corn has changed very little since it was invented in 1898. You have to give it props for being that old and not being originally made of heroin, opium or arsenic. Can you say the same, Coca Cola?

6) You can put candy corn over your own teeth to make vampire teeth. Save the environment with an edible Halloween costume. (Note: dentists do not recommend this).

5) Candy corn is fat free, so it’s basically health food.

4) If you go deep enough into the Internet, you will find people making the argument that candy corn is a metaphor for the Holy Trinity. This is a far superior candy metaphor than that awful, xenophobic poison Skittles one.

3) In an era where you can now get Cadbury crème eggs year-round, it is refreshing to have one thing in life that is genuinely seasonal. There’s nothing like the bittersweet feeling of buying 50% off candy corn on November 1^st. Nothing gold can stay, you whisper to yourself among the barren seasonal aisle of your grocery store.

2) People love to hate on candy corn, and it’s fun to shamelessly embrace things that people snark about. (See also: pumpkin spice, vocal fry, romance novels).

1) Candy corn is a literal zombie. What says Halloween more perfectly than taking a fresh ear of corn, using a multi-step industrial enzyme process to turn it into corn syrup, then adding dye and petrochemicals to transform it back into a grotesque mockery of itself?

Early on Wednesday morning, the Canada Council for the Arts released the lists of finalists for the Governor General’s Awards.  Two exceptional novels by first-time authors, Michael Kaan’s The Water Beetles and Jocelyn Parr’s Uncertain Weights and Measures, appear on the shortlist for the highly contested Award for Fiction. Both are published by Goose Lane Editions. 

First published in April 2017, Michael Kaan’s The Water Beetles is “a literary high wire act” (Toronto Star)  set in China following the Japanese invasion. Loosely based on the diaries and stories of the author’s father, this mesmerizing tale vividly captures the horror of war through the eyes of a child with unsettling and unerring grace. The Georgia Straight has described it as “a work of lasting power.”

Uncertain Weights and Measures, first published in September 2017, takes place in the heady days of post-Revolution Russia. Montreal writer Jocelyn Parr vividly captures the atmosphere of 1920s Moscow and the frisson of real-life events while also spinning a captivating tale of a love torn apart by ideology and high-stakes politics in this deftly written novel. Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels marvelled at Parr’s characters that “seem to move under the surface of the page—breathing, changing, flawed, and resilient.”

Both novels were acquired and edited by Goose Lane’s fiction editor Bethany Gibson.  

Kaan and Parr will be reading from their novels at a special evening devoted to the finalists for the Governor General’s Award of Fiction on Monday, October 23, at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto during the International Festival of Authors.  Other writers whose books also appear on the shortlist for the fiction award include Alison MacLeod, author of  All the Beloved Ghosts (Penguin Canada), Kathleen Winter, author of Lost in September (Knopf Canada), and Joel Thomas Hynes, author of We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night (HarperCollins Canada).

The winners of the Governor General’s Awards will be announced in Ottawa on November 1. The awards will be presented at a ceremony at Rideau Hall, the residence of the Governor General, on November 29.

I watch quite a bit of junk television, but I'm never tempted by the sort of book people call "a beach read." When I'm working hard at my own writing, especially, I am really picky. Maybe I'm afraid banal sentences are contagious.

In June I spent a few weeks in Ecuador, where my new novel is set. I came home with my head swimming, and now I'm trying hard to hammer out the last 100 pages of my book. So I'm not reading a lot except for memoirs and other books that pertain to my story.