Mary Tiwanak can thank son Mark for this year’s winning entry in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Halloween Fiction Contest and the $200 first prize.
The 43-year-old National Guardsman came up with the major plot points that ended up in his mother’s winning yarn, "The Good Soldier," last year but never put the spooky tale down on paper. Like the main character in his mother’s ghost story, he works for the National Guard at Kalaeloa and lives in Kalama Valley. (He also used to drive a Toyota Corolla.)
When this year’s contest rolled around, Tiwanak, 66, of Pearlridge, resurrected the story of a weary commuter in uniform who doesn’t know he’s dead. "I told my son I’m going to do it and that my story would have a little different flavor."
Tiwanak, a real estate appraiser and former teacher, won a 1988 Honolulu Star-Bulletin Halloween fiction contest in which readers were asked to figure out an ending to a story titled "The Dog Ghost," by the late Glen Grant, a historian and author who specialized in local ghost lore.
"I always dreamed of being a writer but found out I’m actually very lazy, and it’s something that requires a lot of time," said Tiwanak, who was in San Francisco when notified she had won the latest contest.
True to her penchant for the mystery genre, Tiwanak sent a photo of herself outside John’s Grill on Ellis Street, around the corner from thePowell and Market cable car stop. She said in an email she always goes there when visiting the city, "due to my worship of Dashiell Hammett (author of "The Maltese Falcon" and her favorite, "The Dain Curse"), who liked to eat at John’s.
"Any lover ofstories and food cansit at Hammett’s tableand even eat his meal of lamb chop and sliced tomato as an homage."
"The Good Soldier" was one of 91 entries in the 2013 Halloween Fiction Contest. Star-Advertiser editors narrowed the field to eight finalists and handed them to contest judge Lee Cataluna, an award-winning playwright, novelist and former newspaper columnist.
"I like that we got to know the protagonist a bit, that the emphasis was on character before plot and that the plot actually grew out of the character," Cataluna said of the winning entry.
The second-place winner, "The Mermaid," was submitted by Barbara Walsh, 39, of the Salt Lake-Moanalua area, who will receive a $100 prize.
Said Cataluna of Walsh’s story, "It’s just so different and original.The description of the smile was nicely creepy."
Walsh, a book designer, considers writing a hobby and said she primarily is a fan of sci-fi and fantasy but also enjoys the horror genre.
"As far as the inspiration for the story goes, I used to go to Chinatown with my mom a lot when I was younger, so I’ve walked by the river in the daytime, which has always stuck out in my memory," she said in an email. "For some reason I just started thinking about it again after I saw the announcement for the contest, and then I started to wonder what it might be like to be in there late at night when it was raining hard enough to flood the island … only with a supernatural creature thrown into the mix."
"They March," an entry based on the legend of the ancient night marchers, by Donald Carreira Ching, last year’s Halloween Fiction Contest winner, was a close third.
"A nice take on a familiar story," Cataluna said. "I liked the way the author slowed down the moment, describing in rich detail something that would have happened in just a few moments."
Read Ching’s story online at staradvertiser.com.
The other finalists are Gloria Kishi for "The Stench at Kipapa Gulch," 10-year-old Jennifer Kimura for "The Cursed School," R. Sojot for "The Visit," Michael O’Keefe for "I Ain’t Scared of No Ghost" and Bea Ganzagan’s untitled story.
The broad range of topics and writers who entered the contest demonstrated the appeal of spooky stories in Hawaii. The entries included tales of a loving ghost who visits her spouse in Nuuanu every Halloween night, a tipsy partygoer who catches a cab ride to hell, a school field trip to a cemetery, a spirited prankster on TheBus, a long-distance fortuneteller, a restless corpse, killer weed of the smokable variety, the haunting of the Hawaii State Library, a zombie werewolf and "noppera-bo," a faceless Japanese ghost.
Terrifying tales were submitted by a dozen students in Gay Ching’s AP English class at Pearl City High School, and 7-year-old Zane Mau, the youngest entrant, offered a gruesome account of a zombie attack.
For more frights, check the Star-Advertiser and HonoluluPulse.com on Oct. 31, when the winner of our Halloween Video Contest will be announced.
