Authors Inspired by October

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“What the light looks like in the pear trees, in October, is a hundred teardrops of gold, the whole orchard weeping.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“ ‘Only today,’ he said, ‘today, in October sun, it’s all gold—sky and tree and water. Everything just before it changes looks to be made of gold.’ ” ― Eudora Welty, The Wide Net

Peace Like a River: A Novel: Enger, Leif: 9780802139252: Amazon.com: Books

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

Small Spaces (Small Spaces Quartet): Arden, Katherine: 9780525515029:  Amazon.com: Books

“You don’t waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets, and there would be weeks of gray rain before it finally decided to snow.” ― Katherine Arden, Small Spaces

Amazon.com: Reclaimed: 9781937053888: Guillory, Sarah: Books

“October had tremendous possibility. The summer’s oppressive heat was a distant memory, and the golden leaves promised a world full of beautiful adventures. They made me believe in miracles.” ― Sarah Guillory, Reclaimed

The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists: Gaiman, Neil, Jones, Kelley,  Dringenberg, Mike: 0001401230423: Amazon.com: Books

“October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end the tale.
“Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: ‘It is simply a matter,’ he explained to April, ‘of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.'”
― Neil Gaiman, Season of Mists

Amazon.com: If You Come Softly: 9780142415221: Woodson, Jacqueline: Books

“He loved October. Had always loved it. There was something sad and beautiful about it – the ending and beginning of things.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, If You Come Softly

“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.”s
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Very possibly, Ray Bradbury has written more about the month of October than any other writer. Even when he is not specifically writing about October, visions of that month seem to be lurking somewhere within his consciousness.

“The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.
Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

“Nobody moved.

Everybody sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I’ll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can’t find her.”

Then… some idiot turned on the lights.

― Ray Bradbury, “The October Game