So we’ve previously featured our character-inspired Halloween costumes here and here, but today our friend David is guest posting his story about when he and a friend dressed up as authors for Halloween! Enjoy 
If there is one thing I know about my fellow bibliophiles, it is that they can’t leave well enough alone. They can’t just read a book, appreciate it, think about it occasionally, and move on. They read, reread, and obsess over great books.
Our collective wall of heroes, our hall of fame, pays tribute to characters and the authors who bring them to life. True bibliophiles are also born proselytizers. We’ll do anything to get people to read the books we love just so we can obsess over them even more.
Once in a rare while, you meet a person who feels the same way that you do about the same books and characters and a true friendship is born.
Like all stories worth their salt told during the season of scares, my friend Emily and I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Emily and I have been friends ever since we discovered that we were our own “one true pairing” when it comes to all things literary (We were eleven or twelve at the time, but have known each other our whole lives. It’s funny how you don’t always see what is right in front of you.) As with most friendships, the time came when our paths diverged, and we enrolled at different universities on different sides of our state. We kept in contact, would talk on the phone for twenty minutes here, chat online ever other week, but nothing like the long, neurotic, book based conversations we had in high school. I decided to drive up to Flagstaff to meet her for a night of adventures, as much as can be had in Flagstaff, Arizona, on my favorite holiday of the year: Halloween.
“What are you going to the party as?” she asked during our phone conversation on my way up the I-17.
“I’ll never tell.” I replied. It was a hollow promise.
“If I guess you have to tell me.”
“You can try.”
“Give me three hints.”
“That defeats the purpose, but whatever. I’m an author, I’m dead, and I am the most frightening person you can think of but for a reason that has nothing to do with any my books.” (If any of you can guess why I feel this way about this particular writer, I envision you laughing and wincing simultaneously in just a moment.)
“You’re going as James Joyce?!”
Right on the first try. There is a reason we have been friends for so long.
“Alright, alright. What are you going as?”
“Hunter S. Thompson! I went out and bought a sick cigarette hold for just the occasion.”
Neither of us had planned to go as beloved authors we would not want to be stuck with in an enclosed space.
“I’m going to have nightmares after I see you dressed as Joyce.”
“This is going to be a great party.”
