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Welcome to First Frost Josh! My name is Josh (shocking, I know) and my goal is to bring the autumn season to my readers year-round. I am a Toronto-based enterprising writer excited to flex my literary muscles in creating an assortment of content for this blog. From short stories and poems to top ten lists and book and movie reviews, I hope to entertain, inform, and immerse with each post.

Another shocking statement—I love the fall season. I'm not sure exactly when or where the obsession began. Although recounting my steps, the planted seeds that would eventually balloon into beautiful orange pumpkins of autumnal passion are unmistakable. I remember walking to the park with my parents on brisk autumn mornings, heavily layered in an eclectic mix of late-90's sweaters and jackets. I remember the quintessential late evenings spent carving pumpkins and trick or treating—my parents meting out the candy haul with painstaking moderation in the weeks following Halloween. I even remember the September and October high school cross country meets, jogging through forest trails ornamented with autumn foliage and the lingering aroma of dead leaves.

In those halcyon memories, I hadn't yet become the raving autumn fanatic I am today. I think the obsession—if we're calling it that—began to take hold when I started university. Only then did I discover my favourite part of autumn and Halloween: the atmosphere. As strange as it may seem, that's why I haven't felt the need to wear a Halloween costume in years (for posterity, I usually throw on one of my orange splattered jack-o'-lantern shirts). For me, the allure of Halloween is the sound the wind makes when it rustles the trees at night. The clarity of a full moon peering at a lonely churchyard with its single beaming eye. The smell of fallen leaves and frost-pregnant air and fresh pumpkin guts and resurrection. Candy, pumpkins, foliage, harvest, football, hiking, monsters, costumes, frost, fire, life, death. Escapism.

Seasons such as autumn and holidays such as Halloween are excuses to liberate ourselves, to shrug off the weight we carry around with us every single day, even if just for a moment or two. And that's what I hope to accomplish with this blog. If I can provide that feeling of escapism—those moments of release—to even one person, then I've done my job.

Happy haunting everyone.
 

Contact me at firstfrostjosh@gmail.com with any inquiries—business or personal.

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