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Hi Gang!
Yay, it's OCTOBER! I've got some big plans for this month: we're working on upping our game with our yard haunt. There are other haunts to visit. There are movies to see (I'm very much looking forward to the new Halloween). There'll likely be the usual round of last-minute interview requests. There's pumpkin spice everything to consume. I'm not a coffee drinker, so I'm trying to work up my courage to experience my first pumpkin spice latte. If I'm not back here in November, you'll know why.
It's been an odd few months leading up to October, though. My pumpkin-growing has been a not-quite-total crash-and-burn this year (out of ten plants, I may get 9 or 10 small pumpkins). The usual round of late-summer print interview requests didn't materialize. I'm currently waiting on no less than three major book proposals while I try to play catch-up with old projects.
But Halloween's only a month away, so let's party! For this month's "New Stuff", I made it all-Halloween, covering eight of my most recent Halloween appearances (and including two things that are FREE!). And I had so much fun with last year's Halloween grab bag giveaway that I decided to resurrect that.
Also, for the last Thirteen Days of Halloween, check out my online advent calendar!
Happy Halloween!
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Ghosbusters is back.
Which is not to say that it ever really went away, but this year it seems like it's everywhere. I've seen it in online discussions, playing in special screenings in theaters, in toys, in collectibles, in Halloween costumes...everywhere.
Why all this attention for a movie released 34 years ago? Certainly the 2016 reboot, despite overall mediocre reviews, brought it back into the public attention. But I tend to think it might have been Season Two of Stranger Things, when the kids all dressed as Ghostbusters for Halloween, that really pushed it back into the limelight.
In any case, it's a great movie and I certainly won't object to walking into a Spirit Halloween store only to encounter a 17 Inch Hanging Slimer Decoration.
About the Still: Back when Ghostbusters first came out, I had a good friend who was working at the studio that made it, and he used to bring me home some pretty crazy stuff from the movie. The still above is one of my faves.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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Haunt Tips Volume 2
In the very first issue of this newsletter, my "Halloween Spirit" column offered some haunt tips. I talked a bit about lighting, fog, and shopping after-Halloween sales for great deals.
It's time to offer a few new tips, and just in time for the holiday:
Make Your Own Stuff - Sure, you can make a great display by buying pre-made decorations and artfully placing them, but if you're like me, you don't have money to burn. With a little creativity and a lot less bucks, you can make some cool stuff. This year I wanted my haunt to have a specific Southern California flavor, so I decided to make my own tar pit. I got a sheet of plywood, cut it into a shape to fit a patch of dirt in the front yard, bought a cheap plastic skull and arm to stick out of it, screwed those into the plywood, and then coated the whole thing with roofing tar (like this). It was all pretty easy (took me less than two hours), and cost under forty bucks. Add a goofy hand-painted sign and some mood lighting, and I think it'll look pretty sweet!
Monster Mud - Here's another cheap DIY solution. "Monster Mud" is a staple of home haunters everywhere. All it consists of is drywall compound and gray paint mixed together (the usual formula is five parts compound and one part paint). It creates a goop that looks like granite when spread on something - say, a styrofoam headstone or a figure formed from chicken wire and cheap cloth. After it's dried, dress it up with paint (black to highlight inset areas, maybe a little green and/or brown to suggest decay and rust).
Projections - If you've got a little money to spare, consider investing in a projector and downloading some scary looping clips. We use projections in two places: we project a haunted graveyard scene against our garage door (our cemetery fills our driveway), and we project ghosts on projection material placed inside one of our windows. If you go this route, be cautious when purchasing your projector - I've seen some on sale at Walmart, but they only offered 500 lumens, which is probably too dim to get a really clean projection. Go for something with at least 1,000 lumens.
Happy haunting!
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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I have great friends who send me wonderful articles.
When you're trying to keep up with Halloween news (just in case...you know...you ever decide that The Halloween Encyclopedia needs a 3rd edition), it really helps to have some of the research work done for you.
Thanks go out to Paul Clemens for alerting me to this one: "New Hampshire Man Grows the Largest Pumpkin in North American History".
Yep, a gentleman named Steve Geddes grew a pumpkin that weighed in at 2,528 pounds.
By way of background: back almost twenty years ago, when I was working on the first edition of The Halloween Encyclopedia, no one had yet been able to grow a pumpkin weighing in at a full ton.
Now THAT's progress!
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"The Devil Came to Mamie's on Hallowe'en" from Cemetery Dance Magazine #60, reprinted in The Samhanach and Other Halloween Treats (also reprinted in other venues)
This story, about a young blues singer coming of age in a bordello in the Deep South circa 1930, was inspired by early blues singers like Bessie Smith. My partner Ricky has always been a blues fan, and he went through a period of being obsessed with the early female singers. He read tons of histories and biographies, frequently stopping to tell me about the amazing true stories of these remarkable women.
The lives of these singers were truly astonishing. At least one spoke of being brought up in a house of prostitution. At the time, I was studying Halloween traditions in the South, and the two separate strands started to intertwine in my head. Eventually, "The Devil Came to Mamie's on Hallowe'en" was the result (note the deliberate spelling of "Hallowe'en" - the apostrophe would still have been part of the name during the time period of the story).
This was my first Halloween-themed short story, and I remain proud of it.
The art from the original printing in Cemetery Dance, by the way, was by Zach McCain. Zach used to sell a signed print of it; mine hangs in my outdoor office.
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Last month I talked about the importance of following guidelines when submitting work.
This month, I'm going to address another issue that seems to occur with alarming frequency in submissions:
An error in the first sentence.
Before you say, "So what? We're all human and we make mistakes," I want you to imagine being an editor reading through a slush pile. Let's say you've already read ten submissions today; that means you've probably read seven that didn't follow the guidelines, which irritated you, and out of those seven, two were so far out of what you asked for that you've moved beyond merely irritated and entered the zone of seriously grumpy.
At this point, that editor is tired; maybe her/his eyes are getting blurry, maybe all s/he wants is to chill out with popcorn and a movie. Even if the rest of your story is error-free and great, you've already prejudiced that editor against your work.
As with following the guidelines, this is relatively easy to avoid. Here are three tips for avoiding the dreaded error in the first sentence or paragraph:
- Re-read that first paragraph over and over. Sure, you've probably re-read and re-written the whole piece multiple times, but give that first paragraph a little extra love.
- Have someone else look at it. Even if you don't have beta readers or a writing group that looks at your work, grab somebody - a spouse, a co-worker, whatever - and have them cast a critical eye over that beginning.
- Don't rely on spell-check. If you have a sentence like, "He stood before the alter," or, "It was there only chance," spell-check isn't going to catch anything. Likewise, spell-check won't find missing words, poor punctuation, or a grammatical faux pas.
Hey, we're all only human and mistakes are going to happen; but if you make a mistake on page six, by then you've hopefully hooked that editor so much that they'll be willing to overlook it. That's less likely to be the case if the mistake is right at the front.
Why take the chance? Get that beginning RIGHT.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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I'm currently waiting to hear on not one, not two, but THREE proposals for major coffee-table art books. All would be very exciting projects, so my fingers are crossed for any one of them to happen.
There's another project that I love, one that would involve multi-media and a use of both editing and screenwriting skills. Again, my digits are crossed.
And, as usual, there are some excellent new sales I'm not supposed to talk about yet. Maybe next issue...!
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The Samhanach and Other Halloween Treats
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The Samhanach and Other Halloween Treats is now available in e-book and print from JournalStone. It collects four novellas, ten short stories, a new introduction by Nancy Holder, and new notes about the stories from me.
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Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween
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My multiple award-winning history of Halloween, available in either paperback or e-book.
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Includes my Dia de los Muertos novella La Hacienda de los Muertos. At only $2.99, what's not to love?
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Halloween's three most iconic stories, with an introduction by me.
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This anthology of all-new Halloween (and Dia de los Muertos/Devil's Night/All Souls' Eve) fiction features sixteen stories by some of the genre's hottest authors. The anthology received a starred and boxed review in Publishers Weekly, as well as raves from Rue Morgue, Locus, and many others.
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The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories
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Includes my story "The Ultimate Halloween Party App".
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Collected Halloween Horror Shorts: Trick 'r Treat
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Includes my story "Pumpkin Rex", plus stories by John R. Little, Richard Chizmar, and more.
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The October 2018 issue of this great free online zine includes both my Civil War Halloween story "Hallowe'en in Blue and Gray", and the non-fiction piece "HWA: A Day in the Life."
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For October, we're talking not just a scarce advance copy of the Halloween anthology Haunted Nights, but also a grab bag of the best Halloween kitsch I can find! Toys, candies, decorations...there's just no telling exactly what the winner will find in this crazy trick or treat bag!
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