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Hi Gang!
Sorry to be late this month, but I've been working overtime to meet my last deadline of the year (for next year's final volume of the "mosaic novel" The Lovecraft Squad).
Hard to believe we're at the end of 2018. It was an interesting year, but I hope '19 will be more productive and profitable (for all of us!).
May your holidays be filled with joy, warmth, and a little bit of scary stuff.
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Edward Scissorhands is my favorite Christmas movie.
I know that might seem like an odd choice, given that the man behind Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton, was also the creator of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
For me, Edward is the better movie. It features a fantastic lead performance by Johnny Depp, my favorite Danny Elfman score, brilliant candy-colored production design, a supporting cast that includes Winona Ryder and Dianne Wiest, and lovely scenes in which Edward uses his bladed fingers to carve ice sculptures.
That's it - now I have to go watch it again!
About the still: back when I was working in the makeup effects industry, I occasionally got to attend the Academy Awards presentations from makeup effects artists who would present their films for Oscar consideration. Sometimes they gave out little kits that included stills and flyers with descriptions of their work. This photo is from the Edward Scissorhands presentation.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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In my house, we decided to do something we've always wanted to do for Christmas this year: turn it into a second Halloween!
We've got a lot of Halloween geegaws around that would work well on a tree, but would look strange on a green tree, so we searched and found out that yes, artificial black trees are a thing.
Then we found out that we are apparently not the only people who want a Halloween-themed Christmas tree, because there are LOTS of beautiful Halloween ornaments out there, including collectible glass ornaments from Christopher Radko.
After we ordered our tree (which hasn't quite arrived yet, or I'd show you photos of that), we found out that black trees are the hot decorating trend of Christmas 2018.
Who knew?
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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For my chapter in next year's volume of The Lovecraft Squad, I had to write about R'lyeh, a sunken city in the South Pacific where dead Cthulhu lies dreaming. R'lyeh was created by H. P. Lovecraft for his story "The Call of Cthulhu".
Lovecraft provided coordinates for R'lyeh, which he gave as 47°9′S 126°43′W.
When I researched R'lyeh for my story, I found out something fascinating: the coordinates Lovecraft provided are amazingly close to something called "the oceanic pole of inaccessibility", or the point in the Pacific Ocean farthest from any land mass. Here's the amazing part: the location of that pole of inaccessibility wasn't officially charted until 1992...which means that Lovecraft came up with it 66 years earlier.
But Point Nemo, as the pole is also known, gets weirder: it's both lifeless, since it sits in the middle of a rotating current and receives no organic matter; and it's so remote that it's used as a graveyard for spacecraft. It's estimated that over 100 crashed spacecraft are located in the area.
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"Dreams in the White House” from The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming
This story was originally intended to cap volume one of The Lovecraft Squad series (Waiting), but when all the other stories in that initial book ran long, it got bumped to the second volume.
When editor Stephen Jones gave me the assignment, I immediately knew what I really wanted to write about: the promise that John F. Kennedy brought with his presidency. I wanted the ending, which incorporated Kennedy's real assassination, to feel elegiac, like the lost promise that the U.S. would never fully recover from.
So I took that idea and worked to combine it with what Steve needed to carry the overall plot of The Lovecraft Squad series forward. I also had to combine it with references to works by Lovecraft (especially, of course, "The Dreams in the Witch House", from which story we took the title), and carefully-researched historical data.
J. Edgar Hoover would be a major presence in the story, so I read one Hoover bio and scanned a few others (and no, I don't believe Hoover was a cross-dresser - that notion has been disproven by all but one of his biographers). I also studied up on Bobby Kennedy, who feuded with Hoover, and of course JFK himself.
Writing for an ongoing series like this sometimes feels more like putting together a literary jigsaw puzzle than creating new fiction, but heck, I love a challenge!
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Mentoring.
I think it's a great thing for both the established writer offering their assistance and the newer writer taking the assistance.
I've mentored a number of writers via the Horror Writers Association, which offers a Mentorship Program to members. Although there are other ways to find a mentor, let me caution newer writers against e-mailing pros out of the blue; our time is limited, and we simply cannot afford to help everyone who reaches out to us. But when we take part in an established mentorship program, we know in advance what we're committing to and can manage accordingly.
I've been lucky enough to be paired up with some tremendously talented writers in the HWA program. I find that mentoring other writers doesn't just provide the satisfaction of "paying it forward" (although that satisfaction is considerable!); it also makes me more aware of issues in my own writing.
Four of the writers I've worked with have recently released new books, so I'd like to share those with you all now:
- The Corpse Whisperer by H. R. Boldwood - H. R.'s novel was substantially underway when I signed on as Mentor. The novel was already vastly entertaining and kickass, and I'm very proud of the fantastic finished novel H. R. finished and placed with Third Street Press. If you like fast-paced, funny, and scary, check it out!
- Dark Wood Dark Water by Tina Callaghan - Tina's book was completed when I became her Mentor, but I was able to help her with the contract that Poolbeg Press offered. The book was just shortlisted for the DEPT 51@ EASON TEEN/YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 in the Irish Book Awards, so congrats to Tina!
- Diary of a Sorceress by Ashley Dioses - HWA's Los Angeles chapter has its own mentor program, and I signed on to help Ashley develop her short fiction...because this woman sure doesn't need my help with poetry! She's an established and ridiculously talented poet whose 2017 collection Diary of a Sorceress is fantastic. She's also selling more short fiction now, so look out horror world!
- Black Sun by Jason M. Light - Jason was the first writer I got to mentor via HWA's program. That was many moons ago, but we became good friends and he's still putting out some stellar fiction. His latest, the novel Black Sun, may not be strictly horror, but anything by Jason is guaranteed to be a quality read.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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At this point, it looks like my 2019 is going to be all about a new novel. I know what it's called, what it's about, and who the lead characters out. I'm a plotter, so I'm about to dive in to working through a concrete outline.
This, of course, undoubtedly means some other project I totally did not expect to fly will suddenly be green-lit. Hey, BRING IT ON, cosmos!
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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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The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming
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I've written two chapters of this second volume in Stephen Jones's "mosaic novel" trilogy.
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18 Wheels of Science Fiction
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Includes my story "Job No. 34264".
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Includes my story “Dr. Morbismo’s InsaniTERRORium Horror Show”.
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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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Birthing Monsters: Frankenstein's Cabinet of Curiosities and Cruelties is an extraordinary tribute to Mary Shelley's classic, in honor of its 200th birthday. Illustrated by Robert Payne Cabeen, my contribution is a non-fiction piece about Fantamasgoriana, the collection of ghost stories that inspired Frankenstein.
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Includes my essay "When It’s Their World: Writing for the Themed Anthology".
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Congratulations to Tashia, Rhonda, Jamie, Catrina, and Jeremy on winning the five 8GB flash drives I gave away last month!
I decided to close out 2018's giveaways with a nice hardcover edition of Scream and Scream Again!, which has my story "Summer of Sharks" (and hey, who doesn't want more summer and more sharks in their winter holidays?). And because it's the Christmas season, I'll throw in one of my custom-branded 8GB flash drives, too.
Just click the button to enter!
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