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Hi Gang!
You may have noticed that you're getting this a few days into March, whereas in the past I've always been right on time on the first day of any month. Yes, that's how crazy things have been lately! As if running a large writers organization, overseeing announcements and administration of the organization's annual awards, reviewing everything related to the organization's convention in May, tax season, and my own personal deadlines weren't enough, I managed to get the flu (and yes, I did get a flu shot back in November). Oh yeah, and L.A.'s had record rainfall and cold temperatures - my plants don't know whether to bloom or curl up and freeze!.
The good news is that...well, there's lots of good news! As usual, much of it falls into the pit of things I'm not allowed to talk about yet, but I can at least tease a few (see the "WIP It" section below).
Thanks as always for hanging in there with me. Hopefully I'll get caught up and be back on schedule for next month!
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Because I've been thinking about ghosts a lot lately...
...I chose this lobby card from 1973's The Legend of Hell House. This photo is one of a handful I bought when I needed more movie stills for my book Ghosts: A Haunted History.
However, I also decided to share this photo along with a plea to Hollywood: PLEASE MAKE A FAITHFUL ADAPTATION OF RICHARD MATHESON'S HELL HOUSE.
If you've never read Matheson's epic haunted house book, you should. It's fast, furious, and frightful, with a potent science-vs.-supernatural theme, a terrifying villain, and some incredibly disturbing images. I first read it as a teenager, and let's just say it left quite an impression.
The 1973 film adaptation, starring former child stars Roddy McDowall and Pamela Franklin and directed by John Hough, isn't a terrible film, but it feels like a watered-down version of the novel (even though Matheson wrote the screenplay).
Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has now had two very fine adaptations (Robert Wise's 1963 The Haunting, and last year's mini-series by Mike Flanagan, The Haunting of Hill House), so it's time for a kickass movie of Hell House. Just please don't give us the 1999 version of The Haunting.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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One of the ways I think many of us (inadvertently) keep the Halloween Spirit going is by collecting.
When we collect, we are gathering something around us that we enjoy; quite often that enjoyment takes us back to a treasured part of childhood.
It will surprise absolutely no one to discover that I collect vintage Halloween items, especially noisemakers. Now here's the weird part: although noisemakers were a popular part of trick-or-treat across the United States, they were never big on the West Coast and I never used one as a kid.
However, I love their colorful graphics, which I often prefer to classic paper decorations. I keep them displayed in a case in my office, and I love sharing them with others...because it is, after all, sharing the Halloween Spirit.
What do you collect? Does it connect you with something you loved as a kid?
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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As a lifelong Californian, I've long heard the name Jack Parsons thrown around, but it wasn't until recently that I learned just how truly unique Mr. Parsons was.
Parsons was a brilliant scientist who is now credited with being a major figure in the development of rocket science in the U.S....and he was also a devotee of occult legend Aleister Crowley. Yes, while Parsons was working at JPL - which he helped found - he was also practicing Crowley's religion Thelema and running the California branch of the Thelemite O.T.O.
Because of his occult practices, he was fired from JPL at the age of 30. For the next 7 years, Parsons conducted rituals, hung with L. Ron Hubbard, and finally blew himself to bits in a home explosion at the age of 37.
I know that CBS All Access recently began airing a mini-series, Strange Angel, based on Parsons' life. I haven't seen it yet or even heard much about it. Regardless of that television outing, though, Parsons will continue to loom large as a Southern California legend. Oh, and he appears as a character in a short story I just completed.
Cool bit of trivia: the photo above shows Parsons and two others conducting an experiment which is now considered to be one of the founding moments of JPL. The experiment took place on Halloween, 1936.
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The Glass Trap (a movie...or rather, a very bad movie)
I realized I've never talked about my movies here. Yes, I've written six produced feature films, plus a bunch of kids' cartoons, plus some ghost-written stuff I can't discuss..
The reason I don't talk about this stuff much is that most of it is bad. I'm not proud of the fact that this stuff bears my name (and yes, I tried to have my name removed from at least one of these things, to no avail).
Case in point: a giant ant movie called The Glass Crap...er, sorry, I mean The Glass Trap. It's got something to do with a janitor and a bunch of fashion models being trapped in a skyscraper with giant - or, well, more like horse-sized - ants. I've never really seen all of it, so I can't comment completely on the plot except to say that about .01% of it resembles the script I delivered.
There are, however, some amusing stories behind this nonsense.
It was sold as the result of a joke. Really. My screenwriting partner Brett Thompson and I were in a production office where we were pitching disaster movies; we'd pitched about six in a row with no bites. We had this joke movie that we'd created to amuse ourselves: Ant Farm, about humans trapped in a glass skyscraper. Brett pitched it. And the company said, "Yes." I walked out of that meeting and said to Brett, "Oh, great - now we have to figure out how to turn a joke into an actual movie."
Here's the other anecdote I like: Brett went to visit the set once during production (I'd also been invited, but after being thoroughly humiliated by two set visits to other movies I'd theoretically written, I declined). Brett called me after the visit. "They were shooting the elevator scene," he said.
"That's nice, except our script didn't have an elevator scene," I responded.
Anyway, I still get little bits of residuals from these movies, so that part's good. And sometimes I get other surprises: while trying to show a friend the poster for The Glass Trap recently, I stumbled on French artwork for the film (this movie was released in France?!) that I actually quite liked (see above).
I should add that there were two movies I wrote that did not completely embarrass me, so I promise to talk about those in the future.
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Waiting.
I'm not going to rehash every aphorism or song lyric about waiting that you've ever heard, but I do want to talk about how waiting is often the most frustrating - and yet necessary - part of being a writer.
Let's say you've finished your story. You labored on it, you are convinced it's very good, and so you send it off to that big magazine you'd love to be published in. You start checking your inbox, just certain the acceptance will arrive soon.
Days go by...and become weeks...and become months...and just when you think they must surely have lost your submission, the answer arrives. If it's no, you curse silently for a few seconds before sending it off to the next market on your list, knowing that now the clock resets and you play the waiting game all over again.
If it's a yes, though, you're not nearly done with the waiting. Just as every big market has to work through hundreds, if not thousands, of submissions, so every publication has to work through dozens of contracts for stories they've accepted. You'll wait more weeks/months for the contract. And then you'll wait more weeks/months for the payment. And then you'll wait more weeks/months for your work to finally see publication.
If you think the waiting is long for a short story to see the light of day, multiply everything by a factor of about three for a book-length work.
This is one reason why the temptation to self-publish is always there, luring us with its siren song promise of no delays and ultimate control, especially with older writers. I'm one of those, by the way; I'm not that far from official retirement age, and I feel that shortening of time pressing on me every frigging time I sit down to write.
But here's the thing: you have to learn to ignore those nymphs singing to you of speed. I know I said I wasn't going to engage in any aphorism-rehashing, but there really is something to the old saw about, "All good things come to those who wait." Even if you decide to self-publish, don't rush into it; take the time to do it right, meaning editing, cover design, promotion, etc. If you believe in your material, then you'll wait until it's either found the perfect home or you know it's 100% ready to unleash on an unsuspecting world. Give it a fair shot.
If you're not good at waiting...LEARN TO BE. Work on new projects while you wait to hear back on old ones. But don't throw your work into self-publishing just because of lengthy wait times. If you land a great deal, you'll be soooooo happy you waited it out. If you don't land that great deal - hey, you'll know you gave it your best shot and then you can consider other venues for your work.
And now if you'll excuse me...I need to get back to paid writing work, because I ain't gettin' any younger.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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The best writing news of the month was seeing Ghost Stories receive a starred review in Publishers Weekly! That was a wonderful, completely unexpected surprise.
I just scored two of my favorite short story sales ever, but I can't talk about either one quite yet. Suffice to say that one is set in Hong Kong's film industry, and the other involves the history of L.A.'s Griffith Park (one of my favorite places in the world).
My Roundtable Interview with Linda Addison, Joanna Parypinski, Becky Spratford, and Kaaron Warren is now available for everyone to read at Nightmare Magazine. I'm currently working on an interview with the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author of Coyote Songs, Gabino Iglesias.
I also wrote the introduction for the kickass all-female issue of Forbidden Futures #4, now available for pre-order.
There are a couple of rewrites I owe editors, and then beyond that...well, we'll see what pops first. You'll hear it here when I can announce!
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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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Includes my story “Dr. Morbismo’s InsaniTERRORium Horror Show”.
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Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense
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Co-edited with acclaimed anthologist and genre expert Leslie Klinger, this anthology gathers classic ghost stories from Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, M. R. James, and more! Coming April 2.
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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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Includes my essay "When It’s Their World: Writing for the Themed Anthology".
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Thanks to everyone who downloaded last month's free e-book, and especially to those of you who took the time to tell me you enjoyed it.
This month, I'm celebrating the upcoming StokerCon in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by giving away copies of the Souvenir Books from the first two StokerCons. These aren't just boring program books - they include fiction by, interviews with, and articles about authors including Tananarive Due, Elizabeth Hand, Jack Ketchum, George R. R. Martin, and many more. I provided the introduction for each and will certainly be happy to sign them.
Just click the blue button to enter, and good luck!
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