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Hi Gang!
I hope your May was great. Mine was a month of highs, lows, and a lot of unseasonal rain and cold temperatures (L.A. officially had its wettest May ever).
The highs included StokerCon, which was fantastic. Even though I spent most of the convention dashing about like the Flash on amphetamines, I still had a great time, and I'm pleased to be free of the duty of serving as the President of the Horror Writers Association so I can get back to focusing more on my own work. There's also a new book proposal that has been accepted, and I should be signing the contract any day now.
The lows have been the post-Presidential wrap-up - which has been more than I expected - and the loss of my friend and mentor Dennis Etchison, one of the finest writers of horror fiction to ever grace the genre. I'm so fortunate to have known him for nearly 40 years, and I'm going to miss him greatly; if you'd like to read a little more about his importance to my career, click here. If you've never read Etchison, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of his seminal collection The Dark Country...and if you have read Etchison, it's a good time to re-read him.
Here's hoping for a calmer and more productive May! Happy Summer, everyone.
Lisa
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Me, getting ready for the Bram Stoker Awards banquet at StokerCon in Grand Rapids.
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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I was recently asked by my friends at PS Publishing to give them a list of my top 20 movies.
These lists are never easy. The top ten are usually pretty obvious, but the second half of the list could vary from day to day for me.
George A. Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead will always be in my top ten, though.
I saw it during its original release, opening weekend, at a packed midnight showing. I was still a teenager, a film student in college, and one of the department TA's told me that if I liked horror movies I had to see it. Weirdly enough, I'd never seen Night of the Living Dead or even heard of Romero. I'd never even seen anything bloodier than a Roger Corman Poe pic.
Dawn of the Dead slammed into me like a semi doing 100 m.p.h. It left me simultaneously terrified, repelled, and excited. I was deeply disturbed not just by the zombies, but also by the living, who seem driven more by greed than anything else. The amount of blood and violence are still staggering.
I didn't sleep that night. But a few weeks later I saw it again, and that was it - I was a fan of both zombies and Romero from then on.
About the Still: This is from the original 1978 "key set" for Dawn of the Dead.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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I know I've talked before about how reading great horror fiction can be a perfect way to keep that Halloween spirit going, but pardon me if this month I do an open plug for my friend, the late Dennis Etchison.
Many of us consider Dennis to be one of the greats. I first read his collection The Dark Country in 1982, and it's the book i credit with making me want to write prose (up until then I'd only thought about screenplays). At that point, I'd already met Dennis, but I had no way of knowing what an influence he would become in my life.
For the next 35 years, Dennis was there, helping to guide me and advise me as I made my way through the publishing world. He introduced me to people; he bought work from me; and most importantly, over countless hours of conversation he treated me like a peer.
My favorite stories of his include "The Dog Park", "The Dead Cop", "The Late Shift", and of course "Dead Line", which has one of the most unforgettable opening lines for any short story EVER: "This morning I put ground glass in my wife's eyes."
If you're looking for a book to start with, I recommend the Kindle edition of Talking in the Dark, which includes all of the above stories and will cost you less than three bucks. You can also enter my giveaway to win a signed paperback copy of this book.
The photo above shows me with Dennis, during a signing at Dark Delicacies when we were celebrating Dennis's 70th birthday.
NOTE: As I write this, it's been just a few days since Dennis passed away. Because he didn't leave a significant estate behind (surely one of the universe's great injustices), a group of his friends and fans have put together a GoFundMe to assist his wife in covering costs of memorial services. You can donate by clicking here, and thank you.
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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I just finished working on an essay that will be an installment of the column "The H-Word" in the September issue of Nightmare Magazine. The essay is about extreme haunts, and how they push the boundaries of the definition of horror.
In case you're not familiar with the term "extreme haunt", the simplest way to define it is to say that it's a haunted attraction where the monsters WILL touch you...and more. They may restrain you, blindfold you, gag you, and even slap or kick you.
However, one haunt goes beyond even the most extreme of other extreme haunts: it's a place in Tennessee called McKamey Manor. Run by a military veteran named Russ McKamey, McKamey Manor is notorious for the amount of brutality its guests endure. In the past, they didn't even provide a way for an overwhelmed guest to stop the proceedings; now, they do at least offer and honor a safe phrase.
In the last episode of the Netflix series Dark Tourist, host David Farrier visits McKamey Manor. I truthfully wasn't the biggest fan of this series - several of the episodes feel too much like, "Isn't this desperation quaint?" for my taste - but Farrier's encounter at McKamey Manor is probably one of the most truthful looks at just what goes on at this...well, frankly, my own opinion is that you can't even call this a "haunt".
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"Pound Rots in Fragrant Harbour"
(originally published in The Museum of Horrors, edited by Dennis Etchison)
This story was inspired by my love for all things related to Hong Kong.
Back in the 1990s, I became a lover of Hong Kong cinema. In the glory days of their film industry, when they were still a colony of the British Empire, Hong Kong was producing a whopping 400+ films a year. Hong Kong movies covered a range of subjects, everything from martial arts movies to serious dramas to wild fantasies, and produced some extraordinary actors and directors: Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Wong Kar-wai all came from that golden age.
After the 1997 handover from the British to the Chinese - when Hong Kong officially became the HKSAR, or Hong Kong Special Administrative Region - film production plummeted. Add in the rise of South Korea's film industry, and a changing world market, and the industry has shrunk to a tiny fraction of its former size.
When it was at its high-point, though, nobody in Hong Kong was bigger than Tsui Hark. The writer-director-producer was a factory unto himself, and he became an obsession for me. He was the subject of my first full-length book (The Cinema of Tsui Hark), and in 2000 I traveled to Hong Kong to spend a week interviewing him.
My trip to the city was inspirational in other ways. I loved the streets of Kowloon, with their odd mesh of traditional herb stores mashed in with modern 7/11 convenience stores. The mix of old and new, east and west, really hit me, and I wanted to write about it. I wanted to talk about how Hong Kong seemed to have an incredible way of taking in an idea from the western world, remaking it, and spitting it back out in a form that seemed completely new.
I think this story had been turned down by two other markets when Dennis Etchison bought it for The Museum of Horrors. For years after, Dennis used to ask me what awards the story had won; he'd just shake his head when I'd tell him none. For me, though, no award could be as good as knowing that Dennis felt that strongly about the story.
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How do you even start when it comes to writing a nonfiction book?
A colleague asked me that recently, so I thought I'd post the answer here.
Writing a nonfiction book does completely dismiss the old "pantsers vs. plotters" argument of writing fiction, the question of whether to outline first or just dive in. With nonfiction, the plotters win. First, you've had to create a detailed outline to sell the book, even if the publishers came to you with the idea. The outline includes a brief description of each chapter, so by the time you start to really work on the book you already have a pretty clear idea of what you need to do.
You don't start writing immediately, though (unless you're already VERY knowledgeable about the subject); first, you have to research. I try to start right from Chapter One of my outline, although during the early research I'll also be coming up with a lot of material that will fit better into later chapters, so I make note of those bits and set them aside. Once I feel like I have enough material (which will take at least several weeks, probably longer), I'll sit down and start the actual writing. It will usually go quickly then.
Nonfiction scares a lot of my writer friends, but I love it. For me, it's like a treasure hunt, and starting is like that exciting moment when you don the scuba gear and dive off the boat into the big blue, ready to unearth priceless relics!
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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So, just when I'm about to sign the deal on my next nonfiction book...an old nonfiction proposal suddenly resurfaces with fresh interest. How's this going to play out? You'll know when I do!
In the meantime, I've just handed in my essay that will be Nightmare's September "H-Word" column, and I also had a couple of nice short story sales I can't quite talk about yet.
Plus, there've been the weekly "Ghost Reports" for Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt and little articles for The Bite Newsletter.
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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, M. R. James, and more!
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Includes my historical dark fantasy story "Etain and the Unholy Ghosts".
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Includes my story “The Gorgon".
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Terrifying Tales to Tell at Night
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Includes my story “The Chemistry of Ghosts".
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My novella, co-written with John R. Little, originally released in 2014, now available in an affordable e-book from Cemetery Dance.
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Has my story "What Ever Happened to Lorna Winters?"
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A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods
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Includes my story "Holding Back".
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The P.S. Book of Fantastic Fictioneers
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Includes my piece on the great cartoonist Gahan Wilson.
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This month I'm giving away a mildly used paperback copy of Dennis Etchison's collection Talking in the Dark. This edition was published by Infrapress in 2004, and this copy is signed and inscribed (to "Suzanne and Don"), with light wear to the covers...but it's a fantastic collection of many of Dennis's best stories. Just click the button below to enter.
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