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Hi Gang!
Holy crap, is it possible that fall is almost here?
That means I have two books due in (gulp) two months, so the newsletters may be a bit truncated until after November, when I'll be able to catch my breath again.
Hope you all had a glorious and productive summer!
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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For some reason I keep seeing Ray Harryhausen pop up.
I'm not sure if there's a new book or a new DVD release or something coming out, but a lot of my friends have been chatting about him lately.
I certainly grew up being a fan. My favorite Harryhausen movie is The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (which also features what may be my favorite movie score ever, by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann), although I think my favorite Harryhausen creature is the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth.
What's your favorite movie/monster by Ray Harryhausen?
About the Still: this is from the 1975 re-release of 7th Voyage, and is kind of a pathetic paste-up, but heck - it's got two great Harryhausen monsters in it, so I still like it.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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Halloween art!
Did you know there are fabulous artists out there who are constantly creating great Halloween art? I've got a few favorites, so here seven of them. Please visit their sites and check out their incredible work!
If you have a favorite who's not listed here, I'd love to hear about them!
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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I love a mystery.
And author Regina Miriam Bloch is just that.
Okay, I'm going to give away a clue about the other book I'm working on right now: it might have something to do with early female horror writers. I might have been working for months reading dozens of stories and critical essays and biographies, digging out great forgotten authors and works. I might have a great partner on this project, which has ballooned to such a size that it might be released as two volumes.
None of the authors I've researched been more interesting than Bloch. Wikipedia lists her birth/death dates as 1889-1938 and describes her as "a Jewish writer and poet." Several studies of the horror genre note her as a writer worthy of a wider audience. Why didn't I know her work?
Because it's nearly impossible to find. Bloch published two collections: The Swine Gods and Other Visions in 1917, and The Book of Strange Loves in 1918. Both books were well-reviewed at the time of their publication. Bloch was frequently mentioned in London papers; she did signings and readings. The books went through multiple printings.
And then both Bloch and the books disappeared. Bloch never wrote another book, or even a short story. The most perplexing mention of her came in 1921, when the renowned author Rebecca West gave an interview in which she claimed to be Bloch...a claim she later retracted. Bloch died in 1938; her death is listed in London's registry for the year, but none of the papers printed obituaries on her, when they'd mentioned her so often just twenty years earlier.
The two collections, meanwhile, now seem to exist in just a handful of libraries around the world. Neither has been digitized and made available online; the few copies that pop up for sale are insanely expensive.
Fortunately for me, only one library - the University of Riverside, which houses the extraordinary Eaton Collection of genre fiction - had both books. It's located less than 70 miles from me, so I made arrangements to view the books and record them with my camera. I've now read (from my photos) all of The Swine Gods and Other Visions (which is less than 100 pages long), and there's some amazing work in it, which I'll soon be sharing with the world.
In the meantime...who was Bloch, and what happened to her?
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"The Tapestried Room"
(This is taken from my introduction to Strange Tales of the Macabre: Ghosts, in which this story appears)
The story I’ve chosen to open the book with is my own peculiar literary experiment, and deserves some explanation first. Earlier this year, Leslie Klinger and I co-edited a book called Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense, a collection of ghost stories dating from 1923 and back. I’ve done a number of interviews to support the book, and when asked what my favorite story in it was, I’d usually mention Sir Walter Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber”, from 1828. This might seem a strange choice, because it’s one of the oldest works in Ghost Stories and is told in the style of an early-nineteenth-century writer, meaning that it employs language and pace that are far removed from what modern readers are used to. Yet Scott’s tale of a traveler who encounters a terrifying spirit while staying in a friend’s house is still chilling nearly 200 years later (at least it is for me), so I began to wonder if the story could be updated to the twenty-first century while still retaining its distinctive flavor (to say nothing of its scares). I decided to rework the story, keeping Scott’s structure intact and as much of his description and dialogue as possible, in an attempt to prove that a classic ghost tale can still frighten us centuries after its creation. I did swap genders, and added a few characters, all in keeping with current literary forms. If you, the reader, find the attempt a failure, then I accept the blame and urge you to seek out Scott’s original; but if it’s successful, then please join me in recognizing the genius of one of literature’s great early frighteners.
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Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to find the real gold.
I'm talking about research. An editor friend of mine recently told me about a story he'd been asked to edit that was (yes, really) about two-thirds copied straight out of a Wikipedia article.
Now, regardless of any artistic or ethical considerations...That sucks because with another fifteen minutes of research, the author could probably have found much better stuff to use.
I'm not knocking Wikipedia, because it certainly has its uses, but here's the thing about any piece of research you might use when working on either fiction or nonfiction: whatever you look at first is probably not the primary source. Most articles and nonfiction books cull information from other, earlier sources; the author of the later work has consciously decided which bits to use from the earlier work. What that means is that there's a lot of stuff the later author hasn't used, and quite often there is astonishing information buried in these historical articles that hasn't been shared much.
Case in point: while working on my forthcoming book on the history of seances, I spent a lot of time reading books on the Fox sisters, who essentially created the seance in 1848. In 1888, after decades spent as prominent mediums and spiritualists, Kate and Maggie Fox issued scathing condemnations of the whole thing, calling spiritualism "a curse". Their letters and interviews were collected in an 1888 book called The Death-blow to Spiritualism, and that book is frequently quoted from...but there, buried in the pages of that book, I discovered one of the most extraordinary quotes (from Maggie Fox) that I've ever read, and I don't believe that quote has been shared by any later authors. That quote moved me so much that I'll be using it to close my seance book.
The moral of this story is: when you're researching, don't always depend on the first thing you find. Check the cited sources (most of which are digitized and can be discovered online within a few seconds of searching), and you may find a buried gem that will take your work to a new level.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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I've just placed a story with the forthcoming anthology Miscreations, edited by two of my favorite editors, Michael Bailey and Doug Murano. Here's the line-up so far:
“Not Eradicated in You” by Bracken MacLeod”
“The Vodyanoy” / “The Old Gods of Light” by Christina Sng (poetry)
“Ode to Joad the Toad” by Laird Barron
“Imperfect Clay” by Lisa Morton
“Spectral Evidence” by Victor LaValle
“The Making of Asylum Ophelia” by Mercedes M. Yardley
“One Last Transformation” by Josh Malerman
“A Heart Arrhythmia Creeping Into a Dark Room” by Michael Wehunt
“Resurrection Points” by Usman T. Malik
“Brains” by Ramsey Campbell
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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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Weird Tales is reborn! The first issue in this new run features my story "A Housekeeper's Revenge".
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The 5x5 Anthology project is a co-op between five of the horror genre's finest, award-winning authors: Eric J. Guignard, Kate Jonez, Rena Mason, John Palisano, and me. We each traded stories to create five themed mini-anthologies (each branded as part of the Strange Tales of the Macabre series), and all available in affordable e-book format. Stormy Weather, Post-Apocalyptic, and Gothic are available now (click on the covers to order); Ghosts and Haunted Journeys are coming soon.
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This month, I'm giving away five copies of my new e-book, Strange Tales of the Macabre: Ghosts! When you enter, please indicate if you'd prefer a Kindle/.Mobi copy or a PDF. Thanks, and good luck!
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