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Hi Gang!
Happy May Day...or, as some of us prefer to think of it, Happy Halfway-to-Halloween!
A special welcome to those of you who may be new to my newsletter. I try to keep it fun and offer giveaways every month, so I hope you'll stick around.
First, some good news (we can all use that, right?): I'll be a Guest of Honor at StokerCon 2021 in Denver, Colorado. I couldn't be happier to be in a Guest of Honor line-up that includes Maurice Broaddus, Joe R. Lansdale, Seanan McGuire, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Steve Rasnic Tem. And how nice will it be to relax with friends in person again?
How's your sheltering at home going? Are you getting lockdown fatigue yet? Taken up any weird hobbies? I've started collecting vintage postcards of Los Angeles - they're surprisingly cheap, and remind me of what this city looked like when I was a kid growing up here. Los Angeles is very much a part of who I am, and I love looking at these images of the city pre-quarantine, when it was vibrant and colorful.
I wish I could say I've started that new novel, but...wellllll...the truth is, I shoved it back in the ol' trunk. This is a novel I've wanted to write for about the last three years, but here's the problem: it's about a pandemic and how everything just stops. Working on that now feels...well, just wrong.
Instead I've decided to look again at how I started my career: as a screenwriter. In case you didn't know, I've written a lot of movies and kids' television shows. I fell out of it because I really didn't like the movies that had my name on them, but at this point, as I face unemployment extending indefinitely into the future, it might be my best shot at making a living.
So, I grit my teeth, yank on my waders, and pull out the old unsold screenplays.
Don't worry, though - I'll never stop writing short stories! And who knows, maybe a new novel will still be in my future...one of these days.
Stay well.
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Remember when post-apocalyptic futures looked like Mel Gibson in leather?
1982 was just a crazygood year for science fiction movies, wasn't it? We got Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and George Miller's The Road Warrior all in the space of a few months.
I might just rank the Mad Max movies as my all-time favorite film series. I've enjoyed all four of them, although I think The Road Warrior had the biggest impact on me. Seeing it on a big screen during its initial release - when it started with the small frame back story and then suddenly exploded into the huge action image - was intense. The mayhem was astonishing, the villains delicious (who could forget Wez?), and Max was smokin' hot.
Right now, as we sit bored and restless in our rooms, afraid to go out unmasked, this future almost looks kind of good.
Almost.
About the still: a classic 8"x10" from the original release.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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Masks.
Who would ever have thought that masks would be ubiquitous six months away from Halloween?
At least if we have to wear masks whenever we leave our homes, we might as well make the masks fun. It will surprise absolutely no one to hear that I've been searching out Halloween-themed masks (if you're interested, try Etsy). I figure that if I ever get to return to my day job as a bookseller, I'll need a few masks to cycle through, so why not stock up now?
If you've found a great mask somewhere, let me know!
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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What do you think of when you hear the word "seance"?
I was recently guesting on a friend's podcast as we talked about seances, and it reminded me again how most of us in 2020 have a skewed idea of what seances in the 19th-century were like. After years of horror books and movies, we assume they were spooky...but far from it. They were more like one part revival meeting and one part theatrical in-home entertainment. Check out this description from an 1873 Spiritualist newspaper:
…Mrs. Everitt and Rev. F. Monck, both of them good mediums, offered to give us a sitting, so we commenced in the usual way with singing and prayer, after which the spirits chose some appropriate portions of Scripture to be read. Our invisible friends then commenced giving us a series of raps in all parts of the room…our party numbered fifteen, all intimate friends. At the beginning of the séance, Nippy, one of Mrs. Everitt’s spirit friends, raised up the table-cloth from beneath with his materialised hand, and each person present felt his fingers distinctly through the cloth, in the light. We then lowered the gas and sang again, when we had quite a shower of lights, varying in size. We carried on a conversation with the lights, which signaled answers in the usual way, each spirit claiming some friend by the light passing towards him. Three flashes were given quickly for “Yes,” and one for “No”…We next had cool breezes laden with perfumes…
“We commenced singing again, and Mr. Monck was lifted, chair and all, into the air, after which his boots were pulled off and thrown to the other end of the room. He then was entranced by the spirit “Sam”, who asked that an accordion which Dr. Hitchman had brought should be tied tightly with string, so that it could not be pulled open. It was accordingly tied with strong twine passed about eight times round. The spirit then played it quite melodiously on each of our shoulders, the string remaining firmly bound on it the whole time. “Sam” next asked for his medium to be bound to a chair. Three of our circle bound him tightly and securely, all of us examining the tying. We began to sing, and in four seconds the medium was released, and among us; the rope was found under the sofa, tied and knotted in such an intricate way that it will take twenty minutes for an ordinary mortal to undo it. Thus ended one of the most convincing séances I ever witnessed…”
There's an interesting afterword to this story, by the way: Mr. Monck would go on to be not just the first medium to serve time after a conviction under Britain's Vagrancy Act, he would be the subject of a famous case involving the magician and debunker John Nevil Maskelyne. One of Monck's admirers, a man named Thomas Colley, put up a £ 1,000 challenge to anyone who could duplicate Monck's spirit materializations. Maskelyne accepted the challenge, then sued Colley when he wouldn't pay up...and he lost because the jury said he hadn't dematerialized the spirit the way Monck did.
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"A New Force of Nature" from White of the Moon
This is a story that's about a particularly strange pandemic: people all over the world are suddenly driven to commit suicide.
The story came from me thinking about the forces that drive us, instinct, reflex. Is it true that lemmings sometimes run en masse off cliffs? What if nature decided it had had enough of us?
I originally called the story "Ego Alien", after a psychological term referring to thoughts that are in conflict with the ego. My editor, Steve Jones, felt that title was too obscure, however, so we ended up with "A New Force of Nature".
It's a story that I still think about from time to time, especially when parts of real life seem to mirror it.
White of the Moon is out of print now, but you can still find good cheap used copies of it. |
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How do you stay inspired during a pandemic?
Over the last six weeks of lockdown, I've seen a lot of my writer friends asking this question. It's hard to focus on words when you wonder how many more will die, or if you'll still have a day job after the dust settles, or if publishers will even still be around.
I wish I could say I had a quick and easy answer for this, but I don't. I've suffered from it. I've had those days during this strange time where I'd spend too long trying to decide how to get supplies, or wondering if that sore throat was more than my usual late-winter post-nasal irritation.
For many of us (myself included) the act of creation is joyful, and life lately has been anything but. But creating art can - just as consuming art does - take us away from the current troubles. I spent much of the first few weeks of my sheltering at home immersing myself in the work and world of Robert W. Chambers for a collection of his work I edited. It was a pleasure to lose myself in that.
So maybe the answer to staying inspired during a crisis is as simple as asking yourself this question: does the work give you some solace, some escape, some pleasure? If yes, recognize that and give yourself over. If not, don't force it; the world will move on at some point, and you can re-engage with your writing then.
That may not be the answer we want to hear, but sometimes we have to adjust our art to keep up with our lives.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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I just finished the indexing for Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances - phew! In case you've wondered, the answer is: yes, authors do their own indexing on nonfiction books (although some of my friends hate this task so much they hire someone to do it for them). It's a boring, labor-intensive job, but it's done now!
I gave a reprint of my very early story "Virus Verses" to the charity anthology Infected Volume I. Proceeds benefit the Save the Children Coronavirus Response.
My story "Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Rancho Los Feliz" will be appearing in the anthology Speculative Los Angeles, edited by Denise Hamilton and coming from Akashic Books in February 2021.
My story "The Deals We Make" will appear in the second volume of Tales of the Lost.
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Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
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Coming in September in the UK and October 14 in the US as an illustrated hardback. My comprehensive survey of the history of spirit-calling looks at necromancy, Spiritualism, modern ghost-hunting, and more.
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Miscreations, which includes my story "Imperfect Clay", is available now in hardback, paperback, and e-book.
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My story "Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Los Feliz" will be in this fabulous new anthology, forthcoming from Akashic Books in February 2021.
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In League With Sherlock Holmes
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My story "A Seance in Liverpool" appears in this forthcoming anthology edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Laurie King.
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Includes my poem "Meeting the Elemental".
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Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923
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My Ghost Stories partner Les Klinger and I have re-teamed to dive deep for this anthology of amazing, terrifying stories by early female writers.
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Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween
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My award-winning history of Halloween has just been re-issued in a new less-expensive paperback format!
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The Lovecraft Squad: Rising
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The final volume in this incredible "mosaic novel" includes a chapter by me.
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My story "Family" is in this fabulous anthology, coming in June.
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Infected Volume 1: Tales to Read at Home
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This wonderful charity anthology includes a reprint of my story "Virus Verses" and will contribute to Save the Children Coronavirus Response.
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Are you listening to the free Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt podcast? Each week I provide a "Ghost Report" in which I talk about some cool little bit of history. Plus, there are great guests, and Bridget's a wonderful host!
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My friend Angel Leigh McCoy has just released her first novel, Wyrdwood: Stalking the Moon. I've read a lot of Angel's fantastic short stories, and I know this dark fantasy is going to be just as good. You can sign up for her newsletter here, read an excerpt or enter a giveaway contest here, or just go buy the book here. Enjoy!
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While I was cleaning my office the other day (something I have time to do now, after all!), I found a bunch of lovely hardback copies of Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense, so this month's giveaway is a hefty hardback of ghostly classics to help get you through lockdown. Just click the button below to enter, and good luck!
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At this point...who knows?
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