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Hi Gang!
Hurrah - Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances has been released! I just got my copies today, and I'm so happy with this book.
If anything else at all good is coming out of this terrible year, it's the virtual gathering. I've got over a dozen podcast interviews and presentations scheduled for the next month, and I love the idea that a lecture on, say, Halloween that I might have done in the past for 20 local library patrons can now be shared (for free!) with friends around the world. See the Appearances section below for a list of what I've got coming up (and I don't know the dates when the pre-recorded appearances will go live, so I've just linked to a listing for the podcast in those cases).
Here in my part of Southern California, we're in an October that's starting with temperatures over a hundred degrees and lasting for the near future. Between that and...well, I'm not going to say it again because you know...it's making for a strange Halloween. We're going to do a reduced version of our usual yard display, mainly for ourselves.
I do hope you're all staying healthy, cool, safe, and sane,
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Ron Cobb.
In an earlier newsletter, I talked about a short film I made with Ron Cobb back in the '90s. The film was a promotional piece to try to sell a feature-length movie called Lightning Strikes, which was a science fiction-action script I'd written that Ron very much wanted to direct.
In case you don't immediately know Ron's name, he was the genius designer responsible for memorable images from Alien, Conan the Barbarian, Back to the Future, Star Wars, and many more. He'd started as a political cartoonist, moved onto production design and concept illustration, and in a sane world he would've next made the jump to director, because I had the opportunity to work with him and he was a kickass director.
Unfortunately, Ron never got to make that big science fiction movie that would've shown the whole world how gifted he was. He died two weeks ago at the age of 83.
I'm so glad I got to spend a few months working with him. He was a legend.
About the Still: I shot this photo of Ron directing on the set of the Lightning Strikes promo video.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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How can you celebrate Halloween in a pandemic?
Last month I talked about drive-thru haunted attractions, but what if you live in an area where you don't have those (or can't afford them, because those things aren't cheap)? How can you have a great Halloween in a year when the CDC is telling us that we shouldn't give out candy to trick or treaters?
Halloween 2020 is especially disappointing because this year the stars seemed to be aligned for an incredible holiday: October 31st is on a Saturday, a full moon, and even a blue moon.
Hey, the local haunts may be shuttered and the kids may not be out in force, but you can still have a great Halloween this year. Here are five things I recommend (and will be doing myself!):
- Decorate. Y'know what? I'm decorating for myself this year; even if no kids at all show up, I'll have a great time creating Halloween folk art in my front yard.
- Enjoy some seasonal treats. If you're anything like me, you might be a little worried about the amount of sugar you've consumed during lockdown, but you can still work in a few holiday goodies, be it a pumpkin spice latte, some pumpkin ravioli, or a Reese's Franken-cup (which, by the way, tastes no different from a regular Reese's Peanut Butter Cup).
- Re-watch a holiday or horror favorite movie or tv show. Watching something new is great, too (and I highly recommend Host on Shudder), but revisiting an old friend brings its own comforts. Myself, I plan on revisiting all three seasons of Stranger Things this October (or at least revisiting as much Stranger Things as I can fit in around all the interviews!).
- Join an online gathering. There are a lot of wonderful Halloween-related things going on this year. You could, for example, sign up for my free Halloween Q&A on October 26, or you could invite friends to a virtual Halloween party.
- Make something fun. Whether it's a costume, a decoration, a food, a short story, a poem, or a painting, celebrate the season by creating something. For me, that act of creating is one of the things I love most about Halloween.
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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Stambovsky v. Ackley.
Unless you're a lawyer who specializes in real estate law, I'm betting you've never heard of this case. I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't despite the fact that I've researched laws around ghosts in depth.
Stambovsky v. Ackley, sometimes referred to as Ghostbusters ruling, is a famous 1991 case involving a gentleman named Jeffrey Stambovsky who purchased an 1890 house in Nyack, NY, from a lady named Helen Ackley. It wasn't until after Stambovsky had made the deposit on the house that he discovered it had a haunted history. Ackley had, in fact, given tales of poltergeists and ghosts to Reader's Digest and local newspapers, but had failed to provide any of this information to the new owner.
Stambovsky backed out of the purchase and sued Ackley and the real estate company that had handled the sale. He lost the case, but appealed, and won in appellate court.
When I bought my house in 2015, I was astonished to see a section in the paperwork in which the seller had to note whether the house had any history of haunting. Now I know why.
The house in the case, by the way (pictured above, looking decidedly un-haunted from the Google street view), is currently on the market again for $1,850,000.
(Huge thanks to my friend Rob Cohen for bringing this case to my attention.)
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Summer's End
(Novella originally published by JournalStone in 2013)
Back in the early 2010's (hard to believe this wasn't even that long ago!), I was writing a lot of novellas, and a lot of those were Halloween-themed.
I had an idea for a new one about a Halloween expert who is called in to consult on a recent archaeological discovery that would not only substantially revise our understanding of the holiday's origins, but also spin the expert's life out of control.
As I started to work through my thoughts on the story, I kept thinking about the protagonist. When I'd think about the characteristics I wanted this person to have, I kept relating to my own experience as a Halloween expert...so at some point I decided, What the heck...let's just make it me. I don't mind admitting that decision made me very uncomfortable - how much of my private life was I willing to put into a story? - but the fact that it made me squirm told me it might make readers squirm, too.
I also made other strange stylistic decisions, too, one of which involved a single sentence that took nearly two pages. My editor on the book, the late great Norm Rubenstein, was nearly apoplectic when he saw that, but left it in.
One of my chief pleasures with the book was choosing a cover artist. I've always loved the work of Harry O. Morris, and when I brought his name up to Norm, Norm agreed. We approached Harry, and he suggested we look at several existing pieces he had. When we came to the painting of a woman seeming to wander lost in some sort of dreamy autumnal landscape, we all agreed it encapsulated the feel of the story.
I now jokingly call Summer's End my "crazy book". It received a few glowing reviews (Gary Braunbeck called it "hands-down brilliant", Ray Garton said it was "so strikingly unique that it stands alone in the genre", Peter Schwotzer at Famous Monsters called it "a beautifully written piece of dark literature", and there were even more raves), but it also garnered me the single strangest review I've ever gotten: Publisher's Weekly praised it as "an ambitious marriage of postmodernism and horror" and even said it was "occasionally poetic", but also thought the lead character was "self-righteous". Uhhh...yeah, the lead character who was me.
"Self-righteous" has now become a joke in our house, as in, "Oh gawd, you're being self-righteous again."
Summer's End was later reprinted in my collection The Samhanach and Other Halloween Treats. |
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Plot and character.
I've actually heard writers claim that their stories don't need plots as long as their characters are compelling, to which I must strongly say au contraire.
Consider: let's say you're reading a story with a wonderful lead character. That character is richly detailed and absolutely fascinating. The author has described the character in exquisite detail, until you really feel as if you're right there inside that character's skin.
And...that's it. Or rather, that's it without a plan. There's no ride to take that character on, nothing that tests them. No matter how incredible that character is, without a plot the reader will grow tired of them quickly.
Why? Because - for me, at least - one of the core blocks of fiction is learning about ourselves. How would we react in certain situations? Having a character who undergoes experiences and encounters is at the beating heart of great fiction, and those experiences and encounters are the plot.
If you're an author crafting a story but you feel like plot may not be your strong point, try not to think of plot as a series of events, but rather as what your character must undergo to move along their path. If you're writing a horror story, your protagonist will necessarily encounter frightening things that will test their character; depending how you want your character to respond (do they scream and flee, stay and fight, or...?) will help you to determine what that next event in your plot will be.
By the way, in case it doesn't go without saying: the reverse is true as well. A plot without great characters is going to read about like this: "A person walks down a dimly-lit road late at night. A speeding car whizzes by. The person is almost hit," etc. Without emotional involvement in that person, the plot - no matter how well constructed or beautifully described - is meaningless.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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September feels like it went almost entirely to scheduling and conducting podcast interviews. See the list below in Appearances for upcoming ones. In the meantime, in case you missed the ones that have already gone live...
I've recently done forewords/introductions/prefaces for three books: Past the Glad and Sunlit Season by K. A. Opperman, Unsafe Words by Loren Rhoads, and Mary Shelley Presents by Nancy Holder. All three can be ordered below.
I will be signing Calling the Spirits for Dark Delicacies in a week or so, and you can pre-order here.
Weird Tales asked Victor LaValle and I to interview each other. The resulting conversation is here.
On October 31st, I'll have an essay on Ouija boards up as part of the Horror Writers Association's "Halloween Haunts" blog series.
I'm currently working on a Sherlock Holmes story for a charity anthology co-edited by my friend Nancy Holder, and a few other short stories are in the "thinking about" stage.
I've got two nonfiction books I'm considering, and just trying to decide which one I might tackle first.
And, as usual, there are the cool things happening that I can't talk about yet, so stay tuned! In the meantime, take a look below at the nice promo video one of these unannounced projects produced to promote me:
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Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
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Coming September 26: my comprehensive survey of the history of spirit-calling looks at necromancy, Spiritualism, modern ghost-hunting, and more. Illustrated and fully indexed. You can order a signed copy from Dark Delicacies.
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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 "We Live Through This."
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I did the foreword for this graphic novel collection of the first four issues of the superb Mary Shelley Presents.
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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. You can order a copy signed by Lisa from the Iliad Bookshop.
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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! You can order a signed copy from the Iliad Bookshop.
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My story "Family" is in this fabulous anthology, coming in June.
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Great British Horror 5: Midsummer Eve
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I'm the honorary American in this upcoming anthology.
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Past the Glad and Sunlit Season
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A wonderful poetry collection by K. A. Opperman, with a preface by me.
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I did the introduction for this wonderful collection of short stories by Loren Rhoads.
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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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'Tis the season, so this month's giveaway is a signed copy of the "compact edition" (meaning it's smaller, paperback, and lacks color illustrations) of my book Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween.
NOTE: Because I want the winner to have this in time for the Halloween season, you only have until 11:59 pm PST on October 7th to enter, and I'll randomly select the winner on October 8th and mail the book right away.
Just hit the blue button below to enter the contest, and good luck!
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