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Hi Gang!
For the first time in close to a year, I have an entire month ahead of me that's not packed with Zoom interviews and panels and presentations. I love doing these, but it's nice to have a little break, too. I'll be back in May, though, for virtual StokerCon, during which I'll be doing a reading, a live Q&A, and panels.
March has been busy, but overall pleasant and productive. There are a lot of things bubbling away in the background, most of which I can't talk about yet, but it's all good.
And YAY, as of today I am finally eligible for my vaccine shot, WOOHOO! Now let's see how long it takes to get an appointment...
Hope all is well in your world, and that your spring break this month will be a peaceful and healthy one.
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Spring has sprung, and so my thoughts naturally turn to...zombies.
Y'know, the season when life returns and stuff rises up from the ground and all that...RIGHT?
Anyway, let's talk a little about George A. Romero's 1985 Day of the Dead, a movie that I often feel doesn't get the luv it deserves. Oddly, this one seems to be a favorite among horror writers in particular; I remember discussing it with the late great Dennis Etchison at some gathering or other, and within minutes about three other writers had chimed in with how much they love this film.
Day of the Dead's history is famous for its unfilmed early drafts, which were HUGE in both theme and presentation, offering a story that turned zombies into armies of the undead. Romero never got the budget to make that version, but there's a lot to love about what he finally ended up with.
Most of the praise for Day gets lavished on Bub, the intelligent zombie, and indeed that's possibly the single most iconic zombie ever created. The performance of actor Howard Sherman is nothing short of brilliant - that moment when Bub responds to classical music is astonishing (and actually very moving).
For me, though, I really love the character of Sarah (and the performance of Lori Cardille), the scientist stuck in the underground lab trying to find a medical solution to the zombie epidemic. That would be stressful enough, but Sarah is also quite possibly the last woman on earth, and she's in this claustrophobic bunker with a bunch of military dunderheads who either taunt her or leer at her with open lust. It's an incredibly disturbing situation, and the end of the film (which I won't give away, in case one of you out there hasn't yet seen Day) makes it clear (at least to me) that Sarah is going to spend her days wondering if she made the right choice.
There are times when I think Day just may be Romero's best film (although Dawn of the Dead looms like a zombie god over everything else in my cinematic world).
All this, plus the film has an opening nod to October pumpkins. What's not to love?
About the Still: It's an original 8"x10" from the Day of the Dead presskit.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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Are you ready to dress up as a witch and go door-to-door asking for treats?
That's actually how the Finnish people celebrate Easter!
On the opposite end of the calendar from Halloween, Easter in Finland is celebrated by children costumed as witches, going door-to-door carrying willow twigs (since willows are almost the only plant flourishing during this time of year in chilly Finland), reciting a small poem, and being rewarded with candy, money, or an Easter egg.
There are also bonfires (another old Halloween tradition) and special foods. I don't know about you, but I'd really love to experience Easter in Finland!
Oh, the graphic above is from a postcard I once bought because I thought it was a Halloween celebration I didn't know about!
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Strange Doings
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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Dark watchers...in my home state.
One of the (many) things I love about researching the "Ghost Reports" I write every week for the Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt podcast is the way things I didn't expect pop up in the search results. Sometimes - as was the case with Dark Watchers - I've never even heard of them.
How could I be a lifelong Californian and never have heard of this famous paranormal legend?
Well, because it's in the top half of the state (I'm in L.A.) - the Big Sur area along the coast, to be precise.
Apparently people for hundreds of years - going back to the early Spanish settlers - have reported seeing mysterious figures in black cloaks and hats watching them from the tops of the coastal Santa Lucia Mountains. The figures are said to simply watch; any attempt at approaching them causes them to vanish.
The most common explanation is an atmospheric effect known as the Brocken Spectre; when this happens, a traveler's shadow can be thrown onto a distant mist or cloud bank, creating the illusion of a large, shadowy figure.
Both John Steinbeck and Robinson Jeffers wrote about encountering these enigmas, who - if we judge from the number of recent newspaper articles - seem to be having a bit of a comeback lately.
Not as if I needed another reason to want a vacation in Big Sur, but I've got one anyway now!
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"One Shot"
(From my mini-collection Handfed: Six Zombie Tales - see below!)
Last month, I was asked to "take over" a Facebook group called The Zombie Army. I thought it would be fun to offer a giveaway, so I put together five previously-published zombie stories into a mini-collection e-book and offered to anyone in the group for a couple of hours.
I also wanted to offer it to YOU, my wonderful newsletter readers, but I thought you deserved a little something extra, so I created a new short-short, "One Shot", to go with the five previously-published tales.
It's not easy to write anything original in the zombie genre these days! It seems like everything has been done, and been done multiple times in multiple variants. What could I offer up that hadn't been done to death (no pun intended) already?
The first thing that seemed obvious was to draw a direct line between the pandemic we're all living through and a zombie plague. Once I started with that, I knew I wanted to play with a lot of the ways we've experienced our virus - surges, quarantining, vaccines, trying to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. From there, the story took off.
I won't say anything else about it right now, because I hope you'll read it for yourself. Hey, why not? It's short...and best of all, it's free!
By the way, "One Shot" will also be read aloud in a future episode of my podcast Spine Tinglers, so if you'd rather wait to hear it, that's cool, too. |
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Rejection.
In one past column, I wrote about ways to handle rejection, but this time around I'm going to get personal...and maybe give anyone who is struggling with rejection a little hope.
All writers deal with rejection. ALL writers. Some deal with rejection for years before making that first sale. It's just a part of the writing gig.
But rejection doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Sometimes editors will take the time to provide some feedback on your work, and you might get something useful out of that. Most importantly, however: rejection may just mean that the story wasn't right for that editor. I like to think that when an editor passes on a story, it's not a rejection but a reload, because that story can now be fired off to the next editor, who just might love it.
Here are a few examples from my own history of rejection:
My first professional short story submission was to Stephen Jones for The Mammoth Book of Werewolves. Steve passed on that story...but he bought the next one I sent him ("Sane Reaction", which appeared in Dark Voices 6). The werewolf story wound up in my collection Monsters of L.A.
The first market I sent my story "Tested" to passed on it, but it was a lengthy rejection with some good notes, which I used. The second market also passed. The third market (Cemetery Dance magazine) bought it. The story went on to win the Bram Stoker Award ® .
My story "Pound Rots in Fragrant Harbour" (a personal favorite for me) was rejected by two anthologies before Dennis Etchison took it for The Museum of Horrors. For years after, Dennis would ask me what awards the story had won. It didn't win any, but having Dennis Etchison think it was that good was better than any award.
I once received a rejection for a story...from the same magazine that had bought it and published it six months earlier.
And yes, I still get rejections because I'm always trying to expand into new directions, and sometimes there's a learning curve. A mystery-horror story I wrote for young readers was rejected the first time around...but went on to appear in the 2019 book Terrifying Tales to Tell at Night.
The moral of this story is: don't let rejections get you down. In every case I've mentioned above, I feel that the stories found the perfect homes. Keep polishing your work and getting it back out into the world, and your stories may just find their perfect homes, too.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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March has been a month of mostly non-fiction work for me:
I turned in the first draft of an academic study of how The Purge franchise translates from silver screen to haunted attraction.
I wrote a foreword for a forthcoming new edition of one of my favorite Bentley Little books.
I'm working on an article about a favorite movie cycle for a favorite magazine.
I'm gathering material and information for a new non-fiction book.
Fiction-wise, I'm crafting more short-shorts for my forthcoming podcast Spine Tinglers, and working on three short stories I owe various editors.
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Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
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Now in a second printing: my comprehensive survey of the history of spirit-calling looks at necromancy, Spiritualism, modern ghost-hunting, and more. Illustrated and fully indexed.
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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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Best American Mystery Stories 2020
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Includes my story "What Ever Happened to Lorna Winters?"
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Includes my story "Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Los Feliz".
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Night Terrors & Other Tales
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This, my first major collection, will launch in May, but you can pre-order yours now. Includes twenty reprints plus one new story, "Night Terrors", written for the collection.
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Weird Women Volume 2: 1840-1925
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Coming September 2021: a new volume of Weird Women, with stories by George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and more!
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In League With Sherlock Holmes
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My story "A Seance in Liverpool" appears in this anthology edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Laurie King.
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Includes my poem "We Live Through This."
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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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Everyone wins this month! Just click the big blue button to grab your free PDF of Handfed: Six Zombie Tales!
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May 20-23, 2021: I'll be a Guest of Honor at the virtual StokerCon.
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