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Hi Gang!
Happy New Year!
At least, we all hope it will be. Here we are, going into 2022 and our third year of life under a pandemic...hard to believe, isn't it?
I hope your holidays were happy and healthy. Mine were pleasantly lowkey, although I did get out to the Season's Screamings convention in Pasadena the week before Christmas, and it was fantastic! I did a presentation on the tradition of Christmas ghost stories, accompanied by readers Richard Grove (Army of Darkness) and Patti Negri (Ghost Adventures), and we had so much fun, We had a nice large audience and they seemed to enjoy it, too. Afterwards, we gave away booklets and MyParanormal.net tote bags.
I also got an incredible gift right in between my birthday and Christmas: a contract for the biggest book (literally!) I've ever done. I can't quite tell you what it is yet, but I can say that it's a coffee table art book, something I've wanted to do for years, so I'm stoked! YEAAAH!
In the meantime, there'll be lots more short fiction, more Spine Tinglers (I know it looks like that podcast has been on hiatus, but it should resume shortly), and the usual surprises.
Thanks again for hanging in here with me, and stay well - we all need each other.
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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I love the new trend for artist-produced limited edition posters, like this one by Matt Lyon for Dune.
When I was a kid collecting movie posters and still photos, the most you could hope for in terms of different posters was pretty much limited to either varying sizes or maybe the occasional odd foreign poster (Polish posters in particular often had striking, very unusual graphics).
But nowadays there are artists out there producing their own posters, which sometimes become even more collectible than those produced by the studios.
If you're not familiar with these posters and are curious, here's a site you can start with: Alternative Movie Posters.
And yes...I bought one of the Dune posters.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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I recently had one of those forehead-slapping moments when I realized I'd never checked out the world of Halloween bloggers.
When I was in Texas last month for the Preserve Halloween Festival, one of my fellow Guests of Honor was Miranda, the mad genius behind the Spooky Little Halloween blog. Miranda's blog is fantastic - it includes everything from crafts and recipes to music playlists. Miranda keeps it fresh, even offering ways to celebrate spooky Christmas. You can follow her on various social media platforms (just click through the Spooky Little Halloween site and scroll down) for new tips.
Mark Ledenbach is one of the experts (if not THE expert) on vintage Halloween collectibles, and he blogs about new finds, complete with delightful photos. Read Mark's blog at Halloween Collector.
Haunted Eve's Halloween blog has a lot of cool stuff about holidays in general, but especially (of course!) Halloween.
Do you have a favorite Halloween blog I should know about? Drop me a line and tell me about it!
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Strange Doings
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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"Zombies, man...they creep me out."
Okay, so that line is actually from George Romero's 2005 movie Land of the Dead, not W. B. Seabrook's The Magic Island...but Romero might not have made any zombie movies had it not been for this seminal 1929 book.
Seabrook was a journalist and adventurer who wrote this travelogue about his time in Haiti and the surrounding islands, making extensive use of the folklore and magical practices he found there. In a chapter entitled "...Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields", he discusses monsters with a local farmer and discovers one that doesn't exist outside of the Caribbean: the zombie.
Here is how the zombie is described to Seabrook:
"...while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost, nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life - it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens."
Seabrook's zombies don't eat the living; it would take George Romero to add that component, nearly forty years later. But it does lay out the other basic rules of the zombie that would form one of the most potent and popular monsters of the next century: the return from the grave, the lack of intelligence, the mindless obedience to some driving force.
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"A Plague on The House"
(from December Tales)
When the editor J.D. Horn invited me into this anthology, he told me he wanted a piece that would put a modern spin on a very traditional ghost story.
First, I thought about the elements I'd need for the traditional part: a haunted house, a wintry setting, and of course ghosts.
For the modern part, I decided to make my house a suburban home. I also wanted to write something for a dear friend who manages a large skilled nursing facility (with tremendous kindness and diligence), and who had recently left his facility after it was purchased by a businessman who plainly had no interest in the welfare of either the residents or the staff. I normally try to avoid the old horror cliche of "asshole who gets a comeuppance", but the combination of a gift for my friend and a twist on the classic ghost story was just too intriguing.
To give the story one more little turn, I decided that I wanted the source of the ghosts to be not that suburban home, but the protagonist himself. I also brought in elements of the current pandemic.
I really like the final anthology, especially how the editor has juxtaposed nineteenth-century favorite tales with the contemporary authors. It may be called December Tales, but it can be enjoyed all year long!
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For this month's writing tips, let's hear from one of horror fiction's greatest practitioners: the late, great Dennis Etchison.
I had the great pleasure of perusing one of Dennis's handwritten journals, and there were two pages of notes on writing, probably for a class he was teaching. Here are a few of my favorite bits:
- "Absolute truthfulness requires absolute commitment."
- ""The ultimate goal is an authentic lived experience - or at least the feeling that this is so."
- "A story is a slice of time. Per Aristotle, open in the midst of action, or just before."
- "Art is the most subjective of expression."
- "Forget the workshops. They may or may not know what you are trying to do and may or may not care if they do."
- "Form and content are one."
- "It's not about consensus."
And if you've never read Dennis's work, I highly recommend his absolutely brilliant collection The Dark Country, a book I can truthfully say changed my life.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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I just finished my novella for Crystal Lake Publishing's new Dark Tide series. Here's their announcement on this innovate new line:
"FROM THE PUBLISHER
Special Publishing Announcement!
Want to know what’s in store for readers and Crystal Lake Publishing in 2022?
How about a special series of Genre Fiction books featuring the likes of Chad Lutzke, Bob Ford, John Boden, Maxwell Ian Gold, Lee Murray, Angela Yuriko Smith, R. B. Wood, Michael Burke, Jess Landry, Sofia Ajram, Nadia Bulkin, Kevin Lucia, Jason Parent, Jeremy Bates, Lucy A. Snyder, Lisa Morton, Kate Maruyama, Michael Bailey, James Aquilone, Michael Knost, David Boop, Naching T. Kassa, John Linwood Grant, Nick Kolakowski, Tom Deady, Glenn Rolfe, JS Breukelaar, Aaron Dries, Kaaron Warren, Mark Allan Gunnells, and Brandon Ford?
These books will be released in the 2nd half of 2022. Two books per month, three novellas/novelettes per book. These books will have different themes/subgenres, which currently include Halloween, Terror, Murder, Suspense, Cosmic Horror, Sherlock Holmes, Weird Western, Body Horror, Vandalism, and Mystery. Eventually it will truly be a series that’ll encompass all Speculative and Dark Fiction subgenres. I wonder if readers can guess which authors will be writing for which themes…
For updates and info on new signings, be sure to sign up to the official Dark Tide mailing list: http://eepurl.com/hKVGkr
There will be more of these books in 2023, so in time we'll invite more authors to fill other themes and subgenres."
I'm betting you can guess which theme is at the heart of my novella!
What I'm working on next: a short story about a futuristic detective, and another about Shakespeare's goriest play, Titus Andronicus. Oh, and the big coffee table art book, of course!
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Night Terrors & Other Tales
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This, my first major non-themed collection, is now available. Includes twenty reprints plus one new story, "Night Terrors", written for the collection.
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Haunted Tales: Classic Stories of Ghosts and the Supernatural
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My Ghost Stories partner Les Klinger and I have re-teamed for a new anthology of more classic horror tales. Coming in August 2022.
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A Little Yellow Book of Carcosa and Kings
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I edited this collection of the four stories that make up "The King in Yellow" cycle by Robert Chambers. Includes my introduction and annotations throughout. Limited to 1,000 copies signed by me.
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Classic Monsters Unleashed
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Coming in 2022...includes my Headless Horseman tale, "Hacking the Horseman's Code".
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Humans Are the Problem: A Monster's Anthology
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Includes my story "In the House of the Elemental".
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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 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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Includes my story "The Garden of Dr. Moreau".
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Includes my short story "A Plague on the House".
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Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World
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Includes my short story "The Gulch".
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This month I've got a print copy of the latest release in HWA's Haunted Library of Horror Classics, Gothic Classics: The Castle of Otranto and The Old English Baron, to send to one lucky winner. Just click the blue button below to enter, and good luck!
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