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Hi Gang!
What a weird year. A pandemic that may or may not be moving into the endemic phase...a war by an aggressor who is praised by a former president...prices for everyday commodities skyrocketing...weather extremes thanks to the climate change that world leaders continue to try to push aside, as if it's some minor inconvenience...and whatever personal crap you've got going on (I've been trapped in a cycle of car repairs lately).
I hope you have something good to occupy your thoughts. Spring is coming here in Southern California, and my plants are busting out in sprout and bloom. I've got a new cat (Henrietta, who belonged to my late friend Bob) who is very timid and still hasn't come out from under my office couch after a month. And I'm knee-deep in the writing of what will (literally) be the biggest book I've ever done. It's a coffee table book, so there's been a high learning curve - these kinds of heavily-illustrated books employ a lot of lingo and formatting it's taken me a while to figure out! It's coming along well, though, and I can't wait to share news of it (although if you read the newsletter closely you'll probably figure out what the subject of the book is!).
I do hope you're all staying safe and sane. It's a crazy world out there; I know I'm thankful that we have art and literature and music and each other to help us get through it.
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Ever heard of an '80s movie called One Dark Night?
I actually worked on this as a special make-up effects artist; it was my first screen credit (although I'd worked on earlier films like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I was one of many who didn't receive screen credit).
One Dark Night is about a dead psychic who not only comes back to life after he's been interred, but he uses his abilities to animate the corpses around him, making it a fairly unique zombie film. I worked on it in the early '80s, sculpting and making corpses as part of Tom Burman's crew. During my time on the crew I shot a number of photos, like the above.
One of these days I'll finally digitize all of the photos I shot from the films I worked on. I have finished digitizing my old slides from a few of the films, including One Dark Night, Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and The Beast Within; still to come is The Abyss, Meet the Hollowheads, and Adventures in Dinosaur City. I need more hours in every day!
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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The Great Pumpkin Experiment of 2022 continues!
Since climate change has made it impossible to grow fruiting pumpkin plants in my part of Southern California during the summer (something I could do up until 2017), I decided that I'd try growing them in the winter instead. I started one in November, but between digging critters and frosts, it didn't survive.
So I threw out a few seeds at the beginning of February, and they've begun to sprout. We've had record-breaking cold nights here in L.A. recently and we're in drought conditions, but so far these little babies are still growing. Let's see what happens now...will I actually get pumpkins off of them?
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Strange Doings
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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Did you know that several of the best horror movies of the 1940s were written by a woman?
I was certainly surprised to find that out. Her name was Ardel Wray, and she was first employed by legendary producer Val Lewton on his 1943 film I Walked With a Zombie. Curt Siodmak had already turned in a first draft, but Lewton brought Wray in to rewrite it.
I Walked With a Zombie feels markedly different from other films of the time. It's the only zombie movie from the '30s and '40s that addresses head-on issues of Caribbean slavery and colonialism, and it also centers its story on a strong woman (wonderfully played by Frances Dee) who dedicates her nursing skills to saving another woman. It's scary and smart and beautifully made (by Jacques Tourneur).
Lewton next hired Wray to write The Leopard Man for him, and again the movie stands clearly apart from other films at the time in its thoughtful treatment of colliding cultures in a New Mexico town. Wray also wrote a movie intended to star Boris Karloff called Blackbeard the Pirate that was sadly never made.
One of the reasons you've likely never heard of Wray is that she fell victim to the scourge of McCarthyism - she refused to work with investigators to name suspected Communists in the film industry and so was "gray-listed," meaning her career as a screenwriter was essentially over.
Wray spent most of the remainder of her life working mostly as a studio story analyst, although she did also write for television. She died in 1983.
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"Blood for the American People"
(originally published in Horror for Good, reprinted in Night Terrors & Other Tales)
Last month I talked about the first story in Night Terrors & Other Tales, "Tested." I've already dissected the second story, "Poppi's Monster," so this time around let's talk about Story #3, "Blood for the American People."
This story began with me thinking about a way to put a fresh spin on werewolves. I started by asking myself: what sort of person lives like the hungry, enraged predator that's at the heart of the werewolf legend? My immediate answer: the politician (I should probably have said, "the corporate head," but for some reason "politician" popped into my head first).
I decided to focus not on a working politician, but on the members of an influential think tank, meaning the puppet-masters behind other politicians. I wanted to bring in elements of noir - hey, werewolves prowl mainly at night, right? - so I introduced a femme fatale and a man hopelessly obsessed with her, even though he knows she's bad. What he discovers in the course of the story is just HOW bad she really is.
The story was also one of my responses to the idea that fiction should never be political. I've heard this often from other horror writers, who somehow equate "political" with "preachy." My response to that is: a badly written story might be preachy, but if the writer crafts a tale that's involving and exciting and frightening, no one will think of it as "preachy." Sure, a few readers might not agree with whatever political stance the story takes...but if it engenders some hate mail (and oh YES, I've gotten some over the years), you scored a bullseye hit, and more power to you!
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Ageism.
Maybe you've heard about this "ism" applied to the film industry, but it's certainly applicable to...well, probably nearly every other industry, too.
It can also be an extra pressure that some of us apply to ourselves. I was recently in conversation with a writer friend who is nearly ten years younger than me and she mentioned that she worried about being irrelevant. I worry about this, too. If you're (ahem) a writer of a certain age, perhaps it's been a question for you as well.
A lot of writers start late in life, especially women, who often have to wait until their children are grown to be able to pursue their passion. Or maybe the writer has recently retired from a stressful career, and is looking forward to finally sitting down at a writing desk, but worries about being too old.
If you fit any of this...well, the first thing you should know is that you're not alone. The wonderful editor Doug Murano put out a tweet last year that unexpectedly went viral, getting millions of views and shares. Here's what it said: "I get tired of 'under 40' lists. Show me someone who got their PhD at 60 after losing everything. Give me the 70-year-old debut novelist who writes from a lifetime of love and grief. Give me calloused hands and tender hearts." (If you'd like to share this marvelous gem with others, check out Doug's IndieGoGo campaign that's offering both cool merch and a chance to help Doug get the message out there even more.)
So how do you stay relevant if you're an older writer? My personal answer to that is: you can't think about it. You can only write what fires your imagination and your heart, and relevance be damned. You can't worry about what younger readers might think; you can only try to know that if your writing is honest and heartfelt, readers of all ages will connect with it. Yes, as an older writer you may have to work a little harder when it comes time to promote your book - to paraphrase Doug, the world loves its "under 40" lists - but hopefully you can find ways to promote that you enjoy, too....like, say, writing a monthly newsletter. That works for me!
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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I just joined TikTok. I still have no idea what I'm doing, but hey, it seems fun!
I just placed a story called "L.A. Lizard" in the 50th anniversary Kolchak anthology.
The final ballot for the Bram Stoker Awards has been announced, and I'm amazed to see that I have stories in four of the five nominated anthologies, plus a piece in one of the books nominated in Non-fiction.
I recently filmed an interview for a new documentary on haunted attractions, and I also recorded an episode of the podcast "Are You There, Ghost? It's Me, Chiwan."
The wonderful British writer Peter Tennant just reviewed both Calling the Spirits ("...this is a comprehensive study that will leave the reader knowing much more about an occasional prop of the horror genre, and which does an excellent job of placing the phenomenon in a broader context. For those with literary ambitions and a leaning towards horror fiction, it may well prove an invaluable aid to credibility, and possibly a source of inspiration"), and my ten-year-old collection Monsters of L.A. ("...a collection of stories that, first and foremost, entertain the reader with their wit and invention, but also have something to say about the nature of our world and the Hollywood filter through which so much of it is presented.")
Last year I recorded a chat with the incredible John Skipp that was intended to promote the Vintage Paperback Show but somehow never got aired. I just posted it to my own YouTube channel (you can watch it right below!) because a chat with Skipp is too good not to share.
Here's a cool promo ad that the producers of Spine Tinglers made for me!
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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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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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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 signed, limited hardback of A Little Yellow Book of Carcosa and Kings, a collection of all of Robert Chambers' original "King in Yellow" stories which I edited, introduced and annotated. These are already sold out, so this might be your best chance at grabbing one. Good luck!
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