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Hi Gang!
I'm now deep in the throes of my Big Project for 2022. I've met the first deadline (it was March 28), and delivered over 700 files on the project (!). In case you're wondering what kind of book needs to start with over 700 files, I can tell you this much: it's a coffee table art book. I now begin working with my "picture editor" to clear rights to the illustrations and find even more; in the meantime, I will also be writing the main text for the book, which is due in June.
The end of the month got unexpectedly tough - just as I delivered the Big Project files (and thank goodness those got done first!), I suffered a massive kidney stone attack that led to a hospital visit, an accompanying infection, and upcoming surgery. That little descent into Painsville has put me behind again, so this will be a skimpy newsletter.
I hope you're all staying away well and enjoying your spring so far.
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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I just love this photo of Bela Lugosi.
This is a still from White Zombie, in which Bela plays the evil zombie master "Murder" Legendre. I adore his sinister suavity in this part!
About the Still: not an original, sadly, so the contrast is a bit stark.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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I love repurposing Halloween stuff.
Okay, I know that's a slight misnomer in regards to the above picture, since that's neither a Halloween piece (it's Dia de los Muertos), nor is it repurposed, since it always came with a tillandsia (air plant) attached to the top.
But I've learned that tillandsia actually require more care than most people realize: they need to be completely submerged in water once a week for about 30 minutes. Most of us (including me) just buy these cute little tsotschkes and the plants die fairly soon after.
I recently decided to try replanting these geegaws (I've got a few, both Halloween and Dia de los Muertos) with fresh tillandsia, so I bought some plants. Now let's see if I can keep up with that watering schedule!
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Strange Doings
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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Is this the worst double feature of all time or WHAT?
Yes, it's true and the ads above are proof: the legendary Night of the Living Dead - the movie that introduced flesh-eating zombies to a terrified world and broke boundaries of gore and nihilism in cinema - was originally released to theaters in 1968 as part of a double feature with Doctor Who and the Daleks.
I couldn't quite believe this at first, so I did some checking...and yes indeed, you can even find reviews in which the films are reviewed together (with the reviewers also wondering who on earth thought putting a kid-friendly scifi romp with a descent into hell was a good idea).
This ad, by the way, is part of the extraordinary collection at the George A. Romero Archives, held by the University of Pittsburgh. This and many other amazing pieces can be viewed for free by visiting the archive's online catalog (just click the button below to visit).
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"Joe and Abel in the Field of Rest"
(originally published in The Dead That Walk, reprinted in Night Terrors & Other Tales)
When my editor Stephen Jones asked me about contributing a zombie story to his upcoming anthology The Dead That Walk, I thought about what part of the zombie mythos I wanted to explore, something that perhaps doesn't get talked about as often as the more adventurous, action-filled parts. I settled on loneliness; being a last survivor in an apocalypse must surely be one of the loneliest positions possible.
Because this story would be in a book for my British editor, I set the story in the rural English countryside and centered it on Joe, a young man who survived the zombie outbreak working alongside his father, but now the old man is gone and Joe is alone. Joe is a simple farmer, a decent man who believed in dealing with the zombies as respectfully as possible; hence, "the Field of Rest," a part of the farm given over to a burial pit for the dead.
When Joe finds that one of the newly-arrived zombies is a former acquaintance from town, he keeps his "friend" alive (or at least doesn't put him down for good). The story asks the question: is Joe's love for his friend Abel any less because Abel can't return it?
The story received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best wrap-up and has been reprinted several times.
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Back up, back up, back up.
This should be every writer's mantra. We've all either lost a work in progress or heard horror stories of works that vanished into the cyber-ether, so it's well worth taking these words to heart.
Here's how I back things up:
- I keep Microsoft Word's automatic back-up function turned on and set to every 10 minutes.
- I periodically save whatever file I'm working on to both the cloud (I use Microsoft's OneDrive, which easily incorporates into Word) and the machine I'm writing on.
- I use an external hard drive for my desktop and an SD card for my laptop (both have automatic back-up enabled).
Even with all this, it's still possible to lose a file, especially if you've just started it and haven't saved it in any form yet. My tip there: SAVE YOUR FILE THE INSTANT YOU TYPE ONE WORD. Hopefully this way you'll never find yourself cursing the computer gods for your lost masterpiece!
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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Thank you to David Agranoff for this amazing review of my collection Night Terrors and Other Tales.
Here I am jabbering as part of HWA's Women in Horror month celebration.
I had so much fun chatting with Chiwan Choi for his "Are You There, Ghost? It's Me, Chiwan" podcast.
Otherwise...I turned in a new interview for Nightmare Magazine, I'm working on four short stories and one nonfiction essay, I'm working on a cool project that'll involve video workshops for writers, and of course the Big Project!
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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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Includes my (science fiction!) story "Touch Has a Memory".
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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 another wonderful release from HWA's Haunted Library of Horror Classics: The Mummy by Jane Webb. Just click the blue button below to enter for your chance to win this cool new paperback, and good luck!
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At this point, my convention schedule is totally up in the air. All I can tell you for certain is that I'll be attending Midsummer Scream in July, and will have late-summer signings for Haunted Tales.
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