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Hi Gang!
May was crazy! Fun, but also a little stressful in that "Did I manage to dodge the Covid bullet again?" way. (Yes, I did.) The month included a visit to Denver to catch up with friends and do a little ghost-hunting (see the Strange Doings column below), a live concert at L.A.'s Greek Theatre (one of our favorite musicians, Aurora, who we saw live for a second time), the first time a documentary crew came to my house to shoot an interview, and a live reading for the long-running "Noir at the Bar" series. In the midst of all that I was also recovering from surgery (to remove a humongous kidney stone) and meeting writing deadlines.
Oh, and that book I'm ridiculously proud of, the forthcoming Other Terrors anthology (the last book deal I secured for the Horror Writers Association before I stepped down as its President in 2019)? It has now notched up THREE starred reviews, in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews. I'm so grateful to editors Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason for knocking this one out of the park!
Here's hoping for a productive, healthy, and happy June!
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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I stand in awe of high-end collectors.
As I mentioned last month, I've recently become a fan of Heritage Auctions. It's fun to just surf the site, and occasionally I throw a bid out there. I can't afford anything major, but there are still some good deals to be had.
It's incredible to see what some pieces are going for, though. That absolutely gorgeous hand-tinted and professionally-restored 11"x14" original lobby card from the 1931 release of Dracula? Its bidding closed on May 29, and it went for $4,200.
I hope whoever buys this (and some of the other high-end expensive pieces) treasures it and displays it in a place of honor. It's beautiful and deserves a little worship.
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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 is now yielding results.
When I first started growing pumpkins in the summer of 2015, I got great crops with a lot of beautiful fruit. By 2017, though, the number of pumpkins dropped; by 2020, it was virtually zero.
We speculated about everything from a fungi infestation to a change in the pH balance of the water, but I thought the answer was: climate change has significantly impacted Southern California and it's simply too hot now to grow pumpkins here over the summer.
To test that theory, I started pumpkins in December. My first few seedlings fell victim to January frosts, so we put out more seeds, which sprouted in February and March.
And OH MY are these plants producing. The photo above shows my first harvested pumpkin (of a bumpy variety from a pumpkin I bought two years ago at a pumpkin patch); this big beauty weighs in at 22.1 pounds. I'm hoping to end up with a large amount of pumpkins that will last until Halloween (not at all impossible).
Looks like my theory was right. Welcome to the future.
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Strange Doings
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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Denver is one haunted city.
Our visit there started on the first night with a surprise ghost tour of the magnificent Wynkoop Brewing Company, Colorado's first brewpub, housed in a gigantic historic building with plenty of ghost stories! General Manager TJ took me, Ricky, and our dear British friends Steve Jones and Mandy Slater through the various floors and into the nooks and crannies, telling us about the ghost who collects dimes and leaves them stacked on the corner of one table, the lady in red who likes to crash parties, and the thirteen kid-ghosts in the basement. Weirdly, I got one photo in that basement that has a light anomaly that I can't really explain... Oh, and the food and beer were darn tasty, too!
The next night, Steve, Mandy, Ricky and I were joined by friends Jason Light, Tracy Cross, Kate Maruyama, Alison McKenzie and Bryan Prince for the Denver Terrors walking tour. This excellent hike began at the state capital building, took us past the Molly Brown house, and finally led us to the notorious Peabody-Whitehead Mansion (supposedly one of the most haunted houses in the world), where Bryan and I held up K-2 meters (see above photo) that went all the way to the highest setting while Tracy and Kate both reported suddenly feeling very ill.
Whether you believe in ghosts or not (let's just say that I remain skeptical), there's no question that something strange is going on with some of these places. And haunted or not, I always love visiting these historic locations and hearing their stories.
Now I need to take some of the ghost walks in my OWN town!
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"Sparks Fly Upward"
(originally published in Mondo Zombie, reprinted in The Living Dead, Zombies: Encounters With the Hungry Dead and others)
Way back in the 1990s, when I was still relatively new to writing and selling short stories, I heard that John Skipp was putting together an anthology of zombie stories. In 1989 Skipp and co-editor Craig Spector had put out the anthology Book of the Dead, which was an incredible compendium of stunning stories that made me desperate to write and sell my own zombie story. Skipp and Spector followed that first book with Still Dead in 1992, and a few years later word got around that Skipp was preparing a third volume.
George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favorite movies; I first saw it when still a teenager, and there's no doubt that it had a huge influence on me. Mash that up with my big admiration for Skipp as an author, editor, and human being, and you can guess that I really wanted to be in that third volume.
Since Skipp and I were both in L.A. at the time, at some point or other I ran into him and begged him to let me submit to the new zombie anthology; he wasn't accepting submissions at the time, but graciously agreed to take a look.
That just left me with... gulp...having to actually write a story.
At the time, abortion was in the news again (I don't remember the specifics now), and I was angry. I wanted to take that anger and put it into a story. Yes, I wanted to write a zombie story about a woman's right to choose.
"Sparks Fly Upward" was the result, and off it went to Skipp. This was back in the day before e-mail, when you still included stuff like a phone number on your manuscript.
I waited a few days, and came home from work one night to find a phone message from Skipp on my answering machine. He LOVED the story and would take it for the book.
I was ecstatic...but here's what happened next: the anthology, Mondo Zombie, encountered endless hurdles. It changed publishers several times. Authors started to pull stories. It sat in limbo... Finally, in 2006 - ten years after my story was accepted! - the anthology was released.
Mondo Zombie won the Bram Stoker Award for Anthology, but then something even better happened: editor John Joseph Adams bought a reprint of the story for his anthology The Living Dead, and a few years later Skipp reprinted it in his Zombies: Encounters With the Hungry Dead. "Sparks Fly Upward" also appears in my collection Night Terrors & Other Tales.
To wrap it up: "Sparks Fly Upward" is possibly my most well-known short story, and is easily my most profitable piece of short fiction - I think it's probably earned more money for me than any of my novels.
Given what's going on with the Supreme Court and Roe V. Wade right now, I decided to share the story as widely as possible, so I've made it a free read. I hope it'll inspire anger and maybe even hope in a few new readers. |
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Readings.
I've recently attended and participated in a few author readings, and I'm always amazed at seeing how even experienced authors will stumble in live readings. Readings can be a great promotional tool - they can get listeners who may just be encountering you for the first time excited to read your work, or they can tell your peers that you've got some real chops. But a bad reading is likely to generate little to no interest in your stuff.
The good news is that it's actually not that hard to give a good reading. Now granted, I have the unfair advantage of living with a domestic partner who has a Masters Degree in Drama from Yale and gives me the best tips (plus, I really love telling stories in any format)...but there are certain basic do's and don'ts that any author can (and should) follow:
- Follow the event rules. Usually the organizers will specify how long they want each reading to last; if your allotted slot is 3-5 minutes, don't read something that's ten minutes long. Similarly, keep the event's theme in mind; if it's part of a horror convention, don't read from your romantic comedy, no matter how brilliant it is.
- Since the time specified in readings is often too short to read an entire piece, look for an excerpt that has a beginning and end point.
- If there are important plot points that listeners need to know before hearing your excerpt, write a small synopsis to be read before the excerpt.
- Here's the single most important tip I can offer: PRACTICE. Read your piece aloud at home. Time it. If possible, read it for someone who can give you feedback. Make sure it doesn't contain any tongue-twisters that might cause you to stumble.
- If you're prone to nerves, try imagining the audience as a group of friends and you're just sharing a story with them - works for me!
- When you step up to the mic (provided you're using one - if it's a small venue and you're good at using your diaphragm you might not need a mic), adjust it so it's directly in front of your mouth.
- Don't just read with your head down; try to look up and make eye contact with people in the audience throughout.
- Consider reading from a backlit device like a tablet or phone - holding an actual book looks cool, but I've been to readings where I was almost the only person who could see in very dim light because I read from my Kindle.
- Be sure to thank the audience and the organizers of the event.
By following these tips (and PRACTICING in advance!), you can have a great reading that will be fun for both you and the listeners...and hey, maybe you'll even sell a few books as a result!
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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I just got an enthusiastic thumbs-up on the latest work I sent in for my Big Top Secret Book Project of 2022, so that's a relief! Now on to the next deadline in this project (yes, this book is so big that it has a series of deadlines)...
Some recent podcast interviews with me:
My interview with Renaissance man Taylor Grant is now a free read at Nightmare Magazine.
I'll have an essay on Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in Subversive Sci-Fi, now funding at Kickstarter.
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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'd like to share my story "Sparks Fly Upward" with everyone. Click on the blue button below for a free read, and thanks!
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