|
|
|
|
Hi Gang!
July was my convention month, with trips to and appearances at both Comic-Con and Midsummer Scream. Both were huge. Both were a little nerve-wracking. Attendance at my Midsummer Scream presentation was huge and the audience loved it. Comic-Con also involved train travel, which I loved (I'll never drive to Comic-Con again!). And (as least as of this writing) I seem to have once again evaded infection.
There was some nice news announced this month: a novella I co-wrote with John Palisano, Placerita, was acquired by Cemetery Dance for their paperback line, with a publication date of December 2023. This is a historical horror tale set in Los Angeles in 1928, when the city was in turmoil due to both the St. Francis Dam disaster that killed hundreds, and a proliferation of weird cults. John and I had great fun writing it and we're so happy that it found a home with one of our favorite publishers.
This is also the month when my latest book with Les Klinger, Haunted Tales, will see release. I'm particularly proud of this one, which unleashes some unjustly-forgotten gems on an unsuspecting world!
I hope you're staying well and cool.
Lisa
|
|
Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
|
|
|
I am occasionally reminded of some of the weird jobs I've had along the way...like being a writer on a kids' television show called Van-Pires.
Back in the '90s I actually wrote for a few children's series, but this was probably the strangest one, and the most innovative. At the time computer animation was still in infancy; the groundbreaking animated series Reboot had been on the air for a couple of years, but there wasn't much else out there.
Van-Pires one-upped Reboot by combining live action and CGI. The premise was: a strange meteor has crashed into an auto wrecking yard, transforming some car-crazy kids into anthropomorphic cars by night, while some of the cars have become "van-pires" that roam the roads looking for fuel to suck.
Writing the show was really fun except that the producers wanted an endless stream of bad puns (there was even one antagonist that was a talking toilet called "Flush"). The show was doing incredibly well in the ratings - it was the #1 syndicated kids' show in a lot of places - but its renewal for a second season was dependent on a line of toys that never happened, so it died after just a single season and is now a barely-remembered oddity.
But it was a great writing gig while it lasted.
About the still: I stumbled across this in an old folder while looking for something else - it's a full-page ad that appeared in Variety.
|
|
The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
|
|
|
It's August now, which means my backyard has been transformed into a crazy wizard's lair of spooky things being birthed.
My partner Ricky and I actually started seriously working on this year's haunt in July, but now the work is really gearing up. We're hoping that this year - for the first time since 2019 - we'll be able to lure Halloween visitors all the way to our front door, so that means there's a lot of ground to cover (literally).
While Ricky's been making coffins and scarecrows and headstones and spooky trees (see the photo above), I've been investigating some new lighting and sound systems. We were also lucky enough to nab one of Home Depot's 12-foot skeletons, so we're designing a big part of this year's display around that big fellah.
Our haunt isn't nearly as elaborate as many in SoCal, but we love it and hope to run it through most of October this year. Stay tuned...
|
|
Strange Doings
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
|
|
|
About ten years ago I knew a remarkable woman named Amy Wallace.
If that name sounds familiar, you might know Amy's work as a writer. She was a member of one of America's great literary families: her father Irving Wallace was one of the most popular novelists of the 1960s; her mother Sylvia was a novelist and editor; and her brother David was an editor, critic, and historian. Irving and David scored a hit with the original Book of Lists, and Sylvia and Amy worked on later installments of various list books.
I first met Amy through my day job as a bookseller; she and her boyfriend Scott (who is a wonderful man in his own right) would periodically bring in books to sell. When Amy and Scott (along with Del Howison) put together The Book of Lists: Horror, they were kind enough to invite me to contribute and I got to see more of Amy. I liked her a great deal; she was funny, adventurous, and spacy in that way that wasn't irritating but rather told you her mind was constantly going in a zillion directions at once.
We occasionally talked about doing fun things together, but somehow those things never materialized. Then, one day in 2013, came the terrible news that Amy had passed away in her sleep (leaving poor Scott to find her). She was 58, older than me but too young to be gone already.
I still think about her and wonder if we might have gone on to become great friends. Recently I picked up her book Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda and decided to read it. It's a remarkable book, covering a relationship that began when Amy was still a teenager and eventually became something fueled by fame, charisma, mysticism and sex. Amy was smart enough to see how Castaneda manipulated her, but she was fascinated by him (understandably).
Reading the book makes me glad I never knew Castaneda, but sad that I didn't get to know Amy better. It's a strange sensation to miss someone you think could have been a true friend. And yes, I suspect a story will come out of this (too bad the title "Chasing Amy" has been taken).
|
|
|
"La Japonesa"
(originally published in Monsters of L.A., reprinted in Tales of Nightmares)
Many years ago - maybe even like 20 - I was looking for something on the L.A. Public Library's website when I noticed an odd note at the bottom of the page*, something to the effect of an urban legend about a secret door in the downtown library's bottom floor that led to an underground civilization of lizard people. Well, you gotta know I was gonna click on a link like that, and it led me down a rabbit hole of Los Angeles urban mythology.
I became fascinated by the real story of G. Warren Shufelt, a crazy engineer who once fleeced the City of Los Angeles out of thousands of dollars by claiming he had created a device that would use radio waves to find the lizard people's hidden gold; and then there was Petranilla de Feliz, who in 1863 cursed the land that would eventually become Griffith Park.
One of the strangest SoCal urban legends involved a creature known as La Japonesa. This tale had originated in Mexico, where it told of a cat spirit that arrived in the New World imprisoned in a large jar imported from Japan. By the time this story moved north into the U.S., it had morphed into reports of a cat woman roaming the San Gabriel Mountains. I remember even finding drawings of the entity based on supposed eye-witness accounts, although oddly enough all of that seems to have vanished now.
I found the idea of a mythical cat woman living in the hills above L.A. to be both scary and romantic. I began to imagine what finding something like that would do to someone. What if, instead of merely frightening a witness, an encounter with La Japonesa served to restore a sense of wonder in someone who has become cynical and morose? Maybe it could be terrifying in that way that becomes truly cathartic (no pun intended with the "cat" part of that word).
That urban legend inspired "La Japonesa," which first appeared under the title "The Urban Legend" in my collection Monsters of L.A. I'm so happy that editor Loren Rhoads liked the story enough to use it in her new anthology Tales of Nightmares. Thank you, Loren!
*Don't look for that note - it went away when the library revamped their website.
|
|
One of the questions I've been asked a few times over the last two years was if I got a lot of writing done during lockdown in 2020.
The answer to that is a resounding NO.
If you're one of those writers who feels like your writing life hasn't been the same since the pandemic settled in to stay, I'm here to tell you that you are not alone.
I recently took an informal poll of a number of writing friends, and I'd say that 80% said the pandemic had negatively impacted their writing. A few said it hadn't made a difference (those were people who either had no day jobs or whose day jobs already involved working from home). Not one single person said it had made their writing life better.
That 80% all experienced something that left them reeling. Some got sick and struggled/still struggle with long haul symptoms. Some never fully recovered from the initial anxiety of wondering if we'd ever emerge from lockdown. Some - like me - came back to day jobs that had radically altered as a result of the pandemic. My work hours got re-arranged in a way that seriously impacted my writing schedule; in addition to that, since June of 2020 (when the bookstore re-opened) we've been running the store on half the staff we had prior to the pandemic, which means I tend to finish most days so exhausted it's all I can do to stagger home. At this point I can really only write on days off, and that's provided I don't have appointments or other business to attend to.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying: there's nothing wrong with you if you've been feeling like this pandemic kicked you in the head. Most of us feel that way. I'm still struggling to regain my balance, so maybe we can struggle together.
|
|
WIP It
My current works-in-progress
|
|
|
Click here to read the full announcement about Placerita, the novella I co-wrote with John Palisano.
My story in Classic Monsters Unleashed, "Hacking the Horseman's Code", got a nice shout-out from WomeninHorror.com.
Congratulations are due to my friend and editor Eric J. Guignard, whose anthology Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World (which includes my story "The Gulch") was just nominated for the World Fantasy Award!
Gaby Triana's new anthology Literally Dead includes my story "Halloween at the Babylon" and is now available for pre-order.
Aaaaaand...work continues on The Big Book Project of 2022. The text has now been edited, we have a solid bite on a legend to provide the foreword, the first pass at lay-out has begun, and next up will be sorting through 600 illustrations and providing captions. I hope to announce the title soon!
|
|
|
|
|
Haunted Tales: Classic Stories of Ghosts and the Supernatural
|
|
|
My Ghost Stories partner Les Klinger and I have re-teamed for a new anthology of more classic horror tales. Coming in August 2022.
|
|
|
Working with members of the Wily Writers writing group, I created this small anthology that marks the first in a series of Wily Writers Presents books, all with different editors and stories. Includes my story "Hollywood Dirt." Available in print or e-book.
|
|
|
Classic Monsters Unleashed
|
|
|
Now available! Includes my Headless Horseman tale, "Hacking the Horseman's Code".
|
|
|
Includes my (science fiction!) story "Touch Has a Memory".
|
|
|
|
|
Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
Weird Women Volume 2: 1840-1925
|
|
|
A new volume of Weird Women, with stories by George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and more!
|
|
|
Here's the second in the Wily Writers series of anthologies, this one edited by the estimable Loren Rhoads and with my story "La Japonesa."
|
|
|
Includes my ghostly tale "Halloween at the Babylon".
|
|
|
Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World
|
|
|
Includes my short story "The Gulch". The book was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award.
|
|
|
|
|
|
It's a print copy of the second Wily Writers Presents anthology! Just click the blue button below to enter and good luck!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
