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Hi Gang!
How was your November? Mine was...uhhh...more interesting than I needed it to be.
Those of you who follow me on Facebook or Instagram know that my secret identity is Captain Bookseller at the Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood. One night early in November, someone took the free books we keep out back for the community, piled them against our main entrance doors, and set it on fire. Fortunately those doors are steel and the firefighters arrived quickly (and our two store cats evaded the worst of the smoke and are fine), but it still caused thousands of dollars of damage that we'll be repairing for months. And of course most of my November at the store has gone to telling "the arson story" over and over.
We followed the arson with a round of flu and Covid among the bookstore staff. I got off lucky and had nothing but a very light flu that passed quickly (yay for the flu shot, which probably kept me from having anything worse than fatigue and a sore throat). I'd like to say I need a vacation, but of course we're now going into the busiest retail month of the year so that won't be happening!
Work continues on the zombie art book as I race to meet my next deadline (mid-December). I'm still not sure what I'll be working on when this book is done; I've got two big non-fiction book proposals and one anthology proposal in play, so the dice have been rolled.
I hope your winter holidays will be healthy and happy ones, and I'll be here again (I hope!) next year.
Lisa
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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I realized with some shock the other day that I've never covered The Exorcist here.
Why is this shocking? Well, because...
- The Exorcist is my favorite movie.
- It's what made me want to be a writer.
- I've got a huge collection of crazy stuff on this movie.
When I get asked about why I became a writer, the story that comes up is this: when I was 15, my mom took me to see The Exorcist. It had already been out for a couple of months, but there were still long lines for every showing (this was back in the day before multiplexes). I'd read the book (which made me a celebrity at school), so I knew what to expect...
Or so I thought. What I didn't expect was the way that movie affected its audiences. If you weren't there it's hard to understand, because there has been absolutely nothing like it since, as in not even close. People ran from the theater. They screamed, fainted, and vomited. Many of those who saw it remained terrified for weeks afterward. I remember one waitress who looked very sick and when we asked her if she was okay, she said she hadn't slept since seeing The Exorcist...two months ago.
By the time I left that theater, I knew I wanted to have that impact on people. Overnight I went from wanting to be an anthropologist to knowing I had to be a writer. My school counselors were horrified (I scored very highly on science in vocational tests), but I was set.
And I still am.
ABOUT THE STILL: When I was a kid hitting conventions, I combed the dealers rooms for photos from the film I didn't already have, and I amassed...well, a lot. This one is likely a makeup test on Linda Blair, using a prosthetic tongue.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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Yeah, I know - you're looking at that picture and thinking, "What the heck does a cactus have to do with Halloween?"
Here's the deal: I really like the old Celtic notion of Samhain (the great grandmama of Halloween) as New Year's Eve. It feels more right to me than January 1st; it's situated just at that time when the seasons are changing, and we begin making plans for the coming winter (and the spring beyond).
Here in Southern California, November is the best time for planting native plants or succulents. Planting in November gives the plants time to get established before SoCal's January rains arrive. Given our mild winters, it's also a great time to plant things like peas and beans.
For me personally, my year really winds up at Halloween, so November 1st is also a great time to return to projects I had to set aside during my mad October rush and think about new ones.
I love that idea that Halloween - just as Samhain of old - represents renewal.
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Strange Doings
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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What the heck is a REM-pod?
If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard a lot of paranormal investigators talk about using a REM-pod and you’ve probably even seen one in action – it looks kind of like a tin can with an antenna and some lights sticking out of the top. But…what exactly is a REM-pod?
First off, the REM stands for “radiating electromagneticity,” which means that this device is actually putting out its own energy. Unlike a K-2 meter, which detects existing electromagnetic radiation, the REM-pod creates its own, generating a field that surrounds it. When anything carrying electromagnetic energy enters that field, the antenna will detect it and fire off the lights and a corresponding audio tone.
Here’s the other cool thing about the REM-pod: it’s a direct cousin of the theremin, that insane musical instrument that made the spooky electronic sounds in 1950s scifi movie soundtracks! Like the REM-pod, a theremin puts out a field that you pass your hands through to generate those crazy sounds.
As for the history of the REM-pod: it was created in 2004 by an engineer named Gary Galka after he lost his daughter in a car accident, and he wanted some proof that the weird things happening around the house were her. Later on, use of the REM-pod was popularized by Ghost Adventures.
So does the REM-pod work? Skeptics point first to its name, noting that there’s no such word as “electromagneticity.” More to the point, though, is that the field the REM-pod generates can be easily disrupted by something like a walkie-talkie, even from a distance or through a wall.
Paranormal investigators, though, note that they achieve their best results when they use either a line of REM-pods, indicating something moving through the individual fields, or a REM-pod in tandem with another device, like a spirit box.
REM-pods are at the higher price range of ghost-hunting equipment – close to $200 – but most investigators feel the money was well spent.
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"Halloween at the Babylon"
(from Literally Dead: Tales of Halloween Hauntings, released this year)
When editor Gaby Triana invited me into this anthology, I took the subtitle literally and decided to do a story about...well, a haunting on Halloween.
A couple of years ago I wrote a script for a special Christmas episode of Ghost Magnet With Bridget Marquardt called "Christmas at the Babylon." The premise was combining a classic Christmas ghost story ala the Victorian tradition with the format of a non-fiction paranormal podcast, so I created the story around the idea that it was all really happening, and that the podcast host Bridget had just discovered that her apartment building was located where a great theater called the Babylon had once stood, and paranormal teams had encountered some seriously spooky goings-on in the neighborhood.
I decided to repurpose the Babylon for this story; I kept most of the mythology, although it needed to be still standing in this case. I also was intrigued with the idea of telling a story from a ghost's point of view; I wanted to capture the sort of looping, forever-stuck cycle that ghosts seem to inhabit, but still move a story forward.
That point of view presented an interesting challenge. I leave it to the readers to decide if I pulled it off or not! |
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You've just finished your first draft - CONGRATS!
So...now what?
Editing your first draft presents its own unique challenges; its not like any other edit you'll do. Later on you may do passes to check for things like continuity or just spelling and grammar errors, but with the first draft you're looking at the Big Picture. Does the story make sense? Does it go where you wanted it to go? Does everything you set up resolve in some satisfying way?
Authors have a lot of different ways of working through editing their first drafts. I just read through a discussion about this that took place among writer friends on Facebook, and here are some of the methods described:
- Print out the file and edit on the print-out. This process offers several advantages, including keeping the print-out for archival purposes, and putting to work that part of the brain that views digital text and printed text differently.
- Write the first draft long-hand, and edit as you type it into the computer.
- Use the word processor's "Save As" function to save the first draft and create a copy of that file for editing purposes.
- Create index cards based on the first draft and lay those out to see how the plot works.
What's my method? For me, the simpler the better so I just edit the same file I created from the start. When I'm ready for a final editing pass, I do change the font from Word's default to TimesRoman; I find that switching the font serves to reorient my brain the way printing out a file does for some people.
The real deal is: do whatever works best for you! There's no right or wrong way to do this...or maybe I should say, there's one right way to do it and it's up to you to find out what that is.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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I'm still working on The Art of the Zombie Movie. I also spent November putting together three different book proposals, doing a new interview for Nightmare Magazine, and of course the usual "Ghost Reports" for Ghost Magnet With Bridget Marquardt.
Cemetery Dance officially announced (via Publishers Marketplace) that they acquired the novella I co-wrote with John Palisano, Placerita, for a late 2023 publication.
The Year's Top Tales of Space and Time 2 is out now and includes my story "Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Rancho Los Feliz."
Here's a print interview with me about how the two Weird Women books I co-edited were assembled and how they intersect with all things Lovecraftian - Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.
Here I am chattering about Calling the Spirits for the New Books Network podcast.
You can still have some Halloween fun listening to me chatting with Jennifer Lee for her Beyond the Raven podcast.
I also want to give a shout-out to the release of Tracy Cross's debut novel Rootwork. I had the pleasure of mentoring Tracy via HWA's Mentorship Program when she was working on this book, and I can tell you that it is a seriously good novel! CONGRATS, TRACY!
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Halloween Beyond: Piercing the Veil
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Includes my brand-spankin'-new novella Halloween Beyond - The Talking-board. Pre-ordering is now ALIVE!
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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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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.
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Classic Monsters Unleashed
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Now available! 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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Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween
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My award-winning history of Halloween, now available in an affordable "compact edition."
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Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
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Now in a second printing (and coming in paperback in December): 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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A new volume of Weird Women, with stories by George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and more!
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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."
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Includes my ghostly tale "Halloween at the Babylon".
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The Feminine Macabre Vol. IV
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I'm proud to have provided the foreword for this wonderful collection of nonfiction works by women writers.
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Video by Ricky Grove!
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For this month, I've got a paperback copy of Halloween Beyond: Piercing the Veil. Click the blue button below to enter, and good luck!
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