Halfoween, a Rondo, and a Giveaway!
Every Day is Halloween #88: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton
Hi All!
Happy Halfoween (or, to my pagan friends, Beltane or May Day)!
That might have been my favorite April EVER. It started with L.A.’s nonstop rain and chilly weather (blech), but ended with (finally) some lovely temperate days and me handing in a new novel (my first in a decade) to my agent, so now the waiting starts as we hope for a deal.
It was a good month for events: we hit a fantastic luncheon for the Mystery Writers of America on the 7th; on April 14th we attended a succulents show at L.A. Succulents and Cactus, and came home with some lovely new plants; on the 21st, I enjoyed the L.A. Times Festival of Books, where I got to spend an hour signing at the Mystery Writers of America booth with pals Les Klinger and Sarah Langan; and then a week later we had a great time at the Spooky Swap Meet held in the historic Heritage Square, where we spent too much money on artwork, horror-themed teas (I highly recommend the “Mother Knows Best” blend) and delicious baked goods from Practical Peculiarities.
Oh, yeah, one other bit of news: The Art of the Zombie Movie won the Rondo Hatton Award for Best Graphic Presentation! I’ve enjoyed the Rondos for years - they cover books, magazines, and video releases related to classic horror - so it’s a particular thrill to win one (especially this year since they had over 6,500 ballots turned in!). Although I will be unable to attend the physical awards ceremony (that will happen at Wonderfest in Louisville, Kentucky on June 1), I will provide a video acceptance.
Now onto San Diego for the Bram Stoker Awards at the end of this month. The Art of the Zombie Movie is up for Superior Achievement in Long Non-fiction, and the competition is fierce this year so I don’t expect lightning to strike again, but it really is an honor to be nominated. And I can’t wait to see my extended horror family - be sure to say hi if you’re also at StokerCon.
Lisa
NEW STUFF I LIKE
I’d heard good things about this one before it was released, and I thought it lived up to the hype…although I also freely admit that you might need to, ummm, be of a certain age to fully appreciate Late Night With the Devil.
That’s because it’s all set within the world of a fictitious 1970s talk show called Night Owls. David Dastmalchian (who might be on his way to becoming the next Bruce Campbell) plays Jack Delroy, the genial host who makes a terrible mistake when he brings on a possessed child for his Halloween 1977 show.
Written and directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, I got a big kick out of how this captured not just the aesthetic of 1970s talk shows, but the aesthetic of one particular show that was itself a parody of 1970s talk shows: Fernwood 2 Night. Produced in 1977 by the late great Norman Lear, Fernwood 2 Night was a spin-off from Lear’s soap opera spoof Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but I thought it was even better and sometimes hysterically funny. Late Night With the the Devil looks a LOT like Fernwood 2 Night, so I loved that about it.
I also thought it did a great job of keeping the budget low by sticking almost entirely to one set (the talk show studio). It’s received a lot of comparisons to the 1992 BBC classic Ghostwatch, and while I don’t think it achieves the levels of terror that Ghostwatch did, it remains fun and spooky throughout. It’s currently running on Shudder.
THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT
I’ve been a jeans-and-tees kind of person my whole life (those times when I have to dress up are just painful), so of course you know that I love Halloween-themed t-shirts…and HECK YEAH, I wear ‘em all year ‘round! Well, okay, maybe not the ones that say “HAPPY HALLOWEEN” or whatever, but when they focus on excellent graphics, I say why not wear them whenever you want to?
I have a few places I regularly shop - Threadless is a favorite, although I recommend Terror Threads for licensed horror movie shirts - but I also love the annual Halloween shirts we produce at my day job, the Iliad Bookshop . Here’s a fun fact about these shirts, which we’ve been making since 2013: it wasn’t my idea to do a yearly Halloween shirt! That actually came from my co-worker, the late Bob Johnson, who’d worked at another bookstore that had done that and Bob wanted to keep the tradition going. We find a different artist to produce each year’s shirt and we limit the number of shirts so they’ve become somewhat collectible (and yes, we already have our 2024 artist in place and hope to reveal the design soon).
Do you have a favorite Halloween shirt?
STRANGE DOINGS
Most of you probably know about the historical significance of April 30th, which was Beltane in the ancient Celtic calendar, was later known as Walpurgisnacht (a major night for witches), and later become the eve before May Day, when kids danced around gigantic erect poles without having the slightest idea what that represented.
But let’s talk today about the newest meaning of April 30th: over the last few years it’s become celebrated by more and more people as…Halfoween! That’s right, it’s exactly six months to Halloween, and as the popularity of Halloween has continued to grow around the world, so have related things like Halfoween.
According to one website, Halfoween technically originated in 2010, and was showing up in things like kids’ TV shows by 2012. The Urban Dictionary says that “Halfoween consists of all the relevant traditions from Halloween - trick-or-treating, dressing up in costumes, teenagers attending drunken house parties, vampires and zombies roaming the streets, etc.” Ironically, although Halfoween may be on track to become the biggest celebration of a holiday six months before it officially happens, we can’t technically celebrate it at exactly a halfway point because, hey – April 31st doesn’t exist.
So, if you love Halloween enough to also love Halfoween, how should you celebrate?
Well, you could start by shopping. This year, Home Depot – home of the much-desired 12-foot skeleton – rolled out some of its new 2024 Halloween decorations for Halfoween, and I’m sorry to inform some of you that the massive “Skelly Dog” sold out in minutes, with the original 12-foot skelly not far behind.
Spirit Halloween unveiled (among other things) its Mars Attacks death ray gun and offered a contest to win an overnight stay in the Lizzie Borden House.
Here in L.A., we honor Halfoween with at least one major event: the Spooky Swap Meet, held in the historic Heritage Square and featuring dozens of vendors and trick or treating.
For more tips on celebrating Halfoween, I highly recommend one of my favorite Instagramers, Spooky Little Halloween, although you can also check out spookylittlehalloween.com
BEHIND THE SCREAMS
“The Call of Cthulhu: The Motion Picture”
(from Dead But Dreaming, 2002)
I was recently looking at some of my Lovecraftian fiction for a certain project, and I was reminded of how much fun I had with this story, which appeared in 2002’s Dead But Dreaming.
I’ve always loved Lovecraft’s original “The Call of Cthulhu,” which is my personal favorite of his Cthulhu Mythos stories, and I thought it would be interesting to write a story documenting an attempt to make a feature film from it (I think when I wrote the story I hadn’t yet seen the excellent 2005 cinematic adaptation by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society). But I also wanted the story of the making of the film to parallel the events that take place in the original short story. And of course I also wanted the story to be genuinely disturbing, so combining those elements presented an intriguing challenge.
Odd bit of trivia: Dead But Dreaming went out of print shortly after publication and for a few years secondhand copies were insanely high-priced, but it was finally reprinted and the value of used copies returned to normal realms.
THE WRITE STUFF
Blurbs…you know what those are, right? They’re those little bits you find either on the cover of a book, on the first page inside, or maybe on promotional material that say stuff like, “Author Schmother’s new book even made my eyebrow hairs stand on end!”
In case you don’t know…it’s usually up to the author to secure those blurbs. Sometimes the publisher will do that for you, but more often the publisher will be telling you to do it. At this point, you, the author, goes a-begging. If you’re lucky enough to have any bigger-name author friends, you can ask them first; otherwise, it’s time to start knocking on those e-doors.
You’ll get turndowns from those of us who are already booked (no pun intended) solid with blurb requests for at least the next year; but you’ll also get people saying, “Love to.”
I’m not going to tell you how to write a blurb, but here are Five Simple Tips on asking for blurbs (and yes, I’ve dealt with all of the below on the receiving end of blurb requesting):
If you’re approaching someone you don’t know, try to contact them via a website first. Social media should be your last ditch attempt (the truth is that we don’t all have time to dig through all the messages we get on social media platforms, especially given how the platforms often bury those messages in some inbox we didn’t even know we had).
If the author you’re approaching says yes (yay!), make sure they know what your deadline is for delivering blurbs. It can be irritating to an author to take the time to read a book to create a blurb and send it in only to be told, “Oh, sorry, guess I forgot to mention that they needed it last week.”
Is your book a sequel or a later book in a series? Then PLEASE don’t tell a potential blurber that the book can be read as a stand-alone novel unless that is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT TRUE. If there’s even ONE scene where a character refers to something that happened in an earlier book, don’t call it a stand-alone novel.
Is your book really, truly, actually, absolutely done? Because if I’m reading your book when I get an e-mail that says, “Oh, here’s the latest version” (especially if that happens repeatedly)…well, again, that can be pretty frustrating to your blurber.
Don’t pester your blurber. Some of us are both very busy and slow readers, so please be patient.
Just remember: an author who has agreed to blurb your book is setting aside their own reading time to do you a favor, so be considerate and grateful. The pay-off will be not just some fantastic praise to slap on your book cover, but hopefully a long and fruitful relationship as well.
NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS
Advance copies of Placerita, a novella I co-wrote with my dear friend John Palisano and that will be published by Cemetery Dance in June, are now making the rounds. And we scored cover art by the insanely talented Lynne Hansen! The novella should be available for pre-order soon.
House of Gamut #4 features my article “Think You Know Horror? Dead Right Might Tell You Otherwise,” about Burbank’s incredible monthly horror trivia contest.
I’ll have a short-short in Weird Fiction Quarterly’s forthcoming “Folk Horror” volume.
I recently digitized 282 photos from my 1988 movie Meet the Hollowheads, which you view here.
What am I working on now, having finished my novel? Mainly catching up on promises I’ve made to various friends about reading things, although there are also new film and book reviews for Rue Morgue and maybe a short story or three.
UPCOMING APPEARANCES
May 30-June 2, 2024 - I’ll be at StokerCon 2024 in San Diego
July 27-28 - I’ll be a Special Guest at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach
WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS
GIVEAWAY
I recently suffered a small disaster with a couple of copies of The Art of the Zombie Movie that got a bit of water damage. They dried fine and the interiors aren’t affected at all, so they still make for fine entertainment and I’m going to give one away this month to one lucky winner!
Just leave a comment to enter to win. Sorry, this one is only open to U.S. residents. Good luck!
Thanks as always for reading this far!
Great newsletter Lisa. Sorry to hear about the water logged books, but glad they survived.
Great newsletter. I'm in GA and our local company also produces some great T-shirts. Check out https://cavitycolors.com.