Halloween Folk Art, The Pandafeche, and a (BIG) Giveaway!
Every Day is Halloween #100: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton
Hi All!
Holy Centenary, Batman - this is my hundredth newsletter!
Fortunately, it comes with some good news: there is at last an offer on the table for a new book. My agent is now working through the deal, and I hope to be able to officially announce it by next issue. What I can tell you right now is that it’s nonfiction, and is a subject that I think you’re all going to love as much as I do.
In the meantime, my novel is still out there in the marketplace, where response times are just loooooooong, so don’t uncross your fingers yet.
Otherwise, April was a month of trying to cross stuff off my to-do list before the heavy-duty research of the new book takes over.
I hope your spring has been full of soft rains and warmer days, and thanks as always for tagging along with me.
Lisa
NEW STUFF I LIKE
Unless you haven’t crept out from your winter hibernation cave before now, you’ve probably seen Sinners and/or heard over and over how great it it.
And this time, the praise is no lie. Because Sinners IS great. One of the best horror films of the decade.
I won’t waste much more of your reading time here, because so much has already been written about this extraordinary work of art - including the business side of it, which is a groundbreaking deal for the artist (Ryan Coogler).
Let’s just say that if you haven’t seen it yet, GO.
THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT
I collect Halloween art, and one of the sub-genres I love is folk art. There’s something about this art that really speaks to the holiday; I feel like folk art comes right from the heart, that it expresses a real love for its subject.
There are artists out there who create and sell Halloween folk art; one of my favorites is Abbybelle. She appears at several shows a year that I attend, and I always buy something from her, whether it’s a little ornament or a larger figure. I picked up this adorable cat at the recent Spooky Swap Meet.
Visit her website to see more of her lovely work, and maybe pick up a little friend of your own!
STRANGE DOINGS
In my last newsletter I talked about sleep disorders and how they affected encounters with the supernatural, and that led me to discover an evil spirit from Italy I’d never heard of: the pandafeche. The pandafeche is associated with sleep disorder, because it’s thought to be a ghost or witch that climbs onto its victims while they sleep and tries to steal their breath. Sometimes it’s also described as a cat – which means most of us who own cats have probably experienced a pandafeche attack, right? – although others believe it’s the ghost of an evil witch that can transform into a cat.
Since nobody wants to wake up to find the ghost of an evil witch sucking their breath away while they can’t move, there are ways to stop it. It gets preoccupied by counting things, so you can place a broom upside-down by the door to your bedroom, and the pandafeche will stop to count the fibers in the broom, a task that will preoccupy it until sunrise, when it will vanish. Placing a pile of sand by the bed is another way; maybe that’s particularly effective if the pandafeche is in cat form.
Although there are similar, breath-sucking nasties in folklore all over the world, I find the pandafeche especially interesting because belief in it has actually been studied. In a 2015 paper called “Cultural Explanations of Sleep Paralysis in Italy,” researchers found that participants from the Abruzzo region of Italy, where belief in the pandafeche was strongest, were very likely to blame an episode of sleep paralysis on a pandafeche.
The conclusions of that study could boil down, I guess, to this: we all make our own demons.
BEHIND THE SCREAMS
“King Krab” (unpublished)
I’ve always been interested in the intersection of mystery and horror. Mystery sometimes feels to me like “horror lite,” like it’s afraid of going all the way. Horror, of course, often incorporates a mystery, although it more often asks “whatdunnit” than “whodunnit.”
I happen to live with someone who loves mysteries. My fellah Ricky has even worked in mystery bookstores, and he has often urged me to try writing more mysteries. I’m not at all interested in some of the most popular mystery sub-genres like cozies or procedurals, but I do LOVE noir, which feels most akin to horror, what with its dark, urban settings and inescapable sense of doom.
A few years ago, Ricky challenged me to write a genuinely hardboiled noir mystery. I told him I was going to write the hardest hardboiled he’d ever read, and I ended up with this story called “King Krab.” The story is about a young woman who falls hard and fast for a dangerous guy, and ends up finding out that he’s far more dangerous than she bargained for.
I’ve never submitted this story anywhere. Aside from the fact that it was a gift for my s.o., I’ve always felt that it was too hardboiled. I’ve never seen a market that I thought it was right for.
Ricky recently got interested in making his own books; he taught himself linocut and paper types and bindings, and I helped with the ins and outs of layout in Microsoft Word. He wanted to do “King Krab” as his first little chapbook, and he ended up producing 15 copies. We’re keeping 10 to sell or whatever, and the other 5 will go to winners of this month’s giveaway. Giving away something this personal seemed like a great way to celebrate 100 issues of this newsletter!
THE WRITE STUFF
In my work as an editor, I’ve read literally hundreds of short stories submitted to various magazines or anthologies I’ve worked on, so I’d like to offer a tip here on how to start your story in a way that will grab your reader…
First off, here’s a don’t (and I’ve seen this a LOT): Don’t open with a lengthy description of your lead character’s everyday life. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read that open with several pages of that protagonist waking up, having breakfast, getting ready for the day, etc. While the writer might think this is a good way to immerse the reader in the world of their main character, the truth is…it’s boring. No matter how well you write, I really don’t care what your character eats for breakfast or how they brush their teeth (unless these facts are somehow going to play into the story later on).
If you’re uncertain about how to start your story, here’s my tip (and I do this often): Start with the most exciting thing that happens in the story. Seriously… if there’s a murder or a catastrophe or a terrible accident or whatever, OPEN WITH IT. Grab your reader from the very first line. You can always follow that adrenaline-pumping beginning with your character stuck in a bad situation and wondering how they reached this point. Or you can move forward from there, building on that first happening.
Just remember this: editors who are reading through huge slushpiles (which may include thousands of submissions) can get as bored with the job as a worker in any repetitious job. If they read fifty stories in a row that start with three pages of a character’s everyday life, that fifty-first story that begins with something unexpected is going to grab them, excite them, and possibly propel that story to a sale.
NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS
I’m finishing up my essay on Jack Hill’s 1972 women-in-prison flick The Big Bird Cage for a forthcoming book on Hill’s work.
After that, I’ll be diving into a few short stories I’ve promised for various books and one magazine.
I just recorded a virtual reading for StokerCon, and I will be appearing on two virtual panels (as well as two live panels at the convention).
And then it’s onto the nonfiction book that will eat my life for the next year!
UPCOMING APPEARANCES
June 12-15 - I’ll be in Stamford, CT for StokerCon
THE WHOLE HAUNTED WORLD
In April, I began the saga of Simon Magus, the magician who challenged Christ’s apostles to ghost-summoning battles, and I revisited the Queen Mary by looking at a book that claimed workers aboard the ship in the ‘50s believed it was haunted even then. Coming up:
The conclusion of the story of Simon Magus, which looks at his role as possibly the original spirit-summoning con artist
History first famous poltergeist: The Drummer of Tedworth
WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS
GIVEAWAY
As promised above, I’m celebrating Newsletter #100 by giving away five copies of Ricky’s home-made chapbook of my story “King Krab”!
Although I admit that I sometimes find trigger warnings irritating, I think this time they’re warranted: you probably shouldn’t enter this giveaway if you have problems with sexual violence, language, gang situations, vengeance, and tattoos gone terribly wrong. This one’s pretty rough.
PLEASE NOTE: If you enter, remember that I will have to contact you via Substack to get your shipping address, so keep an eye on your messages around the end of April - I really want to give these away!
Thanks as always for reading this far!
You are so generous to share tips to encourage new writers. Your mom was always so proud of you. She didn't understand the horror fascination, but was impressed by your ability to convey stories dealing with this topic. Love, Melody
Another excellent newsletter! I hope you enjoy your time at Stoker Con, and all of your chapbooks found good homes!