Hellbender, The Stone Tape, and a Giveaway!

Every Day is Halloween #90: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton

Hi All!

Welcome to the dog days of summer… Here in the foothills of L.A., we’re looking at temperatures in the 90s for the foreseeable future <cue heavy groan>.

It’s been a strange last month for me in other ways, too. I’m still dealing with the litter of feral kittens in my backyard. I’ve been passing a kidney stone (thankfully there’s been no full-on attack yet, but a lot of low-level pain). And my writing career is temporarily stalled, which is weird coming right after a few months that I thought were heading solidly in the OTHER direction. For the first time in my many years, I have no new book in the pipeline. There’s one contract in play that I hope will lead to an announcement soon, but…well, let’s just say I’m not in a happy writing place until that or something else happens.

I’m also thinking more seriously of starting a paid Substack. Don’t worry - I’d keep this newsletter free! But for those who might like to read longer, more in-depth pieces, I’d start a paid newsletter. It would go out every two weeks to subscribers with longer essays on Halloween and the paranormal, videos of my “Ghost Report” podcasts, and once a month a new piece of fiction. What do you think? Leave a comment below or suggestions. Thanks, and stay cool!

Lisa

NEW STUFF I LIKE

I’ve just discovered the work of the Adams Family, indie low-budget filmmakers who’ve made three absolutely stunning horror films: Where the Devil Roams (now streaming free on Tubi), The Deeper You Dig (also free on Tubi), and Hellbender, which I think is close to a masterpiece (now streaming on Shudder, also available as a DVD with cool bonus stuff). The Adams Family is a real family, with parents John Adams and Toby Poser, and daughters Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams all participating. Their work is dark and poetic, gory and disturbing, beautifully written and shot, and superbly acted (especially by the charismatic Poser).

I also want to recommend two books now available: John R. Little’s My Quirky Little Memoir: Confessions of a Small Press Writer, which is both a look at the recent history of small press horror and a moving examination of how a writer uses personal experiences to create; and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two, the follow-up to my all-time favorite graphic novel and every bit as astonishing as the first book. If you haven’t yet read My Favorite Thing is Monsters, drop everything and go get a copy NOW - it’s a true feast for both the eyes and mind, an absolute work of genius.

THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT

Last year my friend Rena Mason sent me a collection of exotic pumpkin seeds. I tried growing a few, but didn’t have much luck.

I had almost decided not to grow pumpkins this year - it’s becoming increasingly difficult here in SoCal as climate change has heated things up - but back in the spring I threw out a few seeds from the one packet Rena sent me that didn’t state what variety of pumpkin it was.

Imagine my surprise at not only seeing two of these pumpkins grow into big, healthy plants, but recently discovering that one had these beautiful, medium-sized pumpkins, yellow with orange bands. I’ll actually end up with a decent crop of very attractive pumpkins this year, which I hadn’t expected! Nothing’s better than surprise pumpkins, right?

STRANGE DOINGS

Anyone who is acquainted with the modern paranormal investigation has heard the term Stone Tape Theory, which is the idea that certain objects or even rocks in the ground can record and replay traumatic events…but I didn’t know until this weekend that there’s a lot more to Stone Tape Theory than that.

What changed? Well, I finally saw the 1972 movie that Stone Tape Theory comes from. Yes, it’s taken me this long to see the classic 1972 BBC television movie The Stone Tape, which is now streaming on Shudder. As written by the legendary Nigel Kneale, the movie is about a team of engineers researching a new way to record audio who discover a haunted room in the old house they’re working in. They soon realize that the same things happen over and over in the room, and that they record a traumatic event from 1890 involving a young woman’s death.

But here’s where Neale’s script goes further: the team discovers that the stones used in the building’s foundation haven’t just recorded that one event, but have recorded events going back thousands of years, layered on top of each other like…well, layers in the earth. Using their audio equipment, the researchers accidentally erase the 1890 event, but find far, far worse waiting below that, because the recordings decay and corrupt over time. They also realize that the events are not replayed for everyone, but are instead projected directly into the minds of those who possess mediumistic abilities. In fact, the team member who possesses the most psychic ability, computer programmer Jill, ends up reliving terrible things from 7,000 years ago!

If you’ve never seen The Stone Tape, I highly recommend it – it’s smart and creepy, and I think had a significant influence on the practice of ghost-hunting.

BEHIND THE SCREAMS

I’m going to cheat this month and just send you to an interview with Rick Hipson in which John Palisano and I talk about how we co-wrote our novella Placerita.

THE WRITE STUFF

Awards…*sigh*. I’ve won some, I haven’t won some, I’ve been involved with their administration behind the scenes (I’m currently on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards), and I’ve developed some opinions about writing awards in general.

First, there’s a huge difference between a writing award and something like a service award, which recognizes individuals according to fairly concrete and obvious standards. The Horror Writers Association (HWA), for instance, gives its own internal service awards to volunteers who have put in an exceptional amount of time for the organization. These awards are given by either a single person (like the President’s Richard Laymon Award) or a small group (HWA’s Board of Trustees bestows the Karen Lansdale Silver Hammer Award), and the recipients are chosen by fairly measurable standards. Did a single person, for example, turn around an entire program? They deserve the award.

Writing awards, on the other hand, are by their nature more subjective. Even those that are chosen by juries (like the Jacksons) will reflect the tastes of the jurors. When there’s a larger voting pool - say, several hundred HWA Active members - there’s always going to be an element of popularity involved. There’s simply no such thing as a perfect awards system.

Let’s say you, the writer, have a work that you really believe is awards-worthy. If you’re a bestselling author (or have a huge social media following), your story or book has probably already drawn notice to itself; but if you’re not at the point where you’re selling tens of thousands of copies, you may have to make sure your piece gets properly noticed or submitted.

So…how do you do that?

Well, there’s a ridiculously simple answer to that: Go to the website for the awards and FOLLOW THE RULES. Notice how I capitalized “FOLLOW THE RULES”? I shouldn’t have to, but it’s like posting submission guidelines: 80% of the submissions won’t follow the rules (trust me on this - ask ANY editor!).

There are writers who will follow those rules but learn how to skate right along the edges of what’s acceptable to game the system. Listen…DON’T BE ONE OF THOSE WRITERS. Maybe it’ll get you onto some finalist list or other, but trust me when I tell you that there are people behind the scenes who will see what you did and remember it. In the end, that attempt to bag yourself an award (or nomination) may backfire mightily.

The ultimate goal of awards is really to promote a type of art or a genre by recognizing excellence within it, not about promoting individuals. Does being nominated for or winning an award help a writer’s career? Maybe…or maybe not much. It can be a nice recognition for a writer, sure…but just remember that if your work isn’t nominated or doesn’t win, it doesn’t mean your work’s not worthy.

Wanna know what matters more to me than any award I’ve ever been nominated for or won? The time Dennis Etchison - who I consider to be the best horror writer of the last half-century and a personal mentor - asked me if a story he’d bought from me for an anthology had been nominated for any awards. The story (“Pound Rots in Fragrant Harbour”) wasn’t, but it didn’t even matter at that point. I’ll never get recognition I value more than that.

NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS

If you enjoyed the bit on Stone Tape Theory above, it’s part of a larger piece that’s just been completed and submitted; that longer piece analyzes how The Stone Tape and Ghostbusters have influenced the modern paranormal investigation.

John Palisano and I talked about Placerita on the Coffee Fueled Stories podcast.

Coming in October, I will once again be participating in the Green Ink Sponsored Write, with proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support.

I’m currently working on four different short stories I’ve promised to various editors.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

• July 14 at 3 pm - John Palisano and I will be at Dark Delicacies signing Placerita (remember, they do mail order, too!)

• July 27-28 - I’ll be a Special Guest at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach (I’ll be delivering the presentation “How to Hunt Ghosts” on Saturday at noon)

• October 6 at 3 pm - I’ll be at Dark Delicacies signing the forthcoming coffee table book Videotapes From Hell (I wrote a piece for the book about Something Weird Video)

• June 12-15, 2025 - I’ll be in Stamford, CT for StokerCon

Plus…my October is already filling up, so stay tuned for lots of links on that coming soon!

WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

GIVEAWAY

It’ll be a signed copy of the new novella Placerita!

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!