Lewis Carroll Ghost Poems, Vintage Postcards, and a (Multiple) Giveaway!

Every Day is Halloween #86: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton

Hi All!

February was a weird month. Here in SoCal, climate change has brought more rain and lower temperatures to our winters (unlike most of the rest of the country, where temperatures are well above average), so we’ve spent much of 2024 chasing leaks and putting on extra layers. I had to set a new novel aside to catch up with a lot of other things, but those things are done now and I’m hoping to have that novel to my agent by summer.

The good news out of February is a pair of award listings for The Art of the Zombie Movie: it’s a finalist for both the Bram Stoker Award (for Superior Achievement in Long Non-fiction) and the Rondo Hatton Award (for Best Graphic Arts Presentation). Although only Active members of the Horror Writers Association can vote on the Stoker Awards, anyone can vote for the Rondo Hattons - there are a lot of excellent things listed there, so take a look and cast your votes!

Oh, and there’s one big piece of upcoming news…but I’m going to be cagey and only show you a cover for now (below).

Stay well. We need each other.

Lisa

NEW STUFF I LIKE

Most of my closer friends know of my love for the work of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento - I count his Suspiria* in my top ten movies, I love at least half-a-dozen of his other films, I very much enjoyed his most recent film (2022’s Dark Glasses) and I think his contribution to Dawn of the Dead is more significant than most people realize. I even scored a signed copy of Argento’s 2019 autobiography Fear.

So, sure, I’m probably primed to love even a semi-decent documentary about him, but fortunately Simone Scafidi’s Panico is very good. It intercuts the usual talking heads and movie clips with following Argento now, as he heads to an isolated resort hotel to craft a screenplay. This latter thread is worth it alone; Argento has made movies about the artistic process, and watching how his own method works is insightful and inspiring.

If I had any complaint about this documentary, which is currently streaming on Shudder, it would be only that it omits any mention of Argento’s aforementioned work on Dawn of the Dead, and it glosses over much of his later work…which is admittedly often pretty terrible, but I’d still love to hear Argento talk about it. But hey, a movie can only be so long, and this one packs its running time with the best stuff. Highly recommended even if you have only a passing interest in Argento…and if you’re unfamiliar with the maestro’s work, drop everything and watch Deep Red, Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Inferno, Tenebrae, The Stendahl Syndrome, and, of course, Suspiria.

*Yes, I did also enjoy Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria, although for me it can’t touch the sheer delirium of Argento’s version.

THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT

One of my favorite things to collect is old postcards. I got started with these back about 2000, when I was first gathering images for my book The Halloween Encyclopedia. Back then vintage postcards could still be found for just a few dollars, and since they’re all old enough to be in the public domain - and feature gorgeous art! - they made for fabulous book illustrations.

Now, more than twenty years later, I’m still collecting Halloween postcards (although I also collect vintage Los Angeles postcards). I love the graphics, and I love the living history they offer; many depict party activities at the time, or little snippets of folklore.

STRANGE DOINGS

Most of you probably know that I have two careers I love (yes, I am VERY lucky): writing and bookselling. As a bookseller, I work for a used bookstore in North Hollywood that deals in a rare books as well, and we have a neverending stream of new arrivals.

One of the most recent was a book I’d never heard of: a poetry collection by Lewis Carroll (yes, the creator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) called Rhyme? and Reason? The book, from 1883, starts with a long poem called “Phantasmagoria” that’s a playful riff on ghosts and other fantastic creatures. Here’s a taste:

“And did you really walk,” said I,
“On such a wretched night?
I always fancied Ghosts could fly—
If not exactly in the sky,
Yet at a fairish height.”

“It’s very well,” said he, “for Kings
To soar above the earth:
But Phantoms often find that wings—
Like many other pleasant things—
Cost more than they are worth.

“Spectres of course are rich, and so
Can buy them from the Elves:
But we prefer to keep below—
They’re stupid company, you know.
For any but themselves:

“For, though they claim to be exempt
From pride, they treat a Phantom
As something quite beneath contempt—
Just as no Turkey ever dreamt
Of noticing a Bantam.”

But what I really love about this book are the illustrations (by A. B. Frost and Henry Holiday). In fact, I liked them so much that I scanned my favorites and made an album of them. Click below to see more of these whimsical delights!

And if you’re interested in owning your own copy of Rhyme? and Reason?…

BEHIND THE SCREAMS

“The Hum” from the forthcoming collection Spine Tinglers

We spend our lives surrounded by strange sounds, don’t we? It becomes more pronounced if you live in a house that you own; you notice every hum, every little groan, every rumble, and you worry that it means something else needs fixing, one more bill… If you live in a dense urban area (like, say, Southern California) add in the constant low drone of distant freeways, construction sounds, natural noises, etc.

A few years ago a new hum sounded from around my house, one that I couldn’t pinpoint. It was low and constant, and eventually I concluded that it was related to nearby construction, because it vanished after a few weeks…but it was mystifying while it was happening, so it supplied excellent fodder for a short story.

Here’s what’s funny about this particular story: I wrote “The Hum” in 2021 for my “Spine Tinglers” podcast, but it was never recorded. When I looked at it again in 2024, I was horrified for different reasons: the plot ended up being that the hum was coming from a single, unmoving cloud perched above the hills to the north of Los Angeles.

It was, in other words, the plot of Jordan Peele’s 2022 movie Nope. Even the location was nearly the same.

Needless to say, I had to perform some quick surgery on that story, because hey - in a collection you can’t really say, “No, I wrote it a year before I saw Nope, really I did!”

The Spine Tinglers collection will be out later this year.

THE WRITE STUFF

AI…we know it’s coming, we know it’s going to change things, but how worried should we be? Will publishers eventually (or maybe not even eventually - maybe sooner than we think) replace human writers (and artists) with machine-generated works?

Before I open myself to a volley of slings and arrows, let me give you one piece of backstory: in the distant past, I actually worked in movie special effects, including most of a year spent as a modelmaker on The Abyss. That movie took the use of CGI (computer generated imagery) up a few notches, and a lot of us on the effects side saw the end of traditional effects coming up very quickly. I’d never intended to be a lifelong modelmaker, so it wasn’t devastating for me…but some of my friends on the crew started seriously rethinking their careers. Many switched over to become propmakers and art directors.

I feel much the same way now as we warily view the approach of AI in writing. Yes, it’s going to change things, and yes, we mere humans will have to adapt…but adapt we will.

At this point, AI-generated prose is still pretty gawdawful, so I don’t see it replacing human writers yet. I have writer friends who use it in a variety of ways: for research, for editing, even for story prompts. In our panic over the scifi potential of AI, some of us have been too quick to condemn all of it, when it’s like any other tool - it can be used for good or bad. The current bad side is that it enables anyone to generate words (I won’t even call them stories) that they can submit to markets, thinking this somehow enables them to earn money as a writer.

Most editors can spot that crap pretty fast. And no, I will never call you a “writer” if you rely solely on someone/something else to do the writing for you. That’s like calling yourself a dentist because you brush your own teeth.

I also know writers using AI in those perfectly reasonable ways I mentioned above who now live in fear of that usage being discovered and a torch-bearing anti-AI mob descending on them.

And so it still comes down to humans being the ones who misuse a tool or misunderstand the tool’s use. The machines are still a long ways off from being the bad guys here.

NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS

As mentioned above, my big news was the Bram Stoker Award nomination for The Art of the Zombie Movie, but there were a number of other works on the Final Ballot that I also contributed to and that I’d like to cheer on:

• In the Anthology category, James Aquilone is nominated for Shakespeare Unleashed, which includes my story “The Body, the Blood, the Woods, the Stage.”

• In the Long Non-fiction category, Claire Fitzpatrick is nominated for A Vindication of Monsters: Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, which I provided the introduction for.

• In Short Non-fiction, Carina Bissett is nominated for “Words Wielded by Women,” which includes an interview with me.

I also provided a blurb for the wonderful Long Non-fiction book Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror (edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith), and I have a secret connection to First Novel nominee The Spite House by Johnny Compton that will be revealed soon…!

My episode of the Chinwag podcast, in which I talk seances, ghosts, and zombies with Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma, has gone live and has been generating a lot of fun chatter.

Amy Sedaris was recently over on Instagram posting clips from my 1988 movie Meet the Hollowheads - MIND BLOWN.

A reprint of my story “What Ever Happened to Lorna Winters?” appeared in Black Cat Weekly #129.

The anthology 99 Fleeting Fantasies, edited by Jennfer Brozek, includes my story “The Secret Life of Gnomes.”

My essay exploring the transgressive elements of Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 silent classic Häxan (aka Witchcraft Through the Ages) was accepted for an upcoming anthology of horror film essays.

Cemetery Dance recently announced the upcoming publication of the Shocklines anthology which includes my story “The End of the World Man”…which I sold to the book 13 years ago!

I very much enjoyed my chat with the Haunted History Chronicles podcast.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

• March 4, 2022, 5 pm PST/8 pm EST - I’ll be teaching live my workshop on Expanding Your Writing Horizons

• March 17, 2024, 1 pm - I’ll be signing at the Vintage Paperback Show in Glendale

• March 18, 2024, 6 pm - I’ll be giving a live presentation on “The Folklore of Zombies” for the Oregon Sno-Isle library

• May 30-June 2, 2024 - I’ll be at StokerCon 2024 in San Diego

WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

GIVEAWAY

I was recently gifted with a large collection of gorgeous vintage postcards on a variety of subjects, including Easter. Since that’s not my holiday, I thought it would be fun to offer these cards as a giveaway.

So, this month’s giveaway will end on 3/15, and FIVE LUCKY WINNERS will each be sent a vintage Easter postcard! Since postage on these is cheap you don’t need to be in the continental U.S. to enter. Just leave a comment, good luck, and Happy Easter/Spring/Ostara/Equinox!

Thanks as always for reading this far!