Pumpkin Cats, Swarm, and Zombies!
Every Day is Halloween #75: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton
Hey Crew!
Well, here we are with a new home for my newsletter, a new look, and some new features.
Why the changes? Well, since I started this monthly author newsletter 75 (!) issues ago, it’s grown in both scope and number of subscribers (with huge thanks to YOU). The first 74 issues were hosted through another email service that, in the blink of an eye, went from FREE to OHMYGODICAN’TAFFORDTHAT. Like many other users of that former nameless service, I began looking around and finally settled on Substack. Why? I like their sense of community, I like the ease of use…and did I mention it’s still free?
Now, granted, Substack does offer the ability to create a paid newsletter along with the free one, and yeah…I’ve toyed with that idea, just like I’ve thought about going to Patreon. The only problem with either of those options is: I’d have to create great content just for my paid subscribers/patrons, and I barely have enough time now to meet all my writing deadlines (see below for some of what I’ve been working on).
So for now, everything remains free…but one of these days I might bite the bullet and offer a paid version that contains original short stories and articles, maybe even something in serial form.
Thanks for hanging with me. I don’t know about you, but 2023 has already proven to be the biggest/craziest/hardest roller-coaster of my life. Right now I’m just hoping for more downhills and screams of pleasure instead of the other kind.
Lisa
NEW STUFF I LIKE
This used to be a column called “Still Life” wherein I pulled a piece of movie memorabilia from my collection and talked about it, but there are so many incredible works out there that I don’t own something from that I decided to just make it into a “New Stuff I Like” section. Every month I’ll talk about a book, movie, series, or even music I’ve just fallen in love with.
First up: Swarm, a new mini-series streaming on Amazon Prime. First off, for those of you who either are unfamiliar with this show or were misled by the promotion into thinking it’s about hiphop: IT IS A HORROR SERIES. It’s disturbing, bloody, blackly funny, impeccably made, and more horrifying than anything I’ve seen in ages.
Swarm follows Dre, a superfan of a Beyoncé-ish musical artist named Ni’jah. Co-created by Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino, whose video for “This is America” is one of my favorites), the series follows Dre as she goes on a murder spree, offing those who diss Ni’jah. The story is a look at the toxic side of fandom, but it explores class, race, and psychology as Dre also wrestles with eating issues.
The production values are stunning, with shots that make you want to reach for the control and just hit “pause.” It’s all held together by an absolutely brilliant lead performance from Dominique Fishback as Dre; there are also some fabulous guests, mainly Billie Eilish (in Episode Four) as the head of a commune of wealthy women, and…well, yeah, Donald Glover as himself.
THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT
A wonderful bookstore customer who collects figures in mystery boxes opened one recently, saw this, and knew I needed it. Yep...a cat in a jack-o’-lantern suit.
What’s interesting is: this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this little figure. I think it must stem from an anime or manga, although I haven’t been able to identify that yet (drop me a line if you know!). Or I suppose it could just be a popular Japanese figure that combines a love of cats with Halloween. Works for me!
STRANGE DOINGS
Out in the middle of the Iowa farmland is a little town called Villisca. With just over 1,100 residents, Villisca looks like any other small American town…until you drive down 2nd Street, and notice a white clapboard house with a sign out front that reads “Villisca Ax Murder House.”
So obviously you’re gonna pull over for THAT, and here’s what you’ll encounter: The house was built in 1868, and purchased by the Moore family in 1903. in June of 1912, eight people – including six children – were found murdered in this house with axe marks in their heads; the axe was left behind in a bedroom, next to a 4-pound slab of bacon. The killer also stopped for some food on the way out, but didn’t eat it; and clothing from the dressers was used to cover up all the mirrors and some of the windows of the house and the victims’ faces. Many suspects were investigated and one man – a minister who had arrived in the town the day before and was known to suffer from mental illness – confessed to the crimes and was tried but acquitted. There has also been speculation that the murders were the work of a serial killer, either Henry Lee Moore, who killed his mother and grandmother with an axe, or Paul Mueller, a farmhand who was wanted for the 1897 murder of a Massachusetts family.
The history of this house got even weirder when word started to get out that it was haunted. Given that six children died there, it comes as no surprise that witnesses often hear small voices, sometimes crying; bloody footprints have been seen, and drawers opened to fling clothing about. When Ghost Adventures investigated, they got an EVP that sounds like a man saying, “I killed six kids.”
The weirdest story, though, comes from 2014 when a paranormal investigator checked into the house with his elderly parents for an overnight investigation. The investigator had brought a hunting knife with him for protection, but he was found in the night with the knife in his chest. Airlifted to a nearby hospital he survived and later said he had no memory of the event.
The Villisca house is open for tours and investigation, so you can book time there yourself…but probably a good idea to leave the sharp objects at home.
BEHIND THE SCREAMS
“Murder in Xanadu” from Entertainment to Die For
I don’t write a lot of mystery stories. For years I thought I couldn’t; they seemed too complex for my go-for-the-jugular approach. When I tried a few, though, I found out I enjoyed writing them; and then when I (somehow, impossibly) landed in Best American Mystery Stories 2020, I decided I should try some more.
This story, originally called “Murder in Two Worlds,” was written for an anthology of young adult mystery stories; originally the characters were all high school kids. If I have any complaint about a lot of modern mystery fiction, it’s that it seems both quite safe and skews older, so I wanted to write something that would be maybe just a little bit hipper. It’s about a chill young genius named Zendrix who has created an alternate reality program that is astonishingly realistic and loads easily; when Zendrix is murdered, his best friend tries to find out why and who.
I thought it would be fun to combine young adult fiction, mystery, fantasy and science fiction; Xanadu, the alternate reality, contains characters like talking dogs who end up playing important parts in solving the murder.
It was an ambitious story and the original market passed on it, as did the next…but the third, the Sisters in Crime LA chapter’s anthology Entertainment to Die For, took the story (with the characters aged from teens to twentysomethings). Sometimes you just have to keep submitting until you find the right home for a piece.
THE WRITE STUFF
Copyright. It can be tough to parse; in fact, it can be so tough to parse that there are attorneys who specialize in it.
I recently talked to a gentleman who excitedly expostulated on projects he was working on. He wanted to be a screenwriter. He loved science fiction. He wanted to adapt a favorite book. He had, thankfully, ruled out Dune, but was eyeing lesser known favorites from the 1950s. He showed me the paperback original of one he was set on. I asked if he had the rights. He enthusiastically informed me that he’d get the rights after he sold the screenplay.
Except…that’s not how it works.
I’ve been involved - as a screenwriter, a playwright, and a fiction writer - with projects that were based on existing materials. With any form of adaptation, the first thing you do is make sure the rights are available, and then find out how you can acquire them. If you manage to get a producer or publisher interested in your project, let me assure you - and I mean ONE HUNDRED PERCENT assure you - that their first question will be to ask if you own the rights to the source material; if you don’t (or if they’re not in the public domain, essentially meaning anything produced prior to 1927), that interested party is going to walk away.
It’s sometimes very difficult to track down the current rights owner; for example, the rights to that book published in the 1950s is likely to now be owned by the author’s children, grandchildren, or even more distant family member. It can take months to find out who owns an old copyright. Once you establish that, you can often make a very reasonable offer on acquiring the rights…as long as the book isn’t something famous. You are not, in other words, going to be able to afford the rights to The Martian Chronicles or I Am Legend. But I optioned works by Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick to adapt to the stage for affordable amounts, and I was a starving artist at the time. Film rights, of course, are a whole different ballgame, and you may need one of those attorneys at your side when you go in to negotiate a film option.
If you want to produce fan fiction…well, that’s something else entirely. I’m not intricately familiar with the ins and outs of fan fiction, but I can tell you one thing: Please don’t submit fan fiction to a professional publication. Yes, as an editor I’ve received submissions of fan fiction, and I turned it down unread. If you want to be a professional writer, create your own worlds and play in those.
NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS
The Art of the Zombie Movie is finished! The publisher is very happy with how it turned out, and I hear they’ll be pushing it at the upcoming London Book Fair.
Ghosts: A Haunted History has just been published in Korean (see above photo).
My essay on George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead (and why it failed) will be in a third anthology of film essays from Ghost Show Press.
My Christmas ghost story “The Grey Road” will appear in Literally Dead: Tales of Holiday Hauntings.
My article on Soviet-era Russian horror films is a featured article in the current issue of Rue Morgue.
My interview with Renaissance Man Eric J. Guignard is now live at Nightmare Magazine.
I have a reprinted interview with Joe R. Lansdale in Conversations With Joe R. Lansdale.
I just finished an article on the history of one of my favorite magazines - more about that next month.
I blogged about some of my favorite memories of Mom, who passed away in January.
Right now…I’m working on three short stories, some material for my agent, and the endless process of settling my mom’s estate, oyyyyyy.
UPCOMING APPEARANCES
Tomorrow, 4/2, I’ll reading from “Murder in Xanadu” for the Sisters in Crime LA Chapter meeting
On 4/16 I’ll be livestreaming in chat with Bigfoots Pad Paranormal.
I’ll be attending StokerCon2023 in Pittsburgh, June 15-18.
I’ll be signing The Art of the Zombie Movie at Dark Delicacies on October 8.
And don’t forget to listen to Ghost Magnet With Bridget Marquardt every week to hear a new Ghost Report!
WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS
ebay - I’m selling a few of my author copies - CHEAP! - and will be happy to personalize them for you. I’ll be adding to this every day, too.
CONTEST
At the end of April we’ll be halfway to Halloween, so let’s celebrate by giving away a really cool piece of Halloween ephemera: the vintage postcard you see above! Click here (put “Newsletter Contest” in the subject line of your email) to enter and good luck!
Cool newsletter. I recommended it to my subscribers. And I love Substack. In some ways it's the revival of blogging, depending on how it's used. There are a lot of good writers and writing here. Welcome.
Really happy to see you on Substack, Lisa!