Stokercon, Horror Coffee Shops, and a Giveaway!

Every Day is Halloween #89: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton

Hi All!

I apologize for the fact that this issue is late, but I’ve been at StokerCon for the last week having too much fun! While there, I also took the opportunity to visit San Diego’s Old Town and tour the Whaley House, which calls itself “America’s Most Haunted House.” I didn’t have any encounters, but I did have a great time!

I’ve also been dealing with a backyard full of feral kittens. Fortunately, thanks to the help of my friends who run Forgotten Animals of L.A., I was able to trap the mama cat and all four of her kittens. Mom’s been spayed, vaccinated, treated for fleas and worms, microchipped, and released into the wilds of my backyard again, while the kittens are now living in a luxury highrise cat condo as we work on socializing them enough to adopt them out. We’ve already got two indoor senior cats (Pinky and Henrietta), so this has all been…ummm…interesting, but we’re also loving how adorable these kittens are. Stay tuned for kitten updates!

Lisa

NEW STUFF I LIKE

As I write this, the final episode of Under the Bridge hasn’t aired yet, but so far this series is absolutely compelling and full of emotional wallops. It makes me want to read Rebecca Godfrey’s book because her character (played by Riley Keough) is so interesting in this Hulu miniseries that I want to know more about her.

Based on the true story of the murder of a 14-year-old girl named Reena Virk in British Columbia (in 1997), the mini-series explores themes of race, bias, police error, and guilt, all in a compelling and beautifully made way. Every actor here is awards-worthy, although for me the stand-out is Lily Gladstone as Cam, the adopted cop daughter of the police chief. I’ve someone never seen Gladstone before, and she’s one of those remarkable actors who conveys an inner life to her character through subtle signals. I’ll be backtracking now to check out more of her work.

THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT

It seems that horror-themed coffee shops and bars are a happening thing these days. We’ve got one in North Hollywood, Horror Vibes Coffee, that I confess I’ve yet to visit. At StokerCon we visited an occult-themed speakeasy in San Diego’s Old Town (you had to confess a deadly sin to enter - I went for wrath). I’ve even heard of these popping up in the Midwest now.

Is there a horror-themed bar, restaurant, or coffee place near you?

Oh, and re: the photo above…I kind of love a drink named “Picture of Earl Grey.” Yeah, I definitely need to visit this place and order one of those.

STRANGE DOINGS

When I was researching The Art of the Zombie Movie, one of my go-to sites was Heritage Auctions, because they include so much great information about the history of every piece they offer.

I ended up enjoying actually following various auctions at Heritage, and one that I really loved was a collection of old books on ghosts. I actually bid on a number of items in that auction, but - being not particularly wealthy! - I lost out on all of them except one, which was unusual for Heritage in not being described in depth. I think it was listed as something like “collection of ghost stories.”

I ended up really overpaying for it (by the time fees and shipping were added on), and it’s really a bound collection of old magazine short stories, not limited to ghost stories. At first I was disappointed…until I started researching the opening story, called “Mr. Heaphey’s Ghost,” and ended up being very glad indeed that I had purchased this book.

Thomas Heaphy was known throughout England for his watercolor portraits, but now he might be most remembered for this tale of a tragic ghost he claimed to have once encountered. There are two very different versions of Mr. Heaphy’s story – a British one that Charles Dickens first printed in an 1861 edition of his magazine All the Year Round, and an American that was supplied to a newspaper by Heaphey’s sister after he died (that’s the version in my book). In both versions of the story, Mr. Heaphy is approached three times by a mysterious young woman: once in a train, once in a country estate he’s visiting, and once in his own studio in London. The young woman, who never gives a name and is seen by no one else, begs Heaphy to paint her portrait and gives him an engraving of herself to work from. Because Mr. Heaphy is traveling and can only work at the portrait from time to time, it takes him months to complete the painting.

Finally Mr. Heaphy is traveling in an area of England known as Lichfield when he is invited to join an old friend from school. He arrives at his friend’s house, only to find his friend is very ill, but somehow knows that Heaphy was working on his daughter’s portrait. When he Heaphy is confused – the man has several daughters but he recognizes none of them – the old friend reveals that the daughter in question died several months ago. One of those other daughter’s pulls out a book that is missing the engraving the mysterious woman gave to Heaphy; he in return hands the family his finished portrait, and they are delighted by it. Of course it’s revealed that the beautiful daughter had died shortly before the first time she visited Heaphy.

Did the artist really encounter a ghost, or was this all (as some suggested) the product of an old man’s deathbed fantasies?

BEHIND THE SCREAMS

A few years ago, editor Nate Pedersen was kind enough to invite me into an unusual anthology: The Dagon Collection is actually Lovecraftian short stories, but presented as detailed listings in an auction catalog.

The first thing I had to do was come up with an item that might be found in an auction. I’ve always loved the look of old sextants, which were used in the past to navigate at sea, so I decided my item would be a sextant. Next, I decided to make my sextant belong on board a famous real-life lost ship, so I chose the Madagascar, which vanished somewhere between Australia and England in 1853.

Then I studied auction listings, as well as how sextants worked. Fortunately I’m already pretty well acquainted with Lovecraftian fiction, so that part was easy. Lastly, I incorporated one of the mediums I mentioned in my book Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances.

It was a challenging piece to write, but hey - I’m nothing if not a writer who loves to be challenged!

THE WRITE STUFF

Do you ever sit down to write and wrestle with the names and descriptions of your characters?

Finding those attributes can be crucial to how readers perceive your fictitious people. If you’re lead is a character born in 2005, do you really want to name her Mabel? Should your brooding killer really be described as having a baby face?

I’m always astonished when I read a story in which a character is described as looking like some celebrity; that feels a little sloppy on the part of the writer, doesn’t it?

I’m much likelier to picture my characters as resembling someone I know or have met in person. When it comes to naming a character, I might google names based on the character’s date or place of birth; I also try to think about that character’s parents. Were they hippies who named their kids after trees? Did they revere some distant great-grandparent, or historical figure?

I might be a bit more blunt when it comes to last names. Real life, after all, often surprises me with names like Butcher for a doctor (that really was the name of my first dentist).

Do you have any methods for naming and describing YOUR characters?

NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS

The big writing news this month is the release of my collection Spine Tinglers, out now from Rothco Press! You can order a copy here.

Otherwise, it’s been a bit of a slow month writing-wise, as I’ve dealt with feral kittens, reading lots of stuff for blurb consideration, and preparing for StokerCon.

I did leave StokerCon with some invites, so I’ve got new things I’ll be working on for the immediate future.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

• June 10th - John Palisano and I will be guesting on the Coffee Fueled Stories podcast to talk about our novella Placerita

• July 27-28 - I’ll be a Special Guest at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach

• October (exact date TBA): 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)

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’s a signed copy of my new collection Spine Tinglers!

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!