X and Pearl, Hans Holzer, and a Giveaway!

Every Day is Halloween #79: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton

Aug 01, 2023

Hey Crew!

I am SO done with traveling.

I mean, Readercon was fun (although my favorite part of my recent trip to Boston was the day spent in Salem), but I hatehateHATE flying. My trip to Boston took 13 hours; those who follow me on social media got to experience my real-time re-routings to first Rochester, and then Pittsburgh (yes, I somehow wound up returning to Pittsburgh after being there in June for StokerCon). I finally arrived in Boston at 3 am, exhausted and starving, swearing to never undertake a long flight again. My return flight went through three gate changes and was a mere hour late in leaving. Remember when air travel was efficient and comfortable?

Fortunately Midsummer Scream was an easy drive (it was in Long Beach) and was fantastic. And StokerCon 2024 will happen in San Diego - hurrah, no flying needed! I’ve already purchased memberships and reserved a hotel room.

Meanwhile…there’s some tremendously exciting writing news lurking just around the bend; hopefully I’ll have a big announcement soon. In the meantime, I managed to knock half the items off my to-do list, but I’ve still got a lot to get through, so pardon me while I run off now to get back to work!

Lisa

NEW STUFF I LIKE

Although I’d seen Ti West’s 2009 The House of the Devil a few years ago, I only just caught up with his 2022 entries X and Pearl, and I was blown away by both (but especially Pearl).

In case you don’t know these extraordinary films: X came first, following a troupe of young filmmakers in 1979 as they head to an isolated and run-down farm to make a porn film; Pearl, a prequel set nearly 70 years earlier, followed. Both star Mia Goth (she plays two roles in X, appearing as both young actress Maxine and the elderly Pearl), and she is nothing less than brilliant in both films. X also features Wednesday herself, Jenna Ortega, as the girlfriend just along to gain some filmmaking experience who had no idea sex was the subject.

Pearl documents the making of the psychotic killer from X, but it’s so much more: it’s a wickedly funny and occasionally downright surreal comment on how Hollywood’s allure was deceptive right from the start. It reminded me a bit of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a film that I think is an underrated masterpiece.

If you haven’t joined the Ti West Fan Club yet, check out both of these gems.

THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT

Do other people collect Tarot decks without knowing how to use them?

Okay, yeah…that’s probably weird. But I love Tarot decks; I probably have a dozen different ones, including three that are Halloween themed. I love the design of a good deck; I love the sense of archetype they present. I love just looking at them.

One of these days I’ll do the actual work of learning how to read a Tarot spread…but in the meantime, I’ll keep collecting!

STRANGE DOINGS

I recently acquired a nice stack of vintage Hans Holzer paperbacks, so I thought it would be fun to talk about this OG ghost hunter. Younger fans may know Holzer via the tv series The Holzer Files, but those of us who are – ahem – of a certain age probably grew up reading his books, not hard considering he wrote 120 of them!

Hans Holzer was born in Vienna in 1920, but his family relocated to New York City when he was 18. He soon became interested in the paranormal and ended up studying hundreds of cases, including the Amityville Horror. Holzer, who died in 2009, usually conducted his investigations with no more than a medium and a tape recorder.

One of Holzer’s most interesting books is Window to the Past: Exploring History through ESP. Holzer here is using ESP not as another way of saying telepathy, but as a broader term that includes psychic abilities like psychometry, which is the idea that psychics can read an object’s history just by touching it. If that sounds like Stone Tape Theory, it’s pretty close…although Stone Tape Theory came about several years after this book.

Holzer absolutely believed in the existence of ghosts, and that certain individuals could communicate with them. He wasn’t a supporter of the theory that mediums are actually reading the minds of those near them, but he was a firm believer in the idea that objects might record events. Here he is explaining it in his own words, from the introduction to Window to the Past: “The art of psychometry rests on the assumption that people leave a film of their past thoughts, actions, emotions, and images upon anything they touch, handle, wear, or come in contact with – even a room they have entered once, provided there is some emotional involvement…” He goes on to say, “In my view, this is entirely reasonable.”

Do you agree with Hans? Contrary to his assertion that there were studies to back this up…there weren’t. But who really knows?

BEHIND THE SCREAMS

“In the Garden” from The Beauty of Death

I wrote this story in early 2016; at the time, I’d been the live-in caregiver to my mom for just over a year.

My mom suffered from severe dementia; the disease had turned my cheerful, hard-working parent into a fearful, angry, confused senior. I’d always known that I would end up one day caring for Mom; what I didn’t know was that it would be far and away the hardest thing I would ever do.

It was a full-time job on top of the two full-time jobs I already had; I hired other caregivers to look after her during the day while I worked as a bookseller, then I took over as soon as I got home. Writing was something I could accomplish only late at night, after I’d finally gotten her into bed; I’d try to get in a few words until I’d fall asleep myself.

During this time, my sources of comfort were largely confined to my cats and my garden. The latter was hard because I could only grab a few moments here and there before Mom’s needs took over again, but I treasured those moments.

The central theme of strange fungi in this story is based on weird stuff I did indeed find out back. I changed the relationship from a mother-daughter to a brother-sister because I wanted to add the element of a longtime sibling rivalry, but much of the material in this story reflects how I was feeling at the time.

I was so honored when writer and editor Lee Murray recently included this story in a thoughtful essay on how horror fiction has dealt with dementia. You can read that piece here.

THE WRITE STUFF

This year has seen more collaborating than usual for me. Coming in December from Cemetery Dance is Placerita, a novella I co-wrote with John Palisano; and my agent is currently shopping not one but two anthology proposals that would pair me with two different editors.

I often hear writer friends say they don’t think they could ever collaborate, and I totally get that; the bulk of my work has been done solo. But there are some projects were working with a partner is just right. Anthologies in particular can benefit from an editing duo, given the amount of extra tasks involved that don’t pop up in fiction (like reading submissions).

Here are some suggestions based on my own experience with collaboration:

Make sure you have similar tastes. “Opposites attract” might work in love (or not…I’ve personally always thought that saying was hogwash myself), but it’s a recipe for disaster when it comes to working with a writing or editing partner.
Be clear from the start on how you’ll divide up the work. If you’re writing a work of fiction with someone else, will you alternate sections/chapters, or will one person write the first draft with the partner taking on the second draft? And who’s going to take care of stuff like promotion and payment?
Remember that you are responsible to your partner. Don’t leave them hanging for long, unexplained periods. If you’ve set deadlines, stick to ‘em.
Be prepared to give your ego a time out. Does your partner have a bigger name than you that might give them first billing? Did they just come up with an idea that’s better than yours? This is not the time for you to act like a diva (well, okay - there’s probably NEVER a great time for that, but especially not now).

Get this stuff lined up right from the start, and you can have a great and potentially profitable collaboration.

NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS

The long-running podcast Ghost Magnet With Bridget Marquardt, which I’ve provided the “Ghost Report” for over the last four years, has finally ended, but I’m pleased to report that the “Ghost Report” will continue as its own little show.

The James Brown tribute anthology Get Up Offa That Thing includes my crime fiction story “Money to Burn.”

The anthology Shakespeare Unleashed, which includes my story “The Body, the Blood, the Woods, the Stage”, is now available for order here.

You can watch an hour-long discussion here on the history of Halloween (it’s me, Kevin Wetmore, Jr., and Leslie S. Klinger).

The book Fantastic Flops will include my essay on George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead. The anthology is currently funding on Kickstarter.

The forthcoming Cemetery Dance anthology Dread Vol. 1 will include my story “God’s Wife.”

The forthcoming Crystal Lake anthology Strange Tales of Terror will include my story “4:10 AM.”

A television I wrote back in the ‘80s, Hawkshaw, is now airing as a radio drama at station KNVC.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

I’ll be signing The Art of the Zombie Movie at Village Well Books & Coffee in Culver City on October 1.
I’ll be signing The Art of the Zombie Movie at Dark Delicacies on October 8.
I’ll be at StokerCon 2024 in San Diego, May 30-June 2, 2024.

WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS

GIVEAWAY

Hurrah! I seem to have finally mastered handling contests on Substack, so let’s have one this month to give away a Kindle ebook of Shakespeare Unleashed. And sorry, but this giveaway is only open to U.S. residents.

To enter, hit the “Leave a Comment” button, just tell me in the comment that you’d like to win, and I’ll randomly pick a winner at the end of August. Good luck!

Every Day is Halloween