From Zombos' Closet

Deathmaster (1972) Pressbook

Here's another movie Robert Quarry played a vampire in. It's got hippies, too. That's about it.

 

How to Write Well By Scott M. Baker

So all I have to do is write a page a day and in a year I’ll have a novel good enough to be published?

Not necessarily. You’ll have a novel. Whether it’s good enough to be published is another matter. Remember, writing is an art, much like figure skating, singing, acting, or painting. You have to practice at your craft to become good at it.

I used to write espionage/techno thrillers. I don’t even admit to the first book because, in retrospect, it was crap. The second book was better, but still not quite publishable. By the third book I had found my style. The plot dealt with North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons and planting four of them in cities in the United States to blackmail the government. I quickly picked up an agent who presented it to several publishers, all of whom liked the book. Unfortunately, this occurred right after 11 September, and the market for those books had dried up. So I switched genres. It had taken me ten years to get to that point in my career, and then I had to start all over. Rather than viewing it as a setback, however, I saw this only as a slight detour. That decade of experience well prepared me for writing in the horror genre.

So get out there and write. And just as important, submit you work.

But what if my work isn’t good enough and it gets rejected?

Don’t get depressed if it gets rejected – that’s the nature of the game. It happens to all authors. And not all rejections are bad. Occasionally an editor/publisher sends you feedback; if they do, consider yourself fortunate. Most editors/publishers reject stories and manuscripts with a simple form letter, if they even respond at all. If one takes the time to offer you feedback means he/she sees potential in you work, and is taking the time to help you hone your skills. Take advantage of that opportunity.

The best way to hone your skills is to get readers who will provide critical feedback. Your mother and significant other do not count – chances are they’ll say it’s good, even if it isn’t. My suggestion is to find a good writer’s group with published authors or aspiring authors who are also interested in improving their craft. I’m a member of The Washington Fiction Writer’s League and the League of Extraordinary Authors, and the feedback they provide has been invaluable to improving what I’ve eventually published.

If you do go this route, remember two very important things.

First, find critique groups that will provide honest feedback. I’ve seen too many groups where the members will tear someone else’s work to shreds, but become indignant if you provide any critical feedback on their material. Avoid those groups like you would a horde of ravenous zombies. They’re filled with people who think ripping apart your work will somehow make them better writers. Trust me, it doesn’t work that way.

Second, and this is the hardest thing, is lock away your ego in a dark room during feedback sessions. As long as the feedback isn’t personal, listen to it and adopt it where appropriate. Every author is wedded to his/her work and hates to here that it is not quite as good as he/she thought it was. Get over yourself. I did. 

Remember, no matter how well you write, there is always room for improvement. Your goal is not to write the best book ever written. Your goal is to write the best book you possibly can. Every work has flaws. But if a reader can overlook the occasional grammatical error or plot flaw because the rest of the story is so entertaining it keeps them glued to the edge of their seat, then you’ve succeeded as a writer. 

Mexican Lobby Card: El Cuervo (1963)

Mexican Lobby Card: Riders to the Stars (1954)

The Mexican lobby card for Riders to the Stars (1954), El Cohete Conquistador. Sort of gives you a strong sense that slinky babes, who don't need oxygen, go for chunky-suited astronauts with fish bowls on their heads. I especially like the placement of the rising rocket.

 

Mexican Lobby Card: La Mensajera Del Diablo

Mexican Lobby Card: El Monstruo De Londres

Mexican Lobby Card: La Senora Muerte

Book Review: Chasing Ghosts Texas Style

Zombos Says: Good  

There are two corrections I'll note for Brad and Barry Klinge's book about their nocturnal exploits with the supernatural, Chasing Ghosts Texas Style: On the Road With Everyday Paranormal. The first is Brad attributing  "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," to an old Mafia saying.  That's wrong: the military strategist Sun-tzu said it first.  Brad, if you want a Mafia quote, I recommend this one: "I know nothing, I didn't see anything, I wasn't there, and if I was there, I was asleep." Even if Michael Corleone says his father told him to keep his enemies closer in The Godfather, the Mob didn't think of it first.

The second correction is more of a needed addition to the book. Brad and Barry describe their experiences with spectral phenomenon, often citing audio and photographic evidence gathered in their encounters, but there are no photographs. I can understand audio being a problem for the print edition (it would be great to hear EVPs in the ebook version, hint, hint), but to not include photographs  seems rather silly, don't you think? Am I a skeptic? Sure, to an extent. But it's more a case of me being tired of the endless hearsay descriptions given on every Ghost Hunters episode, Ghost Lab episode, and insert-your-own-favorite-here episode of any and every paranormal show.  

You know the drill I'm referring to:  investigators start investigating by invariably doing a walk-through of the purportedly haunted premises first, guided by someone who describes how he or she, or a guest or co-worker, has seen a full body apparition, or heard a disembodied voice, or was tripped down the stairs by big spectral feet. The descriptions are always so much more juicy than the investigations (although, I confess,  both do jive enough for me, sometimes). Brad and Barrys' very first investigation, the Harlequin Diner (they took photos), and Brad's apparition sighting of Civil War soldiers (he said he filmed it), piqued my interest enough to want to see photographic evidence. But none is provided in the book. Ouch.

Now here's what I really like about this book: the refreshingly skeptical stance both of them take when witches and feeling psychics are involved in investigations. Asterisks appear by certain names so I'll assume those names have been changed. Whoever "Celeste" the psychic may be in real life, her effectively simple (but naughty) spook assist in the television studio investigation, as well as those white witches who conducted a questionable ceremony--with burning sage--in another, provide a much needed Everyday Normal against all the EVP, EMF, and K-2 meter gadgetizing.  

The best chapter may be Everyday Nutsacks and Other Disasters, in which we meet tipsy "Meredith," who dresses for the brothers' investigation of her house  in a flowing white nightgown, and "Sharon," who says the spirits levitated and rotated her.  At least she wasn't tipsy. 

In Chasing Ghosts Texas Style, Brad and Barry describe their roadtrip to everyday paranormal, potholes and all. A short glossary and essential list of ghost hunting tools will get you started, but you'll just have to find--and avoid-- the potholes for yourself. This book provides a good business primer to do that.

 

Westworld (1973) Pressbook

Considering the latest developments in robotics, this may not be that far off.

How to Write That First Novel By Scott M. Baker

I’ve been fortunate over the past six years to be intimately involved with a writer’s group that has allowed me to become acquainted with numerous authors, publishers, screen writers, and literary agents. They have talked openly about the publishing industry in general and their specific genres, and have offered considerable advice. Over time, I’ve come to realize how valuable that guidance was. So over the next few weeks, I hope to share some of that wisdom with you.

“What do I have to do to be a writer?”

Write.

Believe it or not, it’s as simple as that. Writers write. It’s what we do. But you’d be surprised how many people forget that.

I’ve met several potential authors who have bragged about all the work they’ve done on their project. One had a detailed outline of their proposed novel. Another had 3x5 cards filled with biographical notes for each character. A third had a notebook in which he kept hours' worth of research. When I asked them how far they had gotten in their book, they admitted they had not written anything yet. These people completely miss the point. Research, plot, and character are necessary, but not anywhere near as important as actually writing the book.

So get out there and start writing.

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re a published author and have plenty of time to write. I don’t.”

No one has time to write. You have to make time.

The sad truth about publishing today is that, unless you are a well-established name like Stephen King, J. K. Rawlings, or Dan Brown, most writers maintain a day job (or have a very understanding significant other with a well-paying job and a lot of patience). I get up at 6 AM, rush around to feed my rabbits, get dressed, and then off to work by 7 AM. If I'm lucky, I’m home around 5 PM. Then I have to feed, clean, and spend time with the rabbits--you don‘t own pets, pets own you; do chores and errands; and try to have some meager semblance of a social life. I’m lucky if I get five hours of sleep a night.

I fit writing into that hectic schedule because I love to write. I need to write. It’s my passion. To do it I have to make sacrifices. When I’m in full-fledged writing mode, my Xbox sits idle and my stack of books to read grows taller and taller. And I don’t want to admit to the number of times I’ve spent several hours cranking out a chapter, only to be greeted afterwards by sets of mopey brown eyes and furry dejected faces giving me that why-didn’t-you-play-with-me look.

Anyone who truly and passionately wants to write can find time during the day to do so. Get up an hour early or stay up an hour late (as long as you devote that entire time solely to writing). If you commute by public transportation, use that time. Devote some of your “down time” to writing. Sure, you might have to forego watching American Idol or curtail your time surfing stupid videos on YouTube, but are these really more important than getting your book written?

“Oh, come on. How much writing do you really expect me to get done in an hour a day?”

Let me put it this way. In that hour, anyone can write a single page. If you type in double space, the way manuscripts should be drafted, that’s approximately 300 words a day. If you do that every day for a year, when you’re done you will have 365 pages totaling over 100,000 words. That, my friends, is a novel.

So what are you waiting for? Close down the Internet, call up your word processor, and start writing.

Meet the Author: Chad Helder

by Chad Helder

Author Chad Helder walks the twisting path between the grim fairy tale and the dark forest. Meet him right now...in his own words...near a dark playground nestled deep within the brooding pines.

After attending the Horror Writers Association’s Stoker Weekend in New York a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been reflecting on why I am a horror writer. For me, being a horror writer is my personal response to being gay. With all of the cultural pressures and individual fears associated with being gay in a homophobic society (fear of rejection by family and church community, fear of AIDS, fear of hate crimes, and--worst of all for me--fear of becoming a reviled stereotype), each person responds in an individual way. I became a horror writer.

Growing up in the ‘80s, I was exposed to a variety of negative gay stereotypes. One of the unfortunate psychological responses to living in a homophobic culture is to internalize homophobia, which becomes a strain of self-hatred.  I think Jung’s concept of the shadow is very helpful to understand this. Wanting to deny the emerging gay feelings and desires, I banished them to the shadow side of the psyche--the same place where all unwanted thoughts and feelings are banished. Then a strange thing happened--my unconscious mind associated my fear of becoming gay with the monsters of the horror genre. I don’t intend to make this sound like some kind of simple cause and effect scenario--I actually find it to be quite mysterious.

From the time I was about fourteen-years-old until my mid-twenties, I had a horrifying series of nightmares about Satan and vampires. For me, these universally recognized shadow figures embodied my fear of becoming gay.

Jung wrote about levels of the unconscious mind: an individual unconscious, a cultural unconscious, and a collective unconscious from which our most universal archetypes emerge. Clearly, the archetype of the vampire is a universal shadow figure that appears throughout the world. In my personal unconscious, the vampire embodied internalized homophobia--the monster I was afraid to become. However, I would also argue that the vampire was associated with homophobia in the cultural unconscious of the ‘80s, best represented by Lost Boys (or Nightmare on Elms Street 2 with Freddy as the shadow figure).

For a terrifying summer before I started high school, I was preoccupied with being possessed by Satan. It seemed that Satan could hear my thoughts, and he was waiting for me to slip up and allow him inside. In retrospect, this fear of having my body taken over by Satan (or by vampires) seems a vivid metaphor for becoming a gay man against my will.

After many years psychological work and finding a wonderful partner, I consider myself to be a very well-adjusted gay man--and a very nice, caring person to boot. However, the shadow side of my psyche is still populated by monstrous vampires and Satanic shadow figures. I’ve heard it said that the unconscious mind does not know time.

Over the years, I explored these connections between queer theory and the horror genre on my blog, which eventually led to editing an anthology of queer horror with Vince Liaguno. The anthology is called Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, and it won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology, which was a wonderful validation for all of the exploring, blogging, and theorizing about the underpinnings of queer horror and those closet chapters of my earlier life.

Bronze Bat Wall Sconce Candle Holder

While the 4,000 dollar price tag kept me from purchasing the pair of unique bronze bat sconces, I drooled with envy and imagined they had come from Castle Dracula. I saw them on the wall of a shop while antiquing in Hudson, New York, this past weekend. Here's a closeup of one of them.