Saturday Jan 20, 2024 -- Portsmouth NH
I've managed to miss the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book
Festival every time it’s happened thus far, so when my friend Dennis asked me if
I wanted to go to Christopher Golden’s one-off event in celebration of the
upcoming release of his latest book, I said heck yes!
The event started on Thursday and ran through Saturday, the day we were able to go. It
was a blast! Lowkey, with a single-track
speaker schedule, so it was pretty easy to make decisions about what to
do.
On arrival we almost immediately got to meet author Brian
Keene, who was running the event – he kindly signed a stack of paperbacks that
Dennis had brought with him.
We arrived in time for the signing with Owen King and Joe
Hill, at which point I had to kick myself for not bringing my copy of The
Curator, Owen’s latest book, which is sitting right on my bedside
table. D’oh! However, he was nice enough to sign the back
of my name badge (hooray for creative problem solving!), so that will go in as
my bookmark in his book.
Once upon a time, Joe Hill visited my shop when the
International Cryptozoology Museum was in its first public location, in the
back room attached to my shop space, but unfortunately that was on one of the
days when it was closed and locked up.
(That was the only bad part of having the museum there – having to
disappoint people! Especially Joe
Hill!!! Gahhhhh….)
Next we went to the panel discussion titled “My Favorite Exorcism.” Present (shown above, L-R) were authors Emily Hughes, Ronald
Malfi, Philip Fracassi, Tanya Pell, Rebecca Rowland, Vaughn Beckford, Cat
Scully (moderator), and Christopher Golden.
Possession and exorcism are themes that have fascinated and
horrified those who know of them. They
are fruitful fodder for horror writers, and this panel examined some of the
reasons why. Part of what feeds this creative
fire are the classification systems and rituals that are built up around them
in the lore of the Catholic Church.
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[Right] Christopher Golden
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Stages of possession were discussed briefly, the names
evocative – infestation, oppression, obsession, possession. The addition of non-Western traditions to the
known lore increases its potential.
While Americans have become fairly well-versed in demonic exorcism due
to a plethora of pop-culture exposure points, there are other types, and many
analogues that can be utilized by writers.
For example, in some Eastern traditions, places themselves have an
attached demon or spirit that can possess you and cause you trouble.
Self-contained possession is another applicable theme, when
a part of your existing personality rears up and refuses to be submerged again –
sometimes with an effect that is in some ways liberating, as it turns out (The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman was mentioned, as well as the short piece “The Story of an Hour” by Kate
Chopin). Christopher Golden mentioned
John Carpenter’s The Thing as a favorite non-demonic possession flick, and
Denzel Washington’s Fallen.
What makes possession so frightening? The general consensus was loss of control,
although other themes pluck our nerves – “it could be anybody” – how do you
tell a person is possessed? It’s not
always immediately apparent, especially in The Thing. This is another aspect of the phenomena that
lends itself to building tension in storytelling.
Pregnancy can be seen as possession, people can be possessed
by uncontrollable rage, or unacceptable behavior.
Possession doesn’t always mean complete loss of agency,
either. In Philip Fracassi’s excellent The
Boys in the Valley (Tor Nightfire, 2023), the boys who have been infested with
the evil were still making their own decisions, but their existing attitudes
and flaws were magnified under the evil’s influence. The gloves were off.
Another facet is complicity, such as experienced by communities
who found themselves under Nazi command in WWII. Will you become a collaborator, or fight and
likely die?
Vaughn Beckford talked about the effect of defamiliarization
– when you are a child (or adult) and something happens which causes your
world, previously safe and familiar, to suddenly be yanked out from under your
feet, leaving you alone in a strange and unfriendly environment, with no way to
get back to where you were before. Many
of us have felt that way in our daily lives, so it is easy to for us to
identify with a victim of possession feeling that same thing, only magnified a
million times more.
Cat Scully mentioned another favorite example in the Evil
Dead movies. For her, Ash’s fight to
overcome his possession stood tall as an analogue for overcoming fear and
persevering. Ronald Malfi recommended we
look up a 7-part article called “The Haunted Boy” about Blatty’s experiences
researching and writing The Exorcist, based on a real world possession
case. Tanya Pell talked a little bit
about living with Type 2 narcolepsy, which in her experience includes sleep paralysis
and associated nighttime hallucinations, which invoke a physical response as
though the sufferer is actually fighting off a danger.
Philip Fracassi mentioned the ‘80s film The Hidden
(yes! I was hoping someone would) as another example of non-demonic possession. Vaughn threw the Chucky film franchise
into the ring (another great example!).
Cat Scully highly recommended the Thai film The Medium, and
another called The Wailing, and The Incantation, too. Christopher Golden added When Evil Lurks
and Talk to Me. He talked about
how pure evil is a tremendous concept, evil being “quantifiable in the way a
black hole is dark.”
The “restored” version of John Carpenter’s Halloween was
discussed, which seemed as though it hinted that the child (and eventually man)
that was Michael Myers was being possessed by something “other.” Likewise the hints given in the tagline of Night
of the Living Dead – “When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk
the earth.” – might be read to indicate that the zombies were not being
animated by their original selves. Were
they demon-ridden instead, since they were coming from Hell?
During the audience Q&A following, adolescence as a
seeming possessed state was discussed.
Tanya Pell recommended the YA book The Good Demon. Emily Hughes reminded the audience that hormones
are a possessing force! Christopher
Golden talked about the massive chemical changes in the brain that occur during
adolescence, and then conversation moved onto other options – addiction, in one
form or another, is another analogue, as is mental illness (Billy Joel’s The
Stranger was brought up).
A great question posed (and certainly one that could be food
for a good many stories) is – what “tell” would give you away to a loved one if
you were possessed? What trait (or
absence thereof) would give that secret away to someone who knew you really
well?
After this we were psyched to run into author Eric LaRocca, who has not been able to make it into the shop in ages (but hopefully soon?). He's been busy cranking out the horror books!!
https://greenhandbookshop.com/search?q=larocca
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Next, after lunch at Cheese Louise -- a freezing cold but
short walk away from the hotel -- we went to a reading by Paul Tremblay and
Stephen Kozeniewski.
Tremblay read the first couple chapters from his upcoming
novel, Horror Movie (6/11/24, William Morrow), and Kozeniewski spoke in
extemporaneous fashion – entertaining and sharply funny. Tremblay made my day by mentioning that Horror
Movie was inspired by Gunnar Hansen’s excellent account of his work in
indie film, Chain Saw Confidential, which is apparently available as an
audiobook now (yay!) even though the book itself is long out of print.
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Our next stop was “TV, Film, and the Adaptation Process”
featuring Philip Fracassi (moderator), Clay McLeod Chapman, Victor LaValle, Joe
Hill, and Owen King [shown L-R above]. This panel
discussion ranged widely and examined the pitfalls and some helpful advice from
voices of experience about the subject.
This included – advantages to adapting other’s writing into script as
opposed to your own, how comic books and animation can liberate you from some
budgetary/creative constraints, and in general the fickle and changing nature
of the entertainment behemoth, enslavement of yourself to which often times
seems one of the few ways of making a paycheck (albeit sporadically) as a
writer.
All in all it was a great time. I got to meet the nice folks from Copper Dog
Books, who were the only vendor at the event, got a few books signed for
myself, got to hobnob with old and new favorite authors, and a bunch of friends.
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Author Philip Fracassi explains he would like to come to Maine! Hint hint
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Three of us were wearing our Green Hand
tshirts, which in a crowd that small really stood out. I found this
hilarious, because it wasn’t planned.
Nothing like a little spontaneous love to float your day along nicely!