Sarah Langan's Blog, page 4
April 4, 2021
March 21, 2021
Book Tour, Week One
Hi, all! I was so busy touring I didn’t have time to blog about it. But now I do (sort of?). I am still working on the adaptation of Good Neighbors to screen. I also have good news about my next book, which I hope to announce soon. This is the thing that makes me happiest of all. Ten years without a novel publication was pretty awful. I hope it doesn’t happen again until I’m 100, or at least 70, and caring for grandchildren.
I was so thrilled that Barnes and Noble chose Good Neighbors as its February Book Club selection. They asked for an afterward about the genesis of the story, in context, which I provided and is in any copy you purchase from them. I have been going to B&N since I was a kid, and I wrote out of B&Ns all over Manhattan. I now have two stores very close by in Los Angeles. There’s this wonderful smell in a B&N — the smell of fresh books. The wonder and the thrill of them.
I visited 44 Barnes and Nobles in February, signing the stock they had, and meeting whomever was available. I did so safely, with two masks, using my own pen, and keeping distant. I did not get sick (happily) and I did not make anyone else sick. I did, however, have a wonderful time.
My first week, I started out at Dark Delicacies, where the owner Del Howison opened the store for me and my family while I signed. We met Mick Garris while there. He was also signing. Del is like a host in Los Angeles, to everyone in genre. We caught up and gossiped, and he gave me a copy of his own novel, The Survival of Margaret Thomas, which I’m excited to read. His store also hosted a video interview, which you can find here.
My next stop was my book launch with Hilarie Burton at Mysterious Galaxy, via zoom. Hilarie was gifted a copy of Hex Life, which includes my novelette “Night Nurse,” and she liked it so much she contacted me. We became friends and I asked her to conduct the interview. This worked out great, as before the show started I was so terrified that I blurted: I just want this to be worth your time! I want you guys to all be happy with me! And she gave me this look, like: calm down! I got this! And she did have it. Thank you, Hilarie Burton. You are smart and diligent and you made it look so easy.
My stop after that was with Grady Hendrix at Novel Bookstore in Memphis. Grady’s most recent novel Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires made me cry. It’s that good, and it’s about housewives during the 1980s. Their lives look so wonderful from the outside. It made me think of my mom, who died in June. At the event, Grady was the showman he’s always been, and we had a ball. He ended the session with a plea on behalf of indy bookstores, which are suffering.
February 4 was my event was at Book Revue on Long Island. Book Revue is super fancy, and I suspect they were swayed by Victor, who’s a literary hot shot and also an incredibly nice guy. We met our first year in grad school, and I remember seeing him looking out the window during a workshop in Dodge Hall. I joined him. And we’ve been friends ever since. Poor Victor’s furnace blew up right when the show was supposed to start. But he handled it like a pro, put on a coat, and went on with the show. A lot of our old friends came to listen.
Over the weekend, I visited six Barnes and Nobles. Many of these stores had just started to open up again and employees were returning to work after a long time. My first stop was Studio City, which is closest to my house. They moved the book to the front, and the manager was lovely. We had a nice chat, and I realized that I had stock I could gift to whomever was most likely to read Good Neighbors, so I went back home, got my box of books, and gave her a copy.
My second stop was at Calabasas Park. The third in Thousand Oaks, where they’d just reopened, and were still moving stock around, but they nonetheless spent the time finding Good Neighbors. The manager there was very kind. After that, I signed at Ventura, then Santa Clarita (like the TV show!). At Santa Clarita, the woman I met was especially nice. Thank you, Santa Clarita B&N! Last, I went to the B&N in Burbank, and met the manager, who was excited I was there, and then I got excited, and we were both very excited.
It’s strange, having a book come out during a pandemic. These visits made it seem more real. I tried to find out what employees at the various B&Ns liked to read, so that I could make sure to get my book in front of the right people. There’s this false myth that B&N employees don’t like books– it’s just a job. But this is not at all true. They love books. Every person I met was an avid reader. Some were also writers. Pre-pandemic, many stores had their own book clubs going on. They all expressed sadness that they could no longer have in-store book clubs, as they read the books, too, and enjoyed the discourse.
January 22, 2021
All The Online Events for Good Neighbors!
February 1, 6-8pm PST, actor, mom and writer (Rural Diaries) Hilarie Burton is doing me a solid and joining me for my launch at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. Sign up at Crowdcast.
February 2 – my books goes on sale!!!!
February 2, 6-8pm PST – Grady Hendrix, bestselling author of Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, and I, will be in conversation at the Memphis Bookstore Novel. Register at Eventbrite. If you pre-order the book, you’re automatically placed in a raffle to win a private zoom with me and my excellent Simon and Schuster editor Loan Le, for your book club or just for you!
February 4, 10pm PST – Victor LaValle and I will be in conversation at the Long Island bookstore Book Revue! Sign up for the Crowdcast event here.
February 9, 7pm PST – Super cool Chris Golden and I will be in conversation at Beverly, MA’s Copper Dog Books. Hit the link for Crowdcast details.
February 11, 4:30pm PST – J Ryan Stradal (novelist and fearless member of my writing group) and I will be in conversation at Run For Cover Bookstore. Sign up for the event at Crodwcast. This one costs the price of the book, and then you get the book. So it’s a win-win for everyone.
February 25, 5:00pm PST – Bestselling author Paul Tremblay and I will be in conversation at The Novel Neighbor Bookstore (St. Louis). Sign up to come.
March 4, 6pm PST – Sarah Haskins, co-screenwriter for the film “Booksmart” and I will be in conversation at Los Angeles’ Book Soup. Event sign-up to come.
More events to come, including a cool surprise. In the mean time, you can preorder from these places that are supporting my work, or any other place you like! Pick your favorite, or the one closest to your hometown:
*Book Revue (Huntington, NY) – Love this indy, and it’s Long Island, where the book is set. The novel comes with a signed bookplate.
*Book Soup (Los Angeles, CA) – signed copies
*Copper Dog Books (Beverly, MA) – These guys are the genre stop, supportive and awesome. Novel comes with a signed bookplate.
*Dark Delicacies (Los Angeles, CA) LA’s genre bookstore — Signed copies.
*Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) You can order a personalized copy, signed and made out to you.
*Novel Bookstore (Memphis, TN) these guys had everyone in the store read Good Neighbors and have been total champions. The novel will come with bookplates.
*The Novel Neighbor Bookstore (St. Louis, MO) – Good Neighbors is their book club pick for February and I LOVE them.
*Run for Cover Bookstore (San Diego, CA) – These guys were enthusiastic when I approached them. 100% cool, and doing something new with online bookstores.
*Barnes and Noble -Buy here, and get an extra essay I wrote just for them, about the genesis of Good Neighbors.
More to come. Thanks for reading!
January 9, 2021
Upcoming Events!
Hi, all!
This week has been historical and also terrible. But capitalism goes on, and on that note:
I have an event, Night Time Logic with Dan Braum, on January 14, 4-6:30 pm PST, viewable on you-tube via Facebook. It’s 2.5 hours long! So come and ask questions. We’ll talk about Good Neighbors, Horror, stuff we recommend, and lots more. Save me!!!
Good Neighbors goes on sale February 2, and the best thing you can do if you’re able, is pre-order it. B&N’s version has a 5,000 word afterward that I wrote, about my inspiration for the book in a cultural context.
My launch for Good Neighbors will kick off online February 1, at Mysterious Galaxy, with special guest Hilarie Burton, author of The Rural Diaries and star of One Tree Hill and The Walking Dead. Register for it here.
February 2, I’ll be in conversation with Grady Hendrix, bestselling author of Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, at the Memphis Bookstore Novel. Register here.
Good news is, if you pre-order a copy of Good Neighbors from Novel, you’ll automatically be put into a raffle for a personal zoom for yourself or your book club or crit group, with me and my amazing Simon and Schuster editor, Loan Le. More info here.
There’s lots more tour info to come. Maybe you’re wondering why this e-mail isn’t all in the same font. I’m also wondering this.
Until next week, stay safe and stay sane.
Sincerely,
Sarah Langan
December 26, 2020
Holiday News and Events
Happy holidays!
I have some interviews coming up. If you’re a patron of This is Horror, head over there now and log your questions: https://www.patreon.com/posts/45442760
Lee Thomas, Douglas Wynne and I read ghost stories for the NY Ghost Story Festival and you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iShi1...
My novella Prettiest Mask is still excerpted up at Lib Hub* (https://lithub.com/you-have-the-prett...), and you should also probably buy it from LCRW (https://smallbeerpress.com/lcrw/2020/...). Because it is AWESOME and one of the best things I’ve ever written.
You can and should pre-order Good Neighbors from whichever bookstore is your favorite. This helps my publisher decide how many books to print, and also gets bookstore owners excited enough to actually buy the book and put it in their stores and then try to sell it. It’s very, very, helpful to me.
My blog for Tor Books, “Imagining Horror as the World Burns” is still up: https://tornightfire.com/sarah-langan...
The blog is advertisement for my short story “Changeling,” which Tor made into a super cool audio story: https://read.macmillan.com/torforge/c...
Looks like it’s free right now, so have a listen.
My short story “Night Nurse” is available both in Hex Life (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...) and Best Horror of the Year (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...).
Good Neighbors will be released on February 2. I’ll have news about tours soon. All zoom. The book has gotten a starred ALA review and is recommended by the AARP. Which is super cool!
*For a hot second Lit Hub’s author photo was of a woman who is not me. I don’t know who this woman is, but now sometimes wonder if she’s living my better life in an alternate universe where Covid does not exist and steak from Peter Luger’s grows off trees and Los Angeles has seasons that involve snow and not fire.
Happy Holidays. Stay Safe.
Sincerely,
Sarah Langan
November 23, 2020
Prettiest Mask showed up at my house!
It’s out in the world; available at Small Beer Press. https://smallbeerpress.com/
November 11, 2020
Prettiest Mask up at Lit Hub
Click here. Read it. READ IT!
https://lithub.com/you-have-the-prett...
October 26, 2020
Tor Book Blog
Below is my blog on Tor Books:
https://tornightfire.com/sarah-langan...
I’m pretty sure I was born loving horror. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love to be scared. I’m told the same type of personality loves roller coasters (I do!) – it’s all about the thrill. The feeling of unsafety, while knowing you’re safe. As a kid, reading books by Lois Duncan and watching movies like Dawn of the Dead was great fun and a type of intellectual exercise. A giant what if: Would I go to a mall, if the dead rose, because that gun store would be super cool? Would I learn to fly a helicopter? Would I ride a tricycle through an empty hotel? Learn to astral project?
It’s so much fun to imagine these survival scenarios, and to also imagine that we’d be the ones to choose wisely. We’d never go into the house alone. We’d never walk into the room without looking behind the door. And if a guy walking really slowly came toward us, we’d absolutely stab him in the head! Jesus, he’s obviously a zombie! The cops SO won’t care!
Those were such fun days. Even as we began to grow up, and the stories got proportionately scarier, because I was proportionately more mortal, they were still great fun. Even as I wrote my own novels, and two towers fell near where I worked, making me sick for years, I was still, somehow, safe. I believed in society and my country and my fellow human beings.
There’s this article someone wrote about how when the towers were hit, we entered a bad, parallel universe. Somewhere else, our counterparts are living their best lives. And we are here, living the wrong side of “The Savage Curtain.”
I live in California. Our Covid-19 numbers, as I write this, are still high. As someone with asthma and messed-up lungs from the World Trade Center, I’m a bad candidate to get the disease so we’ve been careful. For instance, my mom died in New York and not only have I missed her funeral, but it’s been three months now, and I haven’t even flown home to see my dad. On good days I understand that this makes sense, as my dad also has medical issues. On bad days, I wonder if I’m just selfish, and so numb inside I can’t be bothered.
Virtual school started up for both my kids three weeks ago. We got them nice chairs, so they can sit in their rooms. My older daughter takes PE every other day. This involves roll call, and watching films about physical fitness. Covertly, to keep herself occupied, she does sit-ups.
It was the hottest day on record over the weekend. When the wind blew, it hurt my eyeballs. Literally. The heat burned my eyes. My husband and I stopped at homeless encampments to give away bottles of frozen water. This is the first thing we’ve done to help other people since the beginning of the pandemic. On good days, I tell myself that raising my kids and writing my fiction is the way I make the world better. On bad days, it’s unclear to me what I’m actually teaching them. Pretend everything’s fine? Let them believe they’re safe? Are they safe?
Two days ago, I heard on the radio that the enormous, record shattering fires up north were started by gender reveal party incendiaries. I had to stop for a second. Because this happened last year, in 2019. Terrible fires that sent me and my family fleeing to the ocean, were started by a gender reveal party. I assumed the radio was playing an old episode. Even as I read more about it on social media, which I no longer trust, I assumed: it can’t be the same thing again.
And then, at dinner, my husband asked if I’d heard what had started the wildfires: a gender reveal party. And I literally asked, “But hasn’t this already happened?” And he said that it had, last year. Yes, this was the second terrible wildfire started by a gender reveal party. And I felt very untethered from the world just then.
Yesterday morning, people in San Francisco woke to orange skies and cool weather, despite the heat wave. When I got my master’s in environmental toxicology, we studied this effect, called global dimming. It’s not desirable. People with asthma are likely to get sick, and in the long term, die. I heard on the Twitter stream that in fact, it really wasn’t that bad. It just looked bad. And I was reminded of the weeks after September 11, 2001, when my boss called to tell me that while most of the office had rented a place to work in Jersey, could I go back to Wall Street and hold down the fort? I wasn’t sure that I could, but everyone kept saying the air was fine. Not really as bad as it looked. And I went back. And the vents were open to outside for legal reasons (?), and ashy pieces of building covered my paperwork, and I started getting bloody noses. But sure, it wasn’t that bad.
Last night, my sinuses were bothering me too much to sleep. I wondered if it was psychosomatic, or unrelated, somehow, to the giant fires burning all over California. And then I woke up to the smell of smoke. It’s foggy out this morning. The smoke has carried. It should be bright and sunny, but it isn’t. We will be leaving for a hotel in a few hours, and maybe we’ll stay for four nights, or maybe we’ll stay for a month.
It feels so odd to talk about horror in fiction, when it’s happening right now in the world. There’s a friction there that’s painful to me. I find myself often close to crying. And most days I work through it, do the jobs I’m supposed to do, despite everything else. But today is not that day. So, I’m sorry for you, if you’re not in that kind of mood. I empathize. 90% of the time, I don’t want to feel any of this, either. Fuck this shit. I mean, seriously. Fuck it.
To get back to the question (I realize I digress), the piece of horror that speaks most directly to me right now, and informs my trajectory, is a B movie called Frankenstein Unbound, with a 44% rating of Rotten Tomatoes, with which I would not disagree. But I’d give 2020 a 35% Rotten Tomatoes rating. So, whatever.
I watched Frankenstein Unbound when I was about fifteen, and what I remember most was being totally freaked out. The movie plays with timelines and weather, real historical characters and fictional ones. It’s nihilistic in a way that truly captures nihilism. Nobody wants the world to end, but it does seem to be happening, and it does not seem to be preventable.
I guess my point here is: in horror, nobody’s playing with the idea of their safety anymore. It’s no longer fun to imagine ourselves in a scary story and wonder what we’d do under those same circumstances. We know already. I’d go to the office and get sick. Then I’d learn not to do that, and teach my children not to do that. Maybe you, reading this, would be smarter than me. I hope you would be.
What the Frankenstein story has in common, through all its iterations (because Mary Shelley is a genius, born of a genius mom whom I hero-worship), is that a creator has intended to do something good, but instead done something very bad, and in doing so, broken down the walls of human reality. This creator could admit his error, but instead he stays quiet, ashamed by his failure, and this is the real tragedy – his pride. He’s stuck in a position he can’t or won’t walk back from and he pays for it with the life of his entire family.
As a kid, Frankenstein stuck with me in ways I couldn’t articulate. But we are all time travelers, and I held onto the story until now, when it seems applicable to my life. Reality has broken down. The horror is here. What we need to do is not just admit that it is horror but also admit that we have made mistakes.
And then, the real horror: we need to fix them.
That’s what I think about when I write, these days. It’s also, on some time-traveling, cautionary tale level, what I knew I would one day have to think about, and have always known. Just like a character from a Lois Duncan novel.
Wishing you all very well, from some place in California, that I hope is far from smoke and plague, and most importantly, lies.
Sincerely,
Sarah Langan
September 5, 2020
Jane Austen, Sexual Predators, and Holiday Weekends
It appears this is a long weekend. I know this because instead of zooming yesterday, my kids made bath bombs, facial scrub, lotion, and glitter aloe from a kit somebody gave Frances on her birthday. Then we had a salon. Clem rubbed my feet and then I rubbed hers and life can’t get much sweeter. Really, if not for my enormous ambition, which I think Daniel Day Lewis expressed best in There Will be Blood, as, “There is a competition in me,” I’d trade my laptop for the perfect company of the most excellent people I share a house with. I don’t know how I wound-up so lucky.
But there is a competition in me.
Along those lines, while writing the television pilot for Good Neighbors, one of my excellent producers suggested I make it read less documentary, more true crime. And I was like: What is that? So I’ve been watching lots of true crime. I really love “There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane.” It reads to me as very feminist and compassionate, without letting Diane off the hook for the gruesome deaths of all those kids. “The Jinx” is good fun and kind of ridiculous. “Amanda Knox,” is pretty great for critiquing the ways in which the press is the catalyst for investigations, when it ought to be the other way around. I empathized with Amanda’s weird quirkiness, and I’ve known people like that in my life, who react unexpectedly to shocks, because they are more tender people, not less. I’m looking for true crime recs if anyone has them – women’s stories are of particular interest. I’ve seen “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” and it was informative and extreme. I did not watch the fictionalization of that story, as I thought making spectacle of it was pretty goddamned gross. The Memphis Three docs were terrific, and I’m so glad those three were finally released, though I wish they’d have been able to sue for damages. The doc itself focuses mainly on making sure they’re freed and their stories get told, but it also, perhaps unintentionally, showed the ways in which the framing of a story informs a viewers’ opinion. So, we think it’s one guy who committed those crimes through two episodes, then, in the last episode, we think it’s someone we’d overlooked before. We’re so oddly quick to place blame, to believe what the camera and its flawed operators show us.
I also watched “Neverland.” The first episode was so appalling I almost didn’t watch it through. I believe those men utterly. It was obvious at the time, and it’s obvious now. I’m glad I watched the second episode, as it’s so easy to blame the parents, specifically, because this is American, the moms. But in showing their stories it was clear that they, too, had been groomed. “Abducted in Plain Sight” was my most recent viewing, and I could not watch it through. I sped to the end. The parents here were much more guilty, but it was also clear that the pedophile in question had groomed them for years. The pedophiles in these films had in common a twisted point of view, in which they constantly manipulated for their own gains. And by twisted, I mean – I could never write them, unless I interviewed one. They focus deeply on the child and their families, separate the child by interfering with the child’s parents’ marriage, and then say all the things that will make the child confused and vulnerable and loyal. In the 1980s, there was this notion we were all taught that pedophiles actually love children. They just love them too much. What became clear to me in watching these films is that they absolutely do not love children. They are simply master manipulators, because getting a child alone is all they ever think about. In my first novel, The Keeper, I tried to show the pedophile compassion and his own point of view. But now I see that I was wrong. There is no compassion earned. In the world, there are monsters. These people are monsters.
As I do when things get bleak, I turned to Jane Austen to clear my head. I love Pride and Prejudice. Mansfield Park may be my favorite, because I identify most with Fanny, but in filmic version, P&P is just more romantic and fun. I love the 2005 version with Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen, so I watched that twice, and then I watched the 1995 mini-series with Collin Firth for good measure. In reading the reviews, most people consider the former the better version, but I disagree. I find it discursive, as so many things made for television can be. I also find if lacking in warmth. Firth and Ehle shoots lots of glances at each other, never smiling and sometimes glowering. In the 2005 version, Macfadyen breaks into a grin upon being teased by Knightly, and it’s such a delight. The differences here are that in the 1995, the story follows the novel’s arc, where they dislike each other, but eventually fall in love. I think this is silly. In the 2005 version, they’re always in love. Despite the criticisms mounted against it, I think the latter feels more modern and more true. Or maybe I just think MacFadyen is 100% hotter.
As I scroll through my facebook and twitter feeds, I see so many political posts. I do not think they are helpful. I do not think polarizing people, rejecting them for opinions I do not agree with, makes any sense. I do not like yelling and I do not like self-righteousness. I do not like being yelled at by angry people when I express my own opinion, and then having to wonder if it’s because I’m a woman. It’s exhausting and moronic. I feel we are fools, fighting about our current figurehead king, when there is a massive political machine beneath him. We’ve put a name on the top of that machine, and scream at each other about it, without ever evaluating the machine itself.
I was listening to the Economist Podcast this week, and in it, I learned that when voting was lowest in the 1980s, Oprah’s ratings were higher than voter turnout. That same thing may apply this year, with more Americans registered as Amazon customers than registered to vote. Economist was talking about how we can raise the number of voters, and I was thinking about how people fight wars for the opportunity to live in a democracy, and we’re throwing ours away with both hands, like entitled assholes.
I should add that for anyone who isn’t white (and also women), American government has not historically been fair or representative. Surely, some people are tired of pushing up against a system with no visible results. But I think these results are happening. They’re just happening so slowly it’s not perceivable to us now, living through it. In other words, this is not Gilead.
I should also add that though the edifice of our government seems crumbling, and the scaffolding we continue to erect will not make it any more functional, the people involved are often good and diligent, and hopeful despite bad odds. I would like to be one of these people.
Happy Labor Day.
September 2, 2020
“Keeping me Safe”
Now that I’m finally making some money, I was quickly told by my accountant that I needed to form a company, and that she needed to be my manager for 5% of my income. I know lots of people who do this. They don’t want to bother with all the nonsense in navigating that the byzantine CA tax system. I was also told that regardless of whether I agreed to the 5%, the fees would add up to about that much. The accountant told me that she would “Protect me” and “Keep me Safe,” and that I should stick with the things I’m good at, and she would handle the rest.
So, I found a new accountant. My guess is that her fee will add up to about .5%. What sucked was having to form the company on my own, apply to the WGA on my own, open the bank accounts, contact the tax people, open payroll, navigate payroll, open a retirement account, navigate that, too. It’s going to be a long process with more crap to come. It’s the opposite of what I’m good at.
But what I can say for sure, is that if I turned my agency over to my accountant, I’d have felt much, much worse. From whom, exactly, do I need protection? I’m not cheating anybody. It’s my money. I like to know how it works and where it goes. Did she mean she’d save me 5%, to earn her keep? I don’t think so. I gather I’ll wind-up with about the same tax return, regardless of the person who prepares it.
For a bit, I wondered if this happened because I’m a woman. It’s assumed I can’t take care of myself. But most of the male filmmakers I know have this 5% money manager deal, so it’s not that.
I’ll find out if I made a mistake down the road, but for now it feels like shopping on Madison Avenue verses shopping at the mall. And I’m okay not being seen on Madison Avenue.
