Lawrence C. Connolly's Blog, page 12

A Monster of a Mix Up:The Strange Case of Creepy No. 10

Today we continue unpacking some of the titles mentioned during my conversation with Brentley Palmer and Nicholas Schwartz in the Frankenstein installment of their Horror Drafts podcast. if you haven’t listened to that discussion, you can find it here.

As for the previous blog posts in this series, you can find them here and here. 

“Monster” isn’t your typical Frankenstein story.

Written by Archie Goodwin and featuring pen-and-ink artwork by Rocco Mastroserio, the tale first appeared in Creepy ...

Not Your Universal Monster:The Hammer Frankenstein Series

It’s alive! Out of the lab and in your earbuds, the latest episode of the Horror Drafts podcast featuring a two-hour discussion of all things Frankenstein is available now. Here’s the description from the podcast site:

This week we are joined by author, screenwriter, playwright, podcaster, and all-around Frankenstein expert Lawrence C. Connolly to draft Frankenstein adaptations!  Lawrence also tells us about his experience working on Nightmare Cinema and his own upcoming Frankenstein adaptation ...

First Impressions:Discovering Frankenstein

A recent episode of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre features responses to the question “Where did you first encounter Frankenstein?” The responses are varied, with listeners referencing Mel Brooks, Boris Karloff, and (appropriately) Mary Shelley. But a response closest to my own experience is from a Facebook friend who reports that she had been aware of Frankenstein long before finally seeing any of the movies or reading the book. That’s understandable, considering how the monster is part of pop cul...

Today at Confluence:Where To Next? Trends in Science Fiction

Writing horror in the days of covid is a bit like living in a science fiction novel. Not the Michael Crichton variety, where things pretty much go back to normal after humankind deals with the inciting incident, but the Richard Matheson kind (think I am Legend) where things change and those of us who get through it learn to adjust. (I addressed the same topic in an earlier post. You can read it here.)

Such changes were at the center of yesterday’s discussion of The Pandemic’s Impact on Horror Fi...

This Friday at Confluence:The Pandemic’s Impact on Horror Fiction

I’ve been doing my best to learn from the examples set by writers who lived through past epidemics – Sherwood Anderson, Beatrix Potter, and W.E.B. Du Bois (all of whom wrote during the 1918 flu outbreak); and Francesco Petrarca, Thomas Nash, and William Shakespeare (who penned some of their greatest works … [read more at The 21st-Century Scop].

This Friday at Confluence:The Pandemic’s Impact on Horror Fiction

I’ve been doing my best to learn from the examples set by writers who lived through past epidemics – Sherwood Anderson, Beatrix Potter, and W.E.B. Du Bois (all of whom wrote during the 1918 flu outbreak); and Francesco Petrarca, Thomas Nash, and William Shakespeare (who penned some of their greatest works during Europe’s deadliest plagues).

The above excerpt is from a piece I posted here in September 2020.

As far as I know, none of those plays or novels were about influenza or plague, but today ...

Writing Mysteries:Round-Robin Storytelling

In 1995, crime writers Edna Buchanan, Vicki Hendricks, Elmore Leonard, Paul Levine, and Les Standiford and eight of their writing colleagues penned the round-robin mystery novel Naked Came the Manatee. Conceives as a parody of the thriller genre and a response to an earlier multi-author novel titled Naked Came the Stranger (which has 24 writers!), Manatee originally appeared as 13 installments published in Tropic Magazine (a Sunday supplement to the Miami Herald).

The plot centers on three ficti...

This Week on Mystery Theatre:Flipping, Turning, and Rotating Clues

[image error]The person in the picture is not standing by a lake. In fact, he isn’t standing at all—a realization that becomes obvious once the photo is rotated 90 degrees to the left, at which point we see that the boy is lying with his back to a fallen tree and a foot propped against its upended roots.

The photo achieved meme status a few years back, making the rounds on social media and landing in an article in The Sun, where it appeared with 21 other mind-bending photographs under the headline ,,, [read ...

This Week on Mystery Theatre:Flipping, Turning, and Rotating Clues

[image error]The person in the picture is not standing by a lake. In fact, he isn’t standing at all—a realization that becomes obvious once the photo is rotated 90 degrees to the left, at which point we see that the boy is lying with his back to a fallen tree and a foot propped against its upended roots.

The photo achieved meme status a few years back, making the rounds on social media and landing in an article in The Sun, where it appeared with 21 other mind-bending photographs under the headline “Look Agai...

This Week on Mystery Theatre:Strange Paintings and Stranger Names

Is the woman in the portrait turning toward or away from the viewer? Is she young or is she old? And what if anything might she reveal about the name Ms. Ambertin?

It’s enough to confound even a master sleuth, and yet–according to August LaFleur–everything you need to answer the questions and more may be hanging right before your eyes.

Such is the challenge that awaits you in Act III of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre’s “A Most Deadly Poison,” which drops today on a podcast platform near you … or at...