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Month of Joy: The Comforting Embrace of Horror by David Annandale

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For my contribution to the theme of this month, I was originally going to put together a short list. But the more I thought about one of the entries on that list, the more I felt I had to devote the entire post to this one book, and even that would fall short of doing it justice. Because if there is one book that has brought me more joy than any other, it would have to be Denis Gifford’s A Pictorial History of Horror Movies. Gifford’s tome came into my life in March of 1976, and it changed everything. I was already obsessed with monsters and dinosaurs, and I bought the book because it had pictures of the biggest dinosaur I had ever seen: Godzilla. Gifford’s text introduced me to the wonders of the cinema of Georges Méliès and James Whale and Val Lewton, to German Expressionism, to Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and in short defined the academic, creative and professional paths the rest of my life would take.

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Month of Joy: Oyster Fritters by Joyce Chng

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In a lot of my stories, you will find recipes and cooking tips. Why? Because cooking brings me joy. Reading a recipe book is visual pleasure for me. I love going through my mom’s collection of recipe books, some of which date back from the 1970s. (Note: SFF writers, read widely — recipe books are legit reading and world-building  material). So… my Month of Joy post will focus on… oyster fritters. In some places, we also call them oyster cakes. My dad got me into it and for years now, we love the sheer pleasure of biting into a piping hot oyster shaped like a disc or UFO.

Announcements and Errata

Poll: What should we rename the Shoot the WISB Movie and TV Podcasts?

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It’s time. We’re changing the name of the Shoot the WISB podcasts to better fit our little media collective, and everyone who participates in or listens to this show gets a vote. We took suggestions from our crew and our listeners and ended up with about 20 names (thanks for the suggestions!). From that massive list, we narrowed things down to two manageable polls:  one for movies and one for television.

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Month of Joy: Things That Bring Me Joy by Stina Leicht

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I love my friends deeply. I’m closer to my friends than I am to certain members of my family. As I see it, friends are the family you get to select for yourself. One of my favorite things to do with friends is to discover stuff. A friend of mine dropped in from Canada recently, and we went to a restaurant I’d never gone to before. Then we went to a nightclub I didn’t know about and watched a band play that I’d never heard before. I even learned how to swing dance for the first time. We capped it off with a visit to a vintage candy store filled with the sorts of candy you remember from childhood. That was a wonderful, memorable evening. I love music. It’s a big part of my creative side and is important to my writing process. I’m always looking for new music. As it happens, one of my best friends used to be a professional DJ, and one of our favorite things to do is to invite a close-knit group of friends over to drink, chat, and listen to music.

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Month of Joy: Miraculous by Feliza Casano

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I was at the end of fifth grade when the Spider-Man film starring Tobey Maguire premiered in the US. That wasn’t the start of my love for heroism in storytelling: as a preschooler, I pretended to be a fire fighter like my grandfather had been; in third grade, I fell in love with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; later, I obsessed over shows like Cardcaptors and Sailor Moon. But it was in fifth grade that I was brought into American superhero comic stories, and Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker did it. After watching the movie with friends, I checked out the novelization from my library. I devoured it and watched superhero cartoons – Teen Titans came first, then Static Shock. I ended up secretly writing Teen Titans fan fiction in junior high.

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Month of Joy: The Joy of Living in an Actual Freaking Golden Age of Comics by Stephen Geigen-Miller

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This, right now? This is the real Golden Age of comics, and that makes me very happy. If you’d asked me about the ideal future for comics, 25 years ago, as I was learning about the medium and the industry, preparing for my own foray into it? (Part of my secret origin is that before I fell in with a bunch of people who were making comics, and got excited about doing them myself, I really didn’t know much about them!) Or if you were a fly on the wall for the conversations between me and my friends about what comics could and should be? Or if you’d distilled all the Usenet and message board debates over what was wrong with comics, and what would make comics better, not just for us frustrated independent comics readers and creators, but for everyone?

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