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September 2009
Interview with Lisa Mannetti
Lisa Mannetti is a former magazine editor and adjunct college English instructor who discovered she preferred full-time writing to real work when she volunteered to be the family member who cared for her ailing mother. Her novel, The Gentling Box, (DarkHart Press, Oct 2008) has been recommended for a Stoker Award and has garnered critical acclaim. Her short story "Everybody Wins" (These Guns for Hire, edited by J.A. Konrath) was recently made into a short film directed by Paul Leyden, and Hungry for the Flesh (Space & Time, April 2007) was recommended for a Stoker Award. Additional short stories (available now or scheduled for publication) include "The Blow-Up Job" (Traps!, Dark Hart Press, November 2008) and "Other Rooms" (Pretty Scary Anthology 2009). Most recently she served as guest editor for Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry, an anthology to be published by DarkHart Press in February 2009. She is currently working on a second novel, The Everest Hauntings and two projects with noted illustrator Glenn Chadbourne: 51 Fiendish Ways to Leave Your Lover (a macabre gag book) and The Tarot of the Brothers Grimm. When she isn't writing, she works on her haunted website, The Chancery House, which has received more than 3.5 million visitors, and constructs spooky gothic greeting cards based on her cemetery photos. She is also a Tarot Reader — a skill she learned while writing The Gentling Box. Lisa lives in the haunted house where she grew up in Westchester County in New York with two kittens — Harry and Theo Houdini — who are growing at the approximate rate of nuclear fusion and who cannot wait to eat the down comforter next winter. You can also visit Lisa at www.lisamannetti.com.
EB: If you had to guess, how many days/hours/weeks would you say you spent researching The Gentling Box, and what drew you to the topic of gypsies in the first place? LM: I'd say it was more like several months; the internet was totally unreliable when I wrote the book and I used actual libraries. With card catalogues. I even had the researchers scouring the Dutchess and Westchester County systems for certain titles on the inter- and intra-library system. These days that process sounds about as outmoded as the 19th century when the novel takes place. My favorite character in the Wolfman movies with Lon Chaney, Jr. was Maria Ouspenskaya; also my mother told me there were gypsies living in this dingy storefront that had a tatty looking pale green curtain that was ripped and I should never walk past the house — even though it was miles from where we lived (I was six and it never dawned on me that I was about as likely to walk there as I was to walk to Michigan). Anyhow, I got the idea that something sinister was going on behind that tawdry curtain and I was very curious about things (which also scared the life out of me like Tarot cards and crystal balls) even though neither of the latter appear anywhere in the novel. EB: What is your favorite place on earth? LM: Venice, Italy where I lived for 5 months in my own apartment. It was a happy accident. I wanted to go and write (like Tennessee Williams) and because I hadn't reread his memoirs in many years I thought it was Venice he retreated to each spring when it was actually Rome. Venice was better, anyhow. Safer, less expensive and no tourists from January till about May 1 when I left for Rome and Naples to visit my relatives. EB: As a child, what things did you fear most? Do any of those things still frighten you or do you have a whole new set of fears as an adult? (Or both!) LM: I was terrified (mostly from looking at my mother's nursing books) of goiter, tertiary syphilis, acromegaly and last (but not least) leprosy. The latter was helped along by stories of Molokai the nuns told us in school. I actually had a leprosy phobia. I'd get up in the middle of the night and check to see if my palms looked yellow. In third grade I asked the nun to explain the difference between nodular and anesthetic leprosy. I think she called my mother and told her I needed a psychiatrist. Which my mother already knew because I wouldn't take the mail from the mailbox when I saw that her friend (also a nurse) who went to Thailand to work with lepers sent letters. Mom also knew I was a little strange because I was afraid of the attic, the cellar, the mummy (whom I imagined shuffling down the driveway every night) and the nameless "thing" in the closet that needed oxygen or it would come out and get me. Therefore, my closet door had to be left ajar at precisely a half-inch. I was also afraid of witches, vampires, abandonment, the devil and the wen one of the old ladies in church had on her chin. I'm more or less over the leprosy phobia (especially since they closed the leprosarium in Louisiana and have some pretty decent drugs to keep the symptoms in abeyance). I'm still afraid of abandonment; it turned out I had goiter in later life (though not the bulging throat buggy-eyed kind) and it scared the crap out of me when I had to be tested for acromegaly when I was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor (I kept picturing looking like Lurch only I'd still be 5 feet tall). The thing in the closet has been replaced by the "thing" in my checkbook — a monster that vacuums up all funds when I'm not looking and spits them back in a chewed up mess consisting of frayed telephone wires, masticated tax receipts and credit card bills covered with a venomous sputum that burns my fingertips like acid when I try to decipher those itty-bitty numbers representing "payment due." I think one time, there was even a baby Jesus from a Mardi Gras cake in there, but the lugie was too slimy to check and be certain. EB: Who are some of your favorite female authors? LM: Jeez, could you have at least made this a little simpler by including cross dressers? Sigh. Okay. In no particular order, my favorite female authors are Shirley Jackson, Charlotte Bronte, Fannie Flagg, Elizabeth Massie, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Deborah LeBlanc, Alexandra Sokoloff, Mary Shelley, Lillian Hellman, Isak Dinesen, Edith Wharton, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Corrine De Winter, Jean Kerr and a whole host of others I can't think of at the moment but some of whom are alive and will probably be ticked off, so mea culpa in advance. EB: Who is The Gentling Box dedicated to and why? LM: It's dedicated to my parents and in memory of my mother because my mother absolutely loved and believed in this book even when I didn't. EB: Are you working on a new novel? What other work can readers get their hands on? LM: I'm working on a novel called The Everest Hauntings and I hope readers will find it as unique as The Gentling Box. I've also done a macabre gag book called 51 Fiendish Ways to Leave Your Lover, illustrated by the renowned artist Glenn Chadbourne, and my agent has it out making the rounds as they say (so technically, it's still in process.) You can also check my website for updates and other stories and articles not mentioned here: Online:
Print:
Film:
EB: If you could have any other talent besides writing, what would it be? LM: Oh, you mean something besides like being invisible, right? Or making heaps of money as a hedge fund manager during the heyday? Okay...hmmmphfff...I guess it would have to be directing films. EB: Do you write in other genres besides horror? LM: Yes, I write some non-fiction and I also write satire — sometimes it's mixed with the horror, sometimes it isn't...depends on the piece. EB: Describe your writing rituals, if any. LM: Boy, this is another really personal question...well, first I take out a voodoo doll (large economy size) and stick in black pins (head, heart and groin areas) representing everyone who is currently writing a novel or short story, everyone who has ever written a novel or short story and everyone who has ever written a review of any film, book, play or restaurant. Then, following tried and true "punish the witch methods" I take the doll (I call her Ms. Phizzle) and I press her under the collected weights of books by Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Stephen King, Alexander Dumas, Barbara Cartland, John Updike and Joseph Campbell. When Ms. Phizzle is thoroughly flattened (a flower press or even 8.5 by 11 sheets of plywood can help work wonders here) I wrap her in tin foil (height of crushed effigy no more than _ inch recommended) and either cut her into precise squares and store at the bottom of my ice trays or, if I'm feeling particularly wicked, I line the cats' litter box. Naturally this can take up a great deal of time if performed on a daily basis (not to mention space if you have to buy all of the above books and cash whether you make your own dolls or order online) so I recommend that you only perform this ritual at the start of a very important project. If however, you find yourself obsessed to the point that poppet stabbing and crushing becomes part of your daily routine, please feel free to email me for counter spell and/or the name of a good shrink who has successfully treated compulsive disorders. EB: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer? Do you remember the first piece of fiction you ever wrote? LM: I knew by the time I was in third grade I wanted to be a writer. The first short story I wrote was a vampire story; and about a year later, at age 10, I wrote my first novel. It was 63 chapters (typed). It was also 63 pages — and even I knew it was crapola. Needless to say, I never finished it. EB: What is one piece of advice you could give to fledgling writers? (Feel free to give more than one piece, if you have more!) LM: First of all read everything you can get your hands on — books, stories, screenplays. Read as widely as you can in all genres. Read the classics, read non-fiction, read those who are successful and those who have failed and those who were one-hit wonders. Read books you love (and re-read them) and books you hate (ditto). While you're reading, pay attention to what turns you on about the piece and what turns you off and why. If it's language, well, context might be important. You're not going to expect Henry James to compete stylistically with today's books...but what can you take from the classics? What can you discard? Above all remember that it is great storytelling that drew you into wanting to write. And, when you sit down to work, remember what J.D. Salinger said (paraphrase): "Are all your stars out tonight?" EB: When you're not writing, what else interests you? LM: Music, painting watercolors, graphics (i.e. working on my website) and generally sitting back and being entertained by my cats. EB: Do you feel women are undervalued as writers in the horror genre? Why or why not? LM: While they may have been undervalued in the past (and may still be undervalued statistically in the present) it's a question I feel should be laid to rest. Sure there are fewer CEOs who are women, and (maybe if you counted) fewer women who act and are bona fide box office hits. There have also been far fewer successful female sculptors and painters than their male counterparts. We can't rewrite history or worry about rectifying misapprehensions that plagued the past. We can't really alter perceptions that Neanderthals currently hold. What I think this question has always really meant was, should women writers stick together? And that answer is yes — if they respect one another, the way that all women who are good friends (and share important attitudes and interests — from parenting to ballet class to dormitory life) stand up for each other. In any event, in terms of writing, there have always been exceptions to the rule. Mary Shelley; Shirley Jackson (The New Yorker received more mail regarding The Lottery than any other piece in the history of the magazine); Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarborough and too many others who have "proved" themselves as writers — note, not women writers — to name. I think a book or story succeeds or fails on its own regardless of whether a man or a woman wrote it. All any writer can do is his or her best work. All any of us can do is lead life the best way we know how. |
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