Beyond the Void
Mary SanGiovanni Newsletter, Issue 3 May 2023
Hi there! I’m horror author Mary SanGiovanni, and this is the third issue of my author newsletter. Thanks for reading!
The weather is changing, and that always inspires in me a kind of reflection. I suppose it does with a lot of people. You think about getting older and being younger and finding happiness and satisfaction with being somewhere in between. You think about all the ways that you are, have been, and will be something to someone else, and what you deserve to be simply for yourself. You think about life blooming out of death — about growing and cultivating things, encouraging new life, whether it be the kittens who have found sanctuary under your front porch, or the herbs you have on the sill and the veggies you have in your garden. You think about creation — of life, of art, of magic, of memories, of a home, of a life well lived.
Or at least, I think about those things. Sometimes they’re heavy thoughts, saturated with possibility and worry and excitement and nostalgia. Sometimes they make me smile, and sometimes cry, but they’re thoughts that need to be thought, need to be experienced and processed. Theyre the kind of spring thoughts that move us from one phase of understanding and appreciating life to another, higher, deeper phase.
I think about the forest and trees and reconnecting with nature and the elements beyond everyday life that I need to believe in — more so, that I need to feel in my everyday life, however elusive they might be. Post-Beltaine, the faeries are back. The elementals are opening their eyes after a long sleep. It’s time to reconnect with the magic of moments that make life worth holding onto. Sometimes that means remembering the dead, and, at least in my view, remembering that death is not an end, but simply a doorway to a new beginning — the start of an adventure in another place, just like birth. It also means that life is not just about surviving, but about living, about experiencing all of it fully and squeezing all we can from those experiences.
And of course, all this for me often leads to writing, and where I’m at, and what I want to accomplish. Between the book tour, planning the wedding, and fighting off what I’m pretty sure now is low-key bronchitis, I am behind in work. I still have final critiques for the STC Writers’ Workshop, personalized stories, and catching up on Patreon, as well as working on a novella I’m writing alone, a novel sequel to THRALL, and working on my next part of the novella I’m writing with Ed Lee.
I did download the software to begin converting and compiling the transcripts/notes for Cosmic Shenanigans episodes into a non-fiction book about cosmic horror in entertainment.
I’m excited that my cosmic horror haunted house novel, THE EVERYWHERE HOUSE, will be published by Thunderstorm Books! Not to toot my own horn, but I really think it’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever written. I hope you folks enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
I’ll be offering a workshop in June through Apex Publications on Cosmic horror, its history and popularity in entertainment. It’s only $30. You can sign up here:
This month’s cosmic horror recommendation: THE ENDLESS, a 2018 movie by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. I can’t recommend these guys’ movies highly enough. They understand cosmic horror in a way few people do; they know that the key to conveying the intangible true horror of the genre is by anchoring it in the concrete and powerful (if often incredibly subtle) connections/experiences of relationships between human beings. Their movies are about the dawning realization that change — more specifically, the unravelling of the security of one’s life (relationships, concepts we hold as unwaveringly true) and our understanding of reality — can mean something deeper and more terrifying than we have hereto imagined, and that not even death can relieve us of the knowledge or the outcome.
That’s it, I think, for this month. Thanks for subscribing. I’ll see you next month.
A fascinating read. I am thrilled that Substack is becoming the experience I had as a kid reading a stack of comics. Each would be different in tone, content, intent, and style, but each fueled me. Thanks for being authentic here.
Death is, in my opinion, a beautiful thing to think about. For me, reflecting on death is like an elephant. Surely the first time man saw this creature in person, he was frightened. What behemoth was this that towered over him? But with time he realized its docile nature and the grace to its calm. Similarly, death is discomforting at first, but with time, we see there’s a unique grace to it (even if it takes those we love so dearly).
I’ve heard this doorway comparison before, but I’m particularly fond of a comparison I heard in a song called Like a Taxi by Showbread. As the title suggests, the song compares death to a taxi, which I prefer because it moves death from being an unmoving factor and turns it into a subservient being. It exists to transport us, not to just allow us through.
Of course, this is me viewing everything through my Christian lens. I greatly appreciate you sharing your thoughts on death. I think it’s a taboo that should be embraced.