Archive for February, 2024
Welcome to the March 2024 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.”
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
To subscribe to this monthly newsletter here, please e-mail me at MLCVamp@aol.com, and I will add you to the list.
For other web links of possible interest, please scroll to the end.
Below is an excerpt from “Therapy for a Vampire,” a humorous story I’ll probably be reading from at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts this month. It’s one of three lighthearted works in the collection DOCTOR VAMPIRE, spun off from my main vampire series. Psychiatrist Roger Darvell, half vampire and half human, is working (with the help of his human professional and romantic partner, Britt Loren) on a cure for a young vampire’s phobias. In this scene in historic downtown Annapolis, Franz has just celebrated his success in walking across a bridge over running water by picking up a “donor” at the bar of a waterfront restaurant.
You can find the DOCTOR VAMPIRE three-story collection here:
Multi-genre author Karen Hulene Bartell is joining us this month.
*****
Interview with Karen Hulene Bartell:
Margaret, thank you so much for interviewing me for your March newsletter!
What inspired you to begin writing?
IMHO, reading is the inspiration for and entry into writing.
Born to rolling-stone parents who moved annually–sometimes monthly–I found my earliest playmates as fictional friends in books. Paperbacks became my portable pals. Ghost stories kept me up at night–reading feverishly. Novels offered an imaginative escape, and the paranormal was my passion.
An only child, I began writing my first novel at the age of nine, learning the joy of creating my own happy endings…However, I got four pages into my first “book” and realized I had to do a lot of living before I could finish it!
So here I am all these decades later, still creating my own happy endings…
What genres do you work in?
More often than not, I write paranormal romances, but I also write political-suspense thrillers and frontier romance.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
Mostly, I “wing it.” Occasionally at the end of a day, I’ll make a brief outline of the action I want to write about the following day, but overall, I’m a “pantser.”
What have been the major influences on your work (favorite authors or whatever)?
Reading has been the major influence on my work. But rather than idolizing one author, it’s more accurate to say each and every author since I learned to read has influenced me in style, expression, or pacing. However, when I was a child, I read every Nancy Drew book our library loaned, so if I had to choose one author who inspired me, I would have to name Carolyn Keene.
Please tell us about your Sacred Journey series.
The Sacred Journey series was my first. Five books are a chronological “record” of Angela’s spiritual journey, beginning before she was born with her mother, and culminating in the realization of her mission. As she follows her inner path, she helps others realize their potential.
SACRED CHOICES – Journey from a test to a decision to an uncanny conclusion – On a quest to learn if it’s the Aztec goddess Tonantzin or Our Lady of Guadalupe who’s been revered for 500 years, Ceren learns she’s pregnant. Her husband urges abortion. Judith advocates pro-choice, and her sister provides the voice of reason. Is it her imagination, a vision, or an angel that inspires her decision?
Sacred Choices
SACRED GIFT – Everyone is gifted, but some never open their package – Spirits are everywhere for those privileged to see. But branded ‘different,’ Angela conceals it until she encounters apparitions along San Antonio’s River Walk. Divine gift or ungodly burden, she’s proof there’s more on earth than is dreamt of, but can she use her sacred gift to spur others to realize their potential?
Sacred Gift
LONE STAR CHRISTMAS: HOLY NIGHT – Christmas brings hope, but darkness looms in the joy – San Antonio prepares for Christmas with twinkling lights, riverboat caroling, and frosty nights. The air is fragrant with homemade tamales. But Maria, seven months pregnant, abandoned, and losing hope, encounters an even darker force. Can she escape her obsession with an ex-con and fight off the evil forces at work? Lone Star Christmas
HOLY WATER: RULE OF CAPTURE – What happens when love or the wells run dry? – A corporation plans to legally pump their land dry. Embroiled in a local water-rights conspiracy, Tulah is torn between her childhood sweetheart and a charismatic corporate lawyer working for the other side. Will she protect the aquifer and save her family’s business? Or will she grab her chance at “the good life”? Holy Water
SACRED HEART: VALENTINE, TEXAS – The desert wind sings eerie music – Angela’s quest begins as a dream, but it becomes her mission. She listens for clues as desert winds call her, propel her across time and across Texas. Will she marry her fiancé Kio, struggling along his own inner path, or should she risk their future to explore her attraction to Kent, the empathic art law student? Sacred Heart
What kinds of research do you do for your Western novels?
I enjoy researching all my novels. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the parts I like best about writing, but the research for Kissing Kin, Book II of the Trans-Pecos series, was especially complex–as well as physically demanding and a whole lot of fun!
Why do I describe Kissing Kin’s research as complex?
A big reason is that the manuscript underwent several iterations before being published. The first version was a story about two generations linked by Covid and (via journals) the Spanish Flu of 1918. However, publishers passed on it, saying readers were sick of pandemics.
Because the second version would have been part of series set in Colorado, I changed the location, names, and family relationships. I also adapted the story to fit the series’ outline and removed the flu, but that version didn’t fly, either. My third attempt is the version being released March 13th, which required further revisions and, occasionally, restorations. Try, try, and try again…
Greed and a checkered family history shaped the property lines for Kissing Kin, where some of the characters swindled the land from its rightful owners. This aspect led me into a hornet’s nest of legal research: warranty deeds, quitclaim deeds, squatters rights, and a process called adverse possession. Both Texas and Colorado are ‘notice’ states, which means that recording documents legally notify the public of property transfers. But the state laws differ, and I had to research both sets of laws, rewriting the second version with Coloradan laws, and then redrafting the third version, while reverting to the Texan laws.
Karen’s “legal” advice 101: Warranty deeds are better than quitclaim deeds, but recorded warranty deeds are rock solid–unless squatters rights and a process called adverse possession come into play. Then you have a legal fight on your hands–as well as a thickening plot…
Kissing Kin is mainly set in a vineyard. As vintners, farmers, and ranchers know, nature can be cruel. Pierce’s Disease attacks grapevines from Florida to California, where insects called sharpshooter leafhoppers spread the bacteria. I’d never heard of Pierce’s Disease. I have no background in vineyards, and I have a brown thumb. Plants would rather die than live with me. Because of my total lack of knowledge, I had to research the disease, its carriers, and the way to control it.
I learned a new, nicotine-based pesticide eradicates the leafhoppers. I also learned from my grandmother’s hand-printed recipe book, that she treated chicken lice in the 1930s by painting their roost perches with nicotine-sulfate. Apparently, nothing’s new under the sun.
PTSD was another new area of exploration. Two of Kissing Kin’s characters suffered from its symptoms, which wreaked havoc on them–as well as their relationships.
However, the most entertaining research included picking and stomping grapes in two central-Texas vineyards. (I love hands-on (and feet-on) study 😉)
Why do I describe Kissing Kin’s research as physically demanding and a whole lot of fun?
After learning how to prune the vines and harvest the grapes, I did a Lucy-and-Ethyl grape stomp–which was sloshing good fun! Of course, the best research was the wine tasting that followed the stomping!
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
Actually, I have two books coming out this spring. Kissing Kin is being released March 13, and Fox Tale will be released April 8.
Kissing Kin Overview (Kissing Kin):
Maeve Jackson is starting over after a broken engagement—and mustering out of the Army. No job and no prospects, she spins out on black ice and totals her car.
When struggling vintner Luke Kaylor stops to help, they discover they’re distantly related. On a shoestring budget to convert his vineyard into a winery, he makes her a deal: prune grapevines in exchange for room and board.
But forgotten diaries and a haunted cabin kickstart a five-generational mystery with ancestors that have bones to pick. As carnal urges propel them into each other’s arms, they wonder: Is their attraction physical…or metaphysical?
Fox Tale Overview (Fox Tale):
Heights terrify Ava. When a stranger saves her from plunging down a mountain, he diverts her fears with tales of Japanese kitsune—shapeshifting foxes—and she begins a journey into the supernatural.
She’s attracted to Chase, both physically and metaphysically, yet primal instincts urge caution when shadows suggest more than meets the eye.
She’s torn between Chase and Rafe, her ex, when a chance reunion reignites their passion, but she struggles to overcome two years of bitter resentment. Did Rafe jilt her, or were they pawns of a larger conspiracy? Are the ancient legends true of kitsunes twisting time and events?
What are you working on now?
My WIP is Silkworm, a political-suspense thriller set in Taipei, Taiwan, that portrays a US Senator’s daughter caught between two men, two cultures, two political ideologies, and the two Chinas.
A love triangle is the metaphor for Taiwan and China (the two dragons) competing for geopolitical and technological accords with the US. As mainland China seeks to recover the third of its lost provinces–Taiwan–Rachel Moore struggles to escape the triple nightmare of impending war, a marriage of convenience, and an assassination plot against the man she loves. Silkworm weaves their stories with the trilateral events currently erupting in Southeast Asia.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
For aspiring paranormal romance authors, I recommend easing into writing through, what I call, the ten “Es”: Establish, Elude, Evoke, Evince, Encounter, Engage, Entertain, Evaluate, Elicit, and Ease.
Establish rapport for the protagonist early on. Let the reader relate.
Elude with scents, sounds, or senses. Let the protagonist walk into a room and get a whiff of her mother’s perfume or a puff of his uncle’s cigar. Are those stairs or floorboards creaking? That chill down the protagonist’s spine feels like someone is walking over their grave.
Evoke memories. Remembering deceased relatives or friends or reading the diaries of ancestors that have passed may help the lingering spirit to be recognized, forgiven, or to find closure.
Forgotten memories or lost journals can help, not only the spirit, but the protagonist, as well, when they learn the truth or understand the role they play in the family story.
Evince the paranormal through evidence. Scents, sounds, or senses set the atmosphere, but eventually, more than hints of a paranormal being are necessary to make the story believable.
For instance, in Kissing Kin, a rocking chair apparently moved of its own volition. But then, they discovered that forced air through vents had “pushed” it. Still later, they learned the history of the rocker, and the protagonist relived the past in a dream. Finally, the protagonist saw the entity’s ghostly figure rocking in the chair.
Or in Fox Tale, I gradually interspersed a mirror’s natural warps with supernatural distortions.
As we left the restaurant, we walked past a convex antique mirror. Still buzzed, I giggled at our distorted, disproportional reflections. His ears looked pointed, like an elf’s. No, like a fox’s. Startled, I gulped.
“What?”
“I…I thought I saw…” Fingers shaking, I pointed at the mirror.
“What?” He glimpsed the mirror.
His reflection was normal.
“Nothing.” Relieved, I giggled and shook my head. “Just that convex mirror playing tricks on my eyes.” Or too much wine…
Encounter the entity. Tease the reader with occurrences that seem paranormal but can be explained through physics or logic. Then, after “disproving” anything supernatural, have the entity manifest itself in a way that’s plausible yet proves it’s unearthly.
Engage the entity. Interact with it. Communicate with it to learn their purpose for the visitation.
Entertain the entity’s request, as well as entertain the reader. Have your protagonist consider how they can—or if they should—help the entity reach its goal or right its wrong.
Keep in mind, your writing’s primary purpose is to entertain the reader throughout the story’s exposition, climax, and denouement.
Evaluate the entity’s motive. Why did the ghost / cryptid contact your protagonist? This is where the entity and / or protagonist deepens their rapport with the reader.
Elicit their help. The entity entreats the protagonist for help. Possibly the entity offers to help the protagonist (because they’re related / had been coworkers or friends).
Ease their plight. After much consideration, have the protagonist agree to assist the entity—but show why. Is it mutually beneficial? Does the protagonist feel an obligation of some sort? Is the protagonist sympathetic? Why?
Hopefully, you’ll ease into writing Paranormal Romance with the ten Es: Establish, Elude, Evoke, Evince, Encounter, Engage, Entertain, Evaluate, Elicit, and Ease.
Happy drafting!
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
Website – Karen Hulene Bartell
Connect – Connect
Buy Links –
UNIVERSAL LINK: Universal
AMAZON: Amazon
GOODREADS: Kissing Kin
APPLE: Kissing Kin
BARNES & NOBLE: Kissing Kin
Social Media Links –
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenHuleneBartell
MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/karenbartell
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HuleneKaren
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/karenhulenebartell/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/611950.Karen_Hulene_Bartell
Website: http://www.KarenHuleneBartell.com/
Email: info@KarenHuleneBartell.com
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/karenhulenebartell
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenhulenebartell/
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/karen-hulene-bartell
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenhulenebartell/
AUTHORSdb: https://authorsdb.com/community/17847-karen-hulene-bartell
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
PALADIN’S FAITH, by T. Kingfisher. Fourth novel in the “Saint of Steel” series, based on the premise that the titular deity unaccountably died, traumatizing his paladins by their direct experience of his death. The few survivors of that cataclysmic event have been taken under the protection of the Temple of the White Rat. Professional spy Marguerite appeals to the Bishop of that Temple for protection on her current mission. She has learned of an Artificer inventing a device to extract salt from seawater much more easily – and cheaply – than currently possible. Inexpensive salt, although a great boon for the general public, would undercut the monopoly of the Sealords and destabilize the economy. Marguerite intends to find and protect the Artificer. A male and female paladin, Shane and Wren, are assigned to escort her. Paladins of the Saint of Steel, although bereft of their deity, retain certain gifts: A berserker frenzy in battle called the “dark tide,” granting them superhuman speed and strength, and the “voice,” with which they can persuade almost anybody of anything, provided the speaker is sincere. While a plot centered on economic and commercial conflicts didn’t strike me as a great thrill, it’s more of a MacGuffin providing a framework for the story’s essential core – a quest / road trip during which character relationships have plenty of scope for growth. Marguerite, in her role as a covert information gatherer with a perfumery business as a front, trusts most people little or not at all, with very few exceptions. Reluctantly she begins to accept Shane as one of the latter. Having been rejected by one god and abandoned by another (as he views his situation), he regards himself as a failure. Moreover, he’s even more conscience-ridden than the average paladin. When he inquires about a word for feeling guilty about not feeling guilty enough, his comrade, Wren, tartly replies, “Pathology.” Like all Kingfisher’s fiction, PALADIN’S FAITH sparks with witty dialogue and wry, self-aware internal monologue, even amid dire crises. The latter include exorcisms of demons, a process dangerous to not only the lives but the souls of both bystanders and exorcists. This novel ends with a hook for the next volume, but not, thank goodness, a cliffhanger. While the story of Shane and Marguerite winds up with a satisfying conclusion, more stories remain to be told. The “Saint of Steel” novels can be read independently in any order, although understanding references to previous installments would enrich a reader’s experience.
THE BAD WEATHER FRIEND, by Dean Koontz. In this thriller combining elements of SF and the supernatural, the title character, the opposite of a proverbial fair-weather friend, steadfastly protects his charge through life-threatening disasters. Protagonist Benny Catspaw, a kind, decent young man highly successful in real estate sales and house-flipping, has such a disaster crash down upon him within a single day. He’s fired from his real-estate agency, his girlfriend breaks up with him, his long-time bank rejects him for a loan, and someone trashes his house. Meanwhile, a previously unknown relative ships him a large, casket-like crate. It contains, not books as claimed, but a benevolent giant named Spike, who introduces himself as a “craggle.” Almost two thousand years old, at present he’s tasked with discovering the forces out to destroy Benny’s life and setting things right. Near the end of the book, Spike defines a craggle as “a benign supernatural creature whose mission is to help nice people lead safe and meaningful lives when. . . thwarted and abused” by persecutors such as the villains. He has superhuman strength, plus the abilities to remove and replace his own organs and to stop time, either by “sidelining” one or more individuals or freezing time altogether in his immediate vicinity. He eats (quite a lot) but doesn’t excrete and has no reproductive organs. He displays a fearsome capacity for intimidation, sometimes entailing severe injuries but never killing. Otherwise, he behaves in a kind, patient manner. Along with a diner waitress named Harper Harper (sic), he and Benny embark on a quest to track the instigators of Benny’s persecution to the ultimate source. Despite a horrible childhood, including a stay at a bizarrely evil boarding school, Benny has grown up uncorrupted by those influences. This novel checks off almost all the standard Dean Koontz tropes – near-future mad science; caricatured sociopathic villains with delusions of utopian superiority; an apparent conviction that the world is going straight to perdition because of the collapse of traditional values (including aesthetic ones); luxuriant, at times pretentious prose style; a manic pixie dream girl heroine; love almost at first sight. But no golden retriever this time; instead, the good guys end up with a huge, placid rabbit and a highly intelligent whippet. This novel is so over-the-top, even compared to Koontz’s other recent thrillers, that I strongly suspect it of deliberate self-parody. Numerous metafictional asides from the narrator to the reader support that idea. When Benny and his companions finally confront the evil mastermind, she reveals that he’s targeted as a threat to the Better People (their unironic title for themselves) because he is – too nice! Yet the lyrical final paragraphs of the last page cast doubt on the self-parody hypothesis. At that point the narrator seems completely serious. So could the entire absurd plot up to that point be meant seriously, too?
WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, by T. Kingfisher. Another enthralling horror tale narrated by delightful protagonist Alex Easton, first met in WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Like that book, this one is too short for my liking, although I grant that its length in terms of the story’s requirements could hardly be improved. While the new novel could be read on its own, readers already acquainted with the characters would get more from it. In WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, Alex doesn’t repeat most of the information about Gallacian “sworn soldiers” explained at length in WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Therefore, a new reader wouldn’t immediately grasp what Alex means by, “I’m not exactly a man.” Sworn soldiers adopt a nonbinary identity for the duration of their service and often (like Alex) for life. The language of Gallacia, a tiny, fictitious central European country, has several gender pronouns in addition to the standard masculine and feminine. As Alex puts it, “No one speaks Gallacian if they can avoid it. Our language is as complicated and miserable as everything else in this country.” Sworn soldiers use ka (subjective) and kan (objective and possessive). Priests are referred to as va / var. The unique pronoun for God is Ha / Har. (Noting that “in English those are sounds associated with laughter,” Alex comments, “Yeah, sounds about right.”) Pre-adolescent children, regardless of sex, go by a neutral pronoun. A couple of brief, offhand remarks reveal Alex’s biological sex as female, but that fact is of no importance. Ka is neither man nor woman; ka is simply a soldier. The book opens with Alex’s return to Gallacia after a long absence, accompanied by kan batman, Angus, “inherited” from kan father. Angus has persuaded Alex to spend a while at the family hunting lodge to host their staunch friend from the previous novel, mycologist Eugenia Potter, fictional aunt of Beatrix Potter. They expect only a quiet period of relaxing and possibly hunting while Miss Potter investigates the native fungi of Gallacia. They find the lodge deserted and in disarray. It turns out the caretaker has been dead for some time, and nobody wants to talk about the lung affliction he died of. They soon learn many people suspect that he was killed by a moroi, an actual creature in Romanian folklore, sometimes conceived as “a phantom of a dead person which leaves the grave to draw energy from the living” (Wikipedia). In other words, a breath-sucking vampire! Unlike WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, which postulates a natural explanation for the destruction of the House of Usher (both structure and family), this new horror novel has a supernatural premise. Of course – it would be quite a letdown if the mysterious affliction and Alex’s nightmares turned out to have a mundane basis. A young man hired, along with his grandmother, to work at the lodge suffers agonizing dreams and falls ill with a severe respiratory disease. After dreaming of a strangely sad young woman who suffocates him by sitting on his chest and inhaling his breath, Alex succumbs to a similar illness. Could the problem be connected with the clogged water flow in the lodge’s springhouse? The grandmother grimly wards the property with heaps of salt and every other anti-supernatural remedy known to local superstition. Her air of perpetual exasperation and disdain for “young fools” such as Alex provides dark comic relief. Miss Potter’s very English understated, levelheaded reaction to the weirdness counterbalances the local people’s fears. The wryly witty conversations among her, Alex, and Angus, typical of Kingfisher’s writing, strike humorous sparks even amid the atmosphere of growing horror. Alex’s disparaging remarks about his native land come across as sardonic humor rather than bitterness. Most interestingly, Kingfisher intertwines the supernatural menace with Alex’s spells of “soldier’s heart” (what we now call PTSD) that linger from his combat service in the Serbian-Bulgarian war of 1885. War, he reflects, doesn’t stay in the past; it’s a “place” to which former combatants continually return – a truth vividly portrayed in the story’s climactic scenes.
For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
*****
Excerpt from “Therapy for a Vampire”:
Roger grabbed Franz by the shoulders. “Don’t you know better than to drink from a victim who’s under the influence?”
“But she was delicious.” With a lopsided grin, the lad stripped off his shirt and tossed it onto the hood of the car. “Watch me cross the water again.”
“Wait, what the hell are you doing?”
Franz’s outline shimmered with the vibrations of molecules reordering themselves. Velvety, sable fur spread over his arms and chest. His canines elongated into fangs, and wings erupted from his shoulders. Opening to a six-foot span, pale greenish, they resembled bat wings less than those of a gigantic moth. He sprang into the air. At his weight, of course, he couldn’t literally fly. He levitated, with the wings for steering and balance. Within seconds, he’d cleared the roof of the restaurant. Diners on the rooftop deck stared at him open-mouthed.
As he glided toward the bridge, Roger raced along below, wishing that, on this occasion anyway, he himself shared the power to transform. “You idiot, get down here!” He ran across the creek, while Franz soared over the dockside parking lot. Half the people enjoying the fall evening craned their necks to watch, and half of those seemed to be taking pictures with their phones. At least the light’s too bad for them to record anything clear enough to convince skeptics—I hope. Dashing past a clump of gaping tourists, Roger shouted over his shoulder, “Special effects. Rehearsal for a film shoot.”
Luckily, the fugitive didn’t meander over the rooftops at random. Using surface streets as a guide, he followed Main Street up to Church Circle. He flew circles around the steeple of Saint Anne’s for a minute, then landed at a slant, anchoring himself with a one-handed grip. Not bothering with the gate, Roger leaped over the fence and stalked across the lawn to glare up at the young vampire. “Have you lost what’s left of your mind?” Unprofessional language, but the situation justified it.
“Look, Doctor, I’m touching the church.” Instead of descending to the ground, he launched himself in the direction opposite from Main Street.
Fewer pedestrians here, at least. Roger sprang over the fence again and ran around the circle to catch sight of Franz spiraling toward the adjacent State Circle. He flew between the State House and the Governor’s mansion, then sank to hover above the brick-paved courtyard between the mansion and a three-story office building.
The noise of a car engine diverted Roger’s attention. He glanced toward the sound and saw a police car rounding the circle toward him. The vehicle idled at the curb, and the officer in the passenger seat rolled down her window. Roger strode over to the car to capture the woman’s gaze before she could speak. “Everything is all right here. There’s nothing you need to worry about. Forget it.” He stared past her shoulder at the male driver. “You didn’t see anything worth investigating. Move along and forget about it.”
“Not worth investigating,” the driver repeated.
The female officer echoed, “Nothing to worry about.” Her voice held a tinge of uncertainty, though.
Roger gave her a firmer mental shove. “That’s right. Everything is fine. Move along.” Thinking of the likelihood that Britt would tease him about performing a “Jedi mind trick,” he resisted the irrational impulse to add, “These aren’t the vampires you’re looking for.”
The woman relaxed in her seat. “We should move along.”
The driver nodded. “Right. Have a nice evening, sir.”
Once the car had disappeared around the curve, Roger exhaled a long breath and marched to the center of the courtyard. Franz was precariously balanced on the shoulder of a monumental statue of Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Roger pointed at him, then at the ground. “You. Down here. Now.”
To his relieved surprise, the lad obeyed. Roger grabbed his arm before he could wander off again. “Transform.”
Franz shuddered as the change rippled through him. Seconds later, he looked like an ordinary young man, although shirtless, disheveled, and staggering from intoxication.
Roger steered him away from State Circle toward the most direct route to City Dock and the bridge. “No more making a spectacle of yourself. You’re coming home with me until you sober up.”
They’d walked a block by the time Franz managed to form a coherent sentence. “What about my car?”
“When I can trust you to drive, I’ll bring you back to pick it up. And if the restaurant has it towed before then, consider that a lesson.”
-end-
*****
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, visit the Dropbox page below. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
All issues are now posted on Dropbox, where you should be able to download them at this link:
All Vampire’s Crypt Issues on Dropbox
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links:
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
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Facebook
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Barnes and Noble
Here’s the list of my Kindle books on Amazon. (The final page, however, includes some Ellora’s Cave anthologies in which I don’t have stories):
Carter Kindle Books
Here’s a shortcut URL to my author page on Amazon:
Amazon
The Fiction Database displays a comprehensive list of my books (although with a handful of fairy tales by a different Margaret Carter near the end):
My Goodreads page:
Goodreads
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You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
Support Group
by Margaret L. Carter
“I believe all but one of our scheduled participants are present.” Dr. Roger Darvell, the psychiatrist conducting the group therapy session, checked his watch and continued, “Please, if you will, each of you begin by telling us why you’re here.” He nodded to the young-looking man in jeans and black leather jacket on his right.
“The same reason as most of you, I suppose.” The speaker ran a hand through his curly hair, chestnut with golden highlights. “To find a cure for this diabolical—compulsion.”
A fair-skinned lady with luxuriant ebony hair, the only woman present, said with a brittle laugh, “Sir Nicholas, you talk like a priest! Nature knows nothing of good or evil. I’m here because my lovers cannot seem to understand this truth.” Her haunting, dark eyes brimmed with tears, as she went on in her faintly Germanic accent, “Always they reject me when they discover my—condition. Love is so painful—my self-esteem suffers so dreadfully—”
The man on her right, equally pale and dark-haired, dressed like a seventeenth-century cavalier, said only, “Attempted suicide. Jumped into a volcano.”
The others winced.
“I, also, by walking into sunlight,” said the somber black man next to him, tall and imposing in his flowing, black cloak. “And why they will never let us rest, those monsters of greed in your golden western land—” He glared around the circle.
A man in an Inverness caped coat, leaning on a wolf’s-head cane, raised his deep-set, shadowed eyes to survey his fellow patients. “I, too, seek a cure. I’ve almost had it several times, but it always proved to be an illusion.”
“Fools!” burst out a tall, old man with a flowing mustache and a strongly aquiline profile. “You, trying to throw away your gift of immortality. And you, begging to be ‘cured’ of your powers. I am elder and greater than most of you, so perhaps your folly shouldn’t surprise me. But you, Sir Nicholas—not only scorning your gifts, but prostituting them to enforce the petty laws of these ephemeral creatures. Why haven’t you learned better in your eight centuries?”
“Just Nick,” said the young-looking man. “Maybe I’ve learned more than you have.”
“If you feel that way, Count,” Dr. Darvell asked, “why are you here?”
The elder’s lip curled in a disdainful snarl. “Your modern medical charlatans would call it an identity crisis or perhaps multiple personality disorder. Those mountebanks beyond the sunset trouble my peace, also. They have made me a warlord, a bloodthirsty beast, a defender of the faith, a cruel tyrant, a melancholy aristocrat, a romantic lover, or sometimes the butt of their crude jests on boxes of breakfast food for children. Some even take me for a sentimental idiot like you, Black Prince. But whatever I am, I chose my fate and embrace it without regret.”
The black man rose from his chair, fists clenched and fangs bared. “That gives you no right to force your condition on others, as you did to me.”
The other replied with a ghastly grin, “Why, I did you a favor. Have you not come to appreciate it yet?” He directed a seated bow to the woman. “Countess Karnstein, at least, understands our inherent superiority, even if she does have a regrettable tendency to whine.”
The Countess bared her teeth in a feral hiss.
Dr. Darvell raised a warning hand. “Please, Count, exercise simple courtesy. We’re here to listen to each other non-judgmentally, not fight among ourselves. I believe one thing we can all agree on is the need for solidarity in the face of the derogatory stereotypes and racist harassment suffered by our kind. Let’s hear from someone else, please.”
The cavalier spoke up. “The Prince is absolutely right. This existence is a burden. When my curse condemned an innocent girl to a terrible death, I knew honor demanded I end my unnatural life. But they won’t allow us to rest.”
“Well, Sir Francis,” the Count said, “if an active volcano wasn’t enough to terminate your ‘curse,’ maybe you should learn to enjoy it.”
“Enjoy being chased from town to town by stake-wielding fanatics?”
“At least you,” said the man with the cane, “have been spared waking after two centuries sealed in a coffin to a world you cannot comprehend.”
The black man nodded. “How true, Mr. Collins. I shall never forget the horror of my first encounter with Los Angeles traffic. Or the shock of that insidious invention, the camera. How was I to know it would betray me as surely as a mirror?”
“Consider yourself fortunate you weren’t unearthed as I was,” said Collins, “by a treasure-hunting halfwit I had to depend on for my knowledge of the modern era. And it hasn’t helped that I can’t overcome my tendency to see every woman who attracts me as a reincarnation of my long-lost love.”
The black Prince said, “I’ve had that problem, too.”
Dr. Darvell interjected, “That’s not an uncommon fixation. Relationships can often be problematic for us. Would anyone else care to share on this topic?”
With a voluptuous pout, the Countess tossed her head. “So many times I have loved, and always tragically, thanks to those hypocritical filmmakers you mentioned.” She glanced at the Count. “They enrich themselves at my expense, while condemning me to stake and fire for my ‘wanton’ behavior.”
“Granted,” said the psychiatrist, “the collective unconscious and popular culture harbor mixed messages regarding our lifestyle.”
“Even gay and lesbian support organizations reject me,” the Countess sighed. “They insist I must be exploiting my lovers.”
The doctor looked around the circle. “Anyone else? I believe you’ve experienced problems in this area, Nick.”
“I won’t consider becoming involved with a woman until I’m cured.” He shook his head despairingly. “I’ve even tried a twelve-step program. No luck.”
“Do you consider living on refrigerated cattle blood such a terrible handicap, or curse, as to disqualify you for intimate relationships?”
“Since Natalie thinks that diet is a roadblock to a cure, and she’s the woman I—well—”
Collins frowned at the young-looking man. “You’re wasting your time. I’ve also had a—relationship—with a female scientist attempting to cure me. The results have been disastrous.”
“Sir Nicholas—Nick,” the Count said with an ironic smile, “your friend might not see your condition as a curse if you introduced her to certain benefits associated with it.”
Nick bared his fangs, eyes glowing.
The doctor again held up his hand to silence them. “Calm yourself. We can’t evade what we all know from experience, the erotic dimension of feeding.”
“If you’re suggesting Nat would ever want that kind of perverted thrill—”
A red glint sparked in the Count’s eyes. “Are you implying that all the young ladies whose favors I have enjoyed are ‘perverted’?”
“It might be more productive,” said Dr. Darvell, “to speak in terms of alternative modes of sexuality rather than ethical categories.”
“Our embraces can bestow only death,” Sir Francis declared in a sepulchral tone.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” the black man said. “In certain circumstances, mutual pleasure can be achieved.”
“I’ve tried often enough,” Collins said with a sardonic smile. “My appeal diminishes when I reach the point of inviting the lady to share my coffin.”
Nick burst out laughing. “No wonder you aren’t getting anywhere with a cure, hung up on that fetishistic crap. You’re a fossil!”
“Please, no name-calling,” the doctor said. “Discuss the behavior, not the person. Now, perhaps we might address the subject of photophobia. A problem you don’t have, for example.” He glanced at the one patient who hadn’t spoken. He looked like a teenage boy, whose skin glittered faintly where the room’s overhead light shone on it.
“No, my main problems are romantic, too. I agree that getting involved with mortals can be dangerous. Having been turned at such a young age makes things worse. How would you like to spend an eternity in high school?”
Dr. Darvell asked dryly, “Haven’t you considered claiming to be home-schooled?” The door creaked open. “Ah, this must be the remaining member of our group.”
A small man with a monocle, a beak-like nose, and a purple-lined cape swooped in. “Greetings!” he intoned. “Please forgive my tardiness, and accept my thanks for the inwitation to join you. They call me the Count. Do you know why they call me the Count? Because I have an irresistible obsessive-compulsive drive to count things.”
-end-
The original version of this story was first published in The Vampire’s Crypt 10 (Fall 1994). If you’d like to become better acquainted with Dr. Roger Darvell, he’s introduced in Dark Changeling and Child of Twilight, which have been combined in a Kindle edition titled Twilight’s Changelings:
Twilight’s Changelings
Welcome to the February 2024 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.”
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
You can subscribe to this monthly newsletter here:
For other web links of possible interest, please scroll to the end.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
N. N. Light’s Book Heaven gave “Bunny Hunt” a wonderful 5-star review. “A touching springtime story, Bunny Hunt will move you.”
There’s an excerpt from “Bunny Hunt” below. Heroine Melanie is responding to a mysterious plea for help she hears in her mind.
For Valentine month, I’m interviewing Katherine Tomlinson, a multi-genre author whose works include a cozy romance series.
*****
Interview with Katherine Tomlinson:
What inspired you to begin writing?
I always made up stories, pretty much as far back as I can remember. My father used to read to me (giving my mother her “me” time after dinner) and he always made the stories “interactive.” Like, when he told the story of Red Riding Hood, he would ask me what she put in the basket she was taking to her grandmother. “Peanut butter sandwiches,” I’d say. Or “rice pudding.”
I also lived in a three-generation home for a number of years, and my grandparents told a lot of stories about “the old days.” My grandmother had been a traveling sales lady for women’s lingerie, and I loved those stories.
When my little sister was born, we shared a room and even as a baby, she was an insomniac. I used to tell her stories to lull her to sleep. When I grew up, I had a vague notion that I would write novels, but in fact, I started out as a magazine journalist, and it wasn’t until 2011 when I wrote my first real piece of fiction and entered it into a contest. I won second place (and $100), and I thought I can do this!
What genres do you work in?
I started out writing crime fiction because I’ve been reading mysteries since I discovered Nancy Drew. I wrote a ton of those stories, and they became my first collection of short stories, Just Another Day in Paradise. A lot of those stories are pretty dark because I was going through a trying time. My little sister was dying, I was working insane hours in my show business-adjacent day job (I was a “reader” for studios and production companies—a gig worker in one of the most expensive cities in the country) and I was eating badly and sleeping poorly.
I also wrote horror, which I still do occasionally. Sometimes, life is just so horrific you can either scream, or you can write.
I use my real name for those crime and horror stories. But one day I had an idea that felt like an urban fantasy story. “What happens to a long-lived vampire who gets age-related dementia?” That story kick-started my whole Misbegotten universe of vampires and werewolves in Los Angeles. I wrote a bunch of stories set in that world, and then my first novel, a shortie of a little over 40,000 words. (It’s available permafree in the collection After Midnight: https://www.amazon.com/After-Midnight-Paranormal-Featuring-Creatures-ebook/dp/B07Y3ZDCN4
You can also read my werewolf novel The Howl (three adventures of Simon Arvai, a globe-trotting investigative journalist who is a reluctant werewolf) in the same collection.
I used the pen name “Kat Parrish” for those stories/books. My middle name is my father’s middle name and was his mother’s maiden name. I originally started using it when I edited a magazine that didn’t pay its contributors, so I wrote around six stories a month. I didn’t want them all to be under the same name.
I met a woman who’d been crushing it self-publishing who was at the time writing romantic fantasy. I had an idea I called “Vampire Cinderella,” and emailed her telling her the idea, and she liked it and encouraged me to write the story. So that became a trilogy—Bride of the Midnight King, Daughter of the Midnight King, and The Midnight Queen. I have a whole “Realm” of stories that grew out of that, and I’m building it out.
I also write science fiction as Kat Parrish. But about seven years ago, I was living in Bellingham, WA when a tree blew down an electric line and we were without power for nearly a day. To avoid going absolutely bonkers with boredom, I started writing a story in long hand about a group of characters living in a similar place who worked at a hotel. That became The Christmas Experience, the first of my “Silver Birch” stories. I’ve since written some sixteen novellas in the same world and have around 20 planned for this year. They’re all cozy, clean romances and most are set around holidays. I use “Katherine Moore” for those stories. (Katherine Moore was my maternal grandmother’s name. Her mother was also named Katherine, as were her grandmother and great-grandmother. And there were a few others in there as well. My sister was named Mary and I had two aunts named Mary and two Aunt Helens. Our cousin is named Helen.)
I have branched out into cozy mystery as well. They’re fun, and I am drifting toward ones with bakery backdrops because I know a lot about bakeries and baked goods. I also have two cozy series planned, one for a woman who buys a food truck and another who ends up with a pizza place. Both are about women reinventing themselves as a single woman. One’s a widow, the other’s divorced.
So, I’ve basically hit all the genres. I’ve dipped my toes into Paranormal Women’s Fiction, and I still write non-fiction and edit collections of stories.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
Something in between. I always have a starting point and beats I want to include, and I always know the ending. In between, it can sometimes get a little hazy. And sometimes I see that something’s not working, so I have to stop in the middle and reconfigure things.
One of the gigs I had early on was writing two short stories a week for the North Hollywood micronews site Patch. I created a serial novel based on Armisted Maupin’s brilliant Tales of the City series. I was full-time freelance and so I was also working side gigs because the owner didn’t believe in paying writers, so I was working for free (while my illustrator was paid the handsome sum of $10 a week).
I’d come out of news writing, and I was used to deadlines, so I didn’t have a problem with writer’s block, but I sometimes ended up finishing the stories just an hour or two before the deadline. I usually outlined my stories a month or so in advance, so I didn’t have to start them from scratch under a tight deadline.
And sometimes, something really unexpected happens. My most anthologized short story is “In the Kingdom of the Cat,” which is about a lonely woman and her cat. I was at home working with television on in the background for company when a documentary about what happens when people who have no family or friends die in Los Angeles. The story literally came to me complete and before the documentary was over, I was typing as fast as I could, afraid that I would forget it before I could write it down. It’s roughly 1500 of the best words I’ve ever written, and it never would have happened if I hadn’t seen that documentary.
So, outline but be open to inspiration.
What have been the major influences on your work (favorite authors or whatever)?
I used to say the biggest influences on my work were Jim Henson and Rod Serling. (A lot of my early crime fiction had twist endings.) I love Stephen King and how great he is with characters. Even characters that wouldn’t normally be sympathetic always have some humanity. I fell in love with the way Tanith Lee wrote. Just flinging words onto paper like she was painting with oils and a palette knife. I loved short stories and read everyone from Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov to the classics everyone reads in school—stories by Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway and “The Most Dangerous Game” and “The Monkey’s Paw,” and “The Lady, or the Tiger?”
How did your experience as a magazine editor and nonfiction author affect your fiction writing (if it did)?
As an editor, I was always looking for story ideas. I consumed other magazines and newspapers. I used to tell my freelancers that every story could be presented as a business story, and that reading business stories was a great place to start if you were looking for a fresh angle on a topic.
I always checked my facts. Non-fiction usually requires some research, and my skills are good. You can go down a rabbit hole doing research—and I have—but in general, I think having too much research is better than too little. The title story of my collection Suicide Blonde is set in the Fifties, and I researched absolutely everything, from what was on the coinage to the price of a lipstick. It took me longer to track down the information than it did to write the story.
Do you keep a “bible” for your fictional town, Silver Birch?
I’ve had to since the series has expanded. I have a LOT of characters, so I keep them on a spreadsheet. (I reused first names a couple of times before I started doing this.) Now I have a list of locations and who works where and a timeline of events (which baby is born when, that sort of thing).
I really like spending time in my fictional city. It’s very much my happy place because I’ve taken all the things I liked about my time in the Pacific Northwest (especially the awesome fall foliage) and left out the things I didn’t like (the incessant rain). I also borrowed places. My landlady and her sisters in Bellingham also owned a string of Pho shops, and that turned into the go-to Vietnamese restaurant Pho on Fifth which shows up throughout the series. One character’s vintage clothing shop is based on a world-class thrift store in Centralia, Washington that’s run by the Visiting Nurses Association.
How did you become a screenwriter? What was it like to work with Hulu, and did you have any involvement in the actual filming of your script? What would you describe as the major differences between writing novels and writing screenplays?
My path to becoming a screenwriter was not the usual one. When I moved to L.A., I had a roommate who wanted to be a screenwriter and was working as a “reader” for some producers. Just as in the publishing business, everyone uses readers—usually young, usually low-wage earners—to separate the submissions into PASS/CONSIDER piles. (Yes, the lowest paid workers in the industry are trusted to make decisions on multi-million dollar projects. It’s kind of crazy.
I was freelancing for Copley News Service and there just wasn’t enough work for me at the time, so my roommate suggested I try doing coverage, which is basically “book reports” on books, magazines, and scripts. He introduced me to one of his clients—the late, great Richard Donner (director of The Goonies, the Christopher Reeve Superman, the Lethal Weapon series and so much more.)
So, I met Dick and his wife Lauren Shuler Donner (producer of Pretty in Pink, the X-Men franchise and more) and I went to work with them. Their office faced the Marian Davies bungalow on the Warner Brothers lot, which was occupied by uber-producer Joel Silver (who produced the Lethal Weapon franchise, the Matrix series, the Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies).
I worked for Joel and learned a lot and had a lot of opportunities. And I read a LOT of scripts. I went freelance and read a lot more scripts. I ended up working for some really big name Hollywood people, including Jerry Bruckheimer, Wolfgang Petersen, and Kathryn Bigelow. I read so many scripts that I internalized the formula.
At the time I was renting a house in Studio City owned by a very successful writer/producer who offered me a chance to write an episode of one of the television shows he produced. I did, and it was filmed and aired. I was so excited. Somewhere I still have the screenshot I took when my name came up in the credits.
Then one day I saw an ad on Craigslist looking for a cheap screenwriter (the pay was $800) to flesh out a science fiction idea the producers had. They wanted it on a very tight timeframe. Something like eight days. But I got the gig. And more followed. My advantage is that I’m not union but I’m not inexperienced. (I’d love to be in the Union.) Producers pay me
But I much prefer writing narrative fiction because screenwriting is so condensed. Most movies are around 90 minutes to two hours, so it’s hard to develop complicated stories and characters. And I love characters. It took me forever to become comfortable reading scripts because I found it such an odd way to tell a story after years of reading books and short stories.
I did not have any interaction with Hulu, nor did I have any involvement with the filming. I live in Portugal and the film was shot in Turin, Italy, so I could have made the trip (on my own dime), but I had other work obligations at the time. I was a little taken aback when I finally saw the finished product because the leading man (who was very cute) pronounced the leading lady’s character name differently in practically every scene. Also, a tacked on, and what I considered crass, joke at end made me want to cringe because I watched it for the first time with my best friend’s mother and his sister.
But one of the first lessons you learn in Hollywood is that the writer is the least respected person on the set. There are directors who are real collaborators—Ron Howard is one, Dick Donner was another—but mostly, directors let writers improvise and/or rewrite things themselves. I really love working with some directors—Stefano Milla, who directed the Hulu movie, for one. He’s incredibly creative and I’ve now written a few movies for him, all of which have either been filmed or are being filmed.
The producers of the film sold it to Hulu (and I was thrilled).
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
I have a horror novella coming out before the end of January as part of a shared world: Asylum Stories (The Tale of the Timekeeper.) It’s something very different for me. I am also a part of several other shared worlds and boxed sets coming out this year.
What are you working on now?
Several things. (I skip around. I’ll focus on one thing if I have a deadline but if I’m working on my own material, I like to change things up.) I am working on repackaging some of my Silver Birch stories into longer works, as well as rewriting and combining some of Katherine Moore’s “Mermaid Beach” stories. Under my own name, I’m taking part in a list-aiming mystery boxed set, so I have my story for that, a twisty little psychological thriller about a woman who’ll do anything for love. And finally, “Kat Parrish” is working on a trilogy about three classic monsters—Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy. I think I have a new take on them that people will like, and I have killer covers.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Start writing now. You’ll only get better the more you write. I think it was Stephen King who said he wrote a million words before he felt confident enough to call himself a writer.
Find your tribe. A lot of bookstores host book groups and writing groups. You can find them online through Meetups or Facebooks groups.
Read as much as you can. You need to replenish your well of inspiration and reading does that in a way nothing else can.
Believe you have something to say.
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
I don’t have a website right now. I’m going to build one for Silver Birch, but right now all my pen names share a freebie blog site. It’s Eye of the Kat.
I used to be really good at posting book reviews and author interviews every day or so, but I see I haven’t updated it for a while. I have to rethink it.
My three pen names are all on Facebook and that’s probably where you’ll find me the most. I know it’s toxic, but I have friends from elementary school, from my first jobs, people I used to date, college friends plus tons of writers and colleagues who are sources of inspiration and information and who have been very kind and welcoming.
I used to be on X, but I never really posted much—just used it to keep up with people I followed. I’m on Bluesky now but haven’t developed a habit of posting. Mostly I put up “skeets” that are pictures I’ve taken. I love taking photographs and occasionally get lucky with pictures.
I need to learn how to do TikTok effectively because every single author I know is using that platform. I want to be able to add entertainment value and not just make my posts about “buy my book.”
I have not used Instagram much because I live in Portugal and there are problems setting it up with my phone.
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
OF DICE AND MEN, by David M. Ewalt. I recently came across this 2013 book—written when Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition was in the works—which the cover blurb calls “a blend of history, journalism, narrative, and memoir.” In keeping with this accurate description, Ewalt enlivens his wide-ranging overview of the origins and development of D&D by weaving the history of the game into his personal history with the game as player and dungeon master over several decades. Both casual fans of roleplaying games and lifelong grognards (a term originally meaning “old warriors”) will find entertainment and enlightenment herein. Even though I started playing D&D with the publication of the First Edition AD&D MONSTER MANUAL and its two companion guides, and I’ve read other histories of the game, OF DICE AND MEN held a lot of fresh information for me. For instance, Ewalt supplies a clearer explanation of why Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a distinctly different product from the original Basic D&D than any other I’ve read. When our family started exploring the game with no guidance other than the manuals and commercially published adventure modules, we took the term “Advanced” literally and assumed the later system was a straightforward elaboration of the earlier one, a misunderstanding that somewhat hampered our playing. (And I still think the terminology was ill-advised and unnecessarily confusing.) For general readers, the main intended audience, the book begins with an explanation of roleplaying games and how D&D works. It then provides an overview of the millennia-old background of war games before moving on to a detailed exposition of how Gary Gygax developed D&D from tabletop wargaming. Subsequent chapters narrate the twists and turns of the game’s and its parent company’s evolution, including the financial and organizational ups and downs as well as the rocky relationship between Gygax and his co-originator. Naturally, Ewalt delves into the game’s public reception, including analysis of the “satanic panic” phase. The book concludes with the playtesting of Fifth Edition, aka “D&D Next.” Each chapter includes multiple entertainingly dramatized anecdotes from the author’s own playing experiences. Only one aspect of Ewalt’s personalized odyssey mildly annoyed me—his occasional references to being embarrassed or vaguely ashamed of his immersion in the game during his early years of involvement. I’ve been a geek/nerd and proud of it since long before those words acquired their current meaning; I regard weirdness as a positive rather than a negative. Still, this book offers fascinating content for both newbies and veterans of the tabletop roleplaying subculture.
VALDEMAR, by Mercedes Lackey. The final volume in the “Founding of Valdemar” trilogy. While it’s necessary to have read the first two books to understand what’s going on in this one, a reader new to the world of Valdemar with its Heralds, Companions, and mages could start with this trilogy. Familiarity with at least some of the other subseries of the series, however, would enhance one’s pleasure, since established fans would enjoy hints of things to come chronologically later in the fictional history. This book skips ahead ten years from the end of the second volume. (The text helpfully reminds us of that point several times.) Two of the three sons of Baron (formerly Duke) Kordas Valdemar are almost grown. The refugees’ colony has become an established city, Haven, although some of their people have split off into their own small villages. Valdemar’s Hawkbrother allies, having magically cleansed the surrounding area, have taken down their temporary protective shield and withdrawn, leaving the newcomers mostly on their own. Contact continues, though, and as we later learn, the Hawkbrothers will offer aid in extreme circumstances. The evil wizardry threat alluded to in the cover blurb doesn’t flare up until well into the story. Most of the first half of the novel concerns the day-to-day problems and minor crises involved in ruling a city still partly under construction. Some readers might find these chapters too slow, but I always enjoy the way Lackey portrays character interactions and the setting and customs of her invented world, with or without any thrilling events onstage at the moment. Secondary characters as well as Kordas himself are presented vividly and sympathetically. The main thread unifying this section comes from Kordas’s council members’ insistence that he must accept the title of King for the good of the realm. He eventually gives in, of course. Fans of the series will be happy to see the development we’ve been waiting for, the advent of the Companions. Since the gods have solid reasons for introducing those magnificent creatures at this time, soon after the Choosing of the first Heralds they, the nobility, the mages (Chosen or not), and the common folk of Haven must face a dire crisis. Aid from a friendly elemental and emissaries of the Hawkbrothers augment the Valdemarans’ defenses, but the threat is appropriately hard to defeat. This book caps the trilogy with a satisfying conclusion, although I’d love to read more novels set in this early phase of the world’s history.
MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN, by Seanan McGuire. The much-anticipated annual installment in McGuire’s “Wayward Children” portal fantasy series. While many of these books can be read independently, one really needs to have read last year’s book, LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND, to fully understand this one. Herein we pick up Antsy’s experiences after her return to this world at the end of LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND. Like the other books, the new one begins with a prologue discussing the “children of the doors” as an introduction to Miss Eleanor’s school for children and teens who’ve returned from the other worlds to which various portals have taken them. This particular prologue expounds the distinctions among mislaid, lost, and truly Lost. Antsy’s schoolmates know she has the gift of being able to find anything. “Anything” includes Doors, for which she refuses to search; she maintains that people’s Doors will find them, if at all, at the right time without her interference. When the selfish, mean, but dazzlingly beautiful Seraphina learns of this talent, she tries to bully Antsy into finding a Door to a world where Seraphina might attain contentment. Antsy takes refuge with her friends in the attic sanctuary of Kade, Miss Eleanor’s heir (and the only student who has no desire to leave the school for any other world). Thanks to Antsy’s gift, the teens escape through a hitherto unknown Door in the attic. It leads to the place she never expected or wanted to revisit, the enchanted shop where she spent most of the previous novel. A sort of inter-universe nexus, the store gives access to innumerable other dimensions. Taking advantage of a handy Door, Antsy and her friends travel through multiple worlds – and, as foreshadowed by the book’s cover illustration, in one of them they meet dinosaurs. By the end of their journey, several characters have achieved resolutions or even happy endings. It’s delightful to watch as Ansty confronts the person who manipulated her childhood ignorance for selfish gain and, ultimately, sets the shop right (helped by a flock of sapient magpies). Along the way, we learn a lot of new lore about the true nature of Doors and the hidden dangers of opening them. In fact, so many threads get wound up that this story could serve as a finale to the series. But I fervently hope it won’t.
HIM, by Geoff Ryman. This novel is odder by far than even the author’s WAS, a tragic deconstruction of origins of THE WIZARD OF OZ, both book and movie. In HIM, Ryman re-envisions the life of Jesus in terms some readers may dismiss as blasphemous. However, this deeply moving treatment of the familiar gospel story, told mainly through the viewpoint of Maryam (the Virgin Mary), might be better regarded as an imagining of an alternate reality. Yeshu (Jesus) implies as much near the end of the book. He reveals the existence of an infinite number of possible worlds. There might be a universe in which he doesn’t have to die by crucifixion; there might exist universes wherein he lives to a peaceful old age. Or the world of this novel, where he was born a girl. The author “makes the familiar strange” in other ways as well, including language. He spells the names of people and places as they might be transliterated from Aramaic or Greek, e.g., “Yerusalem” instead of Jerusalem, “Perisayya” for Pharisees. Even for a reader familiar with the New Testament, many of the correspondences can be hard to figure out. It took me several pages to realize the “Migdali woman” is Mary Magdalene, especially with her significant differences from the way that saint usually appears in tradition and art. So I’ll write proper names in their customary spellings for clarity, aside from Yeshu, Maryam, and Yosef. When Maryam tells her priestly uncle of her miraculous pregnancy, naturally he fears she has gone mad. Searching for a suitable husband to rescue her from her plight, he settles on Yosef, an eccentric dreamer who holds heretical views such as the belief that Adam and Eve before the fall were neither male nor female. He’s just crazy enough to accept Maryam as his wife. The disgraced pair are “exiled” from Jerusalem to Nazareth, where the holy child is born. Therefore, no journey to Bethlehem, no angels and shepherds, no star, no Magi. Maryam and Yosef remain celibate throughout their marriage, although they do conceive several other children by a makeshift version of artificial insemination. As for the child of the Holy Spirit, Maryam gives birth to a daughter. When the girl is five years old, her best friend, a boy slightly older than she, dies. From then on, she adopts his gender and his name, vehemently insisting she’s now a boy named Yeshu. While Yosef comes to accept him without too much difficulty, Maryam takes many years to adjust. For a long time she thinks of her oldest child as “it” and “the Cub.” While she impresses me as more prickly than likable, she also evokes sympathy, especially at the climax of the novel, when she fearlessly berates God for the ordeals He has put her through. In youth, far from holy, Yeshu and his gang of rowdy friends behave almost like juvenile delinquents. Eventually he leaves home in search of his cousin John the Baptist. When Maryam (now widowed) next meets Yeshu, he has assumed the title “Son of Adam” and gathered a throng of followers, roaming through the countryside in groups he calls “eklesia” (from the Greek for “calling out”). In one delightful innovation, they habitually sing favorite lines from Yeshu’s preaching and stories. It’s easy to understand the suspicious reactions of some people in the towns they pass through, viewing the disciples as the first-century equivalent of a traveling Woodstock. Matthew conscientiously writes down as many as possible of the Son’s parables and sayings, but in this version of the story, so does Maryam. Both of them leave out elements they find too unconventional, disturbing, or just plain baffling. Miracles don’t come as easily as often depicted in the New Testament. The feeding of the five thousand is casually attributed to incidents when people share food among themselves and it always seems to work out to enough. Lazarus, Mary, and Martha of Bethany aren’t close friends of Yeshu. Rather, when he learns of Lazarus’s death, he has never met them before. He raises Lazarus from the dead just to see what would happen, and the witnesses don’t welcome the result with joy but shrink from it as an “abomination.” To me, the portrayal of the miracles is the most innovative and unsettling feature of the novel. Yeshu’s healings have a shattering effect on observers, as if the universe momentarily turns inside out and resets itself. In another hint of an alternate world, during Yeshu’s trial it’s claimed that the Romans don’t customarily crucify people in the Jewish territory and that women are never crucified. Unlike in the gospels, the High Priest displays sympathy for Yeshu and tries to save his life. Yeshu, however, won’t accept a lesser sentence and seems determined to die. In another departure from the gospel accounts, Maryam doesn’t follow him to the cross. The narrative skips from the trial to the Resurrection, numinous and as strikingly weird in its way as the rest of the story. This iconoclastic retelling of a revered narrative displays a surprisingly high Christology. Yeshu seems fully aware of his status as the human embodiment of the divine. He repeatedly declares that the purpose of his existence is to let God experience pity, sorrow, pain, suffering, and death – in short, to teach God what it means to be human. In its own idiosyncratic terms, that claim actually comes across as a thoroughly orthodox summary of the Incarnation. While I may not reread this novel straight through, many passages invited repeated perusal and reflection. With the final scene (to quote a PBS TV cartoon character) “my brain just exploded.”
For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
*****
Excerpt from “Bunny Hunt”:
Downstairs, she exited the house through the kitchen door, since the voice in her head seemed to be coming from that direction. She carefully left the door unlocked, not wanting to get stuck outside even in a dream.
Their yard backed up to the wooded area whose other end bordered the playground where the children had searched for eggs that morning. She started toward the trees, listening hard, hunting for the source of the call. When the plea for help echoed in her mind yet again, she realized there was no question of its origin. The voice definitely came from the woods, and there was only one way in from here.
As soon as the damp grass touched her ankles, she realized she should have put on thicker socks. Also, the April night breeze chilled her bare arms. When she considered going inside for a sweater, though, the disembodied voice chimed, Please hurry. Still feeling pleasantly drifty, Melanie shrugged off the chill and quickened her pace.
On the trail that led into the woods, trees cut off most of the light from houses and street lamps. Even with a full moon, she could barely see her way, but fortunately she’d strolled this path many times before. The second time she stumbled on a root, though, she yielded to common sense and dug the emergency flashlight out of her bag. Wouldn’t you think I’d be able to see fine and walk safely by moonlight in a dream?
Every few yards, the voice renewed its appeal for her to hurry. Where was it coming from? How long had she been walking, anyway? Surely not much more than ten minutes. Shouldn’t she have reached the border of the woods by now? The walk from one end to the other took no more than fifteen minutes at a leisurely stroll, and by road the long way around only about five minutes.
Of course, that was in daylight. Maybe she’d unconsciously slowed down to avoid a fall, despite trying to obey the urgent appeal of the voice. On the other hand, she didn’t recall the trail having this many curves. Could she have accidentally stepped off the main track onto a side path?
Around the next bend, what she ran into convinced her she was definitely not on the right path anymore.
Overhanging the trail, a tangle of tree limbs entwined with thorny vines formed an arch. This shouldn’t be here. This dream is getting wilder by the minute. Am I supposed to go through that?
The voice responded as if reading her mind: This way.
Of course, what else? Can’t turn back now, even if this is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had. Melanie stepped through the portal. Beyond the threshold, vine-draped tree trunks hemmed her in on both sides. Aiming the flashlight beam upward revealed a tangle of vines that roofed the trail as far ahead as she could see. A layer of leaves rustled underfoot, stirring a scent of damp loam. The night’s chill abruptly yielded to humid warmth, more like June than early April.
She staggered with dizziness. When the vertigo passed and her vision cleared, the mental fog that had cushioned her until that moment evaporated. Her feet felt clammy from walking in wet grass. Ticklish tendrils of hair clung to her neck. The fingers of her left hand cramped from carrying her bag. The bronze disk on the necklace heated her skin through the T-shirt.
This is no dream. I’m really here. She spun around, pointing the light at the path behind her. Instead of the opening she’d walked through, a wall of branches and thorns blocked retreat. Where is here?
-end-
*****
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All Vampire’s Crypt Issues on Dropbox
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“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter