Archive for October, 2024
Welcome to the November 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, 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.
Happy American Thanksgiving!
YOKAI ENCHANTMENTS, my three-novella collection of paranormal romances featuring creatures from Japanese mythology, was featured in N. N. Light’s Book Heaven’s Trick or Treat Bonanza event:
Below is an excerpt from one of the included stories, “Kappa Companion.” Heidi, a young widow with one child, Adam, has recently bought a house previously rented by a Japanese family.
No author interview this month. Instead, here’s a Halloween-appropriate character interview originally posted on the Compelling Beasts blog in 2015, with Dr. Roger Darvell, my human-vampire hybrid psychiatrist. The best works for getting acquainted with Roger are the e-book duology TWILIGHT’S CHANGELINGS (comprising full-length novels DARK CHANGELING and its sequel, CHILD OF TWILIGHT):
Twilight’s Changelings from Amazon
Twilight’s Changelings from Other Retailers
And DOCTOR VAMPIRE, an e-book collection of three lighthearted stories reprinted from the NIGHT TO DAWN horror zine:
*****
Interview with Roger Darvell:
Vampire Specific Questions:
How long have you been a vampire?
Technically since birth, because I am a human-vampire hybrid, not a demon-possessed walking corpse as in those absurd folk legends. In a sense, however, I became a vampire when I learned my true nature and origin at the age of forty. Previously, I thought I was afflicted with an aberrant fetish for blood-drinking—a mutant of some sort, perhaps, because of my psychic talents, but essentially an ordinary man.
Do you drink blood or are you a psychic vampire?
Mainly blood, but a bit of both. The bulk of our nourishment consists of animal blood and occasionally milk. (After all, that’s a bodily fluid too.) We need human blood to thrive, however, although the amounts aren’t large, and it’s the emotional energy carried on the blood that satisfies us. If we’re deprived of that for too long, we go insane.
What’s the worst thing about being a vampire?
The inconvenience of that blasted sunlight sensitivity. Daylight doesn’t kill us, and I’m slightly less bothered by it than a purebred vampire, but direct sun gives me a headache, and prolonged exposure has an effect similar to heatstroke. Also, being naturally nocturnal, I find it uncomfortable to maintain the diurnal waking hours required of a practicing psychiatrist.
What is the best thing about being a vampire?
The ecstasy of sharing blood with my beloved.
Are there many others like you?
Vampires? No more than 10,000 in the world. Like myself, part vampire and part human? I personally know of only three others, one of whom is my own daughter. Interbreeding in nature (as opposed to deliberate hybridization) has been an extremely rare accident.
Are you a magical creature or are you a different species?
A different species living secretly among humankind, extremely long-lived and hard to kill.
Do you enjoy being a vampire?
Yes, now that I have a human partner who freely offers her blood, saving me from the guilt of preying on unwitting victims.
General Questions:
Where are you from?
I was born in France to a female vampire and her human lover, who were murdered when I was about a year old. I was taken to Boston and privately adopted by a human couple, who weren’t aware of my true background, which was why I didn’t know it myself for the first four decades of my life. I earned a medical degree at Harvard; I chose psychiatry as my specialty mainly because the abnormal mind fascinated me on account of what I thought to be my own mental illness.
Do you have a love interest?
Yes, my partner in my psychiatric practice, Dr. Britt Loren. Early in our association as colleagues, she deduced there was something unusual about me, and when she learned of my vampiric nature, she embraced instead of fearing it.
What makes you happy?
Britt’s love, which even after many years together feels like an undeserved miracle. Because of the guilt that plagued me during the decades before I learned my blood-thirst was natural rather than a grotesque aberration, I freely admit that I am—in layman’s terminology—a neurotic mess.
Do you have a code of honor?
In general, I try to follow the moral precepts of my faith, like any man with a strong religious background. (I’m a practicing Catholic.) If I have a vampire-specific code, it’s to refrain from harming anyone in the process of getting the blood I need.
What makes you angry?
Any threat to Britt’s life or welfare.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would travel back in time and ensure that I knew about my true heritage all along, instead of spending all those years in confusion, guilt, and misery.
Name one person you trust.
Aside from Britt, my half-brother, Claude, a purebred vampire who hides in plain sight as an actor in horror films.
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
JULIA, by Sandra Newman. This uninformatively titled novel (unless you happen to look at the cover image and note the date “1984” above the protagonist’s name) is an authorized retelling of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR from the viewpoint of Winston Smith’s lover. Its flipped perspective opens up numerous aspects of the classic work’s dystopian society not revealed through Winston’s eyes in the original. It also answers the reader’s natural question of why Julia would have initiated a love affair with a rather stuffy, far from outgoing man significantly older than herself. Experiencing life in Oceania from her angle, we learn that the Party isn’t the omnipotent, omniscient, inexorable entity Winston makes it seem. It’s as corrupt and inefficient as the bureaucracy of any other dictatorship in history. For Julia, guarding one’s words, actions, and facial expressions is a routine part of everyday life, ingrained from her childhood in a slightly looser but still dangerously fraught rural environment. Flashbacks reveal tragic elements of her past such as her own role in the death of her mother. However, Julia has a “cheerfully cynical” (as another review puts it) attitude toward the Party’s propaganda and the adjustments required to survive under its rule. She takes pride in her skill as a mechanic. In addition to working on novel-writing machines in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth, she informally repairs equipment such as the frequently clogged plumbing in her dormitory, which has only two lavatories for all the resident women. Her facade of devotion to the Anti-Sex League doesn’t stop her from enjoying as many casual affairs as she can manage, despite the risk of arrest for sexcrime. I wondered why pregnancy isn’t more of a worry, since contraceptives are illegal. Answer: Many single women who suspect they’re in the early stages of pregnancy seek artsem (artificial insemination). If they’ve actually conceived already, they’re covered; if not, the procedure didn’t “take.” And it seems to be common knowledge that some women volunteering to bear children for the Party are already pregnant. In general, most comrades seem to be acting a role rather than sincerely embracing fervent devotion to the Party. Everybody knows about bribery and the black market, and in relaxed moments they joke about the intricacies of Newspeak. Scenes in the prole neighborhoods reveal how the non-Party working class regards life in Oceania (they despise the Party yet adore Big Brother and mainly just try to get along day to day). From Julia’s viewpoint, Winston comes across as an odd blend of intellectual pretension, naïve idealism, and fatalistic despair. His fascination with forbidden political, philosophical, and literary topics bores her, although she maintains a facade of enthralled interest. While JULIA reads as slightly less dark and claustrophobic than NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, it’s still set in a dystopian dictatorship pervaded by telescreens and other surveillance devices, where no one can’t afford to trust anybody completely. Nevertheless, it does answer some questions Orwell’s original leaves as nebulous mysteries: Does Big Brother, as an individual, literally exist? (Yes.) Is there really an anti-Party underground, and was its demonized alleged leader, Goldstein, a real person? (Yes.) Is Oceania really at war? Yes, we witness the bombed sections of London, though we never find out if the enemy is Eurasia, Eastasia, or neither. In this grim setting, Julia can’t remain unscathed forever, and readers can’t expect a truly happy ending. However, unlike Orwell’s, this novel’s conclusion offers hope for the future.
THE FOREST OF LOST SOULS, by Dean Koontz. One positive feature of Koontz’s latest thriller: Near-absence of the cartoon-villain sociopathic geniuses bent on destroying the world for their own gain that have tended to dominate his recent novels. Most of the antagonists in this book act out of plausible greed, self-preservation, and/or sadistic pleasure in others’ pain and death. The one sort-of exception, head of a corporation determined to establish a wind farm on a sacred plateau, is a miserably paranoid, perpetually angry multibillionaire obsessed with extending his life by centuries; still, he’s mainly driven by lust for money and power. While Koontz’s fixation on the idea that the world is headed straight for perdition lurks in this novel as in all his recent work, it doesn’t hit the reader over the head so hard as in some of his books. Annoyingly, though, the whole thing is narrated in present tense, including the flashbacks, for no apparent reason. The heroine, Vida, lives alone in the middle of the woods, in a house inherited from the loving, wise great-uncle who became her guardian after the death of her parents in an accident (genuine, no conspiracy involved). For both artistic expression and income, she cuts and polishes gemstones gathered at an abandoned mining site. The locale is an unspecified western state, with wolves and mountain lions roaming the forest. Koontz’s style shows itself to best advantage in the lyrical, elaborate, multisensory descriptions of plants, animals, and landscape. Vida, who once heard from an enigmatic fortune teller that she was destined to become a champion of the natural world, has a quasi-mystical bond with the surrounding terrain and wildlife. A dominant male wolf she has named Lupo frequently visits her with his pack. Another supernatural feature, or perhaps a touch of magical realism, consists of a seldom-seen white mountain lion widely believed to be an incarnation of the angel of death. And of course there are dogs – not Golden Retrievers this time, but a pack of German Shepherd search dogs, whose handler arrives on the scene rather late in the story. Sam is an Afghanistan war veteran with a horribly disfigured face but a kind heart. Outraged by the work the bad guys expect of him, he joins Vida in opposing them. As told in flashbacks, months earlier her fiancé, one of the town’s most influential opponents of the corporation’s project, died in what looked like an accident. He left behind a cryptic note and a gift she hasn’t opened yet. When she discovers the truth of his murder and who was behind it, she becomes a target of conscienceless men who’ll stop at nothing to feed their avarice and guard their power. Her victories against successively escalating attacks are hard-won and satisfyingly plausible. Her final destruction of the Big Bad, however, strikes me as too quick and easy. I didn’t really mind, though, being more than ready for the unrelenting danger to end and for Vida to find peace with Sam and his dogs (no spoiler, any reader of Koontz knows she will).
A CHRISTMAS GHOST STORY, by Kim Newman. This short novel is as absorbing as one would expect of a story by the author of ANNO-DRACULA. For an American reader, in addition to its other qualities it delivers the slightly exotic (to me) pleasure of very British folk horror. It also includes elements of urban legend. Mystery author and single mother Angie lives with her teenage son Rust (short for Russell) on the outskirts of a small town in Somerset. He produces a monetarily successful paranormal podcast for which he conducts meticulous research, eschewing the sloppy sensationalism of many self-styled ghost hunters. The story begins on December first, as they prepare for the Christmas season. They follow their long-established family traditions, e.g., the Advent calendar with chocolates behind the doors, singing parodic Christmas “cruels” in lieu of carols, replacing Rust’s cherished action figures on the mantel with the seasonal cards they receive. This year, though, Rust discovers the first Advent chocolate tastes “off” and unsettles his stomach. That minor disappointment proves the harbinger of strange events that escalate into quiet horror. A new creepy card with a disturbing or downright threatening message, unsigned, arrives in the mail every day. The pictures of snow-covered woods change from a merely gruesome dead-looking robin on a branch to the Holly Child, a “twiggy” snowman accompanied by ominous stick figures, growing gradually more distinct and closer. Angie soon realizes this phenomenon duplicates the plot of a TV Christmas ghost story that terrified her in childhood. However, nobody else remembers this episode of the horror anthology series, and Rust’s online research can’t find any reference to it. Although a true ghostlike apparition doesn’t show up until near the end, the fear of persecution by some unknown force slowly builds day by day. Amid futile and increasingly desperate attempts to intercept the mail carrier and learn the source of the cards, Angie’s mental state deteriorates from upset to practically unhinged. Tension mounts even higher when a snowstorm knocks out the electricity, exacerbating fear with isolation and privation. At the climax, passage into a dreamlike realm reveals the truth about the “ghost” and the surprising origin of the cards. Unfolding the mundane and the supernatural in parallel, this story intertwines a fraught mother-son relationship with a delightfully twisted variation on a traditional Christmas in a modern English village.
HERE THERE ARE MONSTERS, by Amelinda Berube. Like Berube’s YA vampire novel THE ONES WHO COME BACK HUNGRY (reviewed last month), this book focuses on a pair of teenage sisters, in this case in a more overtly love-hate relationship. Sixteen-year-old Skye begins her story on “the night my sister disappears,” with her narrative of current ongoing events in present tense and flashbacks in past tense. Her parents blame her for falling asleep and failing to notice when thirteen-year-old Deirdre left the house, and naturally Skye also blames herself. At the same time, she hates being held responsible for the sister who, as Skye sees it, has dominated and messed up her life for years. Deirdre has a fantastic imagination. She invented an elaborately detailed fantasy kingdom that she rules with Skye as her champion, the Queen of Swords. For years Skye enthusiastically joined in this game, but she’s tired of it and of serving as her sister’s protector from real-life bullies as well as playing an imaginary knight in shining armor. Deirdre clings to her created world with a fierce insistence on its reality more like that of a much younger child. Her emotional volatility makes her seem younger than her chronological age, too. With the family’s recent cross-country move, their parents hope a fresh start in a new school will straighten out Deirdre. Skye regards the relocation as a chance to establish an identity of her own separate from her weird kid sister, since they’ll now be attending different schools. Adhering to the “script” of how teens are supposed to act with and speak to each other, Skye manages to make a few friends, but she’s always on guard. Meanwhile, Deirdre continues to demand participation in the old game and shows sulky resentment of Skye’s new companions. The days and weeks after the disappearance, with a pile of leaves and twigs left in Deirdre’s bed reminiscent of the stick figures she was constantly building, are pervaded by real-world fearful events: Police and other searchers swarm the neighborhood and repeatedly question the family. Friction and mutual blame haunt interactions among Skye and her parents, alternating with futile attempts at normalcy. Awkward relations with her peers become severely damaged by mistrust. Skye keeps secrets about the past with Deirdre at their old school, especially one unpardonable thing she did to defend her sister, which is hinted at but not revealed until well into the book. Forbidden to search for the missing girl, Skye sneaks into the woods and of course gets caught. As in THE ONES WHO COME BACK HUNGRY, the protagonist knows her lost sister is out there somewhere, but she can’t tell the adults the basis for her belief. In another parallel to the vampire novel, Skye alienates her friends and must struggle to regain their trust in order to rescue Deirdre. Here’s where the supernatural element comes to the fore. “They” – entities in the woods, creatures born of Deirdre’s powerful imagination – have taken her, and they demand a terrible price to consider returning her. Is rescue possible? And if Skye manages to restore Deirdre, can fractured relationships ever be repaired? This novel is true horror, arguably even darker than THE ONES WHO COME BACK HUNGRY.
For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
*****
Excerpt from “Kappa Companion”:
Heidi woke to a bloodcurdling yowl. Heart pounding, she sat up in bed. After a second, she realized the noise wasn’t a remnant of a monster in a nightmare, but a cry from the cat. She’d never heard Ebony make a sound like that before. Maybe she’s protecting us from a wild, fierce mouse. She hoped not. The pre-sale home inspection hadn’t reported any pests. The caterwauling receded along the hall and down the stairs, then stopped.
Heidi lay back and closed her eyes, waiting for her breath and pulse to slow to normal. Now that Ebony had fallen silent, though, a different sound wafted from the hallway. Singing.
Sitting up again, Heidi strained her ears. A child’s soprano voice sang in a language she didn’t recognize. “Adam?” No answer. The voice grew fainter and faded away.
She extracted a flashlight from the nightstand and crept to the closed bedroom door. Leaning against it, she didn’t hear anything. She stepped into the hall and switched on the flashlight, not wanting to wake Adam with the overhead light if he’d slept through the cat’s cries and the song, assuming he hadn’t done the latter himself.
Tiptoeing toward his room, she glanced at the floor, which showed traces of water at regular intervals. At first sight, they looked like child-size wet footprints. Had Adam made the tracks after his bath? Surely she would have noticed them before, though, and anyway they would have dried by now. She nudged his partly open bedroom door farther ajar and peeked in. In the faint glow of the night light, he lay sprawled on his side, breathing deeply and evenly, with no sign of faking sleep. Also, when she thought to check the floor inside his room, that space showed no wet marks. Withdrawing into the hall, she found the tracks already drying.
After going downstairs to check all the doors, which were locked the way she’d left them, she returned to her own bed, shaking her head in bewilderment. If he wasn’t singing, what did I hear? The TV? She didn’t think she’d become so absent-minded at the age of thirty-four that she would leave the set on and forget doing it. Maybe the cat had stepped on the remote control in the living room just long enough to switch the TV on and off. And if she’d been pawing in her water bowl and then taken a stroll upstairs, that could explain the wet spots. Sure, blame it all on the cat. Considering the hypothetical identification of “Zashi” as the name of a ghost child, she emphatically preferred blaming the cat over suspecting a mischievous spirit.
She’d poured every dollar she could spare into the house. What would she do if it was actually haunted? Sue the home inspector for missing that problem? Abandoning her investment like a hysterical heroine in a horror movie wasn’t an option. She dismissed the whole idea with a shaky laugh. This place is our fresh start. There can’t be anything wrong with it. No way would I accept that—even if I did believe in ghosts, which I don’t.
-end of excerpt-
*****
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
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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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My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
“James James said to his Mother,
‘Mother,’ he said, said he;
‘You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don’t go down with me.’”
From “Disobedience” by A. A. Milne
“Tim, I’m heading out to Twice-Told Tales to pick up a book they ordered for me. I’ll be back in a little while. Behave for your sister.”
Tim jumped up from the LEGO castle he was building on the playroom floor. He couldn’t let her go to the scary used-book shop alone. “Wait, Mom, take me with you.”
“No need. I told you, I’ll be right back.”
“Then take my lucky coin so you’ll be safe.” He knew the silver, quarter-size disk Uncle Edwin had given him, with a picture of a curvy, five-pointed star, wasn’t exactly a coin, but Tim didn’t know what else to call it.
His mother frowned. “Don’t start that again. There’s nothing dangerous in the store.”
“But the black hole—”
She cut him off. “That’s enough. I’ll see you soon.” After a quick kiss on the cheek, she marched briskly into the front hall and out the door, with Tim scurrying after her.
Knowing it would only make her mad if he chased her outside, he didn’t follow when she shut the front door in his face. Instead, he trudged upstairs to Cyndy’s room and lingered in the doorway.
His teenage sister glanced up from the game she was playing on her tablet. “What do you want?”
“Mom went to the scary book place by herself.” He struggled to keep from whimpering.
“That again?” She heaved a loud sigh. “Twice-Told Tales? So what?”
“There’s a black hole in the back of the store, in the middle of the shelf with the weird, old books. Grown-ups can’t see, but there’s something dangerous in it.”
“You’re seven. Aren’t you too old for that crap? Something, like what?”
He squirmed, groping for words. “I don’t know. Something shiny, but creepy shiny.” He couldn’t describe the colors swirling in the blackness, with tentacles like an octopus and eyes that glowed and kept disappearing. “She wouldn’t even take the lucky piece Uncle Edwin gave me.”
“That antique coin or medallion or whatever doesn’t mean anything. Uncle Edwin is a flake.”
“Is not!” Tim yelled. “He knows lots of stuff. He says the picture on it is an Elder Sign. It chases bad stuff away.” Whenever Mom took him along to the shop and they walked past that shelf, Tim clutched the Elder Sign coin in his pocket, made special motions with the fingers of his other hand, and whispered secret words. She didn’t know the magic gestures or words. What could stop the things on the other side of the hole from sucking her in and eating her?
“No bad stuff is going to happen in a store full of dusty old books. Go play and quit bugging me.”
It was no use. Cyndy was almost an adult. She wouldn’t believe him any more than Mom did. He stomped downstairs, wondering whether he could follow his mother to the shop. He could run after her, protect her in the store the way he always did—-
Tim shook his head, telling himself that was a dumb idea. Even if he knew the exact path to Twice-Told Tales, she would get there in the car long before he could walk all that way. He plopped down on the floor to add more blocks to his castle.
He kept on building while Cyndy came into the room later, worrying about why Mom hadn’t come back yet. He stayed there when his father got home from work and asked where she was. Later still, Tim switched on the TV to drown out the noises of clattering footsteps and frantic phone calls.
He didn’t bother trying to explain what had happened to his mother. Nobody would listen.
“James James
Morrison’s mother
Hasn’t been heard of since. . . .
If people go down to the end of the town, well,
what can anyone do?”
Flanked by a pair of sword-bearing guards, Larissa folded her arms, as far as the shackles on her wrists allowed, and glared up at Sapphiris, who lounged on the throne formerly occupied by Larissa’s father. “You’ve wiped out the rest of our family. I can’t help wondering why you haven’t killed my son and me yet. What do you want?”
“Something only a sorceress with your power can do.”
True, Sapphiris commanded only limited magic compared to Larissa. The false queen specialized mainly in potions, not spells, and had slain her cousin the king, Larissa’s father, by poison. “Why should I do anything you ask?”
“To preserve your boy’s life, of course.”
No surprise there, for only the threat hanging over him had kept Larissa from breaking out of her comfortable cell and striking down the usurper. “And why would I trust you not to have both of us murdered after I’ve done your bidding?”
“I’ll sign a magically binding contract guaranteeing your freedom and safety and his – after you fulfill my request.” She snapped her fingers, and a scribe holding a document case stepped forward.
“Not after, before. I’ll do nothing until I have your signature on that inviolable pledge.”
“And why would I be so reckless as to make that pledge before getting what I want?”
“Because you know I’ll keep my word. I don’t know any such thing about you.”
Sapphiris’s cold smile confirmed she’d been only toying with her prisoner. “Quite so. Then let it be done, if you can cast the spell I need.”
“Which is?”
“What’s the point of winning power if one can’t be sure of living long and well enough to appreciate it?” With a purr in her voice, Sapphiris scanned the lofty windows and marble walls and floor of the throne room. “I want to remain perpetually beautiful and never sicken, suffer, or die. Can you accomplish that?”
“Of course. If that’s the price of our lives, I can and will.” Larissa allowed a tinge of disdain to creep into her voice. “Not that I anticipate much joy in life under your rule.”
Sapphiris reached for the enchanted parchment and pen. After writing out her request and the terms of the promise she offered in return, she handed over the document, inscribed in glowing letters of golden ink.
Larissa carefully read the compact twice over in search of loopholes. When satisfied that she and her son would have their freedom and permanent immunity from harm inflicted by the false queen or her minions or in any way at their instigation, she nodded. “Very well, you will be perpetually beautiful and never sicken, suffer, or die. But I’ll need these removed.” She held up her shackled hands.
Sapphiris gestured to one of the guards, who unlocked the chains. She then stood before the sorceress at arm’s distance.
Larissa tucked the document into a pocket of her robe, wove the magical sigils in the air, and chanted the necessary invocation. An explosion of blue light momentarily blinded her.
When her vision cleared, she beheld the successful outcome of her spell — a marble statue of the usurper, flawlessly beautiful and immune to sickness, suffering, and death.
With the enchanted compact safely in her possession, she strode from the throne room to free her son.
-end-