Vampires are the New Vampires

I'm featured at the Innsmouth Free Press, a horror zine, about the genre:http://tinyurl.com/yg8vqte

Updates, "Being Human," & Video Friday

Hokay, next week and the week after are going to be crazy for me because I've got to copyedit a manuscript, do my taxes and then I'll be going to the Tucson Festival of Books, March 13-14 and speaking on various topics, including a panel on "Vampires that Don't Sparkle."

Also next week I'm going to be the guest over at my evil Canadian nemesis's site, SciFi Guy, so Doug Knipe and I will be in a bitter battle of (half) wits over there. I'll be giving away one of my fabulous Casa Dracula novels in a contest that Doug will concoct.

Actually I think Doug was supposed to send me some questions to answer and he hasn't -- obviously this is his first manuover in his effort to flummox me. Ha! I will not be flummoxed by someone who thinks Olympic curling is exciting.

On Wednesday, I'll have an interview with Danielle Trussoni here and a contest for a hardback copy of her new book, Angelogy. This book is getting critical raves and you'll want to know more about these dangerous and beautiful creatures and their penchant for warmongering. Also, those of you are really shallow will want to know that the cover is just gorgeous.

Speaking of things that are gorgeous, Wiliqueen sent me her new video tribute to one of my favorite paranormal shows, BBC's "Being Human." Her editing to the song "Cut" by Plumb is masterful. I wish I could post it here in a larger format, but you can follow this link to see it properly on YouTube.




GRATUITOUS VIDEOS OF THE DAY

The week's theme, inspired by my contest for Skyler White's and Falling, Fly, is desire and yearning. WRW13 suggested the longing and desperation in "Interview with the Vampire" with Louis and Claudia, trapped eternally in a child's body.



Stella said she thinks "Wuthering Heights" powerfully expresses yearning and desire in the impossible love between Cathy and Heathcliff.



HeatWave16 mentioned the series "Imagine Me and You" as a show that expresses this. Lots of girl-kissing, so if that offends you, please watch and enjoy your moral superiority.



Morning Glow pooh-poohs my fangirl adoration of The Doctor and Rose Tyler in "Doctor Who" and is more interested in the relationship between The Doctor and Donna Noble, played by the brilliant Catherine Tate. (She's one of my favorite comics.) Well, Donna is a great character. One of the things I love about this show is how the Doctor chooses his companions -- usually women who have great talent, great daring and bravery, who are stuck in mundane lives. He gives them the chance to see the universe and save the world.

Winner of Kellan Lutz Poster

Congratulations to BOOKFREAK, who has won the random drawing for the poster of Kellan Lutz poster! Hope that you'll enjoy your prize.

(I'll email you to get your address so I can send it to the poster publicist.)

Thanks to all who entered!

Winner of Lois Gresh BLOOD AND ICE Contest!

The winner of the contest to have a character named after her in Lois Gresh's upcoming novel, Blood and Ice, is:

Dot S.

Congratulations, Dot! I'll send Lois your email so she can contact you about what name you'd like to use.

Thanks to Lois for offering such a great prize, and thanks, too, to all the readers who shared their weird quirks in the contest!

Guest Blog by Maria Lima & MATTERS OF THE BLOOD Contest

"Full of more interesting surprises than a candy store."

Charlaine Harris

"A brilliant tale of supernatural power, revenge, and the excitement of newfound love."

Darque Reviews

I'm very happy to have Maria Lima, author of the Blood Lines series, as a guest blogger here at Vampire Wire.

Here's a description of her first novel in the series, Matters of the Blood:

If you thought your family was strange...Try being Keira Kelly. A member of a powerful paranormal family, Keira elected to stay among humans in the Texas Hill Country when the rest of the clan moved (lock, stock, and grimoire) to Canada. But family duty means still having to keep an eye on cousin Marty -- a genetic aberration who turned out 100% human, poor guy. And recently Keira's been having violent dreams -- or are they visions? -- featuring Marty as the victim of a vicious murder. Something sinister seems to be brewing in little Rio Seco. Can Keira get to the bottom of it all while avoiding entanglement with her former lover, Sheriff Carlton Larson?

Maria's giving away a copy of Matters of the Blood in a contest. To enter, just leave a comment telling us about your first vampire gateway experience. The contest runs through Wednesday, March 10, and a winner will be selected by random draw.

Hmm, I think the one that made me really interested was an episode of "The X-Files."
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Vampires: the Gateway Drug by Maria Lima

Hi, my name is Maria and I’m an addict.

I got my first hit around twelve or thirteen when my father handed me a copy of Dracula--along with a hardbound copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t long after that I discovered Mary Stewart’s Gabriel Hounds on the wall-to-wall bookshelf in our living room. Then my dad’s business partner, whom we called Uncle Jack, blew my mind open with a three-book set: Lord of the Rings. (Little did I realize that’s how pushers worked: befriend the kid, talk about the high and then give them a taste…)

I was swept into the world of dark mystery, blood, romanticism, adventure. How could I resist such delicious temptations as Frank Langella’s Dracula. [Marta's note: awesome video here.] It debuted while I was in college. My roomie and I drawn to its power. We sat silent in the dark, letting the fantasy wash over us, then walked back to our dorm, sighing over the tortured darkness of Langella’s vampire, the beauty of Lucy (angry at the ridiculous swapping of Lucy and Mina). Neither of us slept that night as we stared out at our dorm room window, hoping that somehow, this amazing, gorgeous creature of the night would find his way to San Antonio and crawl up onto our wee second floor balcony and shatter the sliding glass door.

I then discovered Tanya Huff and her brilliant melding of two of my favorite genres. I dove in glee into a different Toronto, one that contained the gorgeous Henry Fitzroy.

Turning that first pristine page on a new Charles deLint, I fell into his world of Other, not set in a far off medieval style land, nor on another world, nor even Middle-Earth, but just an open window or door away.

Delighting in the new blossoming of urban fantasy--whether Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Jim Butcher--so many names and amazing stories involving vampires, werewolves, the Fae, demons and angels, I was a happy, happy addict--no more did I have to dig through the dusty stacks in ill-lit used bookstores, nor beg my friends for another book recommendation, another source to sooth my addiction. The onslaught had begun…and luckily, now, not only did I have books to read, there were shows on television--no longer did I have to satisfy my longing with Sunday matinees of Hammer Horror and Christopher Lee.

I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer in awe of Joss Whedon’s talent in finding exactly the kinds of stories I’d craved, then gleefully devoured Angel: the Series with just as much joy. When Joss announced the end of Buffy, I was devastated. Then Angel trumpeted his last hurrah.

Crushed, I scoured TV web sites for signs of more, more, more--needing that fix. Thank goodness and Eric Kripke I didn’t have to wait for long. Two hot guys and a hot car roared onto the scene with Supernatural, bringing me folklore and fantasy, tales of heroes and apocalypses, soothing my need, giving me another fix. I bought more and more books, watched more shows, pored over blog posts to see what other author or show I hadn’t yet found, creating lists of to-be-read and to-watch.

I became a pusher, an enabler, buying copies of paperback releases and shoving them at my friends, hooking them, too. Then at some point, I realized I could do more than just buy my fixes--I could create my own! I wrote and wrote, and eventually, I too became a purveyor of the drug, with my own mix of vampires, shapeshifters and other supernatural creatures. No longer just a consumer, I’d built my own crackhouse, telling the stories pounding in my head, pushing them out to the world in hopes that they, too, would taste the joy as I did, decades ago.

I’m still hooked: on vampires, mysteries, strong heroines and fantasy tales. So yeah, vampires are a total gateway drug…be careful, one taste, one bite and you, too could become an addict.
------------------------------

Thanks, Maria!

Remember to leave a comment about your first vampire gateway experience in order to enter the contest for a copy of Matters of the Blood.


GRATUITOUS VIDEOS OF THE DAY

This week's theme is longing and desire, and these are in honor of Maria's favorites.





And sometimes one desires to protect the people he loves.

Regular Programming will Soon Resume

I've been dealing with design issues this a.m. for promo materials. So the blog got put off.

I will, however, post some videos for you on this week's theme: desire and yearning.

Jackie mentioned "Notorious" with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. I wish this video was set to Peggy Lee's "Fever," because the movie is really tense and passionate, and Grant is sexy and dangerous.



You know, I've always loved Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) in "Say Anything."



I wasn't that fond of this version of "Pride & Prejudice," which had far too much running wildly barefoot. But I bow to readers' wishes.



"North & South," the miniseries (about England's north and south) is all about yearning. If you like any of the adaptations of "Pride & Prejudice," you'll like this.



This is for "Blood Ties" fans. Wish the series had continued as it deserved to be.

Juliet Landau's New Ventures and the Ideal Book Site

Juliet Landau, well-known to "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" fans as the mad, bad, and beautiful Drusilla, sent me an email yesterday sharing news about her latest project. She's directed "Take Flight," a documentary about Gary Oldman, another actor famous for a vamp role, and his music projects.

I really enjoyed watching Juliet's interview with Armin Schmerman (many will remember him as the dastardly Principal Snyder in "Buffy" and Quark in "Star Trek") about his creative process.



Here's the trailer for her movie.



CONTESTS

I've got a contest for Skyler White's in Falling, Fly, the debut novel in her The Harrowing series.

This is the last day to enter the contest to have a character named after you in Lois Gresh's next novel, Blood and Ice.

If you're an aspiring paranormal romance or urban fantasy writer, you may want to enter the "Dear Lucky Agent" contest at Guide to Literary Agents. Yeah, maybe you think, oh, hell, if Marta can do it, my senile dog can do it. But you'd be totally wrong, because dogs cannot use a laptop. I know because I tried to train mine to handle my emails and they made a mess of everything.

Here are some of the instructions:

"While you can incorporate a variety of fantasy elements, they still have to fall under these two categories. For those of you who are unsure, keep in mind that both urban fantasy and paranormal romance have a strong base in a real world setting (like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood or Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy). So no stories that take place solely on another planet or world!"


The Ideal Book Site

The Mighty Buzzard has been blogging about what kind of site we need to search for and find books -- he's a coder so it's a professional's view of how an excellent site should work. His general idea is to keep a site absolutely clean and utterly efficient and easy to use.

As a blogger, I visit author, publisher, and retailer sites every day and I'm always astonished at how clumsy most are. Okay, the authors aren't professionals and there are some great, easy, informative sites, but the retailers and publishers should definitely do a better job. On most, the searches will come up with "no result" if you misspell an author's name or series title.

As an author, I'm constantly learning what I should be doing -- listing ISBNs, having a chapter available, etc. It seems simple, but perhaps that's why people don't take designing these sites seriously. Or else they put so many doodads and fancy graphics that you have to wait ten minutes to try to enter the site.

I only wish that publishers and retailers would listen to people who love books and know about efficient and effective websites. Thanks for doing all the hard thinking, The Mighty Buzzard!

Here's TMB's first post on the topic.



Carolyn Karp at Suburban Vampire has a new poll to find the best vampire movies in her first annual Vampire Oscar Party. I missed so many vamp flicks in '09 that I can't enter. I still really want to see "Thirst," the Korean vampire movie about the priest who becomes infected.


GRATUITOUS VIDEOS OF THE DAY

This week's theme (see yesterday's post) is about yearning and desire. The first is in honor of Juliet Landau and her performance as the very twisted Drusilla in "Buffy."

Interview with Skyler White & Contest for AND, FALLING, FLY

"... like nothing you've ever read before. It blends elements of mythology, psychology, neuroscience...it's a wild ride full of riddles, love, desire and read between the lines meaning...I was hooked from page one."

Fang-tastic Books

So far, despite massive hype, zombies and werewolves have failed in their attempts to supplant vampires as the most totally awesome paranormal creature ever. But there is another type of character that has real potential to grab and hold onto readers' imagination.

I'm talking about angels, of course, and particularly fallen angels. So I'm very happy to have Skyler White here today to tell us a little about and Falling, Fly, which has just been released and is the first book in her The Harrowing series.

A review at That's Queen Bitch to You says:

"It is a story of desire. Of despair. Of hope when there is no reason to. Of getting what you want versus what will make you happy. It's a journey of self discovery and asks the question of 'why are we here?'

"I love the way desire as a theme was handled in this book. We often associate desire with evil, with the fall, with sin, but this novel points out the oft times overlooked truth that desire is ultimately what drives us, to good or to ill."

Skyler's also contributing a copy of and Falling, Fly for a contest. Read to the end of the post to learn how to enter the contest for this exciting new novel!

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MARTA: Welcome to Vampire Wire, Skyler! Why don’t you tell us a little about and Falling, Fly, your debut novel?

SKYLER: In and Falling, Fly, Olivia, the fallen angel of desire and a vampire, is bored with modernity. Tattooist, boyfriend, black-metal singer: everyone you don't love tastes the same. She returns to Ireland's subterranean L'Otel Matillide - the Hotel of the Damned - to bury her hope with her severed wings. There, she encounters a self-medicating neuroscientist plagued with impossible memories. Dominic is convinced that Olivia is delusional, not damned, and urges her to enroll in his new drug trials. She believes he is cursed, but might be redeemed, and they end up pitting mythology against medicine with themselves, and eventually each other, at stake.

MARTA: How did you come up with this innovative world of vampires as fallen angels?

SKYLER: Olivia was the angel of desire first. A group of friends and I had read Lynda Barry’s One! Hundred! Demons! and put together a little Yahoo! Group to play around with our own archetypal demons. Olivia (and Alyx) grew out of a personal demon of mine called Too Much is Not Enough. I was trying to get a grip on the nature of desire – what it means when being unable to get something you really want turns into cravings or addictions for things you can, but maybe shouldn’t, have. So desire was the pure idea, but she has fallen. She is desire corrupted or denied.

Also, I was playing with the difference between wanting and being wanted, trying to understand the way my own sense of self and sexuality was tied up in wanting to be wanted; with being the object of someone else’s desire as opposed to the subject of my own. There’s something vampiric about that, and that’s where her inability to see herself in a mirror without someone else looking at her, as well as her shape-shifting to conform to other’s tastes, and her need to feed on their desire or fear all came from.

MARTA: Your book has been called steampunk, which I usually think of as melding science and fantasy in a historical era, such as the Victorian era. Can you explain what steampunk really is and what drew you to write a steampunk novel?

SKYLER: Yikes! I wouldn’t presume to comment on what steampunk really is beyond a wonderfully rich intellectual and aesthetic construct. My understanding is that it explores an alternate history that parallels ours up until the harnessing of electricity. In the steampunk reality, there is no plastic or electricity, so all the mod cons still evolved, but fashioned from metal and glass, and powered by steam. I don’t think of and Falling, Fly as a steampunk novel per se. I love the aesthetic and the people I’ve met who are a part of the subculture are, almost to a person, more intelligent, thoughtful and creative than your average bear. So I like them, but don’t feel like I belong to them. My Hotel of the Damned has sort of a steampunk inflection in that, like steampunk’s alternate version of reality, mine has neither plastic nor electricity. But it isn’t steam-powered either, (it’s run on inertia) and people wear everything from pinstripes and bustles to latex and running shoes.



MARTA: Your book is really about desire, and your character Olivia needs others to desire or fear her to feed from. Sex, love, desire – these can all become a tangled mess for most women. Did you discover anything about desire in the process of writing your book?

SKYLER: You’re the first person to ask that! Yes, actually, I did. I learned I’m not very good at denial. I seem to have this deeply-held belief that if I *really* want something, I can get it. I can convince the universe I’m serious, I can earn it, or work hard enough for it. And I do think a lot of things yield to persistence and hard work, but not everything. There are things where, as in Olivia’s case, God (or the universe or Fate or luck) just deny you. Sometimes, you get told “no.” And I don’t tend to deal with that very graciously. And even though, intellectually, I know that “no means no” I find myself trying to make deals or work harder or dream bigger. Acceptance, which I heard beautifully described once as “a deliberate peace with what is,” comes hard to me.

But I did get to explore my relationships with food and body image and sex, and that, happily, was more productive. I got clearer about what I wanted and where I was substituting, those places where, as Olivia says, “desire denied, consumes.” I lost fifteen pounds just learning to spot that distinction, and I got some clarity about my own wants that I hadn’t had since I was a kid.

MARTA: Angels are becoming much more popular in urban fantasy and paranormal fiction right now. Do you have any ideas why readers are being drawn to fantasies based on stories about the eternal struggle of good vs. evil, and destiny vs. free will?

SKYLER: ::grin:: Can I say it’s because fantasies are the only places where good always wins and we’re not feeling so confident about that in the real world? No, I think the genre is a very inviting ring for wrestling the Big Questions. Fantasy lends itself to symbolism in a way other genres don’t. All the great explanatory stories – from Oedipus Rex to Dante to The Bible to The Hobbit – have that in common. As for why we’re collectively interested in angels, and particularly fallen angels, I think we’re feeling very in touch with toppled ideals. The halos on Consumerism and American Democracy are maybe looking a little dingy, and we’re interested in exploring what happens when our loftiest ideals have to limp on clay legs.

MARTA: Did your career as a dancer and your background in theatre influence your writing…the way you block out or choreograph the action?

SKYLER: I think so, in that they both required me to be able to visualize bodies in space. The muscles you cultivate to “see” in three dimensions in your head had a lot of practice. And I taught ballet, too, so I have a long history of trying to put words around physical sensation and movement. But I think the biggest legacy from my sordid past in dance is, counter-intuitively, my ability to sit still. The most important thing for a writer is the fabled BIC time. (BIC = butt-in-chair, on the off-chance that I’m speaking a regional dialect.) Ballet taught me discipline.

MARTA: What’s next for you, and where can readers find out more about your books and you?

SKYLER: My website has pages for and Falling, Fly and the next book in The Harrowing series, In Dreams Begin. It links to all my social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Goodreads, etc.) and also a page for requesting a temporary version of Olivia’s tattoo, and a gallery you can post pictures of yourself to. There will be prizes.

MARTA: If you were staging a dance version of your and Falling, Fly, what would it look like and what known dancers/celebrities would you like to see star in it?

SKYLER: Oh, that’s a wonderful question!

I’m tempted to over-explain, but I think I won’t. A dance version of and Falling, Fly would feature bodies in unitards that obscured their faces and fingers. It would be a very expressionistic piece. I think it would look like this:

(This is the album cover for ‘Songs of Darkness, Words of Light’ by the band My Dying Bride.)

Is that too obscure? I can tell you Dominic looks like a cross between Max Martini and Ewan Macgregor, if that helps.

MARTA: Thanks for visiting Vampire Wire, Skyler, and I hope you’re keeping Austin weird!

SKYLER: Thanks so much Marta, this was fun! And yes, I’m doing my part here in Austin!


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Read an excerpt from Skyler's new novel.

TO ENTER THE CONTEST: If you'd like a chance to win a copy of and Falling, Fly, just leave a comment about a book or a movie (or even a show) that expresses desire, or leave a comment for Skyler. The contest runs through March 10th and a winner will be chosen by random draw.

Hmm, one of my favorite scenes of desire in fiction is in Jane Eyre when Mr. Rochester tells Jane that he must send her away because he's getting married. She protests that though she is small and plain and poor, she has a heart and a soul, and the reader knows it is breaking.


GRATUITOUS VIDEOS OF THE DAY

Today's theme is desire, and here's a tribute to one of my favorite impossible couples, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and the Doctor (David Tennant) of "Doctor Who."



Here's Buffy and Angel and their hopeless passion.



Some of us felt more for Spike and his love for Buffy.