Dracula

If the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys got together with a Victorian expert and a diehard fan of everything vampire, and then they all read Bram Stoker's Dracula together, they would write The Annotated Dracula, by Leslie Klinger. As it turns out, Leslie Klinger is all of those types of people, as well as an extremely intelligent and philosophical guy. It reads like you and Klinger got together and read every single word of Dracula (not an easy task), which has something to say on almost every single page.

You'll learn more than you thought possible about Victorian England. You'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about the railway schedules for almost every train in England and Europe. (I'd forgotten how much train travel there was in this book.) You'll also learn much about specific London streets and whereabouts, as well as about Carfax, Parfleet, and many other places in England. You'll learn the rivers, streets and locales of Buda-Pesth (I did remember that this was--and maybe still is--the original spelling of Budapest. But now I know why it is.) You'll learn everything you'll ever want to know about everything vampire and Dracula--including the surprising fact that the original Count had no problem at all walking around in the daylight. (That's a movie construct, mostly from 1922's Nosferatu.)

You'll see all of the discrepancies, minor (none of the journal and diary dates jive) and major (I did remember that Stoker had his characters give poor Lucy many blood transfusions--without concerning themselves with blood type. Even as a kid I knew you can't do that, as you can't empty and change a person's blood like you can a car's oil. But blood transfusions were a relatively new-ish thing in 1897, and Stoker took a chance and threw it in there.). Many of these discrepancies, like how there seems to be a full moon every single night, and how one train in Varna couldn't have gotten someplace as it says because it would actually take a lot longer, you could probably do without. But it's like MTV's Pop-up Videos: if you're in the mood for such arcania, you'll love it, if for no other reason than to just pass the time. (You don't watch Pop-up Video to learn something, do you?) Anyway, if you don't enjoy that kind of quaint nothingness, you probably shouldn't be reading this.

I'd read Dracula twice before, but I wanted to read it again with somebody who knew a lot about everything Victorian, as my current WIP partially takes place in 1890s New England. (Not the same, I know, I know.) But I wanted a feel for the time. And Klinger is an expert on everything Victorian, as he has also written a book that annotates every single Sherlock Holmes short story and novel that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. Klinger did the same for Poe, too, but of course Poe was of an earlier time. (These books are all on my list of things to do.)

The constant sidenotes don't deter from the actual reading of Dracula, though someone who's never had to read scholarly things with a ton of footnotes, endnotes or sidenotes may take awhile to get used to this. I read the book and stopped to read the notes every time a little number appeared, and never got sidetracked. Some of these notes are short, some very long, and often there are consecutive pages of notes without the novel, to get caught up with itself. And the print of these notes are not the super-small letters you may remember from the glosses of your collegiate or academic days, so they're fine to read, without straining.

My one caveat is that Klinger uses a conceit that all of the characters are real people, and that the discrepancies are an intentional attempt to hide the truth that they don't actually kill Dracula at the end, and that he lives to fight another day--in tons of other books, movies, comics, graphic novels, etc. You get the idea. Occasionally this conceit did stay me, and I swiftly moved on over such notes. Klinger did this in his Annotated Sherlock Holmes as well, and I wish he hadn't done so here, but how else can you do this kind of thing and yet make it different from all of the similar annotated books of Dracula out there? (Yes, there are several.) Klinger also had to convince his publisher to print such a book as this, and I guarantee this conceit was in his pitch. Otherwise, it may have come across as yet another glossed scholarly work, and who the hell wants to publish or read another one of those? (Well, okay, I read a lot of the scholarly articles Klinger cites in his bibliography, cuz I'm cool like that.) Still, you've got to make it different, and you've got to make it interesting.

So I forgave Klinger this trespass (and I skimmed over many of those annotated conceits) and I read it to enjoy all of the other notes--plus the book itself. Don't forget about the book! It was still as clumsily written as I'd remembered it, and yet it was still as effective as I'd remembered it--sometimes in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way. (Everyone interrogates Renfield as he's dying, and then they all leave him to die alone on the floor as they--finally!--run to Mina's room.) And, yeah, Dracula, as it turned out, was hiding in the building next to Seward's asylum almost the whole time. Whatever.

So if you like Dracula, the book, or the movies, or the Victorian Era, or if you're in the mood for a MST3K riff on all of these things, then this is the book for you. It also comes with the famous short story, "Dracula's Guest," that looks like an early attempt at a Dracula chapter, but not a "missing" or edited-out chapter, like you may have heard. There are many more discrepancies between novel and story than similarities, and it wasn't published at all until after Stoker died, which means it probably was never supposed to see the light of day. (See what I did there?) He published a few books of collected short stories, so if he'd wanted to publish it, he would have. This story looks like a discarded draft of a chapter that was going to show part of Harker's journey to Transylvania, but it's obviously not necessary, and Harker himself is never mentioned in it, so you should enjoy it as a separate story. It's still cool, as "The Dead Travel Fast," is still there, and it's still creepy enough.

Overall, highly recommended, especially in an appropriately-nerdy, have fun as you learn kind of way. And there's nothing at all wrong with admitting that.

Alexia Chamberlynn -- Book Launch: Martinis with the Devil

I'm very happy and super-excited to have my friend and fellow-scribe Alexia Chamberlynn as a guest blogger today, so we can talk about her newest novel, Martinis with the Devil, Part One.

Alexia says that Martinis is free for a couple of weeks at Smashwords and B & N, so please read our short interview below and snatch it up! Here are some links:

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/622489


B & N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/martinis-with-the-devil-part-one-alexia-chamberlynn/1123516459?ean=2940152918359


Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Martinis-Devil-Part-Zyan-Star-ebook/dp/B01CXT1RR0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459961280&sr=1-1&keywords=chamberlynn


Let's start with a few words about your book. What's on the book flaps?


When offered a job on the Holy Representative’s special security team, bounty hunter Zyan Star couldn’t be less interested – until she finds out it’s her most hated of exes that they’re trying to track down. He broke her heart and dumped her, which in turn led to the loss of her soul at the hands of an immortal soul thief. Now she too exists on a diet of souls, with the occasional martini thrown in for good measure, and she’s had over two hundred years to fantasize about revenge. She just didn’t quite imagine it playing out alongside the emissaries of Heaven.

Working with Eli, the uptight angel that heads up the HR’s security, is just about as much fun as Zy expects. He of course wants her vampire ex brought to justice through legal avenues, which is very inconvenient and incredibly boring. As she dives into the case, however, she realizes there’s more at stake than her plot for payback. Like, the free will of mankind, and preventing the minions of hell from taking over the sovereign dimensions.

This job is going to push her to the limits of her abilities, and there’s just a slight problem with that: the powers she’s suppressed for centuries after losing control of them are exactly the powers she’s going to need to save the HR, end her millennia-old ex and stop Lucifer’s little plot to join the party and invade Earth.

Savior of humanity? Not so much. Or so she thought.


Heartbreak, martinis and revenge! Niiiiiiiiiiice! That's how it should always be! Now about you.What would your book's author blurb say?


Alexia lives in Florida. When she's not writing or reading, she can be found playing with horses, drinking wine, traveling to the next place on her global wish list, or maybe doing yoga. She is represented by Sandy Lu of the L. Perkins Agency.


When did you start writing?


I started writing stories when I was about five and never stopped. At around ten I submitted my first story to a magazine (Ranger Rick!) and got my first rejection. At twelve I attempted my first novel, which was about horses.


Good call! I sent a crappy poem to the New Yorker when I was about ten so I could get the first rejection out of the way! What kind of stuff do you like to write?


Fantasy, specifically contemporary or urban fantasy. It’s my favorite thing to read and write, because I absolutely love magic and the fantastical. I like to be taken on an adventure outside the usual realms of possibility. Being struck with inspiration for a new story, and then entering that raw, creative stage of the first draft. Anything is possible, and it’s just the best feeling ever. Some people are scared of the blank page, but I love it. Writing is magic.


Definitely. It keeps ya sane. What do you do when you're not writing?


I have a horse, and I train with him (he’s still young). I also do yoga, and I like to walk, and occasionally jog. Also a big foodie, so trying new recipes is fun (and drinking wine while I’m cooking!). Traveling is also a big love of mine. And reading, of course.


I love reading, too. Fiction is a great teacher, and a great escape! Who are your favorite authors?


Neil Gaiman is my current favorite. I also love Maggie Stiefvater, Erin Morgenstern and Laini Taylor. My early inspirations were Tolkien, Tad Williams, Tamora Pierce, Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, and then a bit later Laurell K. Hamilton and Tanya Huff.


My first story was "A Christmas Carole," which was really a holiday card for my Mom, named [see title], one Christmas when she was really sick. I was seven, so I can't vouch for the quality! What inspired you to start writing?


I didn’t have that one defining moment that writers talk about. I’ve just always loved books and written my own stories. As I mentioned above, it was young, around when I was five. The first thing I remember writing was a story about a girl getting a pony for Christmas, which I wrote to manipulate my parents!


Hey, I hope that worked and you got that pony! Now--vampires! What's your favorite thing vampire?


My first foray into urban fantasy was through Laurell K. Hamilton and her Anita Blake vampire hunter series. I also loved Buffy. I mean, she's so fun. That's one thing that I like about Zyan is that she's fun. Not too serious, not too dark. She doesn't take much seriously. I also loved the first Underworld movie.


Yeah--Kate Beckinsale kickin' butt! Speaking of that, your heroine, Zyan Star, has a kickass job--a bounty hunter! What's the most kickass job you've ever had?


Hmmm. Probably my most kickass job was as a horse trainer and equine massage therapist. Of course, being a writer is pretty kickass. You get to create worlds, breathe life into characters, and hold the balance of good and evil in your hands :)


Very true. Okay, to finish up: Drinks and Devils. Besides Satan himself, what other badass would you like to have a drink and a chat with?


Probably Death. I mean, what an interesting job! I'd love to find out more about it.


Okay, now the drink. My favorite martini is boringly traditional: Ketel One, dirty, with olives, rocks on the side. What's yours?


I like flavored ones. Probably my favorite is a key lime martini (maybe because I'm from Florida). I've also had really great creamsicle martinis and a chocolate/butterscotch one that was to die for! Basically, dessert in a glass, but with a kick :)


Thanks, Alexia!


If bounty hunters, angels, vampires, heartbreak, martinis and the Devil--all mashed together in an urban fantasy romp--sounds good to you, please get a free copy (available for the next few weeks) of Alexia's book, Martinis with the Devil, Part One, available now at the following links, provided again below for your convenience:


Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/622489


B & N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/martinis-with-the-devil-part-one-alexia-chamberlynn/1123516459?ean=2940152918359


Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Martinis-Devil-Part-Zyan-Star-ebook/dp/B01CXT1RR0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459961280&sr=1-1&keywords=chamberlynn

Notes from A Stephen King Interview, Part 2

Photo: Stephen King at The Harvard Bookstore, June 6, 2005.  From his Wikipedia page.

[This is Part 2 of a blog started a few days ago, which you can go to here if you don't want to scroll.]

[Stephen King gave this sort of loose interview to The Atlantic on April 12, 2011.  The interview was in conjunction with a new-at-the-time short story, "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive," which you can read here.  (You should read the story first before continuing on with this blog entry.)]

To another vein.  You know how your writing and English teachers always tell you to walk around with pen and paper (or, today, an iPhone, or an iPad, or just talk into your cell, or--) because you must write down that great idea or you'll forget it?  Well, the guy who has sold more books than anyone currently alive says:

I never write ideas down. Because all you do when you write ideas down is kind of immortalize something that should go away. If they're bad ideas, they go away on their own.

For the record, I also believe this, and I very rarely write anything down.  When I do, I hardly ever use them.  I also believe that ideas you'll use will germinate in your head and simply not leave until you write them into a story.  All the other ideas are unwanted guests who are correctly shown the door.  The more I practice this, the more writing I get done.  The more I let every single idea take root, I stray or the elevator stops.

Out of nowhere, practically, King gives a pretty good description of what poetry is good for:

[Poetry] takes ordinary life, it takes things that we all see, and concentrates them in this beautiful gem. When the good ones do that, that's what you get. When the Philip Larkins or the James Dickeys do that, you get something that is heightened, that says to us that reality is finer and more beautiful and more mysterious than we could ever possibly express ourselves. Which is why we need poetry.

Indeed so.  I'm not a good enough poet to do this myself--I've only managed to sell one poem, though it's also true that I've only sent out one poem--but I agree that this is what good poetry can do.  It's life, super-concentrated, super-compact.  I wrote a line that says, "A poem is a thought shared in compacted time."  I believe this to be true.

But I respectfully disagree with King on one point.  When asked to compare the short story markets of his youth to the ones today, King said:

All those magazines published short fiction. And it started to dry up. And now you can number literally on two hands the number of magazines that are not little presses that publish short fiction.

While this may be true in terms of physical, tangible magazines you hold in your hands, this is not true overall.  There are a ton of markets--many of them big, that pay well--on the Web.  They're called e-magazines.  I've been published in a few of them, and they often pay better than the hand-held, paper ones.  A sign of the times, but a fact nonetheless.

In fact, when King says that people don't read short stories (or much else) anymore, I would politely disagree with that, as well.  Those online mags wouldn't be able to pay what they do if nobody was reading them.  And there's a ton of decent-paying online mags. Again, I know: I've been in them.

And, finally, here's an interesting irony:

JP: It is odd, though, if you think about it, that with all the speeding-up that we're being told about, and the dwindling of the attention span and all that, that people would rather chomp their way through a 400-pager than just get zapped by a little story ...

SK: And so many of the 400-pagers are disposable in themselves. When I see books by some of the suspense writers that are popular now, I think to myself: "These are basically books for people who don't want to read at all." It just kind of passes through the system. It's like some kind of fast-food treat that takes the express right from your mouth to your bowels, without ever stopping to nourish any part of you. I don't want to name names, but we know who we're talking about.

This is also true.  I'll name names for him: James Patterson.  Many of the heart-felt vampire books, or young-heroine dystopias.  But, I should also add, in all honesty: Stephen King himself, sometimes.

I think he would admit that, most of the time.  He was just having a negative, cranky interview.

Night Shift by Stephen King

Photo: First edition hardcover, from the book's Wikipedia site.


Very successful collection of short stories that spawned some (really bad) movies.  I'd read this book as a much younger guy, but had forgotten most of the stories, so I went back to it and appreciated it all over again.  I've lost somewhere my original copy--the one shown here--and so I've had to make do with the "Children of the Corn," movie tie-in version I have here now.  Somebody, probably me, had switched copies over the years, and I can't tell you why.  Odd.  And I want the original one back.

The ones I remembered from (literally) my youth were: "The Last Rung on the Ladder" (still my favorite here), "Jerusalem's Lot," "Graveyard Shift," "Strawberry Spring," "The Bogeyman," "Gray Matter," and, because of the incredibly bad movies, "Children of the Corn" and "Lawnmower Man."

"The Last Rung on the Ladder" and "The Woman in the Room" work especially well because there's nothing supernatural in them.  Both stories--especially the former--read well because they are of the "Nothing's More Scary than Real Life" genre--which should be a genre if it isn't.

All of the stories are either good or very good, but I was pleased to discover a couple more.  "One for the Road" works really well, and is one of the scarier ones here.  If "Jerusalem's Lot" was originally a chapter in Salem's Lot--I think I got this right from King, who said it opened his book and was taken out just like Stoker's "Dracula's Guest" opened up Dracula and was taken out--then "One for the Road" takes place after Salem's Lot ends.  It's mentioned in the story that Ben Mears had burned the town down.  I would've put this story last in the collection, rather than second-to-last.  "Jerusalem's Lot" opens it up, so it would've been nice book-ending to have "One for the Road" end it.  Or perhaps that's too-slick serendipity, like the similar paths taken by Stoker's and King's vampire stories.

"One for the Road," "Strawberry Spring" and "The Last Rung on the Ladder" are the best-written stories here.  Almost all of these stories, by the way, were originally published in Cavalier magazine, a now-defunct magazine of a certain sort, if you know what I mean.  I wonder what men of the 70s made out of these well-written, and sometimes philosophically-bent, ruminations next to those explicitly explicit pictures of...well, you know.  It'd be a little jolting, I'd imagine.  He also got paid a few hundred bucks, per story, by that magazine, which is really good money for short stories, especially in the 70s.  My guess is that the magazine was trying to become the next glossy picture and literary high-end magazine of one of its bunny-themed competitors, and failing miserably.  (That bunny magazine, by the way, still pays a few thousand dollars for a short story, and always has.  So the lie could also be "I was reading the stories!" instead of "I buy it for the articles!")

Anyway, what I've learned here is that King has an idea and he writes it.  The simplicity of that is sort of shocking to me.  So here we have a story about a possessed laundry-pressing machine; a story about monstrous and blind rats; a story about trucks taking over the world; a story of a company that hurts those you love to help you quit smoking; a story about a hitman done in by the toys sent by the mother of his latest victim...and they all work, in varying degrees.

Think it, write it; think it, write it; think it, write it.  And why not?

Dark Visions, Vol. 1--Memorably Good (and Short) Horror Stories

Photo: book's cover, from beforeitsnews.com


If you like horror, and you like short stories, go get a copy of Dark Visions 1: A Collection of Modern Horror, an anthology of original short stories, edited by Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson.  It's available on Amazon, here.  A few notes about a couple of the stories to show you why it's so good:

--Mister Pockets, by NYT bestselling author and multiple Stoker Award-winner Jonathan Maberry.

Very effective short story about a "twelve-year old fat kid" who is barely beginning to understand his place in the world, and where others think his place is.  His place at present is in a town that's just recovering from The Trouble.  Nobody talks about it, but it happened, and it may be happening again.  What's The Trouble?  Well, suffice it to say that the kid goes one-on-one with a very pretty and very alluring vampire-like thing, and he would've been done for had he not earlier given a candy bar to a strange-smiling homeless man, nicknamed [see title].  (Great title, by the way.)

Maberry may be one of the more successful horror writers I've not heard of before.  The short author bio before the story lists an unbelievable amount of writing this man has been paid for since 1978.  If that sounds a little like envy on my part, it's because it is.

The Weight of Paradise by Jeff Hemenway

Creepy story about scientist-wannabes who find a cure for cancer.  By doing so, the cured become immortal.  But, as it turns out, forever comes for a price, and it's painful.  If you're familiar with the genre, you've seen this sort of morality tale before, but not as well-done as this.  It's a horror tale with the wistful sadness of some of Jack Ketchum's short stories.  That's a good thing.

Incidentally, it's always cool to see that a professional  author has been published in the same magazines as you.  In this case, Hemenway's been in Big Pulp, the same good folks who recently purchased the rights to my story, "The Zombie's Lament."  Another author, later in the collection, will soon be published in Space and Time, as I was.  Cool deal, man.  Good for the old ego.

The Troll by Jonathan Balog

A 20-page story that reads like 10, which is one of the things I look for in a slightly-longer short story.  (I like my short stories short--10 pages or fewer--and I tend to write very short ones, too.)  Anyway, the troll of the story looks more like a metrosexual pimp, but what he tells the 12-year old narrator to do is a bit more.  Though he does pimp the kid out, if I may be so bold.  The troll is quite a bit like Pennywise the Clown, except when the story's done, the reader may wonder who the real troll was--the troll, or the narrator?  A good study of adolescent evil.  Very well-written, and very quickly read.

Delicate Spaces by Brian Fatah Steele

Perhaps my favorite so far in this collection.  A group of paranormal researchers answer a dare for free rooming at a hotel that wants to drum up business, hoping they'll stay longer.  Very realistic dialogue and action make the reader feel like he's observing the middle of something, just being dropped right in there.  What they see before they're about to leave will catch the reader breathless.  Very professionally written and described; you'll feel this frightening incident could actually happen.

There are 13 stories in all, and there's a lot to like here.  So, suffice it to say, if you like your horror in small pieces, you'll like this book as much as I did.  Again, it's available here at Amazon.  The Kindle is only $3.99, and a new paperback starts at $11.94.  It's worth it.