Night Gallery: The Girl With The Hungry Eyes

Hulu is hosting several episodes from Rod Serling's TV series Night Gallery. One of the episodes is "The Girl With The Hungry Eyes," based on Fritz Leiber's classic tale of psychic vampirism of the same name. The great thing about this adaptation is that it is faithful to the source material. I preferred the story, but this episode does no shame to it. Cool stuff.

Review : The Dracula Book Of Great Vampire Stories

I have been reading short vampire fiction recently, in the hopes of filling in gaps. When I was selecting an anthology to read, I passed over The Dracula Book Of Great Vampire Stories because I thought I had already read all of the stories in it. On closer inspection, I was wrong... there were several stories in it that I should have already read, but hadn't. Don't make the same mistake that I did - there is a good reason why The Dracula Book Of Great Vampire Stories is in print three decades after its original publication. It is as close to a school textbook on classic vampire fiction as you are likely to find.

The stories in it were selected by Leslie Shepard, who also contributes an introduction. These stories, which range from the late 1800's through the early 1900's, are stone-cold classics of the vampire genre. At thirteen stories, The Dracula Book Of Great Vampire Stories has no fat.

The Dracula Book Of Great Vampire Stories is one more example that "old" doesn't equal "boring" - there are several genuinely disturbing tales to be found in this anthology. I also found them quick and easy to read. That being said, for fans of current vampire fiction, be advised that these are very different stories than the kind you are used to reading. But you may find yourself caught up in it; I'd certainly like to think so. Personally, I find it sad that we don't see this type of vampire fiction as often these days.

My personal favorites in the book -

"Carmilla," by Sheridan Le Fanu - if I have to explain this one to you, you really should be reading "Carmilla" and not my blog. One of the most essential pieces in the history of vampire literature.

"The Horla," by Guy De Maupassant - I don't really consider this a vampire story, but "The Horla" is a chilling forerunner to the style of paranoid, cosmic horror most people associate with H.P. Lovecraft.

"The Room In The Tower," by E.F. Benson - has the feeling of the kind of nightmares experienced by the protagonist. "Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower."

"The Transfer," by Algernon Blackwood - this one is about a mental battle between two psychic vampires - a human and a disconcerting patch of ground. That synopsis might sound funny, but the ending gave me the creeps.

"Mrs. Amworth," by E.F. Benson - another Benson tale, which means that I need to see if there is a good collection of his horror tales in print. Creepy people staring in your window at night = not good.

And The Dracula Book Of Great Vampire Stories also includes Bram Stoker's "Dracula's Guest," which also appears in the anthology Vampire Stories, which I read a couple of weeks ago.

If you hadn't guessed, I highly recommend this book. It belongs on even the most casual vampire fan's bookshelf.

Oh My Goth on VampChix

Michele Hauf over at VampChix is hosting Oh My Goth, a piece I wrote concerning the use of goth characters in current urban fantasy. Go check it out, and keep your eye on VampChix in general - one of my favorite vampire blogs!

Review: The Vampire Diaries

Full disclosure - before its premiere, The Vampire Diaries TV series "sponsored" my programming at Dragon*Con earlier this year. And to be honest, at the time I was worried about the show's quality. While I had read several of L.J. Smith's Night World books back in the 1990's, I had never read The Vampire Diaries. But regardless of its source material, the show itself looked like a Twilight knockoff. Luckily, the series has proven me wrong; in fact, I think it is a superb "horror gateway drug" for teens.

And it is definitely a "teen show" - make no mistake about that. But while I am hardly the show's desired demographic, it has won me over with its cast and evolving storyline.

The first episode was wobbly, and I know that a lot of people tuned out after watching it. The next couple of episodes were better, but I still considered the show to be a guilty pleasure at best. But around episode four, it started to become a lot more compelling. Now, I freely admit that I am a fan.

Basically, The Vampire Diaries started embracing its horror leanings and killing off supporting characters. While I know that the three lead characters are going to survive any given episode, most everyone else is fair game. The unpredictability gives the show legitimate suspense. And for a "teen show" on The CW, there is a fair amount of blood; The Vampire Diaries remembers that it is "a vampire show." Speaking of which, while there are some wrinkles to the standard lore (vervain, rather than garlic, acts as a bane), the vampires are still recognizably vampires, and carry many of the traditional trappings.

The main cast is likable. Nina Dobrev is not only insanely cute, she is also a pretty good actress for this kind of material. She makes Elena a strong, grounded protagonist. For the first few episodes, Paul Wesley was stuck with the thankless task of playing "mysterious vampire love interest guy," but he has begun to break out of that somewhat and give his character more... "character." Everyone says that Ian Somerhalder steals the show as Damon Salvatore, and that's true. Damon is not a generic "bad boy," but a manipulative, evil dick. But he is at least a funny and entertaining manipulative, evil dick.

Give the show a chance, you might be surprised. I know I was. Episode 10, "The Turning Point," ended on a cliffhanger to be resolved in January; I am certainly curious to see how it plays out.

The Dead Grey Eye: How I Learned To Stop Hating And Accept "Twilight"

For many readers, the Twilight franchise has to be like the elephant in the room that I somehow keep overlooking. Even though it is the biggest vampire property at the moment, I never write about it. And the fact is that I dislike it. But not as much as I used to.

When I started Mondo Vampire, I hated Twilight. Just seeing Stephenie Meyer's face or Robert Pattinson's hair was enough to set me off on a vicious diatribe. I had struggled through 100 pages of the first book before I gave up. People can mock the sparkly vampires all they want, but for me, the deal breaker was the character of Bella Swan. I could have overlooked everything else if the book had given me a protagonist I could root for. But Bella was a petulant brat, and I knew that I could not follow her issues through four books. Interestingly, I watched the movie and tolerated it... it was one time where not being able to see into a character's head made for a substantially more likable individual.

But one day, I realized that I just didn't hate Twilight like I used to. It occurred to me that we all have to get our start somewhere. The first vampire thing that I ever loved was the movie The Lost Boys. At the time (and even today), some more "hardcore" horror fans derided The Lost Boys as being empty teen fluff that cribbed from earlier sources. And you know what? They were right. But to a 15 year old kid who watched MTV and listened to hard rock, the movie connected. Vampires quit being the Z-grade Lugosi knockoffs who snuck in your window at night, and became vibrant and exciting. The Lost Boys is far from being the "best" vampire movie I have ever seen - but it is still my favorite one.

And I stuck around. This blog is proof of that. I started watching other vampire movies and reading vampire books. And that stuff that the "purists" said was superior to The Lost Boys? I made my way to those books and films and enjoyed them on their own terms. Ironically, for a guy who came to the genre in part because of flying trenchcoat vamps, my favorite type of vampire these days is the powerful aristocrat who calls the shots.

I have to admit that Twilight fans are a lot more open-minded than I ever expected. I was certain that Twilight was going to cause an influx of know-it-all "experts" whose entire interest in (and knowledge of) vampires began and ended with Stephenie Meyer. No question that there are fans out there like that, but the ones I have met are willing to dig a little deeper. And their interest is spurring sales of other, better, vampire books. New books and reprints alike are easily obtainable. Even people like me who don't like Twilight have to admit that it is nice to go into a bookstore and see cool new gift books about the undead. You can't credit all of that to the success of Twilight, but it certainly didn't hurt, either.

I guess what I am trying to say is, lighten up. If you don't like something, don't read it. Don't watch the movies. Don't buy the increasingly inane merchandise. Yeah, I wish that something good had spurred the current interest in vampires, but the point is - people are interested in vampires. Above all, support what you like. Vote with your wallet. I always get annoyed when people harp on how vampires have been "defanged." Did you see Let The Right One In? Have you read Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt novels? How exactly does Stephenie Meyer's success invalidate Near Dark? It doesn't. The "good stuff" is still there. And some of those Twilight fans are going to stick around long enough to discover it.

Favorite Top 10 Best TV/Movie Vampires of the Decade

Since everyone else is slapping together a "Top 10" list of vampires, I thought it was high time for Mondo Vampire to get in on that action. Since most of the Top 10 lists I've seen primarily reflect television and film (books? What is this "reading" concept?), I have decided to restrict myself to those formats. And to show that I am hip to what those kids like these days, I am only going to pick vampires who made their TV or movie debuts this decade - though some of them previously appeared in fiction or were portrayed by a different actor.

1.) ELI (Lina Leandersson, voice: Elif Ceylan) from Let The Right One In

Dear Sweden,

First your hard rock bands made North America's bands look bad. Now you are showing us up in the vampire movie department as well. Thanks a lot, Sweden.

Sincerely,

Derek Tatum

2.) HENRY FITZROY (Kyle Schmid) from Blood Ties

Be honest. If you were trying to be an ethical vampire, which would you rather be: a glum, tortured do-gooder or a fun-loving rich guy who macks on chicks? This is not rocket science, people.

3.) ERIC NORTHMAN (Alexander Skarsgård) from True Blood

Vikings are cool, owning a vampire bar is cool. Ergo, Eric Northman is cool. Plus, he can fly.

4.) VIKTOR (Bill Nighy) from the Underworld movies

Not only is Bill Nighy awesome, but for some reason Viktor sometimes sounded like he was doing a Col. Sanders impersonation. If anything, that made him awesomer.

5.) DAMON SALVATORE (Ian Somerhalder) from The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries started off like a typical teen-vampire-romance thing, and then THIS cock-blocker showed up and started killing people. Damon, FTW.

6.) BUTTERS STOTCH (voice: Matt Stone) from "The Ungroundable" episode of South Park

I am one of the few people who feels this way, but I think that "The Ungroundable" episode of South Park was an important service announcement.

7.) SELENE (Kate Beckinsale) from the Underworld movies

My answer to seeing Gerard Butler's portrayal of Dracula on other lists.

8.) MAX SCHRECK (Willem Dafoe) from Shadow Of The Vampire

Willem Dafoe was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. For playing a vampire. 'Nuff said.

9.) PUPPET ANGEL (voice: David Boreanaz) from the "Smile Time" episode of Angel

Yes, Angel as a character appeared prior to this decade. But Puppet Angel is exclusive to the New Millennium.

10.) KUNG-FU MARIUS (Vincent Perez) from Queen Of The Damned

Sure, we knew from Anne Rice's books that Marius was a painter. But until the Queen of the Damned movie, we had no idea that he was also capable of over-the-top Matrix-style fight sequences! Boy, Queen of the Damned was an embarrassing movie.

Contest: Winners of Vampire Taxonomy Announced!

And the lucky winners are...

DEEDLES

and

SABLE

Congratulations, and I hope that you enjoy the book!

Thanks again to Perigree/Penguin for the terrific prize.

Biteline: Remake-O-Rama

I read over at the excellent io9 blog that the proposed Fright Night remake is "on" again. Sheesh. The current writer attached to the project is Marti Noxon, best-known to genre fans for her work on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Nothing against Noxon, but I haven't a clue how this is going to work. There simply isn't a correlation in this day and age to the kind of "late night horror host" that Roddy MacDowell played - and his character "Peter Vincent" was a large part of the original's charm. I wish Noxon well and will give her the benefit of the doubt, but I'll be curious how it plays out. Personally, I think this is a case where a remake "loosely inspired" by the original would be a greater tribute than something that slavishly follows the exact same storyline.

And we also have director Matt Reeves' adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Let The Right One In coming up as well. Director Tomas Alfredson's version was so good that I think that this one is an exercise in utter pointlessness. At least Reeves' love for the source material seems sincere. Interestingly, this new version is set in New Mexico; probably a smart move, as setting it in a snowy climate would invite even more comparisons to the original. Chloë Moretz has been cast as "Abby," the character who was named "Eli" in the novel and film. Moretz has gotten a lot of positive buzz for her role in the upcoming film Kick-Ass, so hopefully she'll be able to pull Abby off and make the role her own.

While I think that the remake thing is far out-of-hand to begin with, it does please me to hear that The Hunger is set for a reboot. Whitley Strieber's The Hunger is one of my favorite vampire novels, and I think that a new adaptation has real potential. I love Tony Scott's film version, but I'll admit that it is dated. Let's face it, most people remember the original movie because of 1.) the opening sequence featuring Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead," and 2.) the lesbian sex. I think that a director with a different stylistic approach could make this one worthwhile. Until then, I'll remain cautiously optimistic.

Hunger For The Marvelous: The Vampire Craze In The Computer Age

Last week I mentioned Katherine Ramsland's article "Hunger For The Marvelous" as being one of the major factors for my interest in "the whole vampire thing." I asked for her permission to run the article here as a historical piece. She agreed, so long as I credited her as the author and Psychology Today as the source. Done and done. It's a lot of fun to go back and read this article, 20 years later. It was the first time I remember seeing an intelligent article - and as the cover story, no less - about the subject in a non-genre magazine. I hope you all enjoy this look into the past.

Hunger For The Marvelous: The Vampire Craze In The Computer Age

by Katherine Ramsland

Psychology Today, November 1989

This summer may have been the season of bats and Batman, but the rest of the year belongs to the vampire. If pop culture's current preoccupation forecasts what to expect from the '90s, we're in for a lively time.

Little did anyone know when Anne Rice first published Interview with the Vampire in 1976 that it would grow into a trilogy (The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned) that has sold millions. Or that it would spawn an invasion of the undead and raise some interesting questions about why the computer generation has such a fascination with getting its bytes the old-fashioned way.

Prepare yourself for a slew of vampire entertainments, including a monthly novel series from Pinnacle Books and a new vampire detective from Warner Books. On television, August brought us the first of a wave of new vampire movies, USA Network's Nightlife, starring Ben Cross. September delivered Carmilla, the Shelley Duvall Showtime flick with Meg Tilly and Roddy McDowall, and Fox Television greeted Halloween with Dracula: Live from Transylvania. Other films in production: Dark Side, with Nick Cassavetes as the vampire; Transylvania Twist, a comedy with Robert Vaughn; and Cannon Film's Rockula, touted by its producers as a movie about sex, blood and rock 'n' roll.

All this further enlivens an atmosphere already well furnished with genre magazines (The Vampire Journal and Dead of Night), the Vampire Information Exchange, the Vampire Pen Pal Network, the Count Dracula Fan Club and, for the statistically inclined, the Vampire Research Center. The Center has just issued its 1989 Worldwide Vampire Census, complete with profiles of the typical male and female vampires: He looks 26 years old, has brown eyes and black hair, is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds. She looks 23, is also brown-eyed and black-haired, is 5 feet 6 inches tall and 120 pounds.

Needless to say, the hullabaloo has not escaped the attention of the nation's academics. Last year the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts founded the Lord Ruthven Assembly, whose membership includes more than 50 professors who probe the meaning of the vampire archetype in literature art and teenage folkways. Two members, Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally, attract about 70 students every year for their course on Dracula at Boston College. As a follow-up to their best-selling 1972 book, In Search of Dracula, Little, Brown & Co. is publishing Dracula, Prince of Many Faces this Halloween.

Vampires sell products, too. Advertisers use them to hawk cereal greeting cards, candy bars, nail polish, mouthwash and pizza. Vampire show up in children's programs, rock videos and comic books. Students can even study English with the help of Karen E. Gordon's The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed (Times Books). Some students seem to view the subject with an interest well beyond the grammatical or fictional: Folklorist Norine Dresser of California State University in Los Angeles reports in American Vampires: Fans, Victims, Practitioners that, in the privacy of a recent survey, 27% of 574 high school and college students admitted that they thought vampires might actually exist.

Hungering for the Marvelous

What explains this huge, seemingly insatiable thirst for vampires and their doings? Part, thank heaven, is pure fun. Beyond that, horror writer Stephen King points to the pulsing, aggressive sexual overtones of the vampire hunger among adolescents: "Impotency is never a threat, since vampires' sexual urges are completely oral," he says. "They are particularly interesting to teenagers who are sexually insecure."

But how about the rest of us? Our fascination with vampires seems to be part of a deep disenchantment, or boredom, with science and rationalism--a feeling reflected in our society's growing interest in mysticism, spirituality and belief in the paranormal. Surveys by sociologist/priest Andrew Greeley and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, for example, show that more than 40% of American adults believe they have had contact with the dead, nearly twice as many as 20 years ago. Two out of three report having experienced extrasensory perception. Three out of four believe in life after death, in which they will be reunited with loved ones. Meantime, New Age millions have taken to channeling, reincarnation and shamanistic drumming.

Father Greeley explains the vampire craze as the weird side of a healthy lust for religious substance. "It's a hunger for the marvelous. If you give up angels and devils--which I think is an awful mistake--some people are going to turn to aliens, Darth Vader and vampires. Life seems to be dull and unexciting, especially if you're just a yuppie, so you have to hunt for something marvelous enough to bring back the excitement." Greeley sees the religious imagination as the key to life's delight; the vampire cult and similar oddities are drab substitutes, junk food of spirituality.

Stephen Martin, who edits the journal Quadrant for the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York, gives vampire popularity a psychological twist. "Vampires are living parts of our humanity that people in a technological age have ignored. They have to do with the darkness and magic that is not given its due. If we ignore the unconscious, it becomes avaricious, voracious...the vampire is another side of our culture that needs a voice."

Humanizing the Inhuman

Our culture's need for vampires of its own has produced telling changes in the way we depict them, notes Ellen Datlow, editor of Blood Is Not Enough. "The vampire in literature and film has developed from a creature ruled entirely by instinct and need into a complex being with an inner life." We show vampires as more human, more accessible, less blatantly evil than before. Once audiences cheered for the vampire's destruction. Now they often see a vulnerable side and root for him to escape the stake.

In many of today's stories, vampires have left the Transylvanian aristocracy and moved into town as one of us--although with a certain extra panache. Suzy McKee Charnas, who wrote The Vampire Tapestry, points out, "Vampires are snappy dressers. Think what a zombie or a mummy wears. That's why vampires are so popular."

They're also sexier and better-looking these days. Frank Langella, first in the Broadway play Dracula and later in the 1979 movie version, started the breakthrough. The traditional Bela Lugosi figure--an aging aristocrat with fanglike teeth, a black opera cloak and an easy-to-parody East European accent--was someone to be feared, perhaps even respected. But Bela wasn't much of a sex symbol, while Langella insistently aroused visions of beds, not coffins.

Charles L. Grant, author of The Soft Whisper of the Dead, stresses how important this human side is to the vampire's wide, continuing appeal. "Vampires are popular because, of all the monsters, they're the most dangerous...the most human. Their habitat is night, and you can't tell who's a vampire and who's not. Everyone loves the vicarious danger."

Our increasingly complicated and hard-to-control society makes people seek out "never-never lands of imagination," says Pardon Tillinghast, a professor of history at Middlebury College. "We need monsters--in a controllable environment."

To explain the pull of vampires and other monsters, Tillinghast draws a line between terror and horror. "Terror is what you feel before the bomb goes off," he says. "Horror is what you feel after it has exploded and you're still alive. There may be some blood, but you're safe." We enjoy the thrill of horror that fictional monsters give us. The terror a murderous, bloodsucking creature would engender in real life would be too personally threatening.

Stephen Kaplan, director of the Vampire Research Center since 1972, has been counting vampires systematically since his first census in 1981. For the 1989 census, he sent a 99-item questionnaire to people who had contacted him--in person, over the phone or through letters--claiming to be a vampire or know of one. Among the questions: "How often do you drink blood?" "Do you sleep in a coffin?" "Have you ever been/are you now a member of a coven, a blood cult, a satanic cult?"

Kaplan puts his vampires in three categories: 1) fetishists erotically attracted to blood; 2) vampire imitators who adopt vampire trappings in search of powers of domination, immortality, sensuality, charisma; 3) true vampires. People qualify for Kaplan's purest category when they have a physical addiction to blood, drink it, believe it will prolong their lives, and find sexual satisfaction through the blood-drinking ritual.

Kaplan admits he's met many strange people in his work and seen many weird things. He doesn't believe, however, that there are any "real vampires" of the old school--creatures who can turn themselves into bats, can't live in daylight, are immortal (except to stakes through the heart), and really do sustain life by drinking human blood. But based on his census and his categories, Kaplan counts at least 50 true vampires in the United States now and estimates that there are 300 or more vampires of all kinds in the United States and 500 worldwide.

The Dark Side

The sometimes intense, sometimes playful interest in vampires has its dangerous aspects. Both Kaplan and Dresser describe people who participate in a secret vampire world that sometimes overlaps with sadomasochistic cults across the country. They find peace, strength and satisfaction in drinking blood they extract in various ways--with needles, sometimes through a bite, sometimes through whippings or beatings. Some of their willing victims exchange blood for money or sexual favors. Others apparently find sexual release in masochistic submission.

Blood-drinking murderers are also horribly real, now and throughout history. In early 20th-century England, Fritz Haarman killed several dozen boys by biting them on the neck. He drank their blood, then made them into sausages that he ate or sold in his butcher shop--a real-life Sweeney Todd. Last year, the centenary of the Jack the Ripper murders, several writers speculated that Jack might have been a vampire.

In our own country and decade, multiple murderers Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz and Richard Trenton Chase all had vampire connections. Bundy bit his victims and said he felt like a vampire. Son of Sam Berkowitz claimed he had been poisoned by bloodsucking demons that compelled him to kill. And Chase, dubbed the Vampire Killer by the press in the late 1970s, drank the blood of at least one of his six victims, thinking it would "cleanse him of his sins."

In 1981, James P. Riva was sentenced to life imprisonment in Massachusetts for shooting his grandmother and drinking her blood from the bullet holes, insisting all the while he was a vampire. In 1982, Jerry Moore killed his girlfriend in Chicago and drank her blood to gain strength. In Florida in 1985, a young woman accepted a ride from a businessman who kidnapped her and used intravenous needles to draw her blood. "I'm a vampire," he told her. Just last year, three boys killed a vagrant in Minnesota, licking the blood off their hands as they beat him. One of them cited the vampire film, The Lost Boys, as his inspiration.

Science Strikes Out

Not long ago, a Canadian biochemist tried unsuccessfully to shake the vampire mystique: David Dolphin proposed in 1985 that vampire legends might have started with a rare hereditary blood disease called porphyria, a disorder that produces a deficiency of heme, one of the pigments in oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Dolphin suggested that its victims might have sucked blood in a desperate attempt to obtain the heme their bodies lacked and alleviate the symptoms.

Porphyria is treatable today, but earlier victims suffered from extreme sensitivity to sunlight. They went out only at night--like you know who--since the sun could disfigure their skin horribly and cause their lips and gums to tighten until their teeth looked like fangs.

Instead of putting the vampire myth to rest, the idea gave it fresh blood. Dresser tells of porphyria victims who--after Dolphin's theory hit the media--became the butt of vampire jokes and drew suspicious stares from acquaintances. Vampires have too firm a hold on our psyches to be shaken by the simple logic of a medical explanation.

Clearly, the vampire is still alive and well in our culture, still renewing itself on human blood, which traditionally represents life, healing, kinship and empowerment. The vampire survived as a mythological creature in former times and in other cultures because it served some deep-seated need. The surge of interest in vampires in this decade, without the mythological trappings, tells us something meaningful about Western culture, the United States in particular.

"I think the vampire is a romantic, enthralling image," says Anne Rice,"... the image of this person who never dies and takes a blood sacrifice in order to live and exerts a charm over people; a handsome, alluring, seductive person who captivates us, then drains the life out of us so that he or she can live. We long to be one of them and the idea of being sacrificed to them becomes rather romantic."

Says Les Daniels, who wrote Citizen Vampire and Yellow Fog. "The sexual metaphors, from seduction to the stake, continue to resonate...Our era is more obsessed than any with immortality and eternal youth. The vampire is not really a menace. It's what we long to be."

Interview With The Vampire Writer

Anne Rice, whose vampire trilogy heated up the current craze, began her fascination with vampires very young. "My first encounter with vampires was seeing the movie Dracula's Daughter," she says. "I loved the tragic figure of the daughter as a regretful creature who didn't want to kill but was driven to it.

"When I was a child we had a story from the library called 'The White Silk Dress.' A child vampire told the story in the first person, and I thought it was quite wonderful. I was 8 or 9 years old and I never forgot it. I wanted to get into that vampire. That was the interesting point of view to me - the people right in the center of it all."

Unlike nearly all earlier writers, Rice has never seen vampires as fully monstrous creatures. "Vampires are tragic; they are not pure evil. They have a conscience, they suffer loneliness.

"The vampire is a cerebral image that transcends gender. I always saw them as romantic and abstract. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, they're presented as close to animals, but I always saw them as angels going in another direction….finely tuned imitations of human beings imbued with this evil spirit.

"The challenge of writing a vampire novel in the 20th century," Rice reflects, "is to write one that's fun about creatures of the night, yet still bring them into some sort of philosophical context that satisfies me.

"I didn't think about creating a credible vampire mind, I just did it. It was a challenge to take people who were supposed to be thousands of years old and imbue them with wisdom, and try to imagine what their shortcomings would be."

Could she see herself as a vampire? "If I were a vampire I would like to be Lestat," Rice says. "What fascinates me is that he knows right from wrong and he still does what he has to do. He's determined to be good at being bad."

Review: Vampire Stories edited by Richard Dalby

I've been in a mood to read some classic vampire short stories lately, and I had never read this particular collection. Like almost all anthologies, the various stories were hit or miss. Nature of the beast, I suppose.

A few of my personal favorites were -

"Dracula's Guest," by Bram Stoker - it's Stoker and it's Dracula. Hard to argue there.

"'And No Bird Sings,'" by E.F. Benson - a bloodthirsty "elemental" roams a patch of forest. This is a tale that I wouldn't call a "vampire story," but it was definitely atmospheric and eerie.

"Close Behind Him," by John Wyndham - a burglary gone wrong results in a vampiric haunting.

"The Woman On The Stairs," by Margery Lawrence - the book's best-told tale of psychic vampirism, this one was an "occult detective" adventure in the classic tradition.

"Chastel," by Manly Wade Wellman - Wellman is one of my favorite writers, and this story was rooted in the New England vampire scares of centuries past.

"The Master of Rampling Gate," by Anne Rice - I had never read this story, and I really enjoyed it.

"Saint Sebastian And The Mona Lisa," by A.F. Kidd - of the newer stories in this book, this was my favorite. It is an interesting take on artistic inspiration.

So there you have it. Vampire Stories is currently out-of-print in the U.S., but like many anthologies, it may be reprinted in the future. It should not be difficult to find if it sounds of interest.

Video: The Vampire Princess

Just a quick note to let you all know that the Smithsonian's YouTube channel features a fascinating documentary about a noblewoman who was accused of vampirism. The program runs 53 minutes, and is well worth watching for those of you who are interested in the history of the undead.

The official description for the program reads: "While Dracula is the name most people associate with vampires, a graveyard in the Czech Republic has revealed that it may have been a princess, not a count, who was the inspiration for that dark tale."

The documentary can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqTOTIrfMrM .

Review: Dhampir by Barb and J.C. Hendee

Dhampir is the first book in the Hendee's Noble Dead series, and it rocks the hizouse. It reminds me of a pile-up between Ravenloft, John Steakley's Vampire$, and the Peter Jackson film The Frighteners. If you don't like more "traditional" fantasy settings, don't let that stop you from reading it. I don't read much traditional fantasy myself, but that did not get in the way of my enjoyment of this novel. The focus is still very much on the characters; you are not going to have to memorize maps or a glossary before reading this one.

The protagonists of Dhampir are Magiere and Leesil, two nomadic hustlers who travel the countryside bilking villagers of their money. Magiere pretends to be a vampire hunter, and for a fee, she will "rid" a community of its vampire - played by Leesil. But Magiere is tired of the con, and wants to settle down as a simple innkeeper. The problem is, her reputation as a "vampire hunter" follows her around, and unbeknownst to her or Leesil, the town they settle in has a small coven of very real vampires. Naturally, they assume that this "innkeeper" thing is a disguise, and that Magiere has come to town to kill them. It turns out that Magiere is really a dhampir - half human, half vampire - and she has an innate talent for killing the undead. But is killing vampires her destiny... or is she being manipulated? What happens next can best be described as "mayhem."

All of the characters in Dhampir are well-drawn. The Hendees do not soft-pedal what Magiere and Leesil are doing to the poor villagers at the beginning of the book. The characters have backstories that explain why they have the outlook that they do, but the book in no way excuses their behavior. When Magiere and Leesil decide to take a stand and do the right thing, the story becomes as much about redemption as it is about killing things. And while the vampires are the villains of the piece, the Hendees make them sympathetic and believable. Rashed, the vampire leader, may be a ruthless killer but he genuinely cares about his charges. Another vampire, Teesha, is given a tragic backstory.

Dhampir kicks off the Noble Dead series with a bang. I look forward to reading subsequent volumes.

Review + Contest: Vampire Taxonomy by Meredith Woerner

Ever since the publication of Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide, the humor section has been invaded by a number of books speculating on how to best deal with supernatural beings. It shouldn't surprise anyone that vampires would get in on the humorous handbook action, and Vampire Taxonomy is the latest book that seeks to entertain readers.

Vampire Taxonomy was written by Meredith Woerner, one of the writers at io9.com - one of the best SF/Fantasy newsblogs I have run across, fwiw. While this book is mainly meant as a bit of a lark, Woerner's knowledge of the subject shines through. It is also fairly up-to-date, and Woerner acknowledges that there is more to current vampire pop culture than Buffy, True Blood, and Twilight.

Most of the book is made up of a mock field guide, with the undead broken into various categories that will be familiar to anyone who keeps up with vampire pop culture. By doing this, Woerner zeroes in on the genre's cliches, and makes some pretty funny observations about them. But rather than come off as belittling to vampire fans, Woerner seems to like a good deal of this stuff herself. The result is a book that pokes fun at the subject without contemptuously sneering at the fans.

Longtime vampire fans probably won't learn anything new here, but Vampire Taxonomy is a quick, lighthearted read. With its many examples from literature, film, and television, the book is also a pretty neat little primer for people just getting into the subject.

Vampire Taxonomy is now on sale, but you have a chance to win a copy through this blog. Perigree/Penguin USA has donated two copies of Vampire Taxonomy to be given away. It's a fun addition to your vampire library, or a great gift for a neophyte vampire fan who has come in on the latest wave. To take a suggestion from Patricia Altner (who is also giving away copies), leave a comment below. Please specify your e-mail address so I can contact you should you win. Also, this contest is open to US residents only. The contest will end on November 16, 2009, with winners announced November 17.

The Dead Grey Eye: My 20th Year Anniversary as a Vampire Fan

How time flies... November 2009 marks what I consider my 20th year anniversary as a vampire fan.

I have always been interested in monsters, including vampires, but it was November 1989 when I began to specialize in the undead. I remember 1989 as the year when I noticed vampire pop culture broadening beyond the horror genre. The reason why? That month's issue of Psychology Today, which ran a cover story on the subject. The piece was titled "A Hunger For The Marvelous," and it was written by Katherine Ramsland. Ramsland focuses mainly on criminology and forensics these days, but she is also well-known for her writings on vampires and the works of Anne Rice.

"A Hunger For The Marvelous" really opened my eyes to what was going on with vampires at the time. Sure, I had read books that dealt with vampire folklore or classic movies, but this article was the first piece of (then) contemporary non-fiction writing that I ever read on the topic. It showed me that vampires were, pardon the pun, alive and well in modern society, in a way that no other monsters were at the time. Interestingly, it was also the first time I saw an article spotlighting, as it is worded on the cover, "the sudden, curious allure of vampires." As we have seen, every few years since 1989 the topic is "suddenly" discovered to be popular. But from my experience, Psychology Today was the first mainstream publication to run such an article.

To this day, I can't really put my finger on why the image of the vampire clicked with me and then stuck around. I think a major reason is that few monsters at the time were being treated in the same way as vampires were. There were novels about werewolves and mummies and other classic horror archetypes, but by and large those books treated the monsters as "the other." By the end of the 1980's, you could find more and more books that dealt with what it was like to be a vampire; being an outsider, I have always tended to sympathize with the monsters. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and vampire novels were the only books that I was aware of at the time that dealt with the monster's perspective.

So there you have it - 20 years, and with no end in sight.