A Variety of Vampires

It’s that time of year again. The days grow shorter, the nights grow colder, and Halloween is on the way. For the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to have libraries ask for me to talk about vampires and this year I’ll be speaking at 7 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Schaumburg Township District Library, and at 7 p.m. Oct. 27 at Lake Villa District Library in Lindenhurst.

When Potomac Publishers approached me to do another book in their Most Wanted series (My book Chicago’s Most Wanted was published in 2005), it seemed perfect timing. I’d just finished the fourth book in my vampire series (what would later be called The Chicago Vampire Series) and was looking for a home for the series. I had a vampire vibe going on and vampires seemed like it might be perfect for the Most Wanted series. I wasn’t aware just how perfect the subject was until I started researching Vampires’ Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Bloodthirsty Biters, Stake-wielding Slayers, and Other Undead Oddities (2011). Researching that book opened my eyes to just how varied the legends are when it comes to these terrifying parasites.

When To Touch the Sun, the first vampire book in The Chicago Vampire Series, was published, someone put up a review for it on Amazon that, while incredibly impressed by the ending, they none the less began it with, “vamps have a heart?????? Not in any other vampire stories that i have read.”

(My vampires are not technically dead, the cause for vampirism being biologically-based).

It reminded me of one of the questions I was often asked while publicizing Vampires' Most Wanted: “Should vampires sparkle?” Stephenie Meyer’s curious device to keep her vampires in a dark and gloomy place in her Twilight series had caused a slight controversy with some vampire purists (in Meyer’s series the vampires are not hurt by the sun but rather sparkle when the sun hits them which draws attention to them)

My reply to the question remains that vampires should do whatever the story calls for. There is no one true vampire. The notion of vampirism has appeared in cultures around the world as long as we could tell stories and recognized the power of blood.

At the core of the vampire is the need for the creature to take a life essence from another to survive. Sometimes this essence is given freely. Sometimes it’s stolen. But other elements that make up the story: The causes, the abilities, the weaknesses, differ per culture and time. I believe that it’s this variety that has given the vampire legend a resilience that other legends just don’t have. As I say in the Forward of my book, the vampire has the ability to become what we need when we need it. From god to ghoul to innocent bystander, it’s run the gamut. It has evolved as we have, becoming more complex as our own questions of life and death have grown deeper.

The popularity of the vampire has ebbed and flowed but writers usually come along to reinvigorate the genre. For example, the vampire was at one time considered little more than a walking corpse. They were monstrous, terrifying. The legend was essentially a cautionary tale to convince people not to break a societal taboo (or they’d return as a vampire, or be attacked by a vampire, or lead to others becoming vampires) and while certain ideas differed from culture to culture, there was nothing sexy or sparkly about the vampire.

The Pennengalen from Malaysia

The Romanian Strigoi

The Jiangshi of China

When gothic writers began exploring the darker side of life, they created vampires with motivations beyond the obtaining of blood. Polidori’s “The Vampyre” presents us with a creature that could be mistaken for an average man whose motivation seems to center more around revenge than it does the seeking of blood as if his true craving is for psychological pain. Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” seems to fall in love with each victim she chooses. These vampires were attractive, alluring. 

Carmilla attacks her friend Laura

Stoker’s Dracula kept his vampire nebulous but hinted at a history filled with power and cruelty. Dracula wasn’t just an animated corpse; he had been a noble and somehow had retained the vestige of the power that he possessed centuries before.

Still the was description of the vampire in the novel Dracula does not exactly scream "sexy." He's an old man, tall, with dense white hair, a bushy white mustache and massive eyebrows. And this was close to how he was portrayed in the plays. It was Bela Lugosi, with his piercing gaze and imperious demeanor who brought a mysterious allure to the role, first on the stage and then on the screen. He only played the character twice on film, but his portrayal would provide the iconic image for Dracula and vampires for decades to come. 

The interest in vampires seemed to wane in the 1950s, despite the Hammer Studios’ successful take on the Dracula legend. After all, the atomic age showed us the destruction that science can cause. How frightening was a vampire in the face of that? Richard Matheson was one of the first to use science to reclaim the vampire in his 1954 novel I Am Legend. By using a disease to describe the vampiric affliction affecting his friends and neighbors, he made the notion of the vampire more plausible to a culture less inclined toward fantasy.

In the late 1960s, Dan Curtis created the first Gothic soap opera when he presented Dark Shadows. A character that was meant to be used only a few episodes, ended up sticking around after the popularity of vampire character Barnabas Collins helped ratings soar through the roof (and saved the show from cancellation). 

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins

For his part, Frid had intended to do the short acting gig and go back to his native Canada, using the money earned to open an acting studio. He ended up becoming a teen idol. 

When Anne Rice took the focus off the vampire hunters and put it on the vampires themselves the next great resurgence in popularity occurred. By giving the vampire a chance to present his autobiography she reminded us of something that had been lost all this time. No matter how they were created, magic or science, vampires were at one time humans. Is it possible that they did not automatically give up their humanity after turning into vampires? It's what haunted the character of Louis long after Lestat offered him the choice to live forever.

Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst: Interview With The Vampire

This theme has opened up the story telling dramatically. Where at one time the human history of “the monster,” the origin story if you will, generally remained unexplained, it is now an integral element to the vampire story. We want to know what led to the conversion. That’s half the fun.

I found it enjoyable to puzzle out the origin stories for my novels in which I wanted to present characters dealing with a strange, sometimes deadly disease. In my series, the morality of the vampires, good or evil, is what it was before they became vampires. Narain Khan is a good man going through the decades trying to retain his sense of morality despite the strangeness of his condition and the difficulties of the situations that arise from it. The person he was before his conversion often wars with the person he must sometimes now be to survive. As his nemesis Reg Jameson tells him, “I must say, Khan, I don’t envy you your life. You always seem as though you’re placed in situations where, no matter what you do, you stand to lose something.”

Remembering the vampire’s humanity has made it easier to take the creature from monster to romantic hero, super hero or teen dream. Even Dracula was given a romantic facelift in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation of the novel. Love was Dracula’s motivation for going to England. He was intent on tracking down Mina Harker, who he believed to be the reincarnation of his wife.

Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman: Bram Stoker's Dracula

Now novels, TV and films use this sympathy for the vampire to draw people into the universe they create.

Though that’s not to say that the idea of the vampire as deadly feeding machines is gone. Graphic novels like 30 Days of Night and the film based on it, films like Daybreakers and Fright Night (the remake a better film than the box office made it out to be) still feature the vampire as a dangerous threat. 

Which is great. The fact is there is room for all variations on the tale. And in this piece, I’ve only touched upon a fraction of the characters and stories that have come before. One reason I like giving talks on this subject is because I can discuss the well-known as well introduce the obscure.  

So, while I think the idea of vampires sparkling in the sun as some sort of threat to them is a weak concept (I prefer the notion that the sun is a true danger to them because I believe the character, good or bad, needs a definite vulnerability to help with the dramatic tension of the story), Meyer is simply doing what countless story tellers have done before her. What I did with my vampires whose origins are more scientific than supernatural (and thus their beating hearts). She reinvented the creature to fit the universe she created and this universe has found fans. Fans who may create their own universe that will help keep interest in the vampire alive. As long as we don’t forget the sheer variety that came before, this is a good thing.

The Adventure Continues

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being a guest on The Nick Digilio Show on WGN radio in Chicago to talk about To Touch the Sun. Nick's show is broadcast at 2 a.m. on 720 AM, a station that has a great deal of history in Chicago. Nick's producer was very attentive and cordial and passersby through the "green room" as I waited for my turn at the mic made me feel very welcome as did Nick himself when I went into the booth. I observed this the last time he interviewed me, via phone, when my book Vampires' Most Wanted came out. Any broadcaster is at the mercy of scheduled commercial and news breaks but Nick keeps the interview relaxed and conversational which I really appreciated. 

It was particularly appreciated after the trip I had downtown to the Tribune Tower. I had planned to take photos of the imposing building as well as other sights along Michigan Avenue but by the time the taxi got down there, we were lucky to be able to see Michigan Avenue through the snowstorm (though there was something cool about driving along the Kennedy expressway and seeing the shapes of tall buildings trying to emerge from the frosty visibility of a snowstorm). 

Maybe it was because I didn't mind snow (and I realize after living here all my life that in March in Chicago you never say "never" when it comes to snow). Maybe it was because I wasn't the one driving in the snow (giving me a new appreciation to how hard a cab driver's job can be). Maybe it was because I'd been up since 7 a.m. the day before and probably wouldn't be getting to bed until 4 a.m. after the radio show. Whatever it was I was able not to fixate on the fact that a snowstorm chose that morning to occur. Instead I was able to appreciate the adventure of it all. The fact that after being up for a few hours shy of 24 I was being driven downtown in a snowstorm at 1 a.m. to be on a radio show so that I could tell people about a novel I'd never expected to write but wound up being so much more that I wrote three more books in the series. A novel for which I'd been hunting for a publisher for years, finding one in an unexpected way when my hope was at its lowest. Even  better, now that the novel is published, it seems to be selling well. 

Life can be unusually sweet sometimes. Oh there are times when it can pick you up and toss you around like a rag doll. But there are those moments that can make you float.

The lobby of the Tribune Tower

I was floating as I entered the vast lobby of the Tribune Tower. And it is vast. The kind of place where footsteps echo dramatically as you walk up to the sign in desk. 

The walls of the lobby are etched with historical quotes

You'll have to excuse me for geeking out a bit here. I did after all write a book featuring Chicago history and here I was stepping inside Chicago history. For centuries the Tribune was Chicago's big gun when it came to journalism (oh sure, much of it early on had a bright yellow tint). It billed itself as "The World's Greatest Newspaper" hence the call letters WGN when the radio station came along. It was the radio station that offered a live broadcast of The Scopes Monkey Trial. It was WGN that was instrumental in putting radio in cop cars. In 1929 five squad cars were equipped with one-way transmitters. Prior to 1881 a beat cop calling for back up meant that that beat cop had to run back to the precinct to call for back up. In 1881 the Police Patrol and Signal Service set up booths around the city with telephones hooked up to the stations but that didn't do much for the police cruisers that came about after the proliferation of squad cars. Installed in the five squad cars were one way radios that were able to receive reports broadcast over the Tribune's WGN radio and could roll instantly on the reports. A year later, the department created its own radio broadcasting system and by 1942 two-way radios were installed in all squad cars.

WGN TV was of course home to the news but also to some of the finest children's TV programming like Garfield Goose and Friends, Bozo's Circus and Ray Raynor. Then there was also the Creature Features program which featured scary movies late on a Saturday night. One of the strongest memories I have is hiding behind my older brother Dennis as we lay on the floor in the dark watching the opening to that show.

>

This is my third foray into live radioland. As I mentioned I was on Nick's show when Vampires' Most Wanted came out. At some point I had turned off the ringer to my phone. I was also up very late into the morning so I slept late into the afternoon. At some point I was awakened by the knocking of my friend who about a half hour from Palatine to tell me that the producer of the Nick D. show had been trying to get a hold of me. The producer had tried calling me and got no answer, so he tried the library and they contacted my friend. They needed someone for the show that night and wanted to interview me. Thank goodness for good friends, huh?

Years before, when Chicago's Most Wanted came out I was a guest on The Mike North Show on, I believe it was The Score radio station. It was at 7 a.m., so I drove down at 5 a.m. to the down to the NBC towers. It was a fairly easy drive at that hour. Mike was pleasant and enthusiastic about the book and I enjoyed myself. It was when I tried to get my car out of the parking garage that I ran into a problem. You needed to get some sort of voucher from some sort of machine but since the building was connected to a nearby hotel, I found myself going to the wrong machine to get the wrong voucher. The bottom line is what should have taken 10 minutes ended up taking 45 minutes just to get out of the parking garage. By that time, downtown Chicago was ripe with pedestrians and cars alike, none of which were that keen on letting me pass.

So I suppose a snowstorm on the morning I was to be on a radio show to promote my latest book was in keeping with my radio appearance and inconveniences. Still, it could have been much worse.

When I walked into the lobby and signed in the night guard teased me about the topic of my novel. You could tell he wasn't a big fan of the genre when he said the only vampire movie he liked was the one with Roddy McDowell...and Tom Cruise. Unless he was actually a fan of two movies, he was getting the one he was referring to (I believe it was Fright Night) wildly wrong.

The open door to the green room

Nick's producer Dan brought me upstairs, then down marble hallway (I'm telling you...history) and into a "green room" that was admittedly kind of casual after you've walked through an ornate lobby the size of a baseball diamond in a building built in the 1920s. But it was comfy. It also had some great old radio memorabilia.

I'll admit I was never a huge WGN radio listener in the past. When I was younger, I was more a Top 40 station listener until talk radio host Steve Dahl burst onto the scene (later to be partnered with Garry Meier) and shook up local talk radio. 

Radio history in that case

Even still, I got a little goose bumpy seeing the WGN Radio painted on the door as well as seeing the glass case of old radio equipment. WGN radio grew up with radio as a whole. Other stations have come and gone but 'GN stood the test of time drawing to it personalities who could connect with local listeners unlike anyone else could. And now it seems it's drawing new personalities, like Nick Digilio, that I myself find more listenable then others who came before.

The interview went well. Nick is a very engaging host and I never felt rushed even though I know how tight these programs can be planned out sometimes. The studio itself was dark with a huge table and microphones in the middle that spanned out like spider legs. Nick was in the middle of it all, his attention divided between me and the computer screens in front of him which alerted him to the next break. It was fascinating to watch. 

When it was over, his producer Dan walked me down to the lobby where the guard teased me some more. Then Dan and I wandered around the falling snow on Michigan Ave. until a taxi stopped and picked me up. There was a bit of nostalgia as we passed by the Hotel Intercontinental where my friends and I spent many a weekend at Creation Science Fiction Cons wandering the hotel slightly drunk and flirting with sailors on leave from Great Lakes Naval Base. This was back in the 80s. I think the hotel has classed itself up a bit since then.

Driving on the Kennedy even in perfect weather can at times be an adventure. Driving on it at 3 a.m. in the midst of a blinding snowstorm as semi's sped past you, snow flying off the roofs of the trucks giving already overworked window wipers more to contend with is it's own unique experience. I had to give the cabbie credit (well I gave him credit and a generous tip). Midway through the trip he must have been regretting allowing me access to his cab but like a trooper he soldiered on and got me home safely (the poor guy would have to brave the Kennedy again for the return trip downtown). 

All in all it was a unique experience. Best of all, I got a great interview out of it. Click on the link and have a listen.

Now on to the next adventure.

The Approachng Launch for To Touch the Sun

The poster on my wall says it all!

Well this is pretty exciting. The big day is coming up and Dagda Publishing will be having a Facebook book launch for To Touch the Sun Feb. 25. I'll be popping in as often as I can during the day and am looking forward to meeting people and discussing the novel. And those who attend will have the chance to win a copy of the novel. 

She's on the case!

As I've stated often before, this novel is my baby. I've even taken publicity photos for press releases and I do NOT take photos.

Finding a publisher for it was like finding gold. I've been doing some interviews on it and writing a few guest blog pieces. It's given me a chance to reflect on the story and the various inspirations that went into it. I've been covering that in my blog for the series, The Sentient/Feral Vampire Series. 

I remember when I was writing Chicago's Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Murders Mobsters, Midway Monsters and Other Windy City Oddities (My first book published in 2005 by Potomac Press). The day I signed the contract for that was the happiest and scariest day of my life. Happiest of course because I was finally going to be published. Scariest because I wasn't sure if I could pull it off, especially since I'd never done anything like that before. Once it was published, and I looked back on the writing of it, I have a lot of good feelings (even though I was going crazy while actually doing it). I guess it's all hindsight. 

On the left you'll see Lake Point Tower, home to Narain Khan

It's a bit like that with this book. Slightly different though because I didn't have a contract for it and it was a work of fiction, so there was nothing pressing on me in the way of deadlines. But I remember, once I had fallen in love with it, being very concerned that I'd never find a publisher for it. I really wanted that story out. And as I say, looking back on it, I can see things perhaps I didn't realize as I was writing it. For example, I didn't realize how vital the character of Sophie is to the plot even though she really only appears in a few reminisces. Sophie helped Narain live a relatively normal life (in light of his condition) for decades. When she died, his motivations were colored by trying to retain that normalcy. 

The trenches of World War I

I used World War I as a backdrop for Narain's conversion to vampirism. I was inspired when I read that Albin Grau, producer of the film "Nosferatu" served in Serbia in World War I and heard the locals tell folk tales of vampires. It's what inspired him to produce a vampire movie. Narain left that war a very changed man. But it wasn't until I was writing up a blog entry that I stopped to consider that even if the feral attack hadn't occurred to so drastically alter his life, Narain would probably have returned to his family a very changed man. As most veterans of war do. Whether they wear that change on their sleeve or keep it buried deep inside, there's no way that the violence of war wouldn't change them in some way.

On a more personal note, and this is something I realized shortly after writing it, Narain's family dynamic somewhat mirrors mine. There were four siblings (though we had two and two). There's a wonderful scene in It's A Wonderful Life where Mr. Baily tells a young George, "You were born older." That's how I feel about Narain. He was actually born 12 years before the next child Aziz comes along, 15 before their brother Zaheer and a full 20 before their beloved sister Ujaali. So in some respects, even before he goes to war, he's on his own among the siblings. 

Denny and old time radio

It was such with my siblings. My older brother Dennis was only two years older than my sister Barbara (I came along seven years after Barb, my brother Robert a year after me). Yet from an early age, he was off working on jobs with my dad, an electrical contractor, while the rest of us had more to do with each other. Often, he came home very late at night, whether he was off working late, or with his friends. When I was ten, he had moved out of the house and popped in infrequently. I'd never even been to his apartment. Consequently, I knew very little about him. So while the age between us wasn't as expansive as Narain and his siblings, Dennis was just as apart. And sadly, as Narain was "lost" to his family (though he survived the war), my brother died at the relatively young age of 42. 

It's possible that's why I wrote Narain with so many regrets (and why he feels he needs to see if his sister, who would be in her late 90s, is still alive). He regrets never taking the chance to try to reunite with his family and help them understand what he'd become. It's that stuff that was left unsaid, for whatever reason, that makes loss difficult.

So reflecting on the novel for pieces to publicize it has led me to consider what went into writing it. Some of it done without even thinking about it. Which can be some of the best kind of writing.

And as I say often, I hope people get as much enjoyment out of reading To Touch the Sun as I got out of writing it.

My reaction to finding a publisher.

Visit the link above on Feb. 25 to stop in at the launch on Facebook and say hello. The novel will be available on Amazon for Kindle and paperback format. There have already been some wonderful reviews on Goodreads for it also. 

And Now the Fun Begins

This year I've ramped up my efforts in promoting that thing I laughingly call my writing career. That is a bit of a problem. Part of having a writing career is self promotion. In fact, self promotion is probably about 85 percent of the game. For me, self promotion has never been easy. It's about as natural to me as flying is to a penguin. We have the wings, they're just not very useful.

  


I remember when Chicago's Most Wanted came out. I was working in circulation at the Park Ridge Library and when my book...the book I'd put so much effort into producing, was checked out by patrons, coworkers pointed out the connection between it and me more than I did. I was thrilled someone was reading it, proud of what I had produced, but I just sort of shrank away from making my relation to it known. You can't do that when you're trying to make a career out of writing.

On this blog and now my website, I bill myself as "the greatest writer that has ever lived" oh sure, partly cause it just may very well be true. But mainly because of the sheer absurdity of the statement. I like to have fun. I love to laugh. Often the more stressful a situation the more my urge to spout a highly inappropriate observation or just plain laughter (and actually, sometimes I'm told my "inappropriate" comment was far from it). I can't help it. It's a condition. Like my tendency to break into song. I've had people comment, "Well you're in a good mood." To which I reply, "Not necessarily. It could be either."




The fact is that, re: my status as "the greatest writer that ever lived", I've never been someone who bought my own publicity. Or anyone's publicity about me. If the celestial ringmaster came down from up high and told me point blank that, indeed, I was the greatest writer that ever lived, I'd still question its judgement (or its sanity).

I've spent most of my youth trying to avoid attention and now I'm in a position where I must court it. I have to convince people that I have something to offer and the problem is that I'm not completely convinced of it myself.

Some people have no difficulty selling themselves, even when they have precious little to sell. Of course, confidence, misplaced or not, is a key element in that talent. It helps project the sincerity needed to close the sale. Confidence has always alluded me for a number of reasons of which I won't bore you with now (though you can read it in my autobiography, What the Hell Just Happened! The Laura Enright Story to be published in the near future or far distant past, depending on how fast we get the whole "time travel" thing going).

Then you have the other side of the coin. People with incredible talent who fly way below the radar because, whether out of shyness or because they simply don't desire it, they don't make their presence known. Kind of like when Obi Wan Kenobi gave up his Jedi past and became a simple hermit in the hills. 

Or not.

The point is that I'm not sure where I belong really. Am I an extrovert by necessity not by design? Or do I really like to be worshipped and adored? I mean, if that worship and adoration were to ever occur. 

I suspect I'm somewhere in the middle when it comes to the goods. I have more than I think, and less than I'd like to have.

Or perhaps it goes back to that penguin. The penguin looks up into the sky and sees a graceful eagle, swooping and soaring. Then he flaps his wings wildly but no amount of wing-flapping will lift him off the ground. So, he waddles along on the ice.

Until he reaches the ocean. Then, he slips in and moves just as gracefully in the water as the eagle did in the sky. He can, in some respects fly, he just needs to be in the right element. 

Just like the rest of us.