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.

Radio Radio

Things have been exciting since To Touch the Sun was published. The marketing machine is in full swing. I'll be a guest on the Nick Digilio show on WGN radio at 2 a.m. March 12. Nick was nice enough to interview me when my book Vampires' Most Wanted was published and I had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to this. And I'll be live in the studio. Should be interesting to head to downtown Chicago at 1 a.m. The Tribune Tower has a great gothic-look to it. This design was the one chosen by the Chicago Tribune after a design contest held in 1922. Completed in 1925, it's 36 floors, 462 feet high and at night, you might even see some bats flying around the top of it. Maybe even a few vampires.

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. 

Dracula: The King of the Vampires

When I proposed the topic of vampires for Potomac Publishing's Most Wanted series years ago, I was asked to come up with some sample chapters. One of the chapters I proposed had a very definite plan to it. There is no doubt that Dracula, even to this day, is the most famous vampire in literature or media. It's amazing, actually, that one character has had that much of a hold on popular culture as this guy has. And all from a novel that didn't really do all that well on its first printing.

My plan had been to do a chapter devoted entirely to Dracula in which I would discuss the book, the author, the play, the movie, the movie studio, the actor responsible for giving us the iconic "look" we think of when we think Dracula, etc. For all these factors are key in the continuing popularity of the character. 

The editor of Vampires' Most Wanted saw it differently, however, and requested that I put the entry on the book in the chapter on Vampire Literature, the movie in the chapter on Vampire Movies, the play...well, you get the idea. Maybe that was a better way, I don't know. But I still like the idea of a chapter exclusively examining the popularity of Dracula. 

So, just for fun, I thought I'd offer the next several days the chapter I had originally planned, cut up for easier blog digestion. The entries are also larger than what you'd see in the book because at the time I submitted them I wasn't sure what word count they'd give me, so I just let the info fly! :)

So let's start at the beginning with the novel itself.

Dracula

Timing is everything, or so it’s said, and timing played a crucial part in so much of the Dracula saga for it was over time that it gained its true success. And as time went on, the story would find its way to the stage and onto the silver screen. It was a long and complicated road that took a lot of detours and affected a lot of lives (not all for the better). But then who worries about time when one is immortal.

1.  The Novel

Other stories and books on vampires had come before Dracula, Bram Stoker himself having been influenced by Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. For some reason, however, it’s Stoker’s story that’s been able to capture the imagination of generations of readers. Of course, timing is everything and nothing proves this more than the affect timing has had in Dracula’s many incarnations. Stoker researched the novel extensively for several years before it was finally published in 1897, on the cusp of the new century which the author himself seems to acknowledge the wonder of by mentioning fabulous devices such as the Kodak camera, the Graphophone (the precursor to the dictaphone), the “type-writer”. Even Mina Harker is given a more modern strength of character than other women of the day were thought to have possessed. The story is told through a series of journal entries and correspondence by its principle players. The style known as the epistolary form had been used before but never to such amazing success. It must be remembered however, that the success of a Dracula was a gradual thing. Over time, the character of Dracula would find his way into other novels, stage plays, movies, television, even comic books and would be the seed for an entire genre. But early on, the novel’s royalties never enabled its author to quit his day job, nor would he live to see just how successful his creation would become.

That the character has become so influential is a curious thing considering that Dracula is a menace observed by the reader from afar, vicariously through the characters writing about him. Outside of a few scenes where conversations with him are recorded by the journal authors, he is a figure on the outskirts of the novel, alluded to, physically described but never really mentally or emotionally assessed. It could very well be this vagueness that is the secret to Dracula’s endurance throughout the decades. By leaving him enigmatic, Stoker has allowed him to be refashioned with time, soulful or soulless depending on what the script calls for.

Bela Lugosi

Christoper Lee

Frank Langella

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Gary Oldman

 The 1992 version “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” the version many feel is most faithful to the book, none the less tries to give Dracula a soul by giving him reason to travel to England. There, he is sure he will be reunited with the soul of his beloved wife that now resides in the body of Mina Harker. Blood will be spilled (or rather, ingested) liberally along the way but it’s all in the name of love and romance. Yet there is very little really romantic in the Stoker novel. [note: I understand that my opinion on this is not popular, but I was not as struck by the erotic elements as some and I found very little romance surrounding the character of Dracula himself] Much has been written about the erotic subtext lodged within the pages of Dracula; and perhaps if one puts themselves into the Victorian mindset it becomes obvious. The Victorian mind was always to be controlled; never to succumb to animal instincts such as lust, desire, even love may have seemed risky if it ran too deeply. Words were carefully crafted, deeds carefully done. Passion of any sort strictly muted. So the actions that occur in the novel may have seemed dangerously close to forbidden heights of excitement (when to a modern reader they would seem bland at best) and thus the legend was born. Dracula’s main drive, however, his passion, is not for sex or love but rather for simple survival. It’s what, along with his history, rules him. His history has taught him that to survive one must conquer before being conquered; destroy before being destroyed. A philosophy present in the human animal long before the Romans took it to such insane extremes. It isn’t love or lust that draws him to Mina Harker but rather the need to survive and seeing in her one more tool to achieve his aim. It’s only as Van Helsing’s group begins to pose a threat that Dracula speaks of destroying them. Even then, after the caskets of home soil he has stashed around London have been made unlivable, any human desire to destroy these people is overruled by the animal instinct to survive by returning to his native land. Even one of the most provocative scenes, where Mina is forced to drink blood from a wound in Dracula’s chest, is more a perversion of the image of a babe gaining sustenance from its mother’s breast than anything sensual between a man and a woman, though psychologists, both amateur and professional have had a field day with it for years.

For years it was believed that Vlad the Impaler was the inspiration for the character of Dracula though now that belief has been dispelled. Still, based on Dracula’s own words to Jonathan Harker regarding his past, it seems obvious that while Vlad himself wasn’t the inspiration, his history was. It’s a brutal history; full of battles, conquest and cruelty and used to patch in the holes in Dracula’s own past. There was a more likely candidate for the personality of Dracula in Stoker’s boss Henry Irving, a larger than life actor who the author struck up a friendship with years before agreeing to become his acting manager at the Lyceum Theatre. 

Indeed to see a photo of Irving it’s easy to match him to the description of Dracula in the novel. Irving, the first actor to be knighted, was beloved by audiences and had an almost mesmerizing effect on the people around him. Stoker, in particular, seemed to be trapped by the actor’s charisma (though a genuine friendship does seem to have existed between them). If Irving was the inspiration for Dracula, then Stoker was indeed his Renfield, devoting his time and energy to the survival of his master (or his master’s ego) to the exclusion even of his own family. Indeed, as Stoker seemed on the verge of a successful career of his own, his good friend seemed to turn on him, mocking the stage play he’d written for Dracula, selling the Lyceum Theatre without even consulting Stoker. As loyal and generous as Irving could be, he could be just as petty and egotistical. Perhaps, as seemed to be the case with so much, it was a subconscious thought that led Bram to take his friend’s negative side and apply it to the character of Dracula.

There is something about this novel that opens the imagination of the reader. Dracula’s description in the novel, while perhaps unattractive, is not as awful as some people have described it to be. Nor, however, as he regains his youth over the course of the novel, is Dracula the dashing, alluring character that later retellings would fashion him to be. (This sexiness would reach the heights with Frank Langella’s portrayal of him in the 1979 version). Again, perhaps Stoker’s true genius was being able to write a story that people could plug their own interpretation into. For his part, Stoker claimed never to understand where these theories came from. He wrote a horror story—plain and simple.