More Fun in the New World: American Vampire, Volume 1.

And we’re back. Things are good in the land of the Sanguine Diary. For one, I’m engaged. It’s official; we’ve announced it on Facebook and everything.

In other good news, on February 29th my story “Blood & Soil” will be published in the upcoming anthology, Dark Light, by the good people at Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing. Check out the trailer: 

In the meantime, I have been catching up on my chosen genre and researching a new project. So tonight, I pry myself away from the official history of Special Operations Executive to share my thoughts on the first volume of Scott Snyder’s graphic novel, American Vampire.

American Vampire weaves the history of the U.S. with the evolution of a new, powerful breed of vampire. As opposed to the Wampyr of old Europe, the American Vampire can walk in daylight. Where the old-world vampire is jaded and cautious, the new-world vampire is brash and mercurial. American Vampire tells the story of America’s break from it’s European roots with formidable nuance, representing the different facets of the American soul with the savage, vulgar bank robber, Skinner Sweet, and the faithful, optimistic Pearl Jones, an aspiring actress. While Pearl and Skinner’s European forebearers are more wealthy and sophisticated, they are no less cruel than their offspring.

Skinner Sweet’s story, which was written by none other than Stephen King, unfolds in the Wild West. Sweet’s transformation is an accident, an unintentional by-product of an ancient vampire’s attempt to punish him. In un-llife, as in life, Skinner Sweet is lawless, and nearly impossible to kill.You get the impression he prized the violence of bank robberies more than the money. After he rises from the grave, his only mission is to seek revenge on those who put him there, and he prosecutes this goal with harrowing glee.  

Old-breed vampires aren’t his only enemies, either. Before his transformation, he murders the fiancée of James Book, the law man who apprehended him, and as a vampire he exacts a bloody revenge on Book himself. Skinner’s ultimate goal, though, appears to be the destruction of his vampire forefathers.

Pearl’s story, written by Scott Snyder, is a little less dark than Skinner’s. In the Hollywood of the roaring twenties, a vampire/silent film producer lures her with the promise of stardom, and then feeds on her. Like Skinner, Pearl’s survival is an accident. But Skinner deliberately transforms her as an unwitting pawn in his plot to destroy the old breed.Pearl’s motive, though, is far easier to identify with than Skinner’s. She was betrayed, bled, and left for dead; her goal is justice. After settling accounts, all Pearl wants, in her own words, is to go “somewhere simple and quiet.” Can you blame her?

But Skinner makes it clear to Pearl that her story won’t end there. At the final page, it is also clear that Skinner’s story is far from over, as well. This is a good thing because the overall execution of American Vampire is very good. The art, drawn by Rafael Albuquerque is terrific and the two stories tie together well. I look forward to reading the next two volumes, even though they don’t include Stephen King.

I also hope that the next two volumes resolve a couple of American Vampire’s problems with character development. James Book— the law man who came closest to bringing Skinner to justice and the man who Skinner spends a great deal of story-time pursuing in vengeance— is two dimensional and predictable. He has so little depth that sympathy for him is more perfunctory than visceral. This is unfortunate, because he is the most prominent force of good throughout Skinner’s origin story. In the evil-vs-evil battle between Skinner and the old-world vampires, a really engaging, just character would have provided an interesting counterpoint. Instead, Skinner’s vendetta against Book seems like too much of a side story.

The character of Skinner Sweet is also somewhat underdeveloped. Beyond his crass, violent nature, there is little to him. King and Snyder may very well be playing a long game here, introducing him in the first volume and exploring his motives and personality in greater detail in subsequent stories. Still, can’t they throw us a little piece of something? A hint of something more to come? It is strange that Stephen King, a writer renowned for creating vivid, believable characters, handled this part of Skinner’s story. Snyder, on the other hand, fleshes out Pearl beautifully, with voice-over style narratives from her childhood and dialogue that illuminates her personality.   

That said, the first installment of American Vampire is well worth reading. I will say it again: Rafael Albuquerque’s artwork is terrific. Just look at this image:

 
Image by Rafael Albuquerque, copied from the website Gutter Geek: http://www.tcj.com/guttergeek/

The best thing thing about American Vampire, though, is that it is a welcome tonic against the surge of dewey-eyed, pretty boy vampires. I pray that stories such as this are the first rumbles of a tsunami of dirty, gritty, squirm-inducing vampire lore, and if so, I will gladly pitch a tent on the beach.

Specters of Misogyny: What's the Most Disturbing Thing About American Horror Story?

It's that time of week again, and my story "Restless" is still available in Dark Moon Books' latest eDigest, Dark Eclipse #7. If you haven't already checked out my story, "Survivor's Guilt", you can find it in the Wicked East Press anthology, Once Bitten, Never Die.

Now that the promoting-my-work part of my blog is out of the way, it's on to the vampire, supernatural, and writing-related topics. For this entry, I am going to share my thoughts about the first season of the FX series, American Horror Story.

DISCLAIMER: If you haven't seen American Horror Story, and want to find out how it ends for yourself, stop reading now. It's a show that's totally worth watching, so you won't hurt my feelings if you leave. While you're waiting for the episodes to finish downloading, you can read my story, "Love is a Battlefield." If you've already seen it, or your surprise gene is impervious to ruin, well...

American Horror Story is easily one of the most unsettling things I've seen on TV. It's chock full of vicious ghosts, basement abortions, rape, and low moral denominators. But in the end, what bothers me most is what it seems to say about our society, especially regarding our views of women.

On the surface, American Horror Story is a morality tale about the importance of family and the dangers of reckless behavior. In the beginning, the Harmon family moves from Boston to Los Angeles after the mother, Vivien, has a miscarriage and her husband Ben, a psychiatrist, cheats on her with one of his students. Their teenage daughter, Violet, is caught in the middle of their marital strife, and left isolated by the move.

Several gruesome ghost stories intertwine with the unraveling threads of the Harmon's marriage. Their house, it turns out, is the site of some of Los Angeles's most famous murders, as well as a share of lesser-known ones. When someone dies in the house, their spirit can't leave, and every spirit is motivated by the circumstances of their death. On top of that, there is the Harmon’s menacing neighbor, Constance, and her officious ex, Larry, who is burned on over seventy percent of his body.

Ben is selfish and narcissistic, and some of the ghosts seem to bedevil him as a moral price. He was unfaithful to Vivien, continues to lie to her about it, and ignores his behavior’s affect on his daughter. It often seems like the ghosts are a supernatural manifestation of his deceit and betrayal of his family. Moira, a salacious maid who Constance murdered because of her husband's forceful advances, constantly attempts to seduce Ben. He is harassed by Hayden, the ghost of his mistress, who Larry murders in an attempt to blackmail him. Another malevolent spirit, Tate (a teenage psychopath), poses as a patient and says obscene things about Violet. In the end, Hayden arranges Ben’s death, so he is destroyed by the direct symbol of the harm he inflicted on his family.

This morality tale would be fairly cut and dry if Ben got the worst of it, but he doesn't. To the show’s credit, most characters occupy a grey space between good and evil. Still, of all the members of the Harmon family, Ben is by far the biggest threat to their stability, and his wife and daughter bear the worst burdens.

Violet is sullen and a little rebellious, but struggles to do the right thing. For her efforts, she is tormented by visions of spirits, commits suicide, and doesn't realize she is a ghost for months. But the worst fate is reserved for Vivien.

Vivien haltingly struggles to restore her trust in Ben, an endeavor which is rewarded by Ben's continued deceit and violent harassment from Hayden's ghost. Tate also rapes her, and then attempts to rape her again at Hayden's behest. While Ben is surreptitiously visiting Hayden in Boston, Vivien and Violet are attacked by a cult that wishes to copy famous serial killers. She becomes pregnant— with twins from two fathers, Ben and Tate— and not only does she die in childbirth, but one child is stillborn and the other is the freaking antichrist! And this is not even a complete list of the harm done to Vivien.

The majority of other women in show occupy a moral spectrum ranging from deep gray to black, but none are truly evil. Moira is a ghost with a deep grudge, a flash-frozen trauma who acts out her rage toward the man who assaulted her by tempting other men into indiscretion. Nora Montgomery, another harmful ghost, is driven by the loss of her infant son. Hayden is unstable and manipulative, but Ben’s treatment of her makes somewhat sympathetic. Constance actively plots against the Harmon family, emotionally abuses her Down syndrome daughter, and pressures Larry to murder her son, Beauregard. Though her actions are sometimes cruel enough to make empathy difficult, her behavior stems from a life perpetual tragedy,  .  

The show’s creators, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, are also responsible for Nip/Tuck and Glee, and I am not the first person to raise questions about his shows' portrayal of women. As to whether these two men are personally misogynistic, it is easy to speculate but harder to say for certain. A lot of people worked on American Horror Story, including Tim Minear, a veteran of the decidedly un-misogynistic Joss Whedon creations, Angel and Firefly. But the question of what the show's creators think about women is actually a part of a bigger question of what the show says about our society's attitudes toward them.

It is telling that the show is set in Los Angeles, a city known for chewing people up and spitting them out, especially young women. It may thus be no coincidence that one side plot of American Horror Story features the infamous Black Dahlia murder, which another side plot replicates with Constance’s young, dim-witted lover, Travis, as victim. Like the Black Dahlia, Travis had big dreams. These two deaths could be a commentary on the commoditization of sex. Both men and women are objectified, though the latter supply the larger share of meat for the grinder.  

So, I don’t think that American Horror Story is sexist so much as it reflects broader misogynistic strains in our society. I mean, you don’t have to listen to lots of Ani Difranco to admit that we are living in a patriarchy. But, as American Horror Story shows, the debasement of one sex debases us all. The women in the show suffer mainly because of the selfishness of men. Nora lost her child as an indirect result of her husband’s failures. Ben Harmon’s reckless behavior destroys the lives of the two women closest to him. I can’t help but wonder what Constance would have become had she lived in a society that had valued her more.

If a morality tale about the value of family forms the thematic rind of American Horror Story, then it’s meat warns us against the devaluation and abuse of women.   

Review of Underworld Awakening

My story “Restless” is now available in the newest issue of “Dark Eclipse.”
 
And now, here's my review of the recently-premiered vampire flick, Underworld: Awakening.

I had very low expectations for this movie. So low, in fact, that I already had a pithy title in mind for this article. But that pithy title will not make it to this page, because this movie kicked a surprising amount of ass.

Awakening is the fourth installment of the Underworld franchise, and it sort of picks up where the second movie, Evolution, left off (apparently, no one shall ever speak of the third movie, Rise of the Lycans, again). J. Michael Straczynski, who created the critically-acclaimed Babylon 5, helped out on Awakening’s screen play. I’ve never seen Babylon 5, but apparently his help was a good thing. Underworld: Awakening’s plot was more coherent than the franchise’s earlier installments (though next to Underworld: Evolution, this is saying very little).

Explaining the plot of Underworld: Awakening, however, still makes about as much sense as a detailed description of the stitching of a racy piece of clothing. Here’s what you need to know: In the eternal war between Vampires and Lycans (basically werewolves), Kate Beckinsale is the beautiful death-dealer Selene, a vampire trained to hunt lycans. To her great peril, Selene feels compelled to proctect a vampire/lycan hybrid from each side, and humans have nearly exterminated both species. If you feel like something’s left out, don’t worry. The characters, premise, and movement provide a framework for the action sequences, which do the trick with a bloody fervor. For further reference, here’s the trailer: 



If you have trouble loading the video, go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUcrbUCWKQc

My low expectations evaporated because watching Selene fight her way through the movie was so much damn fun. Kate Beckinsale is not an actress of great range, but she does Selene very well. It’s her facial expressions that really do it for me. Go to the trailer. At about :36 she’s sliding across the floor after slicing her way down a hall filled with armed guards. Her eyes and mouth are wide, but it’s like she’s releasing a breath. Selene doesn’t enjoy killing humans, a big contrast to the look of exhilaration she gets after killing a lycan (1:02 in the trailer). Then there’s the scared-as-bejeezus look she gets at the 1:42 mark. This is more acting than a consummate action hero like Jason Statham do in most of his oeuvre.

In the final analysis, I will say that this is why I largely prefer female protagonists to male ones in my action movies. A lot of this has to do with our expectations of gender. Strong men aren’t supposed to be emotional yet all women are assumed to be more in touch with their feelings than men. On one level, this is gender-stereotype bullshit, but as a curious byproduct I find woman action heroes more relatable.


In a nutshell, I’m willing to forgive the makers of the Underworld series a lot because watching Selene kick ass reminds me of the thrill I get whenever Buffy Summers slays a vampire. For the same reason, I cheered when I saw this trailer: 


If you're having trouble, click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRmWLqrJkz4


Yep. That's Mila Jovavich killing zombies, just like she did in the first four Resident Evil movies. 

Fight on, gals. Pretty Please. 

The Sanguine Diary: Writer’s Block Edition.

Hello and welcome to the newest entry in The Sanguine Diary. Good news! My story “Restless” is now available in the newest issue of “Dark Eclipse.” Not as good news: I am still writer’s blocked. So instead of reviewing a movie,TV show, or written work, this week I am going to chip at the block by talking about why I chose to write about vampires in the first place.

I’ve always like the genre. In addition to my aforementioned adolescent love of Fright Night and Near Dark, I was also an avid fan of the Bunnicula Books as a kid. So looking back, I’ve always had at least some affinity for blood-drinking things that go bump in the night. But I never really got into Anne Rice, and my interest in vampires was never an ongoing, singular obsession.

I’ve been taken with a lot of things in my life: guitar, movies, science fiction, history, and plenty more. For a long time, I believed my lack of a ‘singular obsession’, was a liability— as if I could never produce something worthwhile if I did not have an overwhelming ‘calling’ since my earliest days. An irrational part of me still believes that, but an equal part recognizes that such an idea is absurd. There is no teleological narrative of how I came to write about vampires, and that’s okay, though a few clear markers pop up in the rear view mirror.

Like many things, one source of inspiration came from that wonderful fount of culture, The Simpsons. In the episode where the school bus driver, Otto, moves into the Simpsons’ garage, he asks Marge if she has any books “from the vampire’s point of view.” This became a favorite quote of mine, and in hindsight, it resonated with me more than I realized.

It’s true, I do like things from the vampire’s point of view. In Near Dark, I wanted Caleb just to give in and start drinking people’s blood. It’s the same reason I was willing to sit through all three (and soon a fourth) wowzerly bad Underworld movies. But all that time, something still was missing and I couldn’t figure it out, until the summer of 2007, when I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’d always thought vampires were cool. They’re outsiders with superior strength and piercing, yet detached, insight into the human condition.. Millions of kids who never felt like they fit into the boring social scene of their school have entertained similar fantasies. But before watching Buffy, vampires had never been relatable to me on a level deeper than wish-fulfillment.

And when it comes to carrying a good story, wish-fulfillment is a stubby pair of legs. There needs to be something more, and the Buffy episode “Lovers’ Walk” is a perfect example. Spike, a gleefully mean vampire who sports a leather jacket and wicked cockney drawl, goes on a bender after his lover of over one hundred years has left him. He passes out drunk, and is jolted awake because the rising sun has set his hand on fire. In that moment, I actually felt sorry for him, knowing full well that he was a literal monster. It was the most I had ever felt about a vampire, until later in the series, when Spike had a chip implanted in his head that prevented him from harming humans (long story).

I had no life-changing epiphany when I first saw “Lovers’ Walk,” but the scene comes to mind because it encapsulates what I want to do with vampire fiction. I have often waxed and wanked about how vampires are a metaphor for what we repress. While I believe this is true, and can cite many examples, it isn’t really what I want to do with the genre.

One one hand, I’ve never began a story by saying, “I want to say ‘X’ about the human condition.” But there are some common themes, mostly restlessness and disconnection (note the title of my newly-publsihed story). My characters tend to long to fit in somewhere, and are frustrated that they can’t. Even my more ‘herioc’, proverbially bad-ass characters are kind of bumbling or awkward somehow. There are a couple exceptions, but I think that’s just because these characters haven’t been fully explored.    

Is this because I am restless? Unfulfilled? Unable to fit in? The answers are: sometimes, in some ways, and mostly not. But these are feelings I can easily connect to. I was socially impaired into my early thirties. As I get older, I am more aware of closed doors and the consequences of decisions. Like a lot of people, I sometimes wonder how things could be different. So I like to write about vampires who wrestle with these kinds of feelings.

Monsters are also a metaphor for the uglier things that lurk just under the surface of our civilized façades. I believe this one, too. But I want to delve the more common, less extreme gremlins that drive our behavior. So, yes, I write about blood-sucking monsters that can only reproduce through violent, generally forceful, acts but they still carry the baggage of their erstwhile humanity.

That’s really the best I can explain why I choose to write what I write. That said, I won’t claim that I ever hit this goal on the bull’s eye, but when I actually reach into my self and do honest writing, this is the place I come from.

My Top Five List of Non-Vampire Fiction

There have been better weeks over here at The Sanguine Diary. We had an escaped cat who has― Thank God ―safely returned. As I write this, I am home sick from work. And I’ve had a serious case of writer’s block for about a month now.

But the show must go on. Very soon, I will have another story published. The good people at Dark Moon Books are including my story, “The Restless Warrior”, in the upcoming issue of their monthly Horror e-Magazine, Dark Eclipse.

As always, my story “Survivor’s Guilt” is still available from the kind souls at Wicked East Press.

And since man can’t live on fangs and frilly capes alone, here is a Top-Five List of Non-Vampire Fiction:

5. Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections: Okay, so pretentious jerks name drop him at parties, he snubbed Oprah, and there are loud rumbles that he’s overrated. So, yeah, there’s some backlash against Jonathan Franzen. But he’s still good, really good. He has an incredible gift for description and surprising, incisive turns of phrase. He also wrings gripping drama from the mundane motions of life, which in other hands could easily sputter like a tempest in a tea kettle. When I try to describe The Corrections to people, I am surprised by how little justice I am able to do it. This is because it is not about just one thing. A single family ties the plot together, but Franzen explores each character’s lives with exhaustive detail. But to me, an aspiring writer, the most amazing thing about Franzen is the way he inverts a cardinal rule of the craft: show, don’t tell. Franzen “tells” practically every part of his stories with dense exposition and I can’t imagine him doing it any other way.

4. Stephen King, All-Around Awesome Guy: Technically, including Stephen King overlaps with the first list I published here, because of Salem’s Lot and his other vampire works. But his vampire stuff has not effected me as much as other things he’s done, on and off the page. My favorite King novel has to be Under the Dome, with 11/22/63 running a close second. The man was born with a talent for storytelling, and he has refined that gift beautifully over the past few decades. He is also, by all accounts, a remarkable human being. As told in On Writing, he is a recovering alcoholic and addict. He’s a devoted husband, loving father, and humble social commentator. He’s also funny in an unpretentious, self-effacing way. Oh yeah, and he’s also one of the most successful authors in history. The very existence of Stephen King inspires me as a writer.

3. Harry Turtledove, Great War, American Empire, and Settling Accounts series: Ten books in row is a lot of reading, and Turtledove’s sprawling alternate history of two world wars involving the Union and Confederacy are worth every word. At root, Turtledove is a historian and he thinks like one, weaving complex social and political corollaries into multiple personal narratives. You have to put up with some awkward scenarios, like Confederate slaves arguing about Marx in thick dialect (think: “Dey’s ain’t no such thing as no ghosts! Da histo’cal dialectic says so!”) But Turtledove successfully transplants the convulsions of Europe in the first half of the 20th century onto a divided America. Southern apologists may chafe at the fact that the Confederacy becomes a dictatorship led by a vulgar populist, but Turtledove is too nuanced to be strident and his portrayal of good and evil is too muddy to be polemic.If you don’t want to do all ten books, decide which period of history interests you most and go from there. Great War deals with World War I, American Empire is about the interwar period, and Settling Accounts is about World War II. My own writing deals with a lot of historical settings and these books are Alternate History 101.  

2. Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files series: A friend in my writers’ group once complimented the way I described a character’s hair. My reply: “I nicked it from Jim Butcher.” While I do not directly steal phrases from other authors, I am heavily influenced by Jim Butcher’s precise, colorful, and often witty method of physical description. Not to mention that in Harry Dresden, Butcher has drawn a character so well-defined that he is at once familiar and surprising. Dresden is a wizard detective, and the laws of the magic he wields are as consistent as his cautiously optimistic view of human nature. Butcher’s blend of noir and urban fantasy is as dark as it is funny, and has taught me a lot about what makes for a good story.

1. Philip Caputo, Indian Country: Early on, I decided I wanted to write about a vampire who must deal with the trauma of her human past, and a friend’s sister, who works with veterans, recommended I read this novel. As it turns out, Indian Country is one of the best things I have ever read. Caputo deftly weaves back and forth in time to describe a Vietnam veteran’s struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the costs his trauma lays upon his family. Christian Starkmann’s internal torments, and the unhealed wounds that drive them, are vividly rendered, as are the efforts of his wife June, who tries to understand her husband’s illness while maintaining her own sanity. Both characters make difficult choices that some may find less-than-ideal― Caputo is not one for storybook endings― but the reader feels so close to them that their actions make perfect sense. Indian Country is also beautifully written. His characters' inner worlds teem with as much life as the novel's setting of Michigan's wild Upper Penninsula. I have made two false starts on a novel that is directly inspired by this work, and without it, one of my best stories, “Survivor’s Guilt”, would not have been possible.  

Rejection Letter

“Survivor’s Guilt” is still available from Wicked East Press. More will be coming soon.

For tonight’s entry in the Sanguine Diary, I was originally going to review another short story. That’s the basic plan for the blog: review short stories until I complete another novel, and then review that. But yesterday I went to my mailbox and found a letter from Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. Here is what it said: 

Dear Mr. Greer,

Thank you for submitting "The Horse is in the House," but I'm going to pass on it. This story couldn't hold my interest, I'm afraid. Good luck to you with this one, and thanks again for sending it our way. 

Sincerely,

S------ M----

Assistant Editor

Here’s the sentence that sticks with me: “This story couldn’t hold my interest, I’m afraid.”

Hmmmm.

“Couldn't hold my interest, I’m afraid.” Let me meditate on that clause for a moment.
A variety of responses come to mind. So tonight’s topic will be my top 5 responses to the Assistant Editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction and his tart honesty.  

For Number Five, there’s the classic: “Yeah, well fuck you, pal!”

And Number Four, the lewd riposte: “That’s what your wife says when you drop your pants.”

Then there’s Number Three,. the horror cliché: “Oh, be afraid. Be very afraid!”

Number Two is the obligatory Yakov Smirnoff: “In Soviet Union, interest hold you!”

My favorite, Number One, is something I call ‘The Tin-foil Hat’: “You’re just afraid of the truth, man!”


For the record, “The Horse is in the House” is a bad-ass story about a vampire who gets mixed up with Richard Nixon’s henchmen after he’s abandoned by his lover. I will submit it to a different publisher soon, so this will not be the last you hear of it.