Wednesday, January 25, 2012
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.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
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:
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
"The Secrets of Summer" by Bret Easton Ellis
If you haven’t already, check out the anthology with my story “Survivor’s Guilt”.
Hey, thanks. Now here’s my review of the Bret Easton Ellis short story, “The Secrets of Summer”:
Once, when I was faced with a crisis and feeling distraught, a friend of mine told me “If you’re feeling something, then you’re doing something right.” Reading Bret Easton Ellis makes me think of this maxim. Not because his characters are doing something right, though. Just the opposite. His characters are so terrified of emotion, of connecting to other people, that they go to terrible lengths to avoid the very things that make them human. In the case of Jamie, the protagonist of “The Secrets of Summer”, he fantasizes about being a vampire to cope with his own self-loathing and personal emptiness.
The first scene of the story describes Jamie picking up a woman at a club. He steers her deeper into inebriation, corrals her into his bed, and then attacks her as they’re having sex. As a vampire, he sees himself with shiny black eyes and a “ruptured mouth” that looks like “the anus of an octopus.” There is nothing sexy or alluring about his monster form, and this sense of ugliness underpins the story’s glamorous setting of 1980s Los Angeles.
Each scene unfolds through Jamie’s blasé narration, and his life is an endless pursuit of hedonism and casual sex. Ellis is very adept at portraying this kind of life as unenviable. Jamie’s friendships involve little more than shared substance abuse, bragging about exploits, and watching movies. His life is devoid of intimacy, spirituality, or any other aspect of a healthy inner life.
Throughout the story, it not easy to tell where reality ends and fantasy begins. Jamie himself seems to have a difficult time finding this line. But Ellis leaves some clues. For one, Jamie maintains the decidedly un-vampiric habit of using a tanning salon. He also works out, which has never really been seen as a concern for the undead. But the timing of Jamie’s vampire fantasies is one of the most revealing clues.
Anytime Jamie is threatened with a sense of connection, the vampire bares his fangs. There are a few scenes where he spends time with people he clearly admires, and he fantasizes that they are vampires like him. With his closest friend, he smokes pot, drinks beer, and watches the same movie (Bad Boys with Sean Penn) three times. He also imagines that his friend’s house is filled with human remains and bloody tools. Whenever Jamie has sex, he turns into a vampire, and his violence toward women is as much a desperate plea to rein his own self-destructiveness as it is an act of aggression and dominance.
Ellis later expanded his concept from “The Secrets of Summer” into one of his best known novels, American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is equally shallow, hateful, and self-serving, and he slips between reality and violent fantasy with the same fluidity. Both works are also biting satires of the materialistic culture of the 1980s. But where does “The Secrets of Summer” fit alongside other vampire literature?
In this author’s mind, the story fits quite nicely. Ellis’ use of vampire lore is clever. Some scenes, such as one where Jamie meets a hungover bat named Andre, are quite funny. Jamie’s fondness for raw steak also adds a morbid sense of fun to the story. At bottom, “The Secrets of Summer” is a dark satire, and the ease with which the funnier parts slip into shocking violence can be profoundly disturbing.
Vampires are more or less a symbol of the things we fear and repress, and in most vampire literature that thing is usually sex. For all its merits, Dracula was basically about Victorian Englishmen’s fear of hook-nosed Eastern Europeans corrupting the aspiring mothers of the Empire. With Lestat, Anna Rice made an uneasy peace with our animal lusts and Charlaine Harris invites us to ride the beast so long as you’re tall enough to do so.
But the sexual element of the vampire genre is just a part of a greater whole, and Ellis hits this right on the nose. As one of nature’s most basic, intense drives, sex is tied up in many other aspects of the human experience: connection, reciprocity, acquisition, etc. Sex is never really meaningless because it is always bound to some kind of desire. In this regard sex for Jamie is an act of numbing aggression. Fucking a woman is no different from doing a line of coke. His imagined vampirism is part of the same, desperate scheme to maintain control by avoiding intimacy. He is so terrified of what is really inside of him that he pretends he is a monster.
In a way, “The Secrets of Summer” plays the vampire metaphor so close to home that it turns it on its head. It is simultaneously a vampire story and not a vampire story. Jamie’s vampirism seems so real to both him and the reader that it is equally literal and figurative. And I like that, a lot.
“The Secrets of Summer” can be found in Bret Easton Ellis’ collection of short stories, The Informers.
Hey, thanks. Now here’s my review of the Bret Easton Ellis short story, “The Secrets of Summer”:
Once, when I was faced with a crisis and feeling distraught, a friend of mine told me “If you’re feeling something, then you’re doing something right.” Reading Bret Easton Ellis makes me think of this maxim. Not because his characters are doing something right, though. Just the opposite. His characters are so terrified of emotion, of connecting to other people, that they go to terrible lengths to avoid the very things that make them human. In the case of Jamie, the protagonist of “The Secrets of Summer”, he fantasizes about being a vampire to cope with his own self-loathing and personal emptiness.
The first scene of the story describes Jamie picking up a woman at a club. He steers her deeper into inebriation, corrals her into his bed, and then attacks her as they’re having sex. As a vampire, he sees himself with shiny black eyes and a “ruptured mouth” that looks like “the anus of an octopus.” There is nothing sexy or alluring about his monster form, and this sense of ugliness underpins the story’s glamorous setting of 1980s Los Angeles.
Each scene unfolds through Jamie’s blasé narration, and his life is an endless pursuit of hedonism and casual sex. Ellis is very adept at portraying this kind of life as unenviable. Jamie’s friendships involve little more than shared substance abuse, bragging about exploits, and watching movies. His life is devoid of intimacy, spirituality, or any other aspect of a healthy inner life.
Throughout the story, it not easy to tell where reality ends and fantasy begins. Jamie himself seems to have a difficult time finding this line. But Ellis leaves some clues. For one, Jamie maintains the decidedly un-vampiric habit of using a tanning salon. He also works out, which has never really been seen as a concern for the undead. But the timing of Jamie’s vampire fantasies is one of the most revealing clues.
Anytime Jamie is threatened with a sense of connection, the vampire bares his fangs. There are a few scenes where he spends time with people he clearly admires, and he fantasizes that they are vampires like him. With his closest friend, he smokes pot, drinks beer, and watches the same movie (Bad Boys with Sean Penn) three times. He also imagines that his friend’s house is filled with human remains and bloody tools. Whenever Jamie has sex, he turns into a vampire, and his violence toward women is as much a desperate plea to rein his own self-destructiveness as it is an act of aggression and dominance.
Ellis later expanded his concept from “The Secrets of Summer” into one of his best known novels, American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is equally shallow, hateful, and self-serving, and he slips between reality and violent fantasy with the same fluidity. Both works are also biting satires of the materialistic culture of the 1980s. But where does “The Secrets of Summer” fit alongside other vampire literature?
In this author’s mind, the story fits quite nicely. Ellis’ use of vampire lore is clever. Some scenes, such as one where Jamie meets a hungover bat named Andre, are quite funny. Jamie’s fondness for raw steak also adds a morbid sense of fun to the story. At bottom, “The Secrets of Summer” is a dark satire, and the ease with which the funnier parts slip into shocking violence can be profoundly disturbing.
Vampires are more or less a symbol of the things we fear and repress, and in most vampire literature that thing is usually sex. For all its merits, Dracula was basically about Victorian Englishmen’s fear of hook-nosed Eastern Europeans corrupting the aspiring mothers of the Empire. With Lestat, Anna Rice made an uneasy peace with our animal lusts and Charlaine Harris invites us to ride the beast so long as you’re tall enough to do so.
But the sexual element of the vampire genre is just a part of a greater whole, and Ellis hits this right on the nose. As one of nature’s most basic, intense drives, sex is tied up in many other aspects of the human experience: connection, reciprocity, acquisition, etc. Sex is never really meaningless because it is always bound to some kind of desire. In this regard sex for Jamie is an act of numbing aggression. Fucking a woman is no different from doing a line of coke. His imagined vampirism is part of the same, desperate scheme to maintain control by avoiding intimacy. He is so terrified of what is really inside of him that he pretends he is a monster.
In a way, “The Secrets of Summer” plays the vampire metaphor so close to home that it turns it on its head. It is simultaneously a vampire story and not a vampire story. Jamie’s vampirism seems so real to both him and the reader that it is equally literal and figurative. And I like that, a lot.
“The Secrets of Summer” can be found in Bret Easton Ellis’ collection of short stories, The Informers.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
My Top Five List of Vampire Movies and Television
So, my story, “Survivor’s Guilt” is still available in an anthology from Wicked East Press. It’s about a young woman in Nazi-occupied Poland who is turned into a vampire, and then faced with a chance to protect her parents from German Soldiers.
I’ll be reviewing other, newer works soon, but until then here’s a list of movies and TV shows that inspired me to write about vampires.
5. Near Dark (1987): Long before she made The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow co-wrote and directed this classic horror film of the late nineteen eighties. Set against the lonely, arid backdrop of the South Central U.S., Near Dark follows a young man’s struggle to remain human after he is drawn into a gang of vampires. The thing is, the vampires in this movie are so much more compelling than the humans that you want him to just give in and go hematovore. Near Dark’s central weakness thus becomes it’s greatest strength, largely due to a solid cast. Lance Henriksen is reliably spooky as the vampires’ leader, but the real scene-stealer is a leather and spur-clad, gleefully violent Bill Paxton. I watched this movie with obsessive frequency in my early teens, which probably explains a lot about me.
4. Fright Night (1985/2011): When I first saw this movie, I wanted to be Jerry Dandridge, the sinister vampire next door played by Chris Sarandon. He strolled through the night presuming to rule all he surveyed, and it had a big impact on my socially awkward, 12-year-old psyche. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t age very well; what with its tinny special effects, stiff acting, and some tone-deaf casting (such as a romantic lead played by Amanda Bearse, better known as Marcy from Married with Children). Like Near Dark, Fright Night accidentally made its villain far more interesting than the hero but the remake, scripted by Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Marti Noxon, obliterates the original’s shortcomings. Colin Farrell gives Dandridge an aggressive sleaziness that is absolutely skin-crawling. By the end, you pray that the hero, played by Anton Yelchin, rescues his girlfriend and saves the day. David Tenant’s turn as a phony vampire hunter doesn’t hurt matters, either. The original Fright Night had a great feel and sense of atmosphere, which Noxon’s script fleshed out to its full potential.
3. True Blood (2008- ): I borrow a lot of vampire physics from this series: super speed and strength; sprouting fangs without changing any other facial features; immunity to crucifixes. Some of my own characters also bear resemblance to Pam De Beaufort, with her sullen disdain of humans. And with all due respect to Charlaine Harris’ skillful use of the first person, I prefer the multiple points of view that Alan Ball and co. employ to tell the twisted tales of Bon Temps, Louisiana. Has the series peaked after four seasons? Hard to say. Is the whole Sookie-Bill-Eric love triangle grating? It depends on who you ask (though I think so). But the beauty of the show is that if you don’t like one character, you can just focus on another. Personally, I’m hoping Season 5 has a little less Sookie and lot more Pam. Why? Find out here.
2. Let the Right One In/Let Me In (2008/2010): Both of these movies hew closely to John Ajvide Lindqvist’s story of a bullied young boy’s friendship with a vampire in the body of a young girl, but the original, Swedish version does a better job capturing the feel of the book. Granted, the American remake, Let Me In, can’t be faulted for being set in New Mexico instead of Lindqvist’s native Sweden, but Lina Leandersson strikes a perfect balance of cute and creepy whereas Chloë Moretz is almost too pretty as Eli’s American counterpart, Abby. Both filmakers mostly eschew the novel’s themes of pedophilia and genital mutilation, which would’ve alienated wider audiences, but each movie is suitably bleak in setting and adept at conveying the major characters’ longing for security. In terms of absolute quality Let the Right One In wins by a nose, but if you’re not one for foreign films, that’s okay. Let Me In will forever change the way you hear Blue Öyster Cult’s “Burnin' for You.”
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel (1997-2003/1999-2004): Watching these two overlapping series led me to believe there was nothing Joss Whedon and his crack team of writers couldn’t do. Serious, artistic drama? Check. Musicals and Puppets? Check. What about a willingness to not only jump the shark, but also openly mock it as you hover a few feet above the water? Check. Here’s the secret: Make clear rules, break these rules in a way that fits them in a broader context, turn reliable tropes on their head, kill off popular characters, and never, ever lose your sense of humor. I write about vampires, they have their own quirks, and that’s where my aspirations of Whedonosity hit the Joss ceiling. I would love to do what Whedon and co. achieved in these series: create worlds that are at once lucid, complex and flexible, conjure deep, crisply defined characters who constantly evolve, and tug at every conceivable emotion along the way. Buffy and Angel changed my life, and I am grateful. Because of them, I have the courage to say ‘screw it, I want to write about a vampire with PTSD.’
Post Script: Twilight (2008): I rented Twilight on December 6, 2009. Among other things, I witnessed a scene where a group of sparkly vampires played baseball. When one of the boy vampires scaled a tree to catch a pop fly, a girl vampire cooed, “That’s my monkey man.” Then I said to myself, 'This has to stop. The whole sparkly, sensitive vampires who fall in love with high school girls thing has to stop.' Then I decided to be fair and tried, and then failed, to get through the first book. Clearly, Stephanie Meyer has done something that resonates with a lot of people, and I respect that. Truthfully, I owe her a great debt. After that day, it still took months of research and hem-hawing to get myself to start writing, but Twilight edged my toes up to the line between thinking and doing.
Next week, I review a vampire story by Bret Easton Ellis. Who'da thunk it?
I’ll be reviewing other, newer works soon, but until then here’s a list of movies and TV shows that inspired me to write about vampires.
5. Near Dark (1987): Long before she made The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow co-wrote and directed this classic horror film of the late nineteen eighties. Set against the lonely, arid backdrop of the South Central U.S., Near Dark follows a young man’s struggle to remain human after he is drawn into a gang of vampires. The thing is, the vampires in this movie are so much more compelling than the humans that you want him to just give in and go hematovore. Near Dark’s central weakness thus becomes it’s greatest strength, largely due to a solid cast. Lance Henriksen is reliably spooky as the vampires’ leader, but the real scene-stealer is a leather and spur-clad, gleefully violent Bill Paxton. I watched this movie with obsessive frequency in my early teens, which probably explains a lot about me.
4. Fright Night (1985/2011): When I first saw this movie, I wanted to be Jerry Dandridge, the sinister vampire next door played by Chris Sarandon. He strolled through the night presuming to rule all he surveyed, and it had a big impact on my socially awkward, 12-year-old psyche. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t age very well; what with its tinny special effects, stiff acting, and some tone-deaf casting (such as a romantic lead played by Amanda Bearse, better known as Marcy from Married with Children). Like Near Dark, Fright Night accidentally made its villain far more interesting than the hero but the remake, scripted by Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Marti Noxon, obliterates the original’s shortcomings. Colin Farrell gives Dandridge an aggressive sleaziness that is absolutely skin-crawling. By the end, you pray that the hero, played by Anton Yelchin, rescues his girlfriend and saves the day. David Tenant’s turn as a phony vampire hunter doesn’t hurt matters, either. The original Fright Night had a great feel and sense of atmosphere, which Noxon’s script fleshed out to its full potential.
3. True Blood (2008- ): I borrow a lot of vampire physics from this series: super speed and strength; sprouting fangs without changing any other facial features; immunity to crucifixes. Some of my own characters also bear resemblance to Pam De Beaufort, with her sullen disdain of humans. And with all due respect to Charlaine Harris’ skillful use of the first person, I prefer the multiple points of view that Alan Ball and co. employ to tell the twisted tales of Bon Temps, Louisiana. Has the series peaked after four seasons? Hard to say. Is the whole Sookie-Bill-Eric love triangle grating? It depends on who you ask (though I think so). But the beauty of the show is that if you don’t like one character, you can just focus on another. Personally, I’m hoping Season 5 has a little less Sookie and lot more Pam. Why? Find out here.
2. Let the Right One In/Let Me In (2008/2010): Both of these movies hew closely to John Ajvide Lindqvist’s story of a bullied young boy’s friendship with a vampire in the body of a young girl, but the original, Swedish version does a better job capturing the feel of the book. Granted, the American remake, Let Me In, can’t be faulted for being set in New Mexico instead of Lindqvist’s native Sweden, but Lina Leandersson strikes a perfect balance of cute and creepy whereas Chloë Moretz is almost too pretty as Eli’s American counterpart, Abby. Both filmakers mostly eschew the novel’s themes of pedophilia and genital mutilation, which would’ve alienated wider audiences, but each movie is suitably bleak in setting and adept at conveying the major characters’ longing for security. In terms of absolute quality Let the Right One In wins by a nose, but if you’re not one for foreign films, that’s okay. Let Me In will forever change the way you hear Blue Öyster Cult’s “Burnin' for You.”
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel (1997-2003/1999-2004): Watching these two overlapping series led me to believe there was nothing Joss Whedon and his crack team of writers couldn’t do. Serious, artistic drama? Check. Musicals and Puppets? Check. What about a willingness to not only jump the shark, but also openly mock it as you hover a few feet above the water? Check. Here’s the secret: Make clear rules, break these rules in a way that fits them in a broader context, turn reliable tropes on their head, kill off popular characters, and never, ever lose your sense of humor. I write about vampires, they have their own quirks, and that’s where my aspirations of Whedonosity hit the Joss ceiling. I would love to do what Whedon and co. achieved in these series: create worlds that are at once lucid, complex and flexible, conjure deep, crisply defined characters who constantly evolve, and tug at every conceivable emotion along the way. Buffy and Angel changed my life, and I am grateful. Because of them, I have the courage to say ‘screw it, I want to write about a vampire with PTSD.’
Post Script: Twilight (2008): I rented Twilight on December 6, 2009. Among other things, I witnessed a scene where a group of sparkly vampires played baseball. When one of the boy vampires scaled a tree to catch a pop fly, a girl vampire cooed, “That’s my monkey man.” Then I said to myself, 'This has to stop. The whole sparkly, sensitive vampires who fall in love with high school girls thing has to stop.' Then I decided to be fair and tried, and then failed, to get through the first book. Clearly, Stephanie Meyer has done something that resonates with a lot of people, and I respect that. Truthfully, I owe her a great debt. After that day, it still took months of research and hem-hawing to get myself to start writing, but Twilight edged my toes up to the line between thinking and doing.
Next week, I review a vampire story by Bret Easton Ellis. Who'da thunk it?
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
First Posting: My Top Five List of Vampire Fiction.
First off, if you haven't already, buy the anthology Once Bitten, Never Die from Wicked East Press and read my story "Survivor's Guilt."
Now that you've done that (and thank you), you can read my first post.
Hello, and welcome. I write about the manqué-filled adventures of life-sized vampires. I started doing this about a year and a half ago, and since then I've had two stories published. One has already been adequately pushed for today, and you can always read "Love is a Battlefield" at Spinetinglers.co.uk. Two more stories have been accepted for publication, and will be released in early 2012.
The Sanguine Diary will feature book reviews, movie/TV reviews and other discussions of vampire, supernatural, and writing-related topics.
For my maiden blog entry, I’ve decided to talk about five works of vampire fiction that have had a signifcant impact on my work. This is not a ‘canon’ list. I give mad props to Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, but they don’t represent the direction I want to take with the genre. The works I list here inspired me to write, and I hope I can one day hold a candle to them.
5. Mario Acevedo, X-Rated Bloodsuckers: When I decided I wanted to write about vampires, I went to a bookstore and this novel leaped off the shelf. Admittedly, I was no expert to the genre but the very existence of his book opened doors for my imagination. Acevedo’s vampire noir detective novels are funnier than they are scary, but they’re still plenty twisted. The protagonist, Felix Gomez, is a vampire, Iraq War veteran, gritty private eye, and reluctant servant of a sinister vampire syndicate. In X-Rated Bloodsuckers, Gomez is hired to investigate a series of murders in the porn industry. Fun.
4. Kim Newman, Anno Dracula: In 1888, Dracula has married Queen Victoria, Van Helsing’s head’s impaled on a stake outside Buckingham Palace, and Jack the Ripper is murdering vampire prostitutes. Alternate history doesn't get more fascinating than this. As someone who writes in historical settings— Vietnam, Nixon-era Washington, DC, Nazi-occupied Poland— I am inspired by Newman’s depth of imagination and attention to detail. Anno Dracula is also an inventive gore-fest. One scene in particular, where a nearly decapitated vampire tries to change into a wolf and teeth accidentally grow out of the wound in her throat, had me gushing to my strong-stomached friends.
3. Jonathan Langan, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky”: It’s been more than a year since I’ve read this short story and I still think about it at least once a week. Part of an anthology titled By Blood We Live, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky” recounts a group of veterans’ efforts to rebuild their lives after they encounter a vampire during a firefight with Iraqi insurgents. It spoils nothing to say the vampire is an alien that feeds almost exclusively amid humanity’s least humane behavior, and in hindsight this story is probably one of the reasons why I have written four stories set during chaotic periods of modern history.
2. John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In: Lindqvist’s prose, which tells the story of a bullied young boy’s friendship with an old vampire in a child’s body, is as bleak and beautiful as the novel’s setting of Cold-War era Sweden. Two movies have been made from this book, one Swedish and one American. Both of them are quite good, but they are not as dark, twisted, or layered as the novel. Parts of this book are disturbing almost to the point of sickening, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to read on. If you liked either of the movies, then you definitely need to read this book.
1. Christopher Moore, Bloodsucking Fiends: On my most confident days, I pretend my writing is a darker version of Moore’s unique, funny take on vampire lore. I yearn to tell a story with the deft point-of-view shifts with which Moore spins the tale of Jody, a neurotic, painfully ‘modern’ vampire gal, and her clueless paramour and manservant, Tommy Flood. Set among San Francisco’s down, out, and outright weird, Bloodsucking Fiends is a decidedly un-gothic vampire novel. And as much as it appeals to my love of humor and the macabre, I still feel bad about what happened to those turtles. To know what the hell I’m talking about, you’ll just have to read it.
Now that you've done that (and thank you), you can read my first post.
Hello, and welcome. I write about the manqué-filled adventures of life-sized vampires. I started doing this about a year and a half ago, and since then I've had two stories published. One has already been adequately pushed for today, and you can always read "Love is a Battlefield" at Spinetinglers.co.uk. Two more stories have been accepted for publication, and will be released in early 2012.
The Sanguine Diary will feature book reviews, movie/TV reviews and other discussions of vampire, supernatural, and writing-related topics.
For my maiden blog entry, I’ve decided to talk about five works of vampire fiction that have had a signifcant impact on my work. This is not a ‘canon’ list. I give mad props to Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, but they don’t represent the direction I want to take with the genre. The works I list here inspired me to write, and I hope I can one day hold a candle to them.
5. Mario Acevedo, X-Rated Bloodsuckers: When I decided I wanted to write about vampires, I went to a bookstore and this novel leaped off the shelf. Admittedly, I was no expert to the genre but the very existence of his book opened doors for my imagination. Acevedo’s vampire noir detective novels are funnier than they are scary, but they’re still plenty twisted. The protagonist, Felix Gomez, is a vampire, Iraq War veteran, gritty private eye, and reluctant servant of a sinister vampire syndicate. In X-Rated Bloodsuckers, Gomez is hired to investigate a series of murders in the porn industry. Fun.
4. Kim Newman, Anno Dracula: In 1888, Dracula has married Queen Victoria, Van Helsing’s head’s impaled on a stake outside Buckingham Palace, and Jack the Ripper is murdering vampire prostitutes. Alternate history doesn't get more fascinating than this. As someone who writes in historical settings— Vietnam, Nixon-era Washington, DC, Nazi-occupied Poland— I am inspired by Newman’s depth of imagination and attention to detail. Anno Dracula is also an inventive gore-fest. One scene in particular, where a nearly decapitated vampire tries to change into a wolf and teeth accidentally grow out of the wound in her throat, had me gushing to my strong-stomached friends.
3. Jonathan Langan, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky”: It’s been more than a year since I’ve read this short story and I still think about it at least once a week. Part of an anthology titled By Blood We Live, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky” recounts a group of veterans’ efforts to rebuild their lives after they encounter a vampire during a firefight with Iraqi insurgents. It spoils nothing to say the vampire is an alien that feeds almost exclusively amid humanity’s least humane behavior, and in hindsight this story is probably one of the reasons why I have written four stories set during chaotic periods of modern history.
2. John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In: Lindqvist’s prose, which tells the story of a bullied young boy’s friendship with an old vampire in a child’s body, is as bleak and beautiful as the novel’s setting of Cold-War era Sweden. Two movies have been made from this book, one Swedish and one American. Both of them are quite good, but they are not as dark, twisted, or layered as the novel. Parts of this book are disturbing almost to the point of sickening, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to read on. If you liked either of the movies, then you definitely need to read this book.
1. Christopher Moore, Bloodsucking Fiends: On my most confident days, I pretend my writing is a darker version of Moore’s unique, funny take on vampire lore. I yearn to tell a story with the deft point-of-view shifts with which Moore spins the tale of Jody, a neurotic, painfully ‘modern’ vampire gal, and her clueless paramour and manservant, Tommy Flood. Set among San Francisco’s down, out, and outright weird, Bloodsucking Fiends is a decidedly un-gothic vampire novel. And as much as it appeals to my love of humor and the macabre, I still feel bad about what happened to those turtles. To know what the hell I’m talking about, you’ll just have to read it.
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