The Fear Behind the Smiles

'Back in My Day' and Other BS Spewed by the Pharmaceuticaled Masses

Admittedly, when I made the comment/post of 'Back in my day, vampire novels had vampires in them' I meant it as a joke... sort of. With the mudslide success of Twilight and all kinds of nonsense spewed forth by the mainstream media, it's actually kind of hard for me to get my vampire fix. Yes, I'm reading the Sookie Stackhouse series, and yes, I'm watching True Blood AND The Gates, but I'm left feeling empty and vaguely disappointed. I mean, where's the FEAR? These people are sleeping with a giant parasite, a potentially violent parasite, and yet there's less of a shrieking terror and more of an 'oh n0es!' surrounding it all.

A quick check of my collection of vampire fiction left me a little more sane-feeling. Historically, vampires were not pretty. There was nothing sexy about them, and they certainly didn't glitter, shimmer or shine. These were blood-sucking resurrected corpses, afterall. The lamia of ancient Greece was a blend of various animals with the torso of a woman (gotta get boobs in there, natch). She went around killing babies. Granted, the story behind this monster is a sad one, as often happens with ancient Greco-Roman myths. And usually there's some poor sot getting tormented and abused by the gods just before dying a horrible death. Those were some jealous gods, and they had a knack for torment. Hats off to them.

Then there's the later vampires embodied in good ole Vlad the Impaler and his relative Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Following that there were the resurrected corpse types which usually meant Plague was around somewhere lurking. And not a pretty death by any means. The original Nosferatu film depicted an outright monster.... and then came Hollywood....

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Bela Lugosi. There was an underlying unease throughout Dracula that left you both intrigued and terrified.

So where did the vampire story go awry and transform into a fountain of youth with fangs? And a little too much oil in the T zones...

As a writer, I've come to the conclusion that I need to buck the system and go in a completely opposite direction, for those folks who are looking for real horror, or just a fun read. In other words... literature.

Almost Doesn't Count....

Finally calmed down enough to actually post about the 'incident' of last weekend in Scranton, PA.

Long story short: projects I was really looking forward to working on will not be happening. People I was looking forward to working with I will sadly not be working with, at least not on this project. Money I had hoped to get paid for doing this project will also not be arriving. Thank goodness for a day job I love.

Looking on the bright side, I made a new friend.

To the left is me and Maestro. Meeting the wrestlers at last weekend's event was the bright spot in a very gloomy day. They're awesome people, and I hope everything turns out alright for them.

The saddest part of all of this is that the whole thing really had the potential to be something great. All of the names that showed up would not have signed on if they didn't see some potential for awesome things.

The fallout from all of this just keeps falling.

A message in my Facebook inbox finally opened up my rage dam, and all the anger I'd been fighting to hold back this entire past week came flooding out. The time for explanations has long past, but if it should come to needing to explain to me, then a phonecall could have done the trick, or even just say it in the damned Facebook message right then and there. Don't message me to tell me to call someone else so they can explain it. It's horribly unprofessional and disrespectful beyond all words.

There were many responses drafted over the course of one day. All of them I deleted without sending because none of my responses were a professional response, nor should they have been read by anyone who hoped to keep their eyes from bursting into flame.

Suffice it to say, lesson learned in all of this. My burn was not nearly as great as some of the others involved, and I am glad I had not gotten quite so far into the book writing process that it became a major loss to cut the line and go. I did pay my editor out of my own pocket, because I made a promise to her that she would get paid. You see, I keep my promises, and I don't enter agreements lightly. That's as it should be.