ALTERED STATES THE VAMPIRE EXPERIENCE
FACT: Most Vampire Novels never explore the physical and metaphysical changes that take place when the 'Damned' transition from the living to the undead state. VAMPIRE LOVER is NOT one of them.
FICTION: page 8 Harry had turned the hunt into a Zen experience. Oh yes, Harry had become so very enlightened. He had thought himself tough and self-sufficient in life, having grown up on the streets; but in death, he'd been entirely unprepared for the speed of the learning curve that whipped him incessantly. Astonished at the effect death had on his admittedly moderate intellect, he was woefully unprepared for the human mind with nothing to do. Relieved of the drudgery of running the physical machine, the mind became metaphysically focused. Harry had begun his course in "secrets of the universe." He was a good student.
FACT: I found exploration of the Vampire Transition endlessly intriguing and decided that, logically, it must be as fundamentally different as each of the victims. For some, a sort of near death experience that never moves forward:
FICTION: page 9 It was true, what they'd said about your life passing before your eyes in the moment of death: only Harry didn't die, and the needle was stuck in the groove. His pathetic existence replayed over and over again, on the video screen inside his head (probably occupying the space previously reserved for his nervous system.)
FACT: Perhaps an amplification of their madness;
FICTION: page 88 From the moment Fibs regained consciousness, the last vestiges of her meager morality and humanity began to dissipate. She'd been well on her way to molting them before she became unread, and now she shed them completely, like a dry snake skin, leaving only the animal to inhabit the husk of her machine.
FACT: For others, a transfiguration in which the doors of perception are perpetually cleansed with blood. Blood Sport
FICTION: page 249 ... a dull pain gripped his brow and began to throb along the furrow of his scar. Beginning simultaneously at the top of his temple and the base of his jaw, the fire rushed inward, like molten lead. It spread quickly along the grisly warp, congealing at the point where the crag bisected his nose. Once there, to his agony, it began to inflate and distend the skin of his forehead. It grew larger and more insistent, swelling apace, until finally, unable to contain the growth, the flesh split. Scar tissue parted to accommodate the birth and the third eye emerged wet and glistening with intelligence. page 250 The eye was in his mind. It was the gateway to the next level. When he opened it on the world, it showed him, as if lifting a veil, the many dimensions of time and space coexisting, side by side in the living world. It showed him the corridor of death.
FACT: I love a bloody good time as much as anyone, and certainly have found writing horror fiction as cathartic as reading it, perhaps more so.GORE GALORE
FICTION: page 95 ...she placed her hands on either side of his head. Digging into the scalp she twisted until the neck broke with a loud snap, then continued to screw until she'd brought it full circle and ripped it sickeningly from the body, sending a geyser of blood shooting to the ceiling.
FACT: No therapy succeeds quite like ripping a head off in print. A freakish inspiration I share through my psychopathic creation Little Fibs.
FICTION: page 243 She fastened both fists on the lapels of his jacket and jerked him clean from the coping, dragging him down into the water. It was quick. The hapless night clerk never knew what hit him. A few meager air bubbles preceded his head which bobbed to the pool's surface, useless as a decanted cork. Meanwhile, ten feet down in the deep end, Fibs sucked contentedly on his uncapped arteries as if they were straws in a juice box.
FACT: A safe outlet for feminist rage? You decide. Bone Weary
FICTION: page 261 In her left hand she held the slender spiraled spine of a whelk shell. It sparkled in the moonlight. Eight inches long, it had been tumbled in the surf, sand-sharpened to a razor's edge. She would use it as her ritual dagger. In one bound she was on him, plunging it ruthlessly into the shallow dimple above his breast bone. She buried the corkscrew deep and twisted it for good measure because that's the kind of girl she was.
ROMANCE AND SEX HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE
FACT: One of the central themes of VAMPIRE LOVER is how our tendency to confuse physical beauty with inner beauty can get us into deep trouble.
FICTION: page 22 The man behind the bar turned and flashed her a killer smile. Fibs blinked with disbelief. He was outstanding. Facing her was a Raphaelite angel in black leather. No shirt. No shit. His hair was as raven black as hers was blonde. It framed his face like a wreath, or was it a fiery nimbus? He absolutely blew her away. No mean trick for Miss Fibs. The record dropped in the juke box and Springsteen began to belt out "Hungry Heart." All this had transpired in mere seconds. Time stood still. Fibs was in lust.
FACT: Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas, that's sexual promiscuity in a nutshell.
FICTION: page 126 Try as he might, Harry could scarcely comprehend the devastating turn of events that had swallowed his ordered existence whole and was threatening to spit him out like a bug. He had unwittingly set the monster loose on his community in what was, by any standard of measurement, one of the monumental fuck-ups of all time.
FACT: Even the most evolved among us make mistakes.
FICTION: page 212 Bone drank her in with his eyes. In his increasingly inebriated state, she went down smooth. Like Southern Comfort with a firewater after-bite. She'd leave an acid hangover for sure, but he figured given half a chance, he'd probably risk it. He found himself wondering wistfully if the fifty dollars he had left in his pocket would buy her.
FACT: If we're very lucky we find the one true romantic love of our life and we finally see beyond the mask of the flesh.
FICTION: page 290 Vera reached up and touched the ruined flesh of Gary's cleft cheek lightly and lovingly with her fingertips. Through that touch, she conveyed all of the sorrow for their mutual loss. Bone felt at once blessed and stung as he let his face seek solace in her soft palm. Her love was healing him as a man. page 301 He'd breathed her love and lived inside of her. At first cold, and then not; other, and then blissfully human. The vet had folded her into his soul, and there was light in the darkness. A single touch opened her and with a kiss, both were young and unafraid.
FACT: That's the kind of love a girl would sacrifice everything for. Kill for.
NEW JERSEY SHORE FLAVOR
FACT: I love the Jersey Shore, having grown up in north Jersey, the boardwalk left an indelible mark on my youth. As an adult I love the solitude that can be found on Long Beach Island in the off season. It was there, one November, that VAMPIRE LOVER was born.
FICTION: page 7 There was not a living soul abroad in the tempest. The shrieks of the amusement pier patrons had been replaced by the shrieking of the November wind as the Nor'easter whipped in from an icy ocean. Booth after booth of chance games had been boarded over with plywood, which itself had been immediately covered with graffiti until, finally, most everyone just left. The barkers and shills had all gone back to school, or had followed the sun south to find work, their bellicose huckstering a music lost for another season.
FACT: One of the things I most enjoy about the beach off season is, you have it all to yourself. Late at night though, while out walking my dogs, I began to get creeped-out.
FICTION: page 26 Other houses remained empty from September through May, and on any night, if you were strolling along the beach road, you would be all alone with the silence, house after empty house, their dark windows ebony eyes looking out over the beach. if you cared to get a little closer, and were very observant, you might catch the flicker of a match strike in the window's black pupil, or the wisp of smoke trailing upward from the bowels of what looked to be a deserted bungalow.
FACT: Was I being watched? My imagination went into overdrive. Night Visitor
FICTION: page186 The hunter's moon rose over the dead calm ocean.The moonlight emblazoned a silver path the the horizon. Islanders were drawn to the beach that night to marvel at the passive roll of the ocean and the clarity of the sky after the storm's passing. They watched in silence as a black shadow stole across the face of their celestial night light and returned home without a whisper, totally unaware of the evil sharing their paradise. Like a swath of silk ripped from the mantle of night, Harry fluttered across the moon borne on the trace of a breeze. He folded and unfolded, reinventing himself effortlessly. An infinitely complicated, evolving origami bird of prey. Perfectly beautiful and lethal, hastening to his appointment with death.
FACT: Just for fun, I went back to roam the boardwalks of New Jersey in search of my favorite haunts. The one that made an indelible mark on my memory was the " Hell Hole" ride. Me, and thousands of other Jersey Kids. It was the dare ride of the midway.
FICTION: page 329 She had clear sailing to the end of the fun pier and entrance to the "Hell Hole." A few years back an item popped up in the local paper that had captured her attention. A near fatal accident had occurred on a sister ride of the same name at Coney Island. Put simply, the basic dynamic of the amusement is this: People pay money to enter a cylinder which, when spun at high speed, pins them to the walls like socks in a dryer. Then to add a bit of drama, the floor drops out. One of the bands that held the Coney cylinder together snapped while the ride was at its top speed. A quick-thinking ride operator pulled the emergency brake and, as the drum screeched to an abrupt halt, thirty screaming people were flung to the floor. The offending band whipped around and slashed two unfortunate revelers. One of them lost a leg. The police and emergency crews arrived to find the interior walls streaked with blood and gore. Eight people were hospitalized with serious injuries. Then, as now, the ride lived up to its name.
FACT: It seemed only natural that the final confrontation of VAMPIRE LOVER take place at a quintessential Jersey Shore amusement with that kind of pedigree.
FICTION: page 334 ... she began to sweep the floor with the flashlight beam. There were brownish footprints staining the floor to her right. If she was correct, they were dried blood and led directly to the door of the ride vault. "Right it is," she announced, forcing her feet to obey directions and follow the slime trail, feeling foolish and terrified at the same time, like some over-the-hill Nancy Drew. Any humor that might have surfaced in the situation evaporated immediately when she opened the barrel and stepped into the chamber. This was definitely the source of the smell. The lion's den. She covered the face with her sleeve and struggled to control her breathing , not to mention her stomach. Afraid to take another step, she surveyed the walls of the circular pit. They were decorated with red cartoon devils cavorting around the vault while jauntily poking semi-naked men and women in the ass with their pitchforks. Portions of the mural were streaked with either red paint or, she feared, blood.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
RED MISTRESS (The sequel to VAMPIRE LOVER) There was a river of blood between them that their passion could never bridge. Bone's red mistress ruled him. It was the one obstacle Vera's love could not surmount. A boy named Lethal, enslaved by the mistress, enthroned in pain, will channel the energies of the most powerfully evil financial empire in the history of the planet, and on the eve of the millennium, destroy it. Only one thing stands in the way of their redemption. The Dark Empty. Cheating the dirt nap is not all it's cracked up to be.
PLANTING FORGIVENESS A tale of two sisters. Miranda, the eldest, is a dwarf gifted with second sight, cursed by deformity. The younger, Forgiveness, is beautiful beyond the realm of legend, evil beyond imagining. The vampire novel is set in the 16th century against the backdrop of chivalric ballads and the infamous Eastern European Witch craze. PLANTING FORGIVENESS is a Medieval story with surprising relevance to the computer age. Nuns and midwives, priests and nobles, vampires and knights,struggling to control birth records (the basis of taxation), information, education, religious freedom, and human souls.
FACT: Most Vampire Novels never explore the physical and metaphysical changes that take place when the 'Damned' transition from the living to the undead state. VAMPIRE LOVER is NOT one of them.
FICTION: page 8 Harry had turned the hunt into a Zen experience. Oh yes, Harry had become so very enlightened. He had thought himself tough and self-sufficient in life, having grown up on the streets; but in death, he'd been entirely unprepared for the speed of the learning curve that whipped him incessantly. Astonished at the effect death had on his admittedly moderate intellect, he was woefully unprepared for the human mind with nothing to do. Relieved of the drudgery of running the physical machine, the mind became metaphysically focused. Harry had begun his course in "secrets of the universe." He was a good student.
FACT: I found exploration of the Vampire Transition endlessly intriguing and decided that, logically, it must be as fundamentally different as each of the victims. For some, a sort of near death experience that never moves forward:
FICTION: page 9 It was true, what they'd said about your life passing before your eyes in the moment of death: only Harry didn't die, and the needle was stuck in the groove. His pathetic existence replayed over and over again, on the video screen inside his head (probably occupying the space previously reserved for his nervous system.)
FACT: Perhaps an amplification of their madness;
FICTION: page 88 From the moment Fibs regained consciousness, the last vestiges of her meager morality and humanity began to dissipate. She'd been well on her way to molting them before she became unread, and now she shed them completely, like a dry snake skin, leaving only the animal to inhabit the husk of her machine.
FACT: For others, a transfiguration in which the doors of perception are perpetually cleansed with blood. Blood Sport
FICTION: page 249 ... a dull pain gripped his brow and began to throb along the furrow of his scar. Beginning simultaneously at the top of his temple and the base of his jaw, the fire rushed inward, like molten lead. It spread quickly along the grisly warp, congealing at the point where the crag bisected his nose. Once there, to his agony, it began to inflate and distend the skin of his forehead. It grew larger and more insistent, swelling apace, until finally, unable to contain the growth, the flesh split. Scar tissue parted to accommodate the birth and the third eye emerged wet and glistening with intelligence. page 250 The eye was in his mind. It was the gateway to the next level. When he opened it on the world, it showed him, as if lifting a veil, the many dimensions of time and space coexisting, side by side in the living world. It showed him the corridor of death.
FACT: I love a bloody good time as much as anyone, and certainly have found writing horror fiction as cathartic as reading it, perhaps more so.GORE GALORE
FICTION: page 95 ...she placed her hands on either side of his head. Digging into the scalp she twisted until the neck broke with a loud snap, then continued to screw until she'd brought it full circle and ripped it sickeningly from the body, sending a geyser of blood shooting to the ceiling.
FACT: No therapy succeeds quite like ripping a head off in print. A freakish inspiration I share through my psychopathic creation Little Fibs.
FICTION: page 243 She fastened both fists on the lapels of his jacket and jerked him clean from the coping, dragging him down into the water. It was quick. The hapless night clerk never knew what hit him. A few meager air bubbles preceded his head which bobbed to the pool's surface, useless as a decanted cork. Meanwhile, ten feet down in the deep end, Fibs sucked contentedly on his uncapped arteries as if they were straws in a juice box.
FACT: A safe outlet for feminist rage? You decide. Bone Weary
FICTION: page 261 In her left hand she held the slender spiraled spine of a whelk shell. It sparkled in the moonlight. Eight inches long, it had been tumbled in the surf, sand-sharpened to a razor's edge. She would use it as her ritual dagger. In one bound she was on him, plunging it ruthlessly into the shallow dimple above his breast bone. She buried the corkscrew deep and twisted it for good measure because that's the kind of girl she was.
ROMANCE AND SEX HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE
FACT: One of the central themes of VAMPIRE LOVER is how our tendency to confuse physical beauty with inner beauty can get us into deep trouble.
FICTION: page 22 The man behind the bar turned and flashed her a killer smile. Fibs blinked with disbelief. He was outstanding. Facing her was a Raphaelite angel in black leather. No shirt. No shit. His hair was as raven black as hers was blonde. It framed his face like a wreath, or was it a fiery nimbus? He absolutely blew her away. No mean trick for Miss Fibs. The record dropped in the juke box and Springsteen began to belt out "Hungry Heart." All this had transpired in mere seconds. Time stood still. Fibs was in lust.
FACT: Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas, that's sexual promiscuity in a nutshell.
FICTION: page 126 Try as he might, Harry could scarcely comprehend the devastating turn of events that had swallowed his ordered existence whole and was threatening to spit him out like a bug. He had unwittingly set the monster loose on his community in what was, by any standard of measurement, one of the monumental fuck-ups of all time.
FACT: Even the most evolved among us make mistakes.
FICTION: page 212 Bone drank her in with his eyes. In his increasingly inebriated state, she went down smooth. Like Southern Comfort with a firewater after-bite. She'd leave an acid hangover for sure, but he figured given half a chance, he'd probably risk it. He found himself wondering wistfully if the fifty dollars he had left in his pocket would buy her.
FACT: If we're very lucky we find the one true romantic love of our life and we finally see beyond the mask of the flesh.
FICTION: page 290 Vera reached up and touched the ruined flesh of Gary's cleft cheek lightly and lovingly with her fingertips. Through that touch, she conveyed all of the sorrow for their mutual loss. Bone felt at once blessed and stung as he let his face seek solace in her soft palm. Her love was healing him as a man. page 301 He'd breathed her love and lived inside of her. At first cold, and then not; other, and then blissfully human. The vet had folded her into his soul, and there was light in the darkness. A single touch opened her and with a kiss, both were young and unafraid.
FACT: That's the kind of love a girl would sacrifice everything for. Kill for.
NEW JERSEY SHORE FLAVOR
FACT: I love the Jersey Shore, having grown up in north Jersey, the boardwalk left an indelible mark on my youth. As an adult I love the solitude that can be found on Long Beach Island in the off season. It was there, one November, that VAMPIRE LOVER was born.
FICTION: page 7 There was not a living soul abroad in the tempest. The shrieks of the amusement pier patrons had been replaced by the shrieking of the November wind as the Nor'easter whipped in from an icy ocean. Booth after booth of chance games had been boarded over with plywood, which itself had been immediately covered with graffiti until, finally, most everyone just left. The barkers and shills had all gone back to school, or had followed the sun south to find work, their bellicose huckstering a music lost for another season.
FACT: One of the things I most enjoy about the beach off season is, you have it all to yourself. Late at night though, while out walking my dogs, I began to get creeped-out.
FICTION: page 26 Other houses remained empty from September through May, and on any night, if you were strolling along the beach road, you would be all alone with the silence, house after empty house, their dark windows ebony eyes looking out over the beach. if you cared to get a little closer, and were very observant, you might catch the flicker of a match strike in the window's black pupil, or the wisp of smoke trailing upward from the bowels of what looked to be a deserted bungalow.
FACT: Was I being watched? My imagination went into overdrive. Night Visitor
FICTION: page186 The hunter's moon rose over the dead calm ocean.The moonlight emblazoned a silver path the the horizon. Islanders were drawn to the beach that night to marvel at the passive roll of the ocean and the clarity of the sky after the storm's passing. They watched in silence as a black shadow stole across the face of their celestial night light and returned home without a whisper, totally unaware of the evil sharing their paradise. Like a swath of silk ripped from the mantle of night, Harry fluttered across the moon borne on the trace of a breeze. He folded and unfolded, reinventing himself effortlessly. An infinitely complicated, evolving origami bird of prey. Perfectly beautiful and lethal, hastening to his appointment with death.
FACT: Just for fun, I went back to roam the boardwalks of New Jersey in search of my favorite haunts. The one that made an indelible mark on my memory was the " Hell Hole" ride. Me, and thousands of other Jersey Kids. It was the dare ride of the midway.
FICTION: page 329 She had clear sailing to the end of the fun pier and entrance to the "Hell Hole." A few years back an item popped up in the local paper that had captured her attention. A near fatal accident had occurred on a sister ride of the same name at Coney Island. Put simply, the basic dynamic of the amusement is this: People pay money to enter a cylinder which, when spun at high speed, pins them to the walls like socks in a dryer. Then to add a bit of drama, the floor drops out. One of the bands that held the Coney cylinder together snapped while the ride was at its top speed. A quick-thinking ride operator pulled the emergency brake and, as the drum screeched to an abrupt halt, thirty screaming people were flung to the floor. The offending band whipped around and slashed two unfortunate revelers. One of them lost a leg. The police and emergency crews arrived to find the interior walls streaked with blood and gore. Eight people were hospitalized with serious injuries. Then, as now, the ride lived up to its name.
FACT: It seemed only natural that the final confrontation of VAMPIRE LOVER take place at a quintessential Jersey Shore amusement with that kind of pedigree.
FICTION: page 334 ... she began to sweep the floor with the flashlight beam. There were brownish footprints staining the floor to her right. If she was correct, they were dried blood and led directly to the door of the ride vault. "Right it is," she announced, forcing her feet to obey directions and follow the slime trail, feeling foolish and terrified at the same time, like some over-the-hill Nancy Drew. Any humor that might have surfaced in the situation evaporated immediately when she opened the barrel and stepped into the chamber. This was definitely the source of the smell. The lion's den. She covered the face with her sleeve and struggled to control her breathing , not to mention her stomach. Afraid to take another step, she surveyed the walls of the circular pit. They were decorated with red cartoon devils cavorting around the vault while jauntily poking semi-naked men and women in the ass with their pitchforks. Portions of the mural were streaked with either red paint or, she feared, blood.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
RED MISTRESS (The sequel to VAMPIRE LOVER) There was a river of blood between them that their passion could never bridge. Bone's red mistress ruled him. It was the one obstacle Vera's love could not surmount. A boy named Lethal, enslaved by the mistress, enthroned in pain, will channel the energies of the most powerfully evil financial empire in the history of the planet, and on the eve of the millennium, destroy it. Only one thing stands in the way of their redemption. The Dark Empty. Cheating the dirt nap is not all it's cracked up to be.
PLANTING FORGIVENESS A tale of two sisters. Miranda, the eldest, is a dwarf gifted with second sight, cursed by deformity. The younger, Forgiveness, is beautiful beyond the realm of legend, evil beyond imagining. The vampire novel is set in the 16th century against the backdrop of chivalric ballads and the infamous Eastern European Witch craze. PLANTING FORGIVENESS is a Medieval story with surprising relevance to the computer age. Nuns and midwives, priests and nobles, vampires and knights,struggling to control birth records (the basis of taxation), information, education, religious freedom, and human souls.
