Vampires on LBI Go for the Throat In Artist's Book By LARRY SAVADOVE
Sharks? You're worried about sharks? After you read Susan Zoon's new book, it isn't sharks you'll worry about when you stray up to the edge of the sea. It's vampires. Zoon, who summers in Brant Beach, is an artist of boisterous energy and contorted imagination whose works enlivened the Long Beach Island Arts Festival for two years and have appeared in shows and galleries across half the country. She paints in a sort of cubist, gigantist style, creating images that stay with you long after you go back out into the sunlight. She writes the same way. This is her first book. It's called Vampire Lover. Just as her paintings are not for the faint of eye, her book is certainly not for the faint of heart. Steven King be afraid - be very afraid. Because she knows, and says she loves, the Island well, she decided to set her story here. It's written so it could be any island on the East Coast, but you'll recognize everything. Except, one hopes, the characters. Eschewing both the pseudo-philosophical balderdash of Anne Rice, whose characters could never seem to come to terms with what they are and worry us interminably with the quest, and the classic Bela Lugosi image of some down-on-his-luck Slavic count with a bad accent, Zoon made her vampires very here-and-now. You'd see them at a truck stop, the beauty parlor or, in this case, walking the midnight sands. But you'd better hope you don't. Her vampires don't just decorously put their lips to your neck, nip two neat little holes and slowly drain away your sweet essence of life.
Abruptly, 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. She rolled the offending obstruction away as if it were a bowling ball, then bent her mouth to the red fountain pumping out of the twitching carcass.
I mean, if you're after blood, after all, go for the mother lode. With the book Situation Barnegat Light seeming to push itself into your consciousness from everywhere this summer-billboards, television, huge displays in every store that has a cash register-you might wonder what it is about LBI that is suddenly attracting so much ink. "It energizes me,"Zoon said. A compact woman with quick eyes and an unruly hank of hair, she has none of the dark, brooding look you might expect from a delver into depravity. So why, when she decided to turn her talents from art to fiction, did she choose vampires? "I love to read horror fiction. I read all I can get my hands on. And so that's what I wanted to do." The inspiration came to her here. "I was staying on the beach in late fall-November I think it was. I was going out every night, with the dogs, and I was finding it very creepy, all the empty houses and everything so dark. It really feels so isolated, I found it fascinating."
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. I 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.
She was at her landlord's one morning and happened to see one screen all bent up on one side. "He told me it happened often-they use a crowbar, maybe somebody got in, stayed a few days. That's the way he found it when he got back in April. "So I thought, wow - that's a story. There maybe could be people in these houses." One of those is a down-on-his-life vet named Bone, for his trademark.
A livid ridge of purple scar tissue traversed his face like a lightning bolt. It started at the top of his right temple, snaked across the bridge of his nose, turned left and cut an ugly moon under his eye, ending in an exclamation mark that drove down along his jaw, skipped over his neck, and was punctuated at his collar bone with a deep impression. It was a souvenir of his tour of duty in Vietnam.
Zoon tells us how he got the souvenir, of course, not one to walk away from a good gory tale. We come upon him inhabiting other people's houses like a shadow, about to decorate one of them with most of his insides until Vera walks in... But enough of the plot, of which there is enough to keep you flipping the pages as if it were a movie, which it surely will be, What about the character of Fibs, a new recruit into the vampire corps who won't play by the rules? After her second meal you shudder every time her name appears. "She should make you shudder," said Zoon,"cause she is nuts, wholesale crazy." Which makes things tough for Harry, the sensual, transvestite vampire who gave birth to this Frankensteinian wild card... "Fibs (short for Phoebe) is very direct, you might say," said Zoon. "She's a psychopath: she's just anger on wheels." As to where Zoon got the inspiration for her. "I'm not telling." The book was three years in the writing, six years in the making. "I'm the worst punctuator in the world," said Zoon. "I had to hire an editor to help me with that." But the words are all hers, and the style might best be described as fast and furious, quite unlike that of Ann Rice, the most popular vampire chronicler of the day. Zoon has read "all but the latest " of Rice books, finds them too slow. "Some of it is fascinating on an intellectual level, but they don't have enough zip for me. I'll go take a course in demonology if I want to hear all that. Don't educate me, entertain me. I want to see some blood. And where's the Sex?" There is plenty of both in Vampire Lover, as well as vivid scene- setting. Here's the start of a northeaster:
It started to rain about 3 p.m. Big dime-sized drops pelted down onto the dry beach sand creating intricate and evolving patterns. The winds followed, altering the rain's trajectory, propelling the sand up the beach and into the streets, whittling away the the dunes. She does put an amusement pier and a boardwalk on her island, but the main town is Ocean Haven and she sends her characters to Mardi's. But the familiar gets a chilling turn in her tale.
A hunter's moon rose over the dead calm ocean. The moonlight emblazoned a silver path to the horizon. Islanders were drawn magnetically 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 dark silk ripped from the mantle of night. Harry fluttered across the moon borne on a trace of a breeze. He folded and unfolded, reinventing himself effortlessly. An infinitely complicated, evolving bird of prey. Perfectly beautiful and lethal, hastening to his appointment with death.
Bone is the book's hero, with Vera. But you find yourself rooting, too, for Harry, aka Harriet. "That's the sick point of the book," said Zoon, "that you actually feel sorry for this guy, who's not a nice guy. I see him as sort of Johnny Depp doing his hapless thing - 'I might act, I might not act, why am I here, am I getting paid?'- that sort of thing. And not too bright , either." Depp would, in fact, be perfect for the part. But first Zoon has to get the book published. She has her own ideas how it should be printed. She's done wonderfully eerie paintings for it - the book is described as an "Illustrated Novel" and wants a big format to show them off. As she says in her prologue, "The nightmare landscape of our existence is carved into my heart." It would be a foolish publisher who denied her.
LARRY SAVADOVE is an author, screen writer and columnist.
Sharks? You're worried about sharks? After you read Susan Zoon's new book, it isn't sharks you'll worry about when you stray up to the edge of the sea. It's vampires. Zoon, who summers in Brant Beach, is an artist of boisterous energy and contorted imagination whose works enlivened the Long Beach Island Arts Festival for two years and have appeared in shows and galleries across half the country. She paints in a sort of cubist, gigantist style, creating images that stay with you long after you go back out into the sunlight. She writes the same way. This is her first book. It's called Vampire Lover. Just as her paintings are not for the faint of eye, her book is certainly not for the faint of heart. Steven King be afraid - be very afraid. Because she knows, and says she loves, the Island well, she decided to set her story here. It's written so it could be any island on the East Coast, but you'll recognize everything. Except, one hopes, the characters. Eschewing both the pseudo-philosophical balderdash of Anne Rice, whose characters could never seem to come to terms with what they are and worry us interminably with the quest, and the classic Bela Lugosi image of some down-on-his-luck Slavic count with a bad accent, Zoon made her vampires very here-and-now. You'd see them at a truck stop, the beauty parlor or, in this case, walking the midnight sands. But you'd better hope you don't. Her vampires don't just decorously put their lips to your neck, nip two neat little holes and slowly drain away your sweet essence of life.
Abruptly, 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. She rolled the offending obstruction away as if it were a bowling ball, then bent her mouth to the red fountain pumping out of the twitching carcass.
I mean, if you're after blood, after all, go for the mother lode. With the book Situation Barnegat Light seeming to push itself into your consciousness from everywhere this summer-billboards, television, huge displays in every store that has a cash register-you might wonder what it is about LBI that is suddenly attracting so much ink. "It energizes me,"Zoon said. A compact woman with quick eyes and an unruly hank of hair, she has none of the dark, brooding look you might expect from a delver into depravity. So why, when she decided to turn her talents from art to fiction, did she choose vampires? "I love to read horror fiction. I read all I can get my hands on. And so that's what I wanted to do." The inspiration came to her here. "I was staying on the beach in late fall-November I think it was. I was going out every night, with the dogs, and I was finding it very creepy, all the empty houses and everything so dark. It really feels so isolated, I found it fascinating."
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. I 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.
She was at her landlord's one morning and happened to see one screen all bent up on one side. "He told me it happened often-they use a crowbar, maybe somebody got in, stayed a few days. That's the way he found it when he got back in April. "So I thought, wow - that's a story. There maybe could be people in these houses." One of those is a down-on-his-life vet named Bone, for his trademark.
A livid ridge of purple scar tissue traversed his face like a lightning bolt. It started at the top of his right temple, snaked across the bridge of his nose, turned left and cut an ugly moon under his eye, ending in an exclamation mark that drove down along his jaw, skipped over his neck, and was punctuated at his collar bone with a deep impression. It was a souvenir of his tour of duty in Vietnam.
Zoon tells us how he got the souvenir, of course, not one to walk away from a good gory tale. We come upon him inhabiting other people's houses like a shadow, about to decorate one of them with most of his insides until Vera walks in... But enough of the plot, of which there is enough to keep you flipping the pages as if it were a movie, which it surely will be, What about the character of Fibs, a new recruit into the vampire corps who won't play by the rules? After her second meal you shudder every time her name appears. "She should make you shudder," said Zoon,"cause she is nuts, wholesale crazy." Which makes things tough for Harry, the sensual, transvestite vampire who gave birth to this Frankensteinian wild card... "Fibs (short for Phoebe) is very direct, you might say," said Zoon. "She's a psychopath: she's just anger on wheels." As to where Zoon got the inspiration for her. "I'm not telling." The book was three years in the writing, six years in the making. "I'm the worst punctuator in the world," said Zoon. "I had to hire an editor to help me with that." But the words are all hers, and the style might best be described as fast and furious, quite unlike that of Ann Rice, the most popular vampire chronicler of the day. Zoon has read "all but the latest " of Rice books, finds them too slow. "Some of it is fascinating on an intellectual level, but they don't have enough zip for me. I'll go take a course in demonology if I want to hear all that. Don't educate me, entertain me. I want to see some blood. And where's the Sex?" There is plenty of both in Vampire Lover, as well as vivid scene- setting. Here's the start of a northeaster:
It started to rain about 3 p.m. Big dime-sized drops pelted down onto the dry beach sand creating intricate and evolving patterns. The winds followed, altering the rain's trajectory, propelling the sand up the beach and into the streets, whittling away the the dunes. She does put an amusement pier and a boardwalk on her island, but the main town is Ocean Haven and she sends her characters to Mardi's. But the familiar gets a chilling turn in her tale.
A hunter's moon rose over the dead calm ocean. The moonlight emblazoned a silver path to the horizon. Islanders were drawn magnetically 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 dark silk ripped from the mantle of night. Harry fluttered across the moon borne on a trace of a breeze. He folded and unfolded, reinventing himself effortlessly. An infinitely complicated, evolving bird of prey. Perfectly beautiful and lethal, hastening to his appointment with death.
Bone is the book's hero, with Vera. But you find yourself rooting, too, for Harry, aka Harriet. "That's the sick point of the book," said Zoon, "that you actually feel sorry for this guy, who's not a nice guy. I see him as sort of Johnny Depp doing his hapless thing - 'I might act, I might not act, why am I here, am I getting paid?'- that sort of thing. And not too bright , either." Depp would, in fact, be perfect for the part. But first Zoon has to get the book published. She has her own ideas how it should be printed. She's done wonderfully eerie paintings for it - the book is described as an "Illustrated Novel" and wants a big format to show them off. As she says in her prologue, "The nightmare landscape of our existence is carved into my heart." It would be a foolish publisher who denied her.
LARRY SAVADOVE is an author, screen writer and columnist.
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