A Vampire a Day: Sabella: Or the Blood Stone by Tanith Lee

You don't always remember what your gateway book was to a new author but for me, the Science Fiction Bookclub 1980 double-novella collection SOMETIME AFTER SUNSET (comprising "Companions on the Road" and "Sabella') was my introduction to Tanith Lee.

I had never read anything written in that darkly lushly style before. Tanith Lee used words the painters use oil pigments, just slathering them on, layering them, swirling them around. Her prose was absolutely  gorgeous and I was a fan from that moment on. I've read most of her work and that's saying something because she was wildly prolific.

She wrote several vampire stories, including Dark Dance, which I somehow missed (and which sounds like it has a bit of 50 Shades of Grey in it), and several other books in her Blood Opera series. It's probably heresy to admit it but I never much cared for Anne Rice's vampires. Like everyone else, I devoured Interview with the Vampire but it didn't send me off on an Anne Rice reading binge. (And for me, the absolute best thing about the movie was Kirsten Dunst's performance as the child vampire.)

But Sabella...It was science fiction. It was horror. It was fantasy. It was beautiful. And if I had never read it, I would have missed out on 30-some years of wonderful books.Now if I could just find a copy of BLOOD OF ROSES, which you can get used on Amazon for $151 or new for a few thousand.

May Flowers...Blood and Roses

"April showers bring May flowers" and I thought it might be interesting to blog about flowers this month and how flowers relate to dark fiction in general. Naturally, the first flower that comes to mind when I think of dark fantasy and flowers is the rose. I always liked "Blood and Roses" by the Smithereens (wonder what happened to them) and have a story in a collection of tales of the same name. (the collection is not available on Amazon.com, but the there are a slew of titles that use "blood" and "rose" in them.

There's also a "Blood and Roses" forum community that's connected to a series of paranormal books.  (roses are almost as integral to vampire lore as garlic and crucifixes, which is interesting because in religious iconography, the rose is Mary's flower. It's also associated with Muslim lore and poetry and is also the city symbol of  Islamabad, Pakistan.

I remember reading Margaret Truman's cozy mysteries set in DC an dfor some reason thought that she'd done a "Murder in the Rose Garden" title, but she didn't. (Here's a list of all her books.)  There's an Ellis Peters "Brother Cadfael" mystery called The Rose Rent. there's also a novel called The Blue Rose, that's part of an English Garden Mystery series.  there's just something very mysterious about blue roses, probably because they don't exist in real life. (There are breeders who are getting close but they're not there yet.)  But blood roses just seem dark and strange. Check out this blood rose image by Trivalia.