The Paranormal Gift Guide

Really, nothing says "holiday" like a vampire gift. I remember years ago when the last book of the Twilight saga had been published and my nearest Bookstar couldn't keep the trilogy in stock at Christmas. The sellers knew it was going to be a phenomenon but even they were taken aback (and brought up short) by the demand.

The paranormal book world has moved on since then, but if you have a hardcore vampire fan on your wish list, you might want to stuff their stockings with some old school bloodsucking reads like Les Daniel's awesome Spanish/Aztec The Silver Skull. (It's actually part two of a duology, but it can be read as a stand-alone.) The book is out of print but pretty readily available as a used book on Amazon. (

There's a more expensive hardcover version available on Etsy and if you go on Etsy in search of the book, why not pick up some "Vampire Kisses" bathbombs while you're at it.)

Continuing the Vampire theme, no collection of vampire horror is complete without the late, great Tanith Lee's Blood 20, which is available from Telos Books, a UK publisher. it's not cheap at almost 15 pounds, but while supplies last, the books come with stickers signed by Lee herself. This one is definitely on MY wish list.

If you're looking for an historical vampire novel for someone who has already read Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night or Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, you might check out Lauren Owen's debut novel The Quick, which is set in Victorian London.

If you're a fan of Game of Thrones, you may not know that before he embarked on that epic book journey, George R. R. Martin wrote a series of one-off horror novels including one called Armageddon Rag (about a rock band that resurrects their lead singer) and Fevre Dream, a dark, sensual nightmare of a vampire novel. It's a vampire novel for people who don't think they like vampire novels and it's a lot of fun. More Vampire-themed stocking stuffers include Black Phoenix Labs' perfume oils inspired by Jim Jarmusch's lush movie Only Lovers left Alive. You'll need to act fast, though. Cut-off for domestic Christmas mailing is today, December 13. Other vampire-themed gifts that aren't books include Dracula t-shirts found on Red Bubble (mostly featuring various Bela Lugosi images) or the super-cute Japanese-inspired "Dracula blood-drive t-shirt that features tiny Draculas. (Find it on Snorg.)

May flowers...Every rose Has Its Thorn

I was surprised the first time I read an unexpurgated version of Sleeping Beauty and discovered how cruel and bloody a story it really was. (Which made me think how interesting it would be if George R. R. Martin wrote a series of fairy tales reimagined in his Game of Thrones world. Wicked Queen Cersei as any number of horrible stepmothers!  It would geektastic. But I digress.)

I've been thinking about the fairy tale because I'm working on a paranormal version of Sleeping Beauty in which the prick that sends the Princess to sleep is actually the sharp kiss of a vampire bite. I'm not sure how it's all going to work out, but it's a lot of fun working on it. And the rose imagery will be everywhere.

And meanwhile, here's my favorite version of the Poison song "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," the duet from American Idol with Brett Michaels and Casey James.

The Geektastic Holiday Gift Guide

Continuing the tradition born back in my Dark Valentine days, I offer my very unofficial and totally personal gift guide for holiday gift giving. I've divided it up into categories this year and the first one is:  ETSY gifts.

I love Etsy. Now that the items on the site have expanded beyond the home-made and hand-crafted, I love it even more. You can find some of the same things on eBay but you have to go through the whole auction nonsense, and risk paying way over the money for something or losing out at the last minute to a buyer who swoops in and tops your final bid. So along with one-of-a-kind items and products made to order, you can also browse the best of vintage items in dozes of categories. And for those looking for three G gifts--Geek/Goth/Game of Thrones--Etsy is a one-stop shopping portal for everyone on your list.

Winter is coming...and that means Christmas is nearly here!

Are you Team Lannister or Team Stark?  Or are you rooting for Dani to sit on the Iron Throne?  Show your allegiance with one of the hadsome medallions created by Pieces of II. All the great houses of Westeros are represented.

There's actually a lot of GOT swag on offer at the Etsy site, as well as some whimsical items like a button that says, "The Lannisters send their regards" and another that says, "Not today." Both items are available from Quid Pro Quote.
 There is also a beautifully illustrated deck of cards with the sigils of the great houses dividing up the suits of cards and illustrations of the characters on the face cards. (GOT playing cards $25 a deck, available here.)
Phunky Junk Jewels has created some beautiful jewelry inspired by Game of Thrones. I am particularly fond of this "Fire and Blood" bracelet made with lava rock and Czech glass beads. It's just $12.75.
Dozens of people are offering t-shirts with GOT-inspired designs and graphics. The warning, "Winter is Coming" is a popular slogan. Adage Screen Printing offers a fabulous "Dire Wolf" graphic design shirt, for a bargain $15. Better be quick though, there's only one of

this shirt available.
There are some terrific George R. R. Martin goodies available as well. The most whimsical is probably this knitted GRRM doll from Socks Knit Palace. It's $30 but for a hard-core fan, it's priceless.
Anise Press, meanwhile, has produced a broadside with Neil Gaiman's immortal words, "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch."
Find it here, for $32.  and finally, Red Deer Grove gets points for the most inventive Game of Thrones tie-in, the Game of Thrones Perfume collection (Six bottles, $50.75), each scent named in honor of one of the series' female characters. (Not quite sure I want to smell like Arya, much as I love the character, but I love the idea.) The scents are available separately also.

Seriously Steampunk

"Steampunk" is one of those labels that has been over-used and over-exposed of late, but I still love the aesthetic. It's so much more than just slapping a bunch of gears and clock parts onto an object, though.  The artisans displaying their wares on Etsy have taken the term to its artistic limits and the results are often absolutely fabulous.

I admire a writer who isn't afraid to kill his darlings.

Fever Dreams

I have spent most of the last week in bed, which would be great if the rest of that sentence involved a tall dark stranger and a hotel room in the South of France. Alas it has more to do with waking up at midnight with an atrophied tongue, a lump of fleshy stone as scaly as the bottom of fishing boat at the end of a season. Pretty much the only time I've left my cave of sheets and blankets is to rehydrate--chicken noodle soup has lost any appeal it ever had--and to make more slippery elm tea. If ever there was a substance that made you glad you've lost your sense of taste, it's slippery elm tea.
Orange Cat is delighted.
His goal in life is to sleep 23 and a half hours out of every day and the only reason he doesn't pursue this goal more fervently is that he gets lonely. There's no one to pet you while you sleep, or play with the laser pointer or tell you you're a good boy.
The only good thing about this whole cold/flu thing is the dreams.
I have been having big, huge, technicolor dreams.
Which is unusual.
I rarely remember my dreams.
I was not a kid who had nightmares. I can remember only one nightmare in my whole childhood and it was more a series of images that caused me anxiety than anything else.
Those anxiety dreams everyone has in college?
I had one.
Once.
And even as the dream was unspooling in the Cineplex of my mind--a narrative involving signing up for an advanced math class and never going and having to take a final in it--I was saying to myself, "You would never sign up for an advanced math class."
About a decade ago, following some event--probably 9/11--I had a series of truly awful dreams involving earthquakes and blood. In one I was roaming the halls of what I knew to be my high school in Richmond but it was in Burbank. Classes were in session and my mother turned a corner and told me I needed to tell everyone to get out, there was going to be a quake and the building was going to collapse. "They're not going to listen to me," I protested. "Tell them your mother said so," she said. "Tell them your mother is dead." Which at that point she had been for 15 years or so.
There was also a dream involving me asking my best friend to kill our two cats because they were hungry and we couldn't feed them.
I am mostly glad I don't remember my dreams.
But this week my dreams are so bizarre that they're notable. I was Brad Pitt and Anjelina Jolie's nanny in one. In another, I dreamt the whole plot of a story I've been working on. I remembered everything when I woke, but the distance from the bed to the nearest pencil was just too far. By the time I woke again, the story was long gone.
I'm about one day away from feeling completely human again and I hope to have a dream I can turn into a story like some of my friends do. But in the meantime, I am rereading George R. R. Martin's wonderful vampire novel, Fevre Dream. It's the first book of his I ever read. 

Seriously? The reboot of Beauty and the Beast

You know, I like to look at pretty people as much as the next person, but this new art for the CW's 2012 reboot of the 1980s series Beauty and the Beast (starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman) makes it look like the series has somehow missed the point. On IMDB there's already a thread that asks, "Is Vincent seriously just a guy with a scar on his face? Because that's kind of lame."
Kind of?
The CW's Vincent (his surname is "Koslow," a tribute to the original creator of the series, Ron Koslow, does have the Twilight golden eye thing going on.  Jay Ryan, a Kiwi actor who honed his craft with roles in Young Hercules and Xena, is a fine-looking guy who is probably best known in the US for doing three episodes of the short-lived series Terra Nova.
Here's a link to an interview Ryan and Kristin Kreuk (in the Linda Hamilton part) did at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con to promote their new show. In the interview they explain how their show's concept has changed from the 80s show--the Beast is a product of a military experiment, for example, and Kristen's character is now an NYPD detective rather than a DA. Although they hadn't yet seen any of the episode scripts--just the pilot--both insisted that the shows would be a mix of procedural and action and romance and fairy tale elements.

Friday Fantasy Fiction--Review of Brent Weeks' Way of Shadows

I used to read a LOT of fantasy in my teens and twenties and I hoovered through all the multi-book sagas and story cycles out there. I was a big fan of Susan Cooper's books, and Guy Gavriel Kay and the Deryni Chronicles. I especially loved Robin McKinley's Beauty and Patricia McKillip's novels. And Anne McCaffrey--loved the Dragonriders series. Somewhere along the way, though, all the books started to feel the same. Maybe it was because a client hired me to read all five thousand Dragonlance books and synopsize them.  Whatever it was, I pretty much stopped reading the genre for years.  And then I read Brent Weeks' Night Angel: The Way of  Shadows.  The timing was perfect. I'd just geeked out on the first season of Game of Thrones and was ready for something complex and compelling to get me through to the second season.  (I made the decision not to read the books because I don't want to know what's coming.  If I'd known what was going to happen to Ned Stark, I'm not sure I could have watched.)
I thought Night Angel was fantastic and was very happy to discover that ... there are more books in the series. In fact, the complete trilogy is now available.  If you love densely plotted stories of fantasy, you will love this series. Here's my review:

Night Angel:  Way of the Shadows is a richly textured, multi-layered fantasy crowded with characters who have substance and cast shadows. It is a coming of age story played out against a backdrop of politics and magic, The first of Brent Weeks’ epic story cycle, it compares favorably to George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” books in terms of complexity and world-building.

The relationship between an orphan “guild rat” and a master assassin named Durzo Blint is at the heart of the story, but both Durzo and the boy have lives that connect to a web of other people.  Durzo warns his apprentice that “love is a noose,” but by the time they meet, it’s already too late for the boy to heed the warning.

This is an epic story filled with darkness and cruelty but also stuffed with terrific characters, great friendships, large themes and genuine emotion. The early chapters are especially grim, and almost unbearable at times, but also familiar to us—the fantastical extension of Dickens’ version of poverty.  This world is not sentimental and those who escape the pull of the Warrens are grateful for their reprieve.

The world-building here is outstanding, on a par with Frank Herbert’s Dune or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or the afore-mentioned George R. R. Martin’s Seven Kingdoms.  There is very real magic here, with “talents” that range across many different disciplines and mages that must hide their magic. There are places where a fan of the genre can almost identify the author’s influences (because they’re the classic books every fan has read) and he hits all the tropes and memes out there.  Which is not a bad thing. 

This is a “Chosen One” story, filled with humble beginnings and magical artifacts, and impossible loves, and politics both personal and grand. The chance for betrayal is everywhere and not necessarily because those doing the betraying are traitors.