A Vampire a Day: Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

I first encountered George R. R. Martin as a fan of the original Beauty and the Beast, which he created. I found out he'd written a couple of novels and went in search of them. I really liked Armageddon Rag, but I REALLY liked Fevre Dream, his vampire novel. It's an obscure one that ended up on the B&N Reads list of "the Ten Best Vampire Novels No One Has Read"  (I've read one other book on the list, Suzy McKee C Charnas' Vampire Taspestry but haven't read the other eight which means I have the chance to discover eight (EIGHT!!!!) great new books.

Fevre Dream is a gothic novel with a capital G. Wikipedia, which has an entry on the book (of course they do--it's not a "thing" unless it's got a Wikipedia article) that likens the book's style to a mashup of Bram Stoker and Mark Twain. Martin worked out a complex backdrop for his vampires (the "red thirst" they experience, the Pale King who leads them) and it mostly takes place on an elegant and elaborate steam boat (the Fevre Dream of the title.)

This is a lush and decadent and nuanced novel and (in my opinion) leaves Anne Rice in the dust.

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.

When someone gushes over a book

I was wearing the earrings I bought in New Orleans today and the checker at my supermarket complimented me on them. I told her I'd bought them in NOLA and she told me she'd loved the city. I told her about a cab driver taking me by Anne Rice's house and she told me how much she loved Anne Rice's books. And that made me think of the time I was in a supermarket in L.A. looking over the new paperback books. An older woman, a total stranger, pointed out a book by James Patterson--The 9th Judgment, a book in the Woman's Murder Club series. "That's a really good book," she said.

How cool is that? Can you imagine how great it would be to have total strangers recommending your book to people? You cannot buy that kind of word of mouth. When the first of the Twilight books came out, they came highly recommended to me by a friend's daughter, who was in middle school at the time. She's now in college, a writer herself, and I still rely on her for opinions in all things YA and paranormal. Forget being a best-selling author. What I want to be is an author that people recommend to strangers. (Well, don't forget it but you know what I mean.)

Feminist Fiction Friday: Witch Rhymes with Bitch

I was Googling around and put in the search terms "feminist mysteries," expecting to get back a list of books by women writers or books featuring female protagonists. Instead, what I got were links to a series of books about the neo-pagan movement, some of which I've read (Drawing Down the Moon) and some of which I haven't (The Holy Book of women's Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft,Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting and Other Womanly Arts).
That search led me to this excerpt from a paper on occult crime and law enforcement by a writer named Isaac Bonewits. (The website is holysmoke.orghttp://www.holysmoke.org/  which turns out to be a Scientology site.)

And that sent my train of thought derailing into the whole subject of witches. Some of the greatest villains in pop culture and English literature were memorable witches--Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty and Narnia's White Witch and the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (and also her kinder/gentler self in Wicked). There is the wicked queen/witch of Snow White and the witches in The Golden Compass. In The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, a contemporary woman discovers she's heiress to a tradition of healing that goes back to the Salem Witch Trials and an ancestress accused of witchcraft.  The book is a historical novel first and last, but it has a theme that you see over and over in witch books--a woman inherits a supernatural destiny. And in all of these books, the heroine is a strong woman, powerful and in command. (And usually beautiful, which is in itself a sort of power.) The only exception I've seen is Anne Rice's "Mayfair Witches" books, which have, to me, an unpleasant undertone of victimization and sexual politics.