Category Archives: writing

Thinking About Vampires

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After seeing Sinners this week, I’ve found myself thinking about vampires here and there. Now, vampires are not my favorite type of monsters or horror tale, for me that goes to the ghost story. In fact, most vampire movies leave me cold. I am in that minority that actively dislikes The Lost Boys and count myself among those who read Interview with the Vampire in hardback and had no interest in any other book in the series.

What I do find fascinating is the way the vampire is used by so many creators with so many different attributes.

Until Stoker came along and published Dracula in 1897, the nature of vampires varied a great deal by regional folklore. Stoker in his research gathered the aspects he liked and wanted, discarded many others, and created the template that so many others would follow or deliberately shatter.

Vampires are the dead reanimated. This makes them cousins to the post-Romero interpretation of the zombie and a more distant relation to the traditional version. In modern culture I have seen the two as opposite sides of the same coin. Vampires, as we often depict them in movies today, are the ultimate expression of individuality, iconoclasts surviving and preying upon a larger society that they no longer are a part of. Zombies are the unnamed, undifferentiated great mass, they are the faceless crowd where absolutely no one is special.

Vampires feed on blood. In folklore this is often shown as an unending hunger with the beasts when located in their graves or tomb bloated from their gorging. This is not sexy and is rarely if ever shown in film. By the time Buffy the Vampire Slayer arrived in the cultural scene blood had been reduced to a mere nutrient with any animal’s blood sufficing to meet a metabolic need that remained inexplicable.

Vampires are destroyed by sunlight. This is not found in Dracula where the count walks about in the daylight but with greatly reduced abilities. Count Orlok’s destruction with the rising sun in Nosferatu  set the standard followed by countless films with his gentle fading eventually giving way to explosive detonations in Near Dark. Sinners settled for simple combustion.

Vampires cast no reflection. This is another classic aspect and one that gets upgraded to the contemporary times with the creatures often not appearing in video or film. The British limited series Vhad a secret agency hunting the vampires using pistols that had small video screens attached to allow for rapid identification of their targets.

Vampires must be invited into a space. This aspect comes and goes. Some creators use public spaces like a club or a store are having open to all invites while retaining the restriction for private areas, some dispense with it entirely. Buffy’s force field at the threshold always struck me as a little over the top, while Sinners played a much more subtle action where it was clear the vampire desires to enter but simply doesn’t actually try until invited.

The most problematic and yet widespread aspect of the vampire is the repulsion by a cross or crucifix. Traditionally this is straightforward Christianity, the symbol of the power of a real god and his manifestation in the world of the living acts is a shield against evil and a promise of eternal life not damnation for his believers. As society secularized over the decades, the ‘reality’ behind the cross’s symbolism faded with most creators supplanting a ‘truth’ of the Christian religion with the power of faith by the wielder.

By the time we get to Buffy, the cross itself is simply another talisman wielded by non-Christian with equal efficacy. Sinners wisely dispenses with this aspect entirely, a vampire wearing a cross has no particular meaning and a vampire can easily repeat the Lord’s Prayer without any ill-effect.

I would suggest to anyone thinking about crafting a tale with vampire think deeply about not only which aspects to include but also to why those aspects apply.

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The First 10,000 Words

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My untitled 80s San Diego-based cinema-themed horror novel just passed 10,000 words.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I needed to get this book started because I could feel the enthusiasm battery starting to drain away and if it got much lower while I did prep and research there would not be enough juice to start the writing engine.

This has led me to writing a novel with even less of a mental outline than the last two books I completed, but I think it’s actually started.

My cast of characters is slowly revealing themselves as they step into the story, David Ludendorff, my gay movie theater owner and so far, the character at the center of this ghost story. The theater’s manager, Tram Nguyen, college student and reserved, Terrance, Dave’s best friend and occasional lover, and I just introduced Cyril Jones, long time projectionist at the theater but he’s going to be the first body to hit the floor in this plot.

I have a very rough idea of my 5-act breakdown. The numerous novels and stories I have constructed with this 5-act method I think plays a large part in how I can make the writing work without the aid of an outline. The structure gives me just enough guidance to keep me pointed in the correct direction, so I do not feel lost.

If things go as planned, I have high hopes of completing at least a first draft before Halloween.

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And the Book Starts

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So, I have actually begun placing words in a line starting my next, still untitled, horror novel. Once again, I do not have a full outline in place, have only the sketch of a 5-act structure and only some of the key characters but delaying was not an option.

One thing I have learned about myself as a writer is that there seems to be a bank of enthusiasm when a project first explodes in my little noggin. The idea generates a lot of ‘wow’ and energy as I really really like the prospect. This fuels the research and planning stages but as time passes that burst of energy drains away. The idea and scenes are thought on less and less until if the writing doesn’t actually start, is empties and I find I no longer have any passion for the project.

It dies.

This novel, dealing with cursed nitrate movie footage and set in the summer of 1984 in San Diego, needed to start or I was going to no have the drive to write it at all. So, this week, despite still not have a great opening, I wrote an opening. Maybe a better one will come along. That has happened before, where after the entire book is written I finally figure out how it should have started. The important thing is to get this moving, after about 10,000 words a project usually has enough momentum to find its way to the finish line.

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A San Diego from Years past

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Saturday, I spent three hours at the Central Library downtown researching the movies that played in the summer of 1984 here is San Diego. I needed specific movies and theaters beyond the major studio productions and megahits of that year. And that year had a lot of megahits, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Star trek III, Indian Jones and The Temple of Doom and so many more, but those I can research on the internet and are far less importance to my coming novel. No, I needed the small arthouse films, and just which arthouse were in operation in my adopted hometown.

I was here in that summer. I watched many of those movies, but my memory is foggy on when in the season they player and names of those theaters that have long since shuttered their doors, hence the need to scan through rolls of microfiche looking at the newspaper ads of the day.

Man, that brought back memories. This city used to have so many movie theaters. I saw ads for movies I had nearly forgotten entirely and the old movie houses where they played.

I adore the era of streaming and the ease with which it makes it possible to watch a lot of material instead of waiting on the whims of late-night programmers, but I miss those theaters, the thrill of something wild and unexpected when you went to showing with little or no knowledge of the film and shared that discovery with a live audience.

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The Flowering Phase of Creativity

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So, another post about my next novel and how my creative process works.

I am in what I can call ‘my flowering phase.’ I haven’t committed much to text as far as the next project goes, it’s still a little too indistinct for that, but enough of the project has firmed up that ideas and concepts are sprouting like springtime flowers. They are common enough and specific enough that even while having lunch with my sweetie-wife I can do quick research to validate them as they erupt.

Yesterday, after our quite enjoyable walk in the zoo under a gloriously clear blue sky, I realized that an element of my plot could be resolved by a second Adamas avenue theater, one that by the 80s had become a fabric store. Fast and accurate googling on my smart phone confirmed that what had once the Adams Avenue Theater, a movie palace of old, worked perfectly for my needs.

Soon it will be time to start crafting the details of the plot and putting the outline into shape. While a lot of the story and the plot remain hazy, just shapes in the fog on a dark night, they are there just waiting to be discovered.

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The Next Novel

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I have begun to earliest work on my next novel. Another horror, this one a bit of a period piece, but a period I know well, San Diego the summer of 1984. This one will be a ghost story centered on an arthouse/revival house movie theater in the Kensington area of the city. For people who know San Diego, yes, I am crafting a fictional version of the beloved Ken Cinema that ceased operations at the start of the pandemic. The Ken was part of the Landmark chain of theaters that once thrived here and now no theaters of that illustrious chain remain open in San Diego.

The summer of ’84 was an eventful summer for the nation and the city. Los Angeles hosted the Olympics, which the Soviets boycotted. Our mayor was embroiled in a scandal that seems so small and quaint by today’s degenerated politics. Ronald Reagan was riding to a massive electoral victory and San Diego erupted on the map with for a while the largest mass-murder event in the country’s history. Sadly, America has broken that record repeatedly.

That was the year I still performed as part of the fans that attended The Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screenings, made lifelong friends, and discovered some of my favorite films in class at college.

Amid all this crisis and confusion, I plan to play with ghosts and cinema. It should be a lot of fun.

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The Hardest Part of Writing a Novel

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It’s really not the novel itself. It’s not plotting out the twists and turns of the story or combing through the entire 90,000 words trying make sure you don’t look like some who failed basic English.

Nope. It is none of those things for me.

It is writing the god damned synopsis.

I’ve spent six months carefully working out line by line precisely what the story is, who the characters are, what the twists and reveals need to be, and hopefully crafting a tone that is engaging and provokes the emotions I want to reader to experience. Now, I have to find a way to convey all that in just a few pages and yet engaging enough that an agent or editor when they read it feel energized and want the full experience.

Can you tell that’s where I am at on The Commune? I have my query letter in place for the next cycle of agent stalking and I think it’s my best one yet but the synopsis? Man, that’s hard.

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The Trope of Inverted Tropes

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A trope is a well-worn concept, idea, or situation in fiction. An ambulance chasing lawyer, a doctor obsessed with playing golf, a sex worker with a pure and good heart are examples of tropes well known in previous decades that have fallen out of style and are for the most part now forgotten.

Genre fiction has its own set of tropes that are widely known and for several decades now the flipping of those tropes has been a popular move.

The trouble with tropes is that well-worn and predictable that can often lead to lazy, bad writing and stories. Little that is new, original, or even interesting is presented but rather reheated leftovers instead of a finely prepared meal.

In some cases, the inverting of a trope is motivated by correcting past prejudices, preconceptions, and stereotypes. Sometimes it’s meant as a twist or surprise to the narrative, such as it’s not the shinning knight that is the villain of the story, but the poor dragon hounded and hunted for no good reason, it’s not the creature that is the monstrosity but the villagers, and handsome prince is in fact a terrible and abusive person.

Honestly, I can’t recall a story of recent vintage in which any of the above genre tropes was deployed in anything close to its original form. Everything tale and piece has been the inverted trope, and I think that has become the new default setting for many of these concepts and situations.

So common has the inverted trope become that in my eyes is had become the reheated leftovers and not the fresh new take. Every witch I see in a story I know now is really a good person, unjustly feared and outcast. The inversions become the boring, predictable text that offers little in the way of a new voice, a new vision, a new take on anything.

This is not a plea to return to some ‘golden age’ of stories. That never existed, but I think it’s important, particularly when dealing with concepts that have been around for thousands of years, to bring something fresh that is not merely the reverse image of something else.

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Blood is Magic, Not Food

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With last month’s release of Robert Eggers’ stunning remake Nosferatu vampires and vampires media has been on my mind.

In Nosferatu Count Orlok is presented pretty much as the traditional folk tales describe an undead vampire, a walking corpse, decaying and revolting, that feeds upon the blood of the living. Orlok is much closer in appearance to the post Romero ‘zombie’ than to the urbane European nobleman displayed in my adaptations of Dracula.

With Dracula, both the original novel and the nearly endless adaptations, the vampire moved away from that walking corpse towards a more romantic figure. Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire proved instrumental in moving the image of the vampire into one that was more tragic and a figure to be pitied rather than feared. Over the decades the vampire continued to transform into tragic romantic heroes slowly becoming not monsters of the night but simply life-impaired individuals, comic-book characters with tremendous powers and a few unsavory quirks.

A trope that emerged from this transformation that has always rankled me is the habit of treating blood as merely another nutrient. A process that gave us the character Angel buying blood from Sunnydale’s local slaughterhouse to sustain his dietary requirements.

Even just typing that out annoys me to no end. The vampire feeding on the blood of living humans was not the same as someone has a nice bowl of soup. It was not about calories and essential elements it was about life. Blood, to the pre-scientific world, was that strange substance that meant life itself. Blood was always at the center of the most powerful magics. Turning it into just another meal product that can be ordered from your local distributor cheapens that entire symbolism of the myth and robs it of most of its horror.

I will admit that this is just part of a larger issue I have with ‘scientific’ and rational approaches to supernatural horrors. It seems logical to treat the vampire’s feeding on blood the same as out feeding on plants and animals, just as it ‘logical’ to treat werewolf transformations as bound by the conservation of mass laws. Both are violations of the magical, wonderous, and inexplicable nature of the supernatural. Vampires are the dead. They are not just different kinds of people and I am thankful that Eggers bucked the slick modern trend of making them cool and sexy returning the monster to is terrifying and revolting roots.

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Quick Thoughts on Prologs

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Prologs are a never ending source of debate and contention in the writing community with some saying always avoid and other loving them. The truth, as usual, I think lies in-between.

They are far too often used as a place to dump exposition and world building which is usually a sign that an author doesn’t have confidence in their ability to weave that vital information into the narrative itself.

I have often listened to prologs in critique session and advised cutting them and yet my published novel has one so I cannot be described as a rabid anti-prolog writer.

Here are a few quick guidelines I have for effective prologs.

1) It shouldn’t involve the protagonist. If it does, then it should be part of the main narrative.

2) It should contain information that the protagonist doesn’t know at the start of the story. That is, it is information that primes the reader for what is coming but the characters remain blindsided.

3) It should not be resolved. It’s not its own little short story it is a building block of the larger tale. If everything in the prolog is resolved than the reader has no pull to turn the page. The prolog is a harbinger of things to come, not a neat little package complete and finished.

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