Oops. I was hoping the new one-shot story set in the Succubus Summoning 101 universe would have gone up on Literotica by now. I intended it as my apology for taking so damn long on Succubus Summoning 201 and also to show I hadn’t forgotten about Phil and friends. Unfortunately it’s been rejected for underage content. Not sure why—it’s clear Cέrμləa isn’t the young girl she’s masquerading as and she isn’t even around for the sex scene either.
Oh well. I was going to post it here as well anyway. I’ll give it another read through for errors and put it up over the weekend.
I’m not sure what this means for posting the Succubus Summoning 201 series up on Literotica. I'm not going to write out Cέrμləa or change what I've written/plan to write. I'll try and post as much of the series as possible. At the worst, the complete uncensored version will still be available as an ebook.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
One of the Best Feelings in the World
My print copies of Succubus Summoning 101 arrived last week. To be honest I'd been biting my knuckles in worry over how the cover would turn out. The design looked great on computer screen, but often What You See Is Not Always What You Get with these things. Thankfully, they turned out great.
It’s a narcissistic, egomaniac thing, but I like having a couple of print copies for the shelf. Being an author has always been a lifetime ambition, so actually holding the print proof of that is one of the best feelings in the world.
If you want your own dead-tree form of Succubus Summoning 101, you can get it through eXcessica or on Amazon. Sorry about the price. That’s POD (Print-on-Demand) for you. Still, it’s available for anyone wanting a physical version.
Succubus Summoning 201 is still in progress. I’ve written a short story featuring Phil, Cέrμləa and another summoning mishap to fill in the gap while I get 201 back up to speed again. Look out for it here sometime next week…
It’s a narcissistic, egomaniac thing, but I like having a couple of print copies for the shelf. Being an author has always been a lifetime ambition, so actually holding the print proof of that is one of the best feelings in the world.
If you want your own dead-tree form of Succubus Summoning 101, you can get it through eXcessica or on Amazon. Sorry about the price. That’s POD (Print-on-Demand) for you. Still, it’s available for anyone wanting a physical version.
Succubus Summoning 201 is still in progress. I’ve written a short story featuring Phil, Cέrμləa and another summoning mishap to fill in the gap while I get 201 back up to speed again. Look out for it here sometime next week…
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Even Academics Aren't Immune From Making The Author's Big Mistake...
The Author’s Big Mistake, apparently, is to respond to a bad review. All that happens is the writer makes themselves look foolish and unprofessional. Witness this spectacular meltdown from Jacqueline Howett over a bad review of her self-published book, The Greek Seaman. To compound her misery, this went viral enough to hit the major broadsheets. Even if they say bad things about us writers, the reviewer is meant to be aloof and sacrosanct. Otherwise it’s just a big circle jerk that helps no one.
What if the reviewer is less than honest in their intentions?
A link to another spectacular author meltdown appeared in one of my social networking feeds. This one saw Mike Coe attempt to break the world record for most consecutive comments after a blogpost following Jane Smith’s negative review of his book, Flight to Paradise. A fellow writer had posted the link as a good example of a self-published writer overreacting to reasonable criticism. I thought the same, until I read down to the part that revealed the reviewer had only read four pages.
Four pages! How can anyone seriously review a book after reading only four pages? That’s like writing a review of a movie after seeing only the first three minutes. I’m sure there are many movies where the film critic would have liked to have walked out at the halfway mark, but they can’t, because they’d be violating their role as a critic. I know Smith has clear rules and a ‘fifteen typos and you’re out’ policy, but her review is four paragraphs long and talks about ‘poor characterization’…from a book where she’s read only the first four pages. I’ve read plenty of books where the main characters haven’t even showed up by then! Slamming a book because the writing is so bad it’s painful to turn the page is one thing, but I’d be peeved too if a reviewer read only the first couple of pages of one of my stories and started to comment on broader issues of characterisation and plot (although not enough to attempt to break the world record for most consecutive comments after a blogpost).
I might be wrong, and I’m prepared to apologise whole-heartedly to Jane Smith if this is the case, but after reading more of her reviews my gut feeling is her selfpublishingreview is a troll site with the main aim of beating up self-published writers for the temerity of going it alone. She also runs a blog entitled “How Publishing Really Works”, which sets my ‘ulterior motives’ alarm bells ringing. A bad book is a bad book is a bad book, and this is true whether it was shat out by one of the Big 6 or a lone, misguided scribbler, but some people are vehemently against the whole principle of self-epublishing in general.
I’m sure plenty will keep on submitting to her for review. They’ll see the carcasses of past maulings and think, That won’t happen to me; my book is good. We’re daft like that. I think I’ll pass on this one, though. I don’t see the point when the game is so heavily stacked it’s impossible to win. Or rather, if someone has an axe to grind, the last thing you want to do is give them an axe.
Oh, and to prove it’s not just those crazy self-published types that go apeshit below the line, enjoy Eric Anderson making the Author’s Big Mistake over Catherine Hakim’s review of his latest book in The Guardian.
Right, that’s enough of the serious posts for a while. Coming next…back to the sexy succubus smut…
What if the reviewer is less than honest in their intentions?
A link to another spectacular author meltdown appeared in one of my social networking feeds. This one saw Mike Coe attempt to break the world record for most consecutive comments after a blogpost following Jane Smith’s negative review of his book, Flight to Paradise. A fellow writer had posted the link as a good example of a self-published writer overreacting to reasonable criticism. I thought the same, until I read down to the part that revealed the reviewer had only read four pages.
Four pages! How can anyone seriously review a book after reading only four pages? That’s like writing a review of a movie after seeing only the first three minutes. I’m sure there are many movies where the film critic would have liked to have walked out at the halfway mark, but they can’t, because they’d be violating their role as a critic. I know Smith has clear rules and a ‘fifteen typos and you’re out’ policy, but her review is four paragraphs long and talks about ‘poor characterization’…from a book where she’s read only the first four pages. I’ve read plenty of books where the main characters haven’t even showed up by then! Slamming a book because the writing is so bad it’s painful to turn the page is one thing, but I’d be peeved too if a reviewer read only the first couple of pages of one of my stories and started to comment on broader issues of characterisation and plot (although not enough to attempt to break the world record for most consecutive comments after a blogpost).
I might be wrong, and I’m prepared to apologise whole-heartedly to Jane Smith if this is the case, but after reading more of her reviews my gut feeling is her selfpublishingreview is a troll site with the main aim of beating up self-published writers for the temerity of going it alone. She also runs a blog entitled “How Publishing Really Works”, which sets my ‘ulterior motives’ alarm bells ringing. A bad book is a bad book is a bad book, and this is true whether it was shat out by one of the Big 6 or a lone, misguided scribbler, but some people are vehemently against the whole principle of self-epublishing in general.
I’m sure plenty will keep on submitting to her for review. They’ll see the carcasses of past maulings and think, That won’t happen to me; my book is good. We’re daft like that. I think I’ll pass on this one, though. I don’t see the point when the game is so heavily stacked it’s impossible to win. Or rather, if someone has an axe to grind, the last thing you want to do is give them an axe.
Oh, and to prove it’s not just those crazy self-published types that go apeshit below the line, enjoy Eric Anderson making the Author’s Big Mistake over Catherine Hakim’s review of his latest book in The Guardian.
Right, that’s enough of the serious posts for a while. Coming next…back to the sexy succubus smut…
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The Pastor and the Smut Writers
“First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
I’ve seen a few blog posts using Martin Niemöller’s famous quote in different variations. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big chilling effect hitting erotica writing right now. PayPal, a payment processor with a highly dominant, almost monopolistic market position, has begun a crackdown on what type of books online retailers can sell. Bookstrand and All Romance went first as mentioned in Selena Kitt’s blog, and now Smashwords has also succumbed to the same pressure.
I’ve also seen some comments expressing outrage over mucky erotica writers using Niemöller’s warning. How dare they compare their inability to foist degenerate smut on the world with the murder of six million people. They’re not. No one’s seriously expecting erotica writers to be dragged out of their homes at midnight. Some are going to have to find another source of income, some hobbyists will lose an outlet for creative expression, and some readers will miss out on works they might enjoy. Small beans compared to one of the worst atrocities in human history, but those small beans still mean something to the people involved.
Niemöller’s “First they came…” refers to a regrettable tendency of people to stick their heads, ostrich-like, into the sand and stand by and let things happen because it’s “Not My Business”. I’ve read lots of head-in-the-sand rationalising over the past few days ranging from the classic “I don’t write that filth so it won’t affect me” to “It’s not censorship; PayPal have the freedom to choose who they do business with.”
The censorship argument is a tricky one. I’ve seen that bend back and forth. Eve McFadden provides a very good counterpoint here. A retailer is not obligated to stock items they don’t wish to sell. While I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of a financial service company determining what their clients can sell, PayPal is also not obligated to provide services to a retailer selling items PayPal doesn’t wish to be associated with. Unfortunately, when a company has the reach and market dominance PayPal has, decisions of this nature can have a stifling effect on what items can be sold.
These books are not illegal. People are happy to write them, people are happy to sell them, and people are happy to buy them. If this is not happening then there are grounds for concern. It might not be censorship according to the classic definition of the word, but when the outcomes start to look the same we should start to get nervous.
I think it’s important to stress again these books are not illegal. While some might find themes of incest (including “pseudo-incest”), rape, barely-legal and bestiality in erotica objectionable, it’s only fiction. Contrary to what some people might think, Erotica writers don’t actually have to carry out these acts in order to write about them. We do have imaginations. And, at the end of the day, no one’s forcing anyone to read these books.
Although I write fairly explicit horror/erotica hybrids, I don’t think I’m affected by this unless PayPal shuts eXcessica down completely. Technically I could fall foul of restrictions on “Rape” and “Snuff”, but part of the nervousness about PayPal’s recent strong-arming is whole swathes of books could be taken off the shelves depending on how those are interpreted. Writing a thriller about a serial killer? No sir, someone could find that chapter where the killer strangles a prostitute during sexual intercourse titillating. This is the slippery slope Selena Kitt referred to. Is it just the nasty gang-bang stuff that’s off limits, or will someone use that as a foothold to start removing chunks of BDSM literature they don’t like?
When that paedophile manual surfaced on Amazon a while back I found myself in a conflicted position. Obviously I found the book repulsive, but I also knew it could be used as a lever to justify taking down other work. Sure enough, some of Selena’s titles featuring incest were taken down next. Now the category of objectionable material has widened to include sex between non-blood relatives and depictions of rape and violence. While the tide hasn’t reached me yet, it’s certainly lapping at my toes. I’m thinking maybe I should have spoke out sooner, even if it meant defending something I found personally objectionable.
Further behind me are the paranormal erotica writers. They don’t have anything to worry about now. It’s not bestiality if the were is in human form. It’s not necrophilia if the vampire is walking around. Then the tide moves further up until it starts lapping at their toes. New emails go around. No more of this yucky non-human erotica. All participants must be 100% human. Then the paranormal writer starts to think, Maybe I should have said something when they were banning all that icky incest and rape stuff.
Behind them is an erotic romance writer. They don’t have anything to worry about. Their stuff is strictly vanilla. Then the next round of emails arrive. There’s too much sex. Tone it down or it gets pulled. And the erotic romance writer starts to think maybe they should have said something.
And beyond them is the edgy thriller writer…
And it’s exactly what Niemöller was warning about, albeit on a considerably smaller scale. Freedoms do get eroded if people don’t speak out, even if speaking out means defending subject matter they might not agree with. Which segues nicely into the other classic quote I used in the last blog post:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Don’t give them an inch and don’t let them get a foothold.
PayPal is a business and is perfectly entitled to choose who they do business with and how…just as we’re perfectly entitled to choose whether or not we do business with them based on their decisions. If you don’t like the idea of PayPal policing what you can or can’t read, now would be a good time to let them know.
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
I’ve seen a few blog posts using Martin Niemöller’s famous quote in different variations. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big chilling effect hitting erotica writing right now. PayPal, a payment processor with a highly dominant, almost monopolistic market position, has begun a crackdown on what type of books online retailers can sell. Bookstrand and All Romance went first as mentioned in Selena Kitt’s blog, and now Smashwords has also succumbed to the same pressure.
I’ve also seen some comments expressing outrage over mucky erotica writers using Niemöller’s warning. How dare they compare their inability to foist degenerate smut on the world with the murder of six million people. They’re not. No one’s seriously expecting erotica writers to be dragged out of their homes at midnight. Some are going to have to find another source of income, some hobbyists will lose an outlet for creative expression, and some readers will miss out on works they might enjoy. Small beans compared to one of the worst atrocities in human history, but those small beans still mean something to the people involved.
Niemöller’s “First they came…” refers to a regrettable tendency of people to stick their heads, ostrich-like, into the sand and stand by and let things happen because it’s “Not My Business”. I’ve read lots of head-in-the-sand rationalising over the past few days ranging from the classic “I don’t write that filth so it won’t affect me” to “It’s not censorship; PayPal have the freedom to choose who they do business with.”
The censorship argument is a tricky one. I’ve seen that bend back and forth. Eve McFadden provides a very good counterpoint here. A retailer is not obligated to stock items they don’t wish to sell. While I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of a financial service company determining what their clients can sell, PayPal is also not obligated to provide services to a retailer selling items PayPal doesn’t wish to be associated with. Unfortunately, when a company has the reach and market dominance PayPal has, decisions of this nature can have a stifling effect on what items can be sold.
These books are not illegal. People are happy to write them, people are happy to sell them, and people are happy to buy them. If this is not happening then there are grounds for concern. It might not be censorship according to the classic definition of the word, but when the outcomes start to look the same we should start to get nervous.
I think it’s important to stress again these books are not illegal. While some might find themes of incest (including “pseudo-incest”), rape, barely-legal and bestiality in erotica objectionable, it’s only fiction. Contrary to what some people might think, Erotica writers don’t actually have to carry out these acts in order to write about them. We do have imaginations. And, at the end of the day, no one’s forcing anyone to read these books.
Although I write fairly explicit horror/erotica hybrids, I don’t think I’m affected by this unless PayPal shuts eXcessica down completely. Technically I could fall foul of restrictions on “Rape” and “Snuff”, but part of the nervousness about PayPal’s recent strong-arming is whole swathes of books could be taken off the shelves depending on how those are interpreted. Writing a thriller about a serial killer? No sir, someone could find that chapter where the killer strangles a prostitute during sexual intercourse titillating. This is the slippery slope Selena Kitt referred to. Is it just the nasty gang-bang stuff that’s off limits, or will someone use that as a foothold to start removing chunks of BDSM literature they don’t like?
When that paedophile manual surfaced on Amazon a while back I found myself in a conflicted position. Obviously I found the book repulsive, but I also knew it could be used as a lever to justify taking down other work. Sure enough, some of Selena’s titles featuring incest were taken down next. Now the category of objectionable material has widened to include sex between non-blood relatives and depictions of rape and violence. While the tide hasn’t reached me yet, it’s certainly lapping at my toes. I’m thinking maybe I should have spoke out sooner, even if it meant defending something I found personally objectionable.
Further behind me are the paranormal erotica writers. They don’t have anything to worry about now. It’s not bestiality if the were is in human form. It’s not necrophilia if the vampire is walking around. Then the tide moves further up until it starts lapping at their toes. New emails go around. No more of this yucky non-human erotica. All participants must be 100% human. Then the paranormal writer starts to think, Maybe I should have said something when they were banning all that icky incest and rape stuff.
Behind them is an erotic romance writer. They don’t have anything to worry about. Their stuff is strictly vanilla. Then the next round of emails arrive. There’s too much sex. Tone it down or it gets pulled. And the erotic romance writer starts to think maybe they should have said something.
And beyond them is the edgy thriller writer…
And it’s exactly what Niemöller was warning about, albeit on a considerably smaller scale. Freedoms do get eroded if people don’t speak out, even if speaking out means defending subject matter they might not agree with. Which segues nicely into the other classic quote I used in the last blog post:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Don’t give them an inch and don’t let them get a foothold.
PayPal is a business and is perfectly entitled to choose who they do business with and how…just as we’re perfectly entitled to choose whether or not we do business with them based on their decisions. If you don’t like the idea of PayPal policing what you can or can’t read, now would be a good time to let them know.
Monday, February 20, 2012
A Big Erotica Freeze Is A-Coming...
This isn't the best of news.
In a nutshell, the morality police have deployed the banhammers and no one has the slightest idea where the line of acceptability is anymore. I don’t know where this leaves my publisher, eXcessica, or the status of my own titles. Without Paypal (someone—Google, Bitcoin, anyone not Apple—please put these jokers out of business) I’m probably not going to be able to sell directly through the excessica.com store, as it won’t exist unless Selena Kitt can find another payment processor. On top of that there’s the uncertainty of not knowing what the other book retailers will accept.
Bestiality, Necrophilia and Paedophilia have always been big no-no’s for erotica. Incest was heading there, and now it looks like Pseudo-Incest (where the participants are not blood relations) and Rape are about to join them.
Personally, Incest isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s an enormously popular category on Literotica, but I’ve never felt the desire to write about or read it. Doesn’t matter. If other people want to read or write about it, that’s their business and fine by me.
As for Rape, what the hell does that cover? That can range from ugly stuff where dudes fantasize about gang-banging the uppity cheerleader with their homies, to non-consent fantasies written and enjoyed by women about pure and sexually-frustrated maidens being ravished by hunks of studliness. Where does that leave my stories? Does it count if it’s female-on-male? I have no fucking clue. Selena tried to clarify with Paypal on BDSM—a category with sometimes dubious consent—and was told to yank the lot. Last I heard, BDSM is a hefty chunk of erotica and mostly features consenting adults. How do you stay within a line when there is no fucking line?
You might think this doesn’t matter to you, that it’s only the muckiest of mucky stuff that’s affected. It does. Same for all the paranormal erotica writers that let out a sigh of relief when bestiality was clarified to not include werewolves and other shape-shifters. Don’t get too comfortable. They WILL come for you next. It’s what they do.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often misattributed to Voltaire)
Maybe we should just ban the people that try to ban things.
In a nutshell, the morality police have deployed the banhammers and no one has the slightest idea where the line of acceptability is anymore. I don’t know where this leaves my publisher, eXcessica, or the status of my own titles. Without Paypal (someone—Google, Bitcoin, anyone not Apple—please put these jokers out of business) I’m probably not going to be able to sell directly through the excessica.com store, as it won’t exist unless Selena Kitt can find another payment processor. On top of that there’s the uncertainty of not knowing what the other book retailers will accept.
Bestiality, Necrophilia and Paedophilia have always been big no-no’s for erotica. Incest was heading there, and now it looks like Pseudo-Incest (where the participants are not blood relations) and Rape are about to join them.
Personally, Incest isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s an enormously popular category on Literotica, but I’ve never felt the desire to write about or read it. Doesn’t matter. If other people want to read or write about it, that’s their business and fine by me.
As for Rape, what the hell does that cover? That can range from ugly stuff where dudes fantasize about gang-banging the uppity cheerleader with their homies, to non-consent fantasies written and enjoyed by women about pure and sexually-frustrated maidens being ravished by hunks of studliness. Where does that leave my stories? Does it count if it’s female-on-male? I have no fucking clue. Selena tried to clarify with Paypal on BDSM—a category with sometimes dubious consent—and was told to yank the lot. Last I heard, BDSM is a hefty chunk of erotica and mostly features consenting adults. How do you stay within a line when there is no fucking line?
You might think this doesn’t matter to you, that it’s only the muckiest of mucky stuff that’s affected. It does. Same for all the paranormal erotica writers that let out a sigh of relief when bestiality was clarified to not include werewolves and other shape-shifters. Don’t get too comfortable. They WILL come for you next. It’s what they do.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often misattributed to Voltaire)
Maybe we should just ban the people that try to ban things.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Valentine's Day Promotion for A Succubus for Valentine's Day
As I'm a bitter, twisted, possibly certifiable individual with a spider-infested lump of black coal for a heart, Valentine's Day is the worst day of all. All that saccharine schmaltz and pink froth—Ugh!
To help fellow warped malfeasants through this most trying of days I’m dropping the price on my A Succubus for Valentine’s Day collection (ebook) to 99 cents for this week. This was the collection I put out this time last year. If you haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet, you have until Sunday (19th) to take advantage of my irrational hostility to February the 14th and get it on the cheap.
The new price is already updated in the eXcessica store, but it usually takes a little longer (about 12 hours) for amazon, B & N and others to update.
Guaranteed to take away that sickly sweet aftertaste of too much Valentine's Day confection. Enjoy!
To help fellow warped malfeasants through this most trying of days I’m dropping the price on my A Succubus for Valentine’s Day collection (ebook) to 99 cents for this week. This was the collection I put out this time last year. If you haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet, you have until Sunday (19th) to take advantage of my irrational hostility to February the 14th and get it on the cheap.
The new price is already updated in the eXcessica store, but it usually takes a little longer (about 12 hours) for amazon, B & N and others to update.
Guaranteed to take away that sickly sweet aftertaste of too much Valentine's Day confection. Enjoy!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
HWA sucks in debate for Vampire Novel of the Century
The Horror Writer's Association is marking the centenary of Bram Stoker's death by adding an award for Vampire Book of the Century to this year's Bram Stoker Awards. By century they mean 1912 to 2011, not the 20th century as I discovered after making a tit of myself on the comment boards of a major British newspaper.
The nominees are:
The Soft Whisper of the Dead by Charles L. Grant
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
It's a selection that leaves me conflicted between the book I'd like to see win (Anno Dracula) and the book I think should win (Interview with the Vampire).
Kim Newman is probably better known today as Empire's goto man for reviewing B-movies of questionable quality. He's also a bloody good horror writer. The first thing I used to do on purchasing the latest Year's Best Horror or other similar anthology was flick straight to the Kim Newman story.
Anno Dracula takes Dracula as a starting point and plays What If! the heroes lost and Dracula won. What we get is an alternate history with a blood-bloated Count on the throne of the British Empire, Queen Victoria on a leash, and vampirism spread throughout England. It's a lot of fun and, as with all of Kim Newman's work, part of the entertainment is spotting all the references to the historical figures and fictional characters of the time.
Of the other books, I Am Legend might seem like an odd choice on a vampire novel shortlist. Isn't that a zombie apocalypse book? you might think, especially if you've only seen the film adaptations. While it might be hard to believe in these sparkly, post-Twilight days, vampires were once used as a metaphor for contagion and plague, a role which has largely been stolen by zombies in more recent times. This is also the reason, despite being an excellent book, it shouldn't win. A true thoroughbred, but someone changed the track midrace and now it’s charging down the wrong path.
As good as the other books are, I don’t think any of them come close to having the same cultural impact as Interview with the Vampire. You only have to look at the shelves clogged up with vampire fiction at your local bookstore (if it hasn’t already closed down) to see the enormous influence of Anne Rice’s work. Without Interview would we have had the vampire-craze of Twilight, or most of Urban Fantasy in general? As much as horror purists might hate how vampires have changed from badass and evil to emo and whiny, it’s really hard to argue against Interview with the Vampire being the defining vampire novel of the last century in the way Dracula was the defining vampire novel of the one before.
I’m still going to put up a link to Newman’s Anno Dracula, as he’s basically awesome and definitely worth checking out if you haven’t read his work before.
I would have liked to have seen Brian Lumley’s Necroscope on the list, but as I haven’t read either the Grant or Yarbro books I can’t legitimately argue it should be on there at their expense.
Anyway, vampires are so last century. I think it’s time for the sexy, soul-sucking succubi to claim the darkness… ;)
The nominees are:
The Soft Whisper of the Dead by Charles L. Grant
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
It's a selection that leaves me conflicted between the book I'd like to see win (Anno Dracula) and the book I think should win (Interview with the Vampire).
Kim Newman is probably better known today as Empire's goto man for reviewing B-movies of questionable quality. He's also a bloody good horror writer. The first thing I used to do on purchasing the latest Year's Best Horror or other similar anthology was flick straight to the Kim Newman story.
Anno Dracula takes Dracula as a starting point and plays What If! the heroes lost and Dracula won. What we get is an alternate history with a blood-bloated Count on the throne of the British Empire, Queen Victoria on a leash, and vampirism spread throughout England. It's a lot of fun and, as with all of Kim Newman's work, part of the entertainment is spotting all the references to the historical figures and fictional characters of the time.
Of the other books, I Am Legend might seem like an odd choice on a vampire novel shortlist. Isn't that a zombie apocalypse book? you might think, especially if you've only seen the film adaptations. While it might be hard to believe in these sparkly, post-Twilight days, vampires were once used as a metaphor for contagion and plague, a role which has largely been stolen by zombies in more recent times. This is also the reason, despite being an excellent book, it shouldn't win. A true thoroughbred, but someone changed the track midrace and now it’s charging down the wrong path.
As good as the other books are, I don’t think any of them come close to having the same cultural impact as Interview with the Vampire. You only have to look at the shelves clogged up with vampire fiction at your local bookstore (if it hasn’t already closed down) to see the enormous influence of Anne Rice’s work. Without Interview would we have had the vampire-craze of Twilight, or most of Urban Fantasy in general? As much as horror purists might hate how vampires have changed from badass and evil to emo and whiny, it’s really hard to argue against Interview with the Vampire being the defining vampire novel of the last century in the way Dracula was the defining vampire novel of the one before.
I’m still going to put up a link to Newman’s Anno Dracula, as he’s basically awesome and definitely worth checking out if you haven’t read his work before.
I would have liked to have seen Brian Lumley’s Necroscope on the list, but as I haven’t read either the Grant or Yarbro books I can’t legitimately argue it should be on there at their expense.
Anyway, vampires are so last century. I think it’s time for the sexy, soul-sucking succubi to claim the darkness… ;)
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