vampires

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Worldcon/Aussiecon appearances

the darkness withinI’ve scoured the Aussiecon4 program online and come up with these appearances at the convention, at Melbourne’s Convention and Exhibition Centre, for those who might like to catch up (outside of the bar area):

Saturday, Sept 4, 5pm

If anyone has a dusty copy of The Darkness Within lying around they’d like signed (or maybe an anthology such as Dreaming Again), I’ll be in Room 201-02 with pen in hand. (I believe Guest of hHnour Kim Stanley Robinson, amongst others, is also signing at that time.)

Sunday, Sept 5, noon

A reading in Room 215

Sunday, 1pm

Presenting a chat (for teens only) about the evolution of the vampire from Dracula to now, in Room 218.

Sunday, 2pm

I’ll be joining some very cool people indeed to support the anthology Dreaming Again (probably my proudest publishing credit), in Room 211 (keep your eyes, or ears, peeled, as there *might* be an audio version of my story ‘Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn’, available during the con).

Monday, Sept 6, 1pm

Joining a discussion on the taboos in dark fantasy, again with some very cool people, in Room 211.

I’m very happy indeed to be able to support the worldcon through this participation, so I hope some folks can come along to any and all of these: the more input the better 🙂

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Best screen vampires

Another day, another list … this one of the Ten Best Screen Vampires at the Guardian was winning me hands down until the very end, where once again the confusion about popular equating to good kicked in. Honestly, if you want a vampire struggling with their nature and trying to practise restraint, wouldn’t you go for one that actually makes you feel the true weight of that struggle rather than just mooching about – at best a cad, at worst a dirty old man? Like, say, Louis in Interview, or eponymous Angel, or even Nick Knight (probably more the TV show than the movie)? Still, nine out of 10 ain’t bad (even if I’d probably have plumbed for Kirsten Dunst’s Claudia in Interview as my child representative).

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Talking vampires at the Melbourne SF Club’s mini-con

poster for vampire movie Near Dark

The Melbourne Science Fiction Club is having its annual mini-convention on May 22, and yours truly will be a joint guest of honour, sharing the stage with Kirstyn McDermott. I’ll be giving a wee talk on the evolution of the vampire (from Dracula to, um, Edward et al). And Kirstyn will, I believe, be giving her first reading from her forthcoming debut novel, Madigan Mine (spoiler: there is no vampire per se in the novel, but it’s good and dark and there will be blood…)! The mini-con is a gathering of the fan clans, with support from some key purveyors of SF and fantasy goodness. Sounds tasty!

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More bloody vampires

Marianne de Pierres is scoping for readers’ (and viewers’) favourite vampires at her blog, while Nicole Adams has assembled a dubious top 14 vampire stories at hers. Good to see Dracula and Nosferatu made the Phlebotomy cut, despite their lack of supplementary cross-media tie-ins that seem to inform the rest of the selection. Nothing like a list to get tongues wagging, eh?

To whit, I’ve already listed my favourite vampire movies, so, riffing off MdP, here’s my pick of the screen vampires:

Bela Lugosi’s Dracula

Max Shreck’s Orlok

Klaus Kinski’s Orlok

Gary Oldman’s Dracula

Christopher Lee’s Dracula

Ingrid Pitt’s Carmilla

Near Dark’s vampire gang

Buffy’s Drusilla (and Spike, and Darla)

Catherine Deneuve’s Miriam

Willem Dafoe’s Shreck

Tom Cruise’s Lestat

Kirsten Dunst’s Claudia

Udo Keir’s Dracula

That’s 15 and quite a mouthful. I wonder if Kiefer Sutherland and David Boreanaz are unjustly omitted? And you know better than to mention Edward here, right?

So what is it about these screen portrayals that makes them stand out for me? Let’s see. Udo’s a maniac, Cruise excelled where no one expected him to. Shreck is impossible to forget and both Kinski and Dafoe paid amazing homage (Kinski in Vampire in Venice was also divine). Lugosi and Lee are likewise iconic. Near Dark is gritty and nihilistic. Dunst, Oldman, Deneuve and Pitt all offer nuances of characterisation you just don’t often get in a screen vampire. Buffy’s bunch are simply damn good fun, each in their own way. If there’s a theme running through these portrayals, it might be one of dealing with immortality – there’s a loneliness to these vampires, an otherness, that strikes deeper than the usual predator of the night depiction. They might be sexy, zany, insane, downright nasty, but all seem to suffer from the common malaise of being more-or-less alone in their timelessness. Maybe that’s part of why their performance lingers long after the credits have ended.

  • I’ll be rabbitting on about the evolution of vampires in literature and screen at the Melbourne Science Fiction Club’s mini-con on May 22. More details when they’re available.
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    Addendum to books of 2009: The Infernal and Poppy Z Brite

    The little bird twittering about a new release of Kim Wilkins’ debut novel The Infernal has come home to roost — at this online bookseller, to be precise, where you can order a limited edition, rather cool-sounding copy for the princely sum of $100.

    At time of writing, the website is giving a percentage of sales to a Western Australia bushfire appeal.

    lost souls by poppy z brite

    To end the new year, I’m revisiting Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite. She’s one of my favourite authors. I love her ability to inhabit her characters, to draw that shadowy, downcast world, and her depictions of beloved New Orleans. I’ve uploaded an interview conducted with Brite in 2005, just months before Hurricane Katrina devastated her home town.

    I’ve been back to New Orleans twice since Katrina, and found the city tooled up for tourists, but Katrina’s bite is still deep and tenacious for residents, and Fema remains a dirty word.

    Keep up to speed with Brite, and her engagement with her home town post-K, as she puts it, at her blog.

    Meanwhile, Wilkins, another of my favourite authors, has just returned from a month’s research in England in pursuit of a tasty historical fantasy tale. Something to look forward to on the cusp of a new year.

    Have a good one.

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    Ahem. Twilight. And on Being Human

    While in New Orleans in October, I was asked by the Aussie ABC Online to offer some thoughts on the popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga and the state of the vampire mythos today. The article has appeared here, in a preview of the latest movie’s opening.

    If ever there was a city in which to talk vampires, it’s New Orleans, or at least the French Quarter, with its uneven, gas-lit sidewalks and classic architecture, and the legacy of Anne Rice never too far away.

    Meanwhile, my local cinema is filled with Twilight posters, standees and even a merchandise table that includes, I kid you not, an umbrella for $50. Can someone please make it stop now?

    Fortunately, as some kind of counterbalance, however unbalanced that balance might be, there are shows such as Being Human: cleverly scripted, well acted, an engaging take on the supernatural trying to co-exist with the mundane. The premise sounds a little like a gag — a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost all live in this house and… — but it’s not a laughing matter. Think Ultraviolet in a sharehouse. Yummy. Maybe there’s hope after all… even if it doesn’t have a brolly.

    Here’s a taste, about how the show approaches its bloodsuckers:

    And a trailer for Ultraviolet, truly superb viewing if you can get your hands on the series.

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    Continuum, Slights from Angry Robots, and some vampires

    So I’m in post-convention funk, short on sleep and strong on caffeine, a day back at work and wondering where the weekend went. The receipts tell some of the story: cabs, airlines, two dinners at a Chinese restaurant with lots and lots of chilli and an amazing capacity for seating and feeding 17 people at the drop of a hat, Japanese, innumerable coffees at the Lindt cafe and the State Library and that excellent sandwich bar in the Queen Victoria Building and other places besides…

    Cat Sparks’ (as always) fun photo diary helps fill in some blanks, too.

    So, the event was Continuum 5, held in the basement of the sprawling Mercure hotel complex in Melbourne, with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro as international guest of honour. She was rather grand, too. I enjoyed my vampire panel with her, and taking a new novel in the making for a walk during a reading session on the Sunday. I enjoyed meeting up with a bunch of folks from around the country, seeing Deb Biancotti launch her first anthology and Richard Harland steaming on with Worldshaker … and Kirstyn McDermott landed an award trifecta with her short story “Painlessness”, which had already won an Aurealis and a Ditmar before taking a brand new Chronos.

    Next year there will be another Continuum, in February, and in September there will be a grandaddy of conventions, the Worldcon aka Aussiecon 4, also in Melbourne. If you are in Australia and write any kind of spec fic, you really owe it to yourself to be at the Worldcon.

    Slights by Kaaron Warren

    Slights by Kaaron Warren

    On the flight home from Melbourne, I finished Kaaron Warren’s debut novel, Slights. It’s one of the first books to be released under HarperCollins’ new spec fic imprint, Angry Robot. It’s a weird title for an imprint, especially given that Kaaron’s book doesn’t have robots in it, nor any science fiction at all. The SF component of two of the other first four books also seems non-existent. No matter. What matters is that Aussie writer Kaaron’s book is a real gem. Sure, I had a little rant about the number of literal errors — you can’t get away from them these days — but don’t let that distract you. This is a compelling read, even though it’s not exactly express train pace. It’s a steam train of personality and character, wit and dread; such fully realised characters just don’t pop up that often, especially when they’re digging up family secrets in the backyard, pissing off their brother, tormenting all and insundry — and paying a heavy price. I can’t say Stevie is likeable, but her honesty is refreshing, her barbed one-liners engaging, her relationship with and indeed morbid curiosity about death intriguing and just a tad spooky. She namechecks Aussie writers Richard Harland and Robert Hood, too. Cool.

    Kaaron has two more books signed to Angry Robot. So what’s to be angry about, huh? You tell me, robot.

    Despite the previously mentioned funk, there is no rest for the wicked. I’m up to my jugular in vampires, and will be till Saturday when I present a wee talk at the Logan library’s SF month about the evolution of the vampire, from Byron to, ahem, Twilight.

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    Booked in Bundaberg

    From left, Stephanie Laurens, Sue Gammon, Jason Nahrung,Kirsty Brooks, Sandy Curtis at Booked in Bundaberg

    From left, Stephanie Laurens, Sue Gammon, Jason Nahrung, Kirsty Brooks, Sandy Curtis at Booked in Bundaberg

    There really is nothing like country hospitality. I had the good fortune to be a guest at Booked, the first such event hosted by the Bundaberg Library at the weekend. Also appearing were Stephanie Laurens, Kirsty Brooks and Kim Michelle Toft, and what a fascinating group they were. The day began after a coffee with all of us answering questions from our awesome library host Sue Gammon.

    I was particularly interested to hear that all of us were inspired to write our initial books by self-interest: interested in telling the kind of story we each wanted to read, rather than as a marketing exercise or commercial venture. The theme of passion for writing and storytelling was one that ran strong through my own presentation later in the day. But that followed a superb presentation by Kim of her gorgeous silk painting of underwater scenes, some she uses in her children’s books, others she sells through her gallery in northern New South Wales. Then Stephanie blew us away with her work ethic and description of her amazing house in Victoria, tailor-made for a full-time writer. Then I was chuffed to field a bunch of questions about horror and vampires and writing in general, before Kirsty charmed the crowd (and it *was* a crowd, what a great turnout!) with her sheer enthusiasm and zaniness.

    I have two goddaughters in Bundy, so being able to catch up with my dear friends there as well as rub shoulders with writers and readers really was a lot of fun. And then there was the generous barbecue held by Bundaberg writer Sandy Curtis …

    We forget, in the city, just how many stars there are. Even a country boy like me forgets from time to time. A walk on the beach away from the city lights can do wonders for our perspective. Life is a fleeting thing. Best to indulge those passions while we can, methinks.

    Me, blabbing on. Pictures: Kirstyn McDermott

    Me, blabbing on. Pictures: Kirstyn McDermott

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    Zombies have their day … and night

    The indominitable Chuck McKenzie, his glee barely contained by the electrons, points out this piece in Time magazine proclaiming that the zombies’ day has come. If it means less twee Twilight and more actual, you know, horror with something to say, bring it on. Though Chuck, the vampire will never die, my friend 😉