Author Archives: D.A Lascelles

Interview with Neelima Vinod

09 Sunday Jun 2013

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Today we are back with Neelima Vinod, author of the recently released novella, Unsettled. Neelima was originally supposed to be contributing this interview to Vampire month but circumstances conspired and instead she sent us a piece of fiction. I promised her the chance to answer the Vampire month questions when her book finally came out and so here are her answers…70112929-019 copy

1) What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?

I remember writing  letters to my grandparents on blue envelopes that doubled as writing paper. I wrote to them at great length about the things that I did and the books I was reading. I wrote poems a great deal as well. When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step? After my sons were born. It’s been seven years since I made that decision. I had always chosen to do jobs that had a lot to do with language like editing, and literature, like teaching. But  it was not enough. I needed to write more. So I wrote for magazines and blogs. I worked on writing fiction and poetry that I would like.  I searched a long time for my voice. When I was presented with an opportunity to write a novella last year, it happened easily.

2) What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?

My strength has to be my love for poetry- that gives me a sense of rhythm when I write. The amazing part of the digital age is the immense access you have to poetry. Although poetry books are not flying off the shelves, there are archives and archives of good poems and readings. This ability to read almost any poem out there has opened my world.  My weakness is that I keep editing what I write. That slows my pace. What I try to do now is write continuously without being overburdened by the possibility of change. Yet I keep faltering….

3) Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?

Well my ebook ‘Unsettled’ is straight out of the place where my ancestors lived. The same hundred roomed house, no ghosts though! I’m romantically attached to Kerala in southern India,  especially my mother’s ancestral homeland. I visit Kerala often and  the images of the sunny green palm studded landscape seem to have seeped into my heart and mind.

4unsettled-200x300) Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?

Wuthering Heights is a book that I love- it’s the first book about haunted love that held my undivided attention.  The Victorian writers set the stage for the paranormal excesses that we see today.

5) What drove you to write about Vampires?

The story ‘Unsettled’ has a vampire seductress- what is called a yakshi in subcontinental literature. I grew up listening to stories about yakshis- my mother and grandmother are good story tellers. As they spoke about their lives, I lived those lives too and the idea of a yakshi appealed to me a great deal.  A yakshi is normally pictured as insensitive in stories and movies, though she is also worshipped in some parts. The female stereotype irked me a great deal- the idea seemed absurd that a beautiful woman would hang on a tree and devour innocent men who could not help being tempted by their delicious floral scent. The yakshi will make a night of it and then devour the innocent man and leave his nails and hair like trophies for all to see. Why is she so angry? I often wondered. So I decided that my yakshi would be less woman, though she is terribly attractive, and more human.

6) What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?

There are so many people in one person- a part of each of us is fascinated by negativity as it is as much a part of life as all things bright and beautiful. People read vampire fiction for thrills- it makes you feel terribly alive when you read it.

7) In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?

You can’t beat Count Dracula….he’s a precursor of all the fanged blood suckers that come after.

8) What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

I’m hoping Thathri, my yakshi would win that one Her kohl drenched eyes and lustrous hair give her a slight advantage.

9) How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?

Well the Count may just get smitten by the yakshi…she’s far too seductive to ignore.

10) Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.

The story is about a search for love. When a couple who fall out of love go in search of the scrolls of love, they come face to face with a paranormal reality. A yakshi guards the scrolls at the hundred roomed house- she has been haunting the Big House for centuries. Although the book is about an outward search, it is a psychological drama of a seductress who is angry at the deck of cards called life she’s been given. The story goes back and forth in time- there is the present disillusioned Indian couple and there is a story that happened five centuries ago.  We all search for love but suppose our search is the very basis of the existence of someone else’s memory? What then? That’s what I wanted to talk about.

Unsettled: A summary by Neelima Vinod

05 Wednesday Jun 2013

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You may remember Neelima from her appearance in Vampire Month in March this year. When Vampire Month was going live, she was on the verge of releasing her new novella – Unsettled – but did not really have much to tell us about it. This has now been rectified. Unsettled is out now and here Neelima tells us all about it…70112929-019 copy

Unsettled: A summary

The e-novella ‘Unsettled’ is about a search. We all go out in search of something, don’t we? Life is that. This story is set in the subcontinent- a young couple, Divya and Raghav,  have fallen out of love. They meet Dr. Ray with his unconventional methods. He zeroes in on the primary problem in their marriage. The only thing that can fix it is a search for the Scrolls of Love. Anyone who gets their hands on these scrolls will fall in love again, so goes the myth.

There’s a story behind the Scrolls of Love as well- I go back in time, five centuries ago in fact, to tell you the story of these scrolls of love, actually poems written by a court poet who was banished into Cherakad, a snake-infested forest land. Once a court poet, now a homeless man, the court poet walks into a house with one hundred rooms.

The unhappy couple walk into the same house centuries later. There they meet a femme fatale Yakshi spirit, drowned in centuries of loneliness. She’s a vampire seductress who refuses to bury memories and has a taste(a serious hunger) for young men. She knows what the couple are looking for and she is not the sort who will part with what Divya wants most.

unsettled-200x300Where does the search take them? That is what ‘Unsettled’ is all about.

Here’s a link to the book page: http://indireads.com/unsettled

Here’s a link to my author profile at Indireads: http://www.indireads.com/ir_author/neelima/

Bio: Neelima writes fiction and blogs poetry @ neelthemuse.wordpress.com. She’s written a book with a paranormal twist which will be coming out soon.

Who will it be?

03 Monday Jun 2013

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So, over the weekend Matt Smith announced that he was going to leave Doctor Who after the Christmas Special. Of course, speculation about this has been ripe for most of the past series with rumours going about that he was leaving long before it started (which were largely denied) and a rather strange speculation (that was hotly denied) about this being the last ever series of Doctor Who. Now that the cat of out of the bag regarding WHEN Matt Smith will be leaving, thoughts inevitably turn to WHO will take over as the eponymous Time Lord.

Now, I have lived through a number of time lord regenerations (I have vague memories of Tom Baker regenerating into Peter Davison at the end of Logopolis when I was very young) and have been through the media and fan speculations about the next actor to take on the role. It used to be a big event on Blue Peter when I was at school where they would bring on the new actor, complete with costume, and talk with him about how he intended to portray the character. Generally there would also be lavish tabloid reports of various famous people taking on the role – people who had claimed to have been approached or even just people who may have just happened to have been talking to the current showrunner for a completely seperate reason. Usually, these are just cases of wishful thinking. Sean Connery and John Cleese have been among those tagged in these articles, despite neither of them being likely to have the time or interest with the fairly big Hollywood careers they both had at the time of being suggested.

Often, it tends to be someone relatively unknown at the time of casting. They may have done some previous acting for which they got recognition (Tom Baker was Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexander in 1971 and Koura in The Golden Vioyage of Sinbad in 1973, before he became the Doctor,and David Tennant was in Casanova) but by and large the first time you hear their name as a child who watches Doctor Who is when the casting is announced. There have been exceptions to this, of course. Christopher Ecclestone had been in a couple of things (I think he’d done some films somewhere in Hollywood you might have heard of 🙂 ) and William Hartnell had a  remarkably robust film career (including several Carry On films) but by and large unknowns have taken the part over well known actors. So, perhaps the speculation needs to be looking not at well known actors but at those on the fringes – the up and coming talent rather than the established names? A couple of names that have popped up in this mould include Andrew Scott (who played Moriarty in Moffat’s Sherlock – not a bad choice as he fits the model of the relative unknown who has also happened to have worked with the current showrunner before) and Ben Whishaw whose main claim to fame is the role of ‘New Q’ in Bond.

One thing I will say about this time, however, is that something is different. As Colin Baker said in his first appearance as the Doctor at the end of The Caves of Androzani: ‘Change, my dear, and not a moment too soon.’ Amongst the fairly predictable speculations for the role – the typical white middle class male archetype that the Doctor is often portrayed as – there are calls for some variety. There has long been interest in the Doctor being a woman, of course. I even commented on an article which speculated on who would play the role in all 11 incarnations if the Doctor had begun as female. This time, however, it seems to have become more urgent, with calls for Helen Mirren, Miranda Hart or Joanna Lumley to be appointed to the part. There is also another interesting request – that for the Doctor to change his ethnicity. One barrier in the way of this has been the simple fact that, so far, it has not happened – Time Lords by and large kept the same baisc gender and ethnicity. Though this has not stopped some considering the series to be racist because it has never changed the ethnicity of the lead character. However, that changed dramatically in ‘let’s Kill Hitler’ when River Song showed that it is perfectly possible for a young, black Time Lord to regenerate into a middle aged, white woman and has led me to wonder if Moffat was not setting things up for just such a change. Suggestions in this vein  have included Patterson Joseph (famous for Neverwhere and Hyperdrive), Chiwetel Ejiofor (famous for being the Operative in Serenity), Richard Ayoade (Moss from IT Crowd) and Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel. It seems that Geekdom may actually be ready for a gender or ethnically diverse character to step into the TARDIS. After all, Christopher Ecclestone has already transcended the North/South and class divides in the character and was seen to dabble in sexuality a little with his flirtations with Captain Jack. Can we break even more barriers with number 12*?

Of course, there could also be potential for a double whammy. Change the ethnicity AND the gender in one fell swoop… A name that has been cropping up in a few places is Lenora Crichlow, Annie from Being Human. Not only has she the geek credentials, she has also been in Doctor Who before (a fact which never stopped Colin Baker taking the part). There are even facebook pages dedicated to this.

I think it will certainly be interesting to see how this pans out. Internet and tabloid speculations have a habit of being wrong, especially when you consider the aforementioned tendency for a relative unknown to be given the job – that generally precludes anyone the media considers unless they are keeping a very careful eye on up and coming talent. Personally, I am unfortunately predicting a situation of no change – a white male. It may be a white male with some interesting other feature – an accent. an eccentricity, some new approach to the character – but it will be, by and large, the same basic character. I do not think that those involved in the series yet have the impetus to make such a radical change as to colour the Doctor’s skin or give him ladyparts save in jest (as happened in Curse of the Fatal Death which was interestingly written by Moffat indicating that he has at least considered a woman in the part). However, I do consider it a welcome sight that a large number of fans are seriously considering ethnic or gender diversity in a positive light. It is, I feel, a sign of the times, evidence that we do indeed live in an enlightened age where considerations such as race, gender and sexuality are less of an issue. Well, at least for those of us who are not hard core conservatives…

As for my own preference… if Patterson Joseph, Richard Ayoade or Lenora Chrichlow are not options then I would like to see Moffat’s old pal from Coupling, Richard Coyle, take up the role. I don’t think I have a lot of popular support in this one, I’ve not even seen anyone else mention him and I have been pushing for him ever since David Tennant left the role. However, for all that it is probably a lost cause, I think it would be nice to see him on TV again.

*Or is that number 13 if John Hurt as the forgotten Doctor is actually Doctor number 9, pushing all the subsequent ones up a number?

Six Gun Apocalypse

15 Wednesday May 2013

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America loves cowboys. Maybe not enough for certain television executives to damned well do the decent thing and commission a second series of Firefly but enough that there are references to the genre everywhere you look. Especially on television. OK, you don’t see the likes of Clint Eastwood or John Wayne or even Emilio Estevez riding around on horseback and firing six shooters left, right and centre as much as you used to. We don’t even get to see Nathan Fillion in anything other than a smart suit, unless it is halloween, and this is something which makes women the world over lament. However, America still seems to have an inherent tendency to revert to the ideals and concepts of the old West in a crisis.

Case in point, look at the two recent American TV shows that have come over to the UK – Revolution and Defiance. Both are post apocalyptic science fiction and both are so heavily flavoured with cowboy you can almost smell that campfire bean eating scene from Blazing Saddles.

Let’s take Revolution first. Ignoring the blatant Hunger Games reference of a cute young girl with a bow, the whole look and feel of the Militia reeks of the American Civil War. The uniforms (especially the caps), the attitude, the liking for large canvas tents that are usually only seen in re-enactment events in this day and age… Ok, American Civil war is not really ‘Wild West’ but there are also Saloons, fist fights, gun fights and all sorts of Wild West cliches inherent in the world building. And horses. It is, I suppose, natural that in a society where cars and planes no longer work (and ships are apparently all but rusted or rotted to scrap), people will revert to the next most reliable means of transport – the Horse – but that does add significantly to the whole western feel.

Defiance also has a wild west thing going on. The blatant imagry of the Castithan in this show is clearly Victorian in style, for example, but that is only one of the many references. Small towns with a troublesome population and the need for a strong sherrif is a common wild west cliche and in many westerns the hero comes from outside the town to take on that difficult job. In Defiance, a tough outsider comes to a town with a troublesome population, mostly comprised of squabbling aliens, and ends up with the job of lawman.

I do not imagine for a moment that I am pointing out anything here that you have not already noticed for yourself. Neither show really goes to great lengths to hide what they are doing. However, these observations led me to wonder what it is about the American psyche that means it reverts to the Old West as soon as any disaster happens that collapses society. What is it about the tropes inherent in the genre that makes writers of other genres fall back on them so often? Is it some nostalgic harking back to the good old days? Something to do with the lone gunman defeating evil? Maybe it is the idea of spunky, independent women eking out an existence in the bleak wilderness with nothing but a Gingham dress and a shotgun to defend them from all the rapacious lone gunmen who seem to be wandering everywhere? Personally, my theory revolves around the old West being seen as an idealistic time for many born in the US. It was a time and place when the population was smaller outside of the big East Coast cities, people gathered in small communities and there was endless space for expansion. America was truly a land of opportunity because land and gold and whatever else you wanted was simply there for the taking. This translates well into a post apocalyptic setting as most of those features are also present then – low populations, resources such as land less tied up by governments and laws and a need for people to work together to survive.

Whatever it is, it seems irresistable for writers to fall back on these ideas. The question I feel needs to be asked, however, is whether or not this can be considered lazy writing or inspired reimagining of common themes? This is not a new thing, either. You could argue Firefly as being another interpretation of the Post Apocalypse Wild West (Earth that was being somewhat uninhabitable when they left) and David Gemmel’s Jon Shannow novels are also along this sort of theme. So what is it about this period of American history that so appeals? Feel free to comment below…

And before anyone says anything… No, we Brits are not immune to similar things in our writing. Ignoring for the moment the obsession Doctor Who seems to have with Cowboys at the moment, British Apocalypses tend to come in Crusty flavour – raggedy, dreadlocked punks in lumberjack shirts throwing petrol bombs. However, that may be a topic for another occasion…

A tale of World Book Night

26 Friday Apr 2013

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So, this Tuesday gone was World Book Night and yours truly was there in Costa Coffee Prestwich for a night of books.

The lucky recipients show off their acquisitions

The lucky recipients show off their acquisitions

It was actually quite a while ago, on one of our regular writers’ group meetings that R.A Smith suggested that we do something for World Book Night. The plan: All five of us apply to be Givers on the WBN webpage and we organise an event together in a local library in order to give them away. At the same time we would do readings and give aways and other things to keep the punters amused. We support the cause of spreading the love of reading, get some local community kudos and maybe a bit pf publicity for our own projects as an added bonus side effect.

So, with alacrity we set this plan in motion by us all logging into the WBN website and submitting our applications. We each applied for different books as our first choices and enough variation in second and third choices in order to hopefully avoid any overlaps and began to discuss the event itself.

Our initial plan of using libraries fell a little flat. We got no response from any of the libraries in Stockport, where a good number of our members lived, so at a quite late stage we had to expand our search to other areas. Being selfish and lazy and not wanting to travel more than a short distance, I offered to check out the possible venues in Prestwich, all of which are only a short walk from my house. Prestwich library were very helpful when I visited them and told me that they were closed on Tuesday afternoon (insert rant about local council budget cuts and their impact on local services here…) which was why they could not host (unless they could find a member of staff willing to work overtime for no pay) but suggested that I talked to the Coffee shop just over the plaza from them as they sometimes hosted events for them. I did just that and very soon we had a venue set. All that remained then was publicity…

The books laid out ready

The books laid out ready

Another problem was when we got the notification of what books we had got. We found that only three of us had been appointed givers (myself, Joy Phillips and Ed Fortune) which was more than 50% which was good. However, despite our careful planning, we got two batches of the same book. This meant we had 40 copies of John Wagner’s The Dark Judges and only 20 of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses. Nevertheless, this gave us the challenge of having 60 books in total to give away to anyone who wanted them…

On the day itself, we got to the coffee shop by 530pm to be ready for a 6pm start. We laid our books out on one table and on another we put all our publicity stuff – bookmarks and leaflets and so on. Ninfa Hayes had thought to provide a double sided A4 sheet with extracts from two of her stories on it which I thought was a nice touch and we’d also each thought to bring along copies of all our in print books for guests to browse through. Since Transitions is not (yet) in print, I had a copy of Pirates and Swashbucklers for this.

I had been concerned that we had not done enough publicity, that no one would bother to show up. However, these concerns were soon dispelled as people began to filter in. Some people we already knew, friends of ours who lived locally, but there were also a good few who were not known to us who had been drawn here by the leaflets and posters. There were discussions, with each of us drawn off into small groups to talk about the books or our books or publishing in general and while there was an initial mistrust of the ‘free books’ (a number of people asked how much they cost…) they were soon snapped up by all there. The ‘demo’ books were also much read, being passed around from person to person. It is to be noticed that Oblivion Storm is not shown in the photograph of the ‘swag table’ This was because it was at the time being ardently read by someone. Ninfa was even nice enough to let one of the guests take one of her paperback copies of Bites away with them – signing it for her too.

We ended the event with two readings, both done by R.A Smith. One was from Oblivion Storm the other from Bites. I had intended to do a reading from Transitions but realised that the only copy of it I had on my Kindle was actually a pre-edit copy and so not the best for a reading.

By 8pm, the official end of the event, the pile of 60 books had been reduced to a much smaller pile. We had only a couple of copies of

The swag

The swag

Noughts and Crosses and about 15 of The Dark Judges. Several of these were snapped up by the event guests as they left. One copy of each was taken to be put into the library of a local school (which I personally consider a win) and several of the rest were grabbed by some friends of ours to give out to random people they saw on their way home (at least one copy was given to the staff of the chip shop we all stopped at for dinner). At the end, we were left with 8 copies of the Dark Judges and none at all of Noughts and Crosses.

I hope that all those out there who took books will enjoy them… I do feel proud of what we achieved on that day and I think a number of the event guests enjoyed the event a great deal. Next year we plan to do the same again and this time make it bigger and better!

As for the 8 books we have left… well, they are there to be given away and we *could* just give them away to people we meet in the street or leave them in a pub or on a train or something like that. However, we have discussed it and decided to run a competition to decide who gets the books. Therefore, myself, R.A Smith and Ninfa Hayes will be taking at least two of the books each and will be announcing how you can win them very soon…

The Name of the Doctor

19 Friday Apr 2013

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A recent announcement has stated that the final episode of season* seven of Doctor Who will be called ‘The Name of the Doctor’. Of course, the hints have been building for a while that this is one secret which may be revealed. The prophesy of the Silence – ‘Silence will fall when the question is answered’ – is a pretty big telegraphing clue as to what is going on and as more and more is revealed about that plotline it becomes even more obvious that, at some point, the Doctor will be put in a position where he will have to reveal his truethe name of the doctor name.

At least that is what Steve Moffat wants us to think…

You see, I am not convinced it is going to be as easy as that. Moffat is a master of the double bluff and especially the double meaning and the prophesy as stated is full of potential double meanings and misunderstandings. What exact definition of ‘fall’ is meant here? Does ‘Silence’ actually refer to ‘the Silence’ or something else entirely? Their self centered interpretation has led to the belief that the Doctor is their enemy and so, as a result of this, they have acted to try to prevent this and, in the course of events, made the Doctor their enemy… It is an excellent example of a Cassandra paradox – by paying attention to the prediction you cause the events in the prediction to come to pass. The Doctor is only their enemy because they paid attention to the prophesy, got scared and tried to kill him. The lesson here being, of course, never trust prophesy. Especially not when dealing with immortal or long lived beings. More so if they can Time Travel. Because the chances are they were probably there when the prophesy was written. They may even have written it themselves, AFTER the events that ensued from you following it. After all, even Bill and Ted managed to work out that particular munchkin flange of access to a Time Machine and they were dumb stoners. Just think what an ancient alien intelligence with centuries of surviving in the universe against every hostile alien that has ever existed could do given the motivation. The Doctor has in the past been shown to be a manipulative person who plays chess with people across the centuries, I personally do not see him having any issues with him setting up a nice little fake prophesy to send his enemies off in the wrong direction… even if all he manages to do is edit the original rather than simply delete it from history to make sure none of this can ever happen.

So, I am not sure what to expect on the final episide of Doctor Who this year. I am hoping for something epic. I am also hoping for something clever and emotional. If it comes to the final confrontation and the question is asked and it turns out his name is Bob I think there will be disappointment. It’s a fairly major anticlimax. A secret that has been kept so long is not a secret to give up lightly and maybe it would be better if that particular one is kept secret. Secrets are more fun when they are kept, the frission of knowing there is something you do not know and the endless speculations can be an addictive mix. I am hoping that the way the prophesy is worded will work to add a surprise to this plotline and cannot wait to see what that surprise might be.

 

*Season? Season! Dammit, we’re English, it should be series. Americans call them Seasons, we call them series… *grumble, mumble, moan*

World Book Night

19 Friday Apr 2013

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You may have noticed a new page on the top of this page. This is a page covering the details for World Book Night which, as you may or may not know, is this coming Tuesday (the 23rd of April, which is a special day for lots of other reasons…). On that day,darkjudges I will be at the Costa Coffee in my home town of Prestwich, giving away copies of The Dark Judges by John Wagner. This is a graphic novel based on the famous 2000AD character who also starred in one absolutely awful film and one which is, by all accounts, not bad at all.

Others will be there giving away other books for free including copies of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses which, from the blurb, seems to be an intriguing alternate history where apartheid and race relations work in reverse and those with dark skin (crosses) are seen as superior to those with white skin (noughts).

Both books look to be splendid and well worth checking out…

Of these books we only have limited supplies. 40 copies of the Dark Judges and only 20 of Noughts and Crosses. I expect these to disappear quite quickly so anyone who has set their heart on getting hold of either book should make sure they get to the coffee shop early.

The event starts at 6pm and runs until 8pm and as well as the book give away we also hope to have other things to entertain you. There should be readings and discussions and maybe some other giveaways. And we also have the staff of the coffee shop staying in late to keep us in hot drinks. Feel free to pop in and say hi. We will be upstairs…

If you are also a WBN Giver and want to give away your books, feel free to come along and share our space with us. The more we have there the merrier. If you are an author with some giveaways or swag to dispose of, you are also welcome to join us and do a talk or a reading or a competition of some form.

Of course, World Book Night is a charity so you should also check out their website to see how you can help them out. Their aim is to provide access to reading to those who either are unable or unwilling to be regular readers. You can volunteer to be a giver for next year’s event and get a box of books all to yourself to give away for free or you can make a cash donation. Apparently £10 will buy one of the WBN special edition boxes which ensures that twenty people get a free book to read.

A few things here and there

05 Friday Apr 2013

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Well, Vampire Month is finally over and I have just got back from a brief holiday during which I had my birthday. It’s been a rather successful month with some great vampire writers contributing some really good articles on a range of subjects. In this first week of april, however, there have been a few things cropping up here and there which need to be shared.bookmarks

First of all, I was interviewed by Michael Brookes over at The Cult of Me blog. The interview went live yesterday and in it you can find out all sorts of things about me. Go over there and check it out. I talk about the first book I ever wrote which, thankfully, no longer exists save as a bad memory and a few other things.

Secondly, I have signed up for Authorgraph. This is a system which allows signatures to be added to ebooks. You can find Transitions on there by following this link: http://www.authorgraph.com/authors/areteus. Basically, you can click the ‘request authorgraph’ button and I will get a notification telling me you are wanting a signature. I can then choose to do this freehand (using a touchscreen or mousepad but be warned my ‘handwriting’ is terrible using a mouse…) or using a font. I can also add an inscription. You basically get a pdf of this with a picture of the book cover sent to you. This app seems to be a good way to fill a niche caused by the ebook revolution. I have heard many say that one thing you cannot do with an ebook is sign it. Now, I will not say that this is going to replace ‘signed copies’ in any way (I am not convinced, for example, that you will be able to sell the signed ebook copies for a greater value) but it is a step in that direction. It will be interesting to see how it works out over the next few years.

Scan this using your mobile phone and an appreopriate tagging app...

Scan this using your mobile phone and an appreopriate tagging app…

Finally, preparations for World Book Night are progressing. Myself, Ninfa Hayes (author of Bites), R.A Smith (author of Oblivion Storm), Ed Fortune (columnist for Starburst magazine) and Joy Phillips (upcoming debut novelist and organiser of innovative new LRP Fall of Vusoria) are getting together to give away free books to anyone in the Manchester area who wants to come and get them. We will be announcing a venue sometime soon (hopefully). It should be a good night and we have around 60 books between us to giveaway. As part of this I have decided to have some bookmarks made up and I have also sorted out a couple of QR tags so that people with mobile phones can scan them and quickly and easily buy a copy of my books in any ebook format. I am rather proud of the bookmarks, which I designed myself using elements of the cover for Transitions.

So, if you fancy meeting any one of us, getting any of our work signed or just want a free book, feel free to pop along on the 23rd of April and all of this will be possible…

[Vampire Month] Still a better love story than Twilight

29 Friday Mar 2013

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‘Still a better love story than Twilight’ seems to be a common refrain on the internets at the moment. Twilight has been a book and film series that seems to have polarised geekdom, turning many against the idea of Vampire fiction while, at the same time, bringing a horde of teenage girls into it.

Many misunderstood Ridley Scott’s reimagining of Romeo and Juliet

Geeks are a weird bunch. We hate change. We like routine and things to be as they have always been. We recall the ‘good old days’ like dear old grannies recall the casual racism and horrors of the past – through spectacles so rose tinted we are practically blind. We remember how great things used to be without recalling some of the really awful things – shoddy special effects, awful dialogue, overacting. When something new comes along claiming to be ‘geek’ we hate it and the ‘johnny come lately’ fans that come with it. They aren’t real geeks, we complain. They weren’t there, man, in the trenches in the days when they cancelled Doctor Who, they call themselves Vampire fans and they don’t even know who Christopher Lee is. I mentioned Lestat to them and they looked blank. THEY HAVEN’T EVEN READ DRACULA!

Of course, in 20 years time those same teenage girls who are the target of all this ire, will be there themselves –  hating on some other new trend. Sneering at some young newcomers at a con and complaining into their brown ale that these new Vampires don’t sparkle and that this entirely detracts from the whole angsty drama of the inherent horror of the vampiric condition because it juxtaposes the darkness of their soul with the light on their skin thereby providing a visual contrast the reader can identify with. This is how it goes in the cycle of geek. By then, of course, I will be an old man laughing at both groups, knowing that I am still far more geek than either and safe in the knowledge that the previous generation of geeks is not in any position to contradict me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that Twilight is good. There are many flaws in it and these do not include the ludicrous ‘glowing in sunlight’ nonsense which seems to be one of the main foci for attack. The heroine is far too passive, for example, which gives the whole love story angle a stalkery feel and, as the indoctorwhotwilightternet has reminded us repeatedly, undermines almost 40 years of feminism by convicing a new generation that all they need to be happy is to find an older man to look after them. This, above all others, is the main reason why the phrase ‘still a better love story than Twilight’ has been applied to a number of crazy pairings. The very fact that Fifty Shades of Grey started out life as a Twilight fan fic should tell you the inherent nature of the relationship here.

So, Twilight is certainly not flawless but I am not sure that the level of hate is quite to scale here. I think it is largely because it is such a big target – a massive fanbase who are intensely fantatical, the amplification of that fanbase through the films and a number of glaring flaws that even the dumbest geek can spot. At the moment it seems as if the entirety of geekdom is kicking into the franchise with big bovva boots because they have nothing else to do. And, yeah, I’ve done my share of that too. In geekdom the roles are reversed. It’s the big kid who gets attacked. And while I am not sure it deserves all the hate, it is equally undeserving of all the popularity.

However, it is worth considering what Twilight has actually achieved. Just as Interview with the Vampire and Buffy the Vampire Slayer before it, it has yet again put the Vampire in the forefront of publishing. Like the creatures themselves, it seems the vampire phenomenon is a hard one to kill – just as interest wanes something comes along to ressurect it. It is, I feel, a fitting concept. Plus, as Harry Potter did for fantasy, there is also the fact that more children/teenagers/adults reading is a good thing. Even if they begin by reading Twilight, many move onto to other things and the Vampire renaissance has led to such things as the Morganville Vampire books, which are in my opinion superior in many many ways. If only because they feature an insane, Welsh, medieval alchemist character by the name of Myhrrin who really should be played by David Tennant when they make the movie.*  So, maybe we should let the Twilight franchise alone for a little bit. It’s over with, the last film has been released. There is sure to be another thing we can enjoy hating along very soon.

*Yes, I have in fact written the cast list for the Morganville Vampires series in my head. It’s what I do. It also, by the way, includes Olivia Williams and Anthony Stewart Head as Amelia and Oliver. Please do not judge me in my insanity…

[Vampire Month] Beginnings by Neelima Vinod

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Vampire Month

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Today, for our final Vampire Month guest, we have Neelima Vinod who has written a short fiction piece covering how she came to be inspired by a particular South Asian version of the Vampire myth – the Yakshi.

I shall turn it over to her now:

Thank you David for having me here!

Beginnings

I like to go out sometimes and sit beside the pond. There I watch the black fish nibble at my feet and the coconut trees reflect themselves. It is at times like these that I compose a poem or contemplate a character that made its way out of a book into my heart. I’m usually left alone at times like these but today I hear a woman hum as she comes toward me and sits with me by the lichened steps.yakshi

“Can I join you?” she says. She is playful and I a woman, unafraid of another.

“Desperate?” I ask her because I know at once who she is. She is alarmingly beautiful, a siren from Greek myth or an apsara. I think her eyes are made of precious stones and her hair of the ocean. She is what we call in these parts, a yakshi. “No men to pick on these days?”

She looks away from me, perhaps at the faraway worlds she is supposed to inhabit. Perhaps she looks at the humid landscape before her as I do. It is hard to say.

“What do you think?” she asks me. “You should know as you have heard about the tree spirit that I am falling on men and enveloping them. Not many have survived after I’ve entered their lives.”

She is as beautiful as folklore makes her out to be.When I grew up, there were witches and wizards; there were elves, goblins and gnomes. Being from the subcontinent, my world is populated by additional figures of interest-apsaras(dancing goddesses), asuras( demons) and devas(gods). Then there is folklore- where the yakshi comes in.

                       

“Tell me about them.” I ask her quietly, as the green pond spreads through the horizon of my eyes and the blue sky above refuses to bleed in the heat.

“The men?”she asks. If she were a contemporary woman, she would have blown out smoke from a cigarette as she spoke. Her movements are so of the now but she looks centuries ago, in her white sari and gold chains. I nod.

“So many. Some of them had never been loved, imagine that, grown men who have only dreamt of being touched. Some of them were rogues who did not know what touch meant, their fingers were meant to tear, but the world is made of so many kinds.”

“Why do you tell me all this?” I ask. “Perhaps I must rush back to my quiet sanctuary and disappear into a book. Maybe all this heat is getting to me.

“You asked me, didn’t you? I’m defined as so many things. Noone seems to get it right. Yes I’m a bit of a vampire.” She bears her pearly white fangs at me. Then as though she showed me a trifle, she lifts the hem of her sari and shows me her feet a foot above the ground.” Yes I hover” and then as she turns around, I stop her.

Her eyes are hollow when she speaks. “They say I lure them from the palm tree.”

“Don’t you?”

“I follow their smell and feel their skin. They leave a trail. They think they are safe and can just be. Unlike” she looks at me with her searching eyes, “women like you who have to think twice about wherever you’re at.”

“I know all about your sort, sometimes spirit, sometimes venomous. You kill. ” I say pretending not to like her motives, ignoring her conspiratorial friendship.

“They kill me many times before I kill them.” she says. “ Though they do not live to tell the tale.” She wraps the edge of her sari around her fingers. We say nothing and the world around us disappears for the night.

When she is gone like a shimmering sunset ended, she leaves me alone with far too many questions about how lust has been demonized in the subcontinent. How the consequences of it could lead to a smashed skull and a heap of bones and hair, or simply put how it could lead to being ostracized forever.

I walk back to my sanity. There are some poems to write and maybe a story about a yakshi.

Bio: Neelima writes fiction and blogs poetry @ neelthemuse.wordpress.com. She’s written a book with a paranormal twist which will be coming out soon.