Halloween on 6th Street, updates

I previewed a brand new documentary making the festival circuit right now called Halloween on 6th Street.




I cannot say enough about this doc, which its running time introduces us to the amazing phenomenon of Halloween in Austin, Texas, where historic 6th Street fills with equal parts exhibitionists, costuming genius and gawkers. The focus of the documentary, from producer Michelle Canning, is on Bud Hasert, a triathlete whose late Summer is usually taken over by planning his Halloween costume. And when I say costume, I mean production: Hasert plans and builds gigantic costumes with transforming parts, like his Headless Horseman costume featuring a horse. He even recruits extras, and builds costumes for them. All the way through we follow his remarkably patient fiance, who is planning a marathon and a wedding, and hoping Bud will make it to at least one of these. Along the way we meet local designers, producers and inventers, all of whom turn out in a big way for Halloween.

Amazing work. I hope you can catch it soon.

Oh-- the writing weekend went well. Daughters of the Shadow #3 is turned in, and I now have three chapters on the new middle grade series I'm working on.

See you soon!

Writing Shadowland: Daughters of the Shadow, writing weekend

It's a "writing weekend," meaning I've committed to myself and a few other people lots of new work. So this weekend on the block we have:

• The script for Shadowland: Daughters of the Shadow #3-- this is actually just in time because Ivan Rodriguez-- who has this amazing ability to take my often-opaquely-described fight scenes and make them make visual sense--- is just now finished with Issue 2, so he needs to start drawing Issue 3. It's not as simple as me just writing a script and tossing it to Spain, of course. Before we go to script on a Marvel comic, we generally go through multiple panel by panel outlines. In a big event like Shadowland, numerous editors jawbone about every issue and how they fit together; my story connects mainly with its own issues, but we have to keep track of what the various characters are also doing in the main Shadowland mini, issues of Daredevil itself, Blood on the Streets and more. All of which gets us to: this Wednesday we had an approved outline and it was time to go to script, which was due Friday, last night. And, so that happened, and it's written. I'm always thrilled when a work finally comes together, and I see myself making choices, how about if we open this scene this way, how about if she sneaks in like this instead of like that, and I keep wondering-- what if I wrote this yesterday, would a different sudden idea occur to me? What if I wrote it tomorrow? We re-write and re-write, but many times the flash of inspiration shapes the final so completely that you can't imagine the story going another way. So I think, what if I were writing this yesterday, or tomorrow? Would this work happen? What is Yesterday Guy writing?
• Meanwhile, I owe another Marvel editor a synopsis for a one-shot story. A synopsis is basically a one-or-two-page breakdown of the story. In my case I break the synopsis out into Acts and Scenes, just to help keep track of the beginning-middle-end structure. A typical one-shot comic is 22 pages long, so it's crucial to make sure that the end is getting started about two thirds, or 15 pages, into the comic. 
• Meanwhile, I'm working on a new novel and hope to get some sample chapters done. That's slated for today and tomorrow.

Out there on the web, I've been thrilled by the reactions Shadowland: Daughters of the Dragon #1 has been getting. I'm mainly proud of this work because it's my first official Marvel Universe title and certainly my first crossover event title. I've been following and joining discussions at Comic Book Resources and Comixtreme.

Oh, some other good news-- I heard from IDW that the new printing of Sword of Dracula, the trade paperback of the series I wrote about Ronnie Van Helsing (sister of Alex Van Helsing), has actually sold out, and they'll be going to a second printing soon. That's huge news.

Okay, enough screwing around. Time to get to work.

Shadowland: Daughters of the Shadow is out!

It's Wednesday, which means that it's the day the big stacks of comic books land on the stoops of comic book stores. This is a special Wednesday for me because today my first official Marvel Universe comic comes out, Shadowland: Daughters of the Shadow. (That link takes you to Lone Star's online catalog, but I encourage you to go visit your neighborhood store if you can.)

Of course I've worked with Marvel before, doing alternate-reality stories, but this is a big step for me as a writer, because Shadowland takes place in the actual Marvel U, meaning it's part of the great continuity that we all love and love to complain about.

What's "DOS" about? It's the story of Colleen Wing, a street-level sword-wielding hero who for the first time in her history is not part of the two-man team that earned her reputation. She's broken away from longtime partner Misty Knight and working on her own, focusing on human trafficking, when out of the blue she receives an offer: join Daredevil's new citywide martial law, and he can set her up with resources and long-lost information about her own past. Except that Daredevil has drifted a long way from the ally Colleen has worked with in the past.

Daughters of the Shadow fits into Shadowland, an ongoing Marvel "event" that covers the ramifications of Daredevil, fed up with corruption in the city, declaring his own martial law over part of New York and ruling it with an army of Ninjas. Oh, and he builds a big freakin' ninja castle there, too.

Check out a preview of Shadowland: Daughters of the Shadow #1 here-- and go pick it up today!

Ms. Yingling Reads Alex, and a look at Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires

Ms. Yingling, who runs a middle-grade and YA book blog, sent me a note pointing me to her note on Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising. I think this is the first time anyone ever laid any sentence by me next to one by John Grisham. It's a wash; no one reads either of us for our sentences.

I really loved this entry! It reminds me that school is coming soon, and this is the first semester where Alex will be in most of the libraries.

Meanwhile I've got a new favorite blog: Rockabilly Online, which ran a cool look at one of my favorite Hammer films, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. As I mentioned before:
SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES came out back in 1974, co-produced by England's Hammer Studios, makers of Gothic brilliance, and Hong Kong's immortal Shaw Bros. It was meant to be the first of a series of movies in which vampire slayer Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) went around the globe killing the vampires of the world. Didn't happen. But this one did, and what a wacky thing it must have seemed to audiences who had never seen Chinese Horror.

The Vampire Lovers

I caught The Vampire Lovers on a big screen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I realized that the DVD era has brought a few curses along with its blessings. Of the good, thanks to DVD and VHS before it, we are able to see an old film whenever we want. I have The Vampire Lovers on DVD myself, in fact. And most of the times I've watched a movie and studied it, I've watched a home video version. But I realized while watching the movie in a theater that theaters give us the gift of focus. In a theater, we delegate to a third party the authority to tell us to shut up and listen, to sit quietly in the dark. I'm used to this for brand new movies, but I have to search for it for older titles.

I tend to watch movies as thought I'm studying a problem, letting the movie play while I thumb through four or five different books on movies, and tabbing over to look up various details. (With this movie, it's, Who's that playing the innkeeper? Is that castle set the backlot at Elstree or Bray Studio? Wait, this would  be 1970, so it has to be Elstree, so when did that transition happen again?) When you watch an older title in a theater you get the chance to think of it by itself.

The Vampire Lovers is a Hammer Studios adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla. Carmilla was probably the first vampire story I ever read, a languid, erotic and romantic story of a vampire woman who comes into the life of a young noble girl and nearly destroys her. It's an extremely important story.
Everyone always remembers that Carmilla was a lesbian but they rarely seem to remember what an exciting b**** Carmilla is in Le Fanu's story. She whines petulantly when she doesn't get her way, smugly insults peasants and comes on a little strong with everyone. She's dashing and brash. She's a con artist, too, running a regularly-repeating long con where the mark is always a pretty and naive noble girl and prize given up is the mark's life.
Carmilla came out in 1872, fifty-three years after Polidori's The Vampyre but certainly in that tradition of dastardly and erotically powerful noble vampires. The date also puts Carmilla twenty-five years before Stoker's Dracula, which would revisit several of these themes, though with nowhere near Le Fanu's gift for prose:
Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever". ("Carmilla", Chapter 4).
I loved Le Fanu's use of time in his story, note how he mentions the "hour of apathy;" in fact Carmilla is full of ennui, of slow walks and lounging, waiting for something to happen. Punctuated with vampirism and violence.
The Vampire Lovers attempts to take Carmilla and tell it as a Hammer movie, and why not-- the Hammerscape, a strange Euro-Britain of rolling fog and gorgeous castle sets, is on full display here. In fact, I'm not sure it's ever looked better, because The Vampire Lovers manages to display in one movie every graveyard, haunted wood, foggy court, broken down castle, and musty crypt ever built for other Hammer movies, with a few more new ones thrown in.
The movie, like all Hammer Films, operates within a rigid fictional class system where everyone's behavior is pre-determined. Carmilla's scam works this way: her mother/aunt/older companion drops her off at a nobleman's castle, protesting that she must hurry to an emergency meeting elsewhere; could the master of the house allow Carmilla (called whatever she's called) to stay with your daughter? Because they are of the same class, the imposition is acceded to inside a cloud of understandings and gentleman's agreements.
We see the scam play out twice in The Vampire Lovers, once with Laura (the  first girl here, the Final Girl in the original novella) and then with Emma, who becomes the Final Girl.

There are problems everywhere-- it's troubling that we conflate Carmilla's lesbianism with her villainy, because she is a villain, she lies and she kills with no remorse. And Ingrid Pitt, who is an enchanting actress, is still a very strange choice for Carmilla because she's about fifteen years too old. Maybe the problem is that it's hard to find a 19-year-old who can play a centuries-old noblewoman. Also, the movie seems to suggest that Carmilla is changing the rules and has special feelings for Emma-- which would add a special crime-drama tragedy to the piece if it were explored more. And of course the movie is mannered, as all Hammer's are, with language as formal as its attire. The acting is mannered, too-- all of these actors could probably appear very normal in another film, but on these sets they are stagy and expressive. Watching Hammer, you are watching a universe that plays by its own rules.
The Vampire Lovers comes very close to capturing the ennui, romanticism and action of Le Fanu's story, and at the same time is a fine example of Hammer Horror. If you catch catch it on the big screen, get the DVD-- and put away the books.

Ice Princess: Alex Van Helsing

Great review of Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising from Koorihime-sama, the Ice Princess:


Unlike most young adult (and adult) books I read, this book actually has details of events, scenery/places, characters, etc. I felt more engaged in this book than in most books I read. The characters feel realistic, and the action/suspense is something to look forward to.
Also, something even more interesting, the author ties-in not only Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as well. Why is that interesting? Because I have never seen any other vampire book tie in another horror book, and use some of the writings in it as well as use Dracula as clues for vampires and the history behind it.
Now, shoo, go read it.
You can read the rest of the review here.

AN IMAGINARY EXERCISE
Incidentally, I totally can't comment on whether I use more or less detail than other books. But this opinion does make me think of what would be a fun exercise: imagine asking ask six or seven authors to write the same minor scene-- Lead Character parks her car at the airport and has to get to her gate, and while she's going through security she gets an important cell phone call but has to hang up her phone, losing the end of the conversation.

I can imagine many ways of writing the scene, with more description or less, lots of dialog:

                    "I gotta cut this short," Ronnie said.
                     "Did you stop by the courthouse?" Marcus asked.
                     "Yes, and I need to get off; is there anything else?"
...  or narrated dialog:
                         The second conversation was short-- Ronnie let Marcus know she'd already visited the courthouse and there wasn't anything else to say.
... and I can imagine the scene with almost no description and with a lot. I do know too much is too much. But also coming into play-- probably more so than description--- will  be rhythm and pacing.

More to come on that. Thanks for the review, Ice Princess!

The Bloody Vampire

As much as I've written about British horror and its technicolor glory, I have a genuine, mirth-filled love for the euro and Latino horror-- horror from Spain, France, Italy and Mexico tend to have a Catholicism and showmanship that slick Hollywood productions cannot match. I'll take a Dario Argento, Jess Franco or Paul Naschy picture any day before sitting through the remake of THE HAUNTING again.

But O! Mexican horror, that's where it's at. There's something strangely other-worldly and magical about the way we get Mexican horror, the black-and-white witches and vampires and yes, wandering masked wrestler heroes. The key man in bringing these movies to the US was K. Gordon Murray, a Florida distributor whose bread and butter was making cheesy low-budget kid's movies before the major studios secured contracts that allowed key evening releases to play on weekend days, killing the matinee industry. Murray returned, Dracula-like, buying and re-dubbing heaps upon heaps of Mexican horror films, many of them featuring Santo, the silver mask man. My favorites among these are the vampire pictures, like THE VAMPIRE (El Vampiro) and last night's fare, THE BLOODY VAMPIRE (El Vampiro Sangriento.)

Last night I watched THE BLOODY VAMPIRE, a 1962 Mexican vampire movie included in a fantastic box set of public domain and forgotten vamp movies, Undead: The Vampire Collection. Here's the thing: I suspect the people who put these box sets together think they're ripping me off. Look! I imagine them shouting. We're bundling 20 public domain movies no one cares about and he's paying $5 for it! Except that I actually love these movies.

Anyway, THE BLOODY VAMPIRE is worth watching for several reasons. It has some astonishing visuals-- the silent carriage ride in the beginning is chilling and the king vampire, Count Frankenhausen (!) cuts a powerful figure. The sets-- long, lightning-lit corridors-- are beautiful to look at. The plot, meanwhile, makes only the slightest amount of sense. The movie is pure innocence and melodrama, and because this is a K. Gordon Murray release, it's dubbed in a strange and circuitous way, with characters adding extra words and doubling back on themselves all the time, saying things like "And now finally I will reveal to you all the secrets left to me by my family, and this is what I hope to explain, if you can give me your attention. Now I will reveal everything." At one point the good doctor and the evil Count discuss coffee, and they discuss it at length, as though not only is coffee new to them, but it must be very new to us, as well, giving us a strange, stream-of-consciousness scene that runs something like: Did you offer me coffee? You must be referring to the drink that is popular in Arabia. It is created through transfusion. You see I know many things about alchemy and chemistry. But I have only read about coffee; I have never actually seen the bean. I am looking forward to experiencing it.
They have a similar discussion about vampires. In this movie, there are two kinds of vampires: "living" vampires who run around and attack people, and "dead" vampires who sleep all the time. If you kill the head living vampire, all the "dead" vampires wake up and become dangerous. Cool, no? I have to admit I like that little twist, where suddenly the heroes have to consider a risk of killing the boss vampire.

I see lots of reviews like this one at Classic Horror: "A dull feature whose eerie sets and photography are ruined by the poor dubbing." That just seems seems obtuse to me, like someone saying "this cubist painting is marred by a lack of proper perspective," as if the reviewer couldn't possibly imagine why someone would watch a movie like this. This feature is what it is; the poor dubbing and complete sincerity create a work that is strange and wonderful. Through several accidents, these films are strange and wonderful works all their own. If you don't watch this movie and smile all the way through, I can't help you.

Here's a few choice moments from THE BLOODY VAMPIRE, in Spanish.

Halloween Man: Superdeformed is genuine fun

Drew Edwards' Halloween Man is an independent comic that is as pure of heart as it is clever. Here is a story that unabashedly calls on the spirit of horror-- classic horror, modern horror, B-movie and forgotten horror, all of it-- to endow a hero to fight the powers of darkness in much the way that horror empowers its own enthusiasts to face the darkness in our own lives. I've been reading the comic for years, on and off, and I can't think of another story that comes closer to the feeling Ray Bradbury summoned in The Halloween Tree: a joyous celebration of Halloween.

Here's the thing: Halloween Man is not a horror comic. I'm sure Edwards could write a horror comic, but Halloween Man is a super-hero comic, with all the rules found there, peopled with characters that are all a sly wink at the trappings of comic books. Halloween Man himself is the revived writer Solomon Hitch, killed by a vampire and brought back to life by a John Constantine-like necromancer called Morlack. Morlack brings Solomon back with this wonderful incantation, as he holds one hand on the body of Solomon and another on the glowing screen of a television tuned to the late late show:


I call on the spirits of Cunningham and Karloff for the undeath. I call on the might of Romero, Raimi, and Savini to cast this dead sould back to flesh. I summon the long dead Halperin and his fellow Lugosi... those dead of Fall... give this soul strength!

Isn't that awesome? When Solomon comes back and gets his monster-fighting legs under him, he's a scarred, intelligent zombie who must slake his hunger on evil demons. He's aided in this endeavor by a brilliant and beautiful scientist girlfriend, who fits him out with Marvelesque pseudo-scientific weapons, like Spirit Guns that shoot ectoplasm harvested from Solomon's own body.

Halloween Man: Superdeformed, a manga-sized paperback that collects Halloween Man's origin and a number of stories-- including one exciting three-parter in which Solomon is accused of murder-- gives the reader a great tour of Solomon's world. Solomon isn't alone: not only does he have scientist Lucy on his side, but he's teamed up with a gigantic creature called Man-Goat ("a man with the power of a man-sized goat," as he constantly reminds us,) the aforementioned Morlack, a Tony Stark-like ex-boyfriend of Lucy, and more. The tool around in a hovercraft coffin. There's an insane gee-whiz nature to all of this; I love how the stories are very quick and heavily worded; this is compressed storytelling of the old, pre-Bendis era. In this one volume we get a look at a brilliant riff on the Avengers, the legend of the Headless Horsemen, and even the modern vampire gang (in a thoughtful and scary tale told from the perspective of the creatures Solomon hunts.)

A word about the world-- Halloween Man takes place in a place called Solar City, built over the ruins of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in Texas. This is where Edwards turns what could be a one-note idea into a series with legs. Solar City is peopled with demons, vampires, heroes, and innocent bystanders, allowing Edwards to use Solomon as our guide through his own take on all of comicdom, a la Kurt Busiek's Astro City. Solomon Hitch is a man with no place except among his friends, rejected by the heroes of the city and distrusted even by the monsters who sometimes need his help.

Halloween Man is contagious good stuff.

Letter from a young reader

I'm amazed even today that we have such a thing as emails from readers. I say this because when I was a kid, if you wanted to send a note to Judy Blume or Robert Bloch, you had to send a letter to the publisher, which might get forwarded in time to the writer. Today is different-- I can actually hear from readers whenever they like.

Desirea (no age given) writes:

So I just want to say how much I loved your book. I started reading it and I couldn't put it down, my parents had to pry it out of my fingers lol. I finished it the same day I started it. Can't wait until the next book comes out!

And I'm thinking-- wow! An actual human being read my work, and stayed glued to it all day. I gotta wonder, does the reader know we writers care? That this makes a huge difference to us? I fired back a note:

Desirae-

Thank you so much for your note! It means a lot to me to hear from a reader. I worked really hard writing the book, and sometimes you wonder if anyone will ever read it... so now I know!

Since you ask, book 2 comes out in July of 2011! It's already written-- so I promise it will be there. It's called Voice of the Undead.

Thanks for making my day!

-Jay

And that was true! It does make my day. Sure, I know; if I were Charlaine Harris I'd get letters all the time. But I'm not, so this is pretty cool. I'd like to think it would stay pretty cool regardless.

Vacation Days

Going on vacation for a few days-- be back late next week!

Editing Process for Alex Van Helsing 2

That image is the editing copy of Alex Van Helsing: Voice of the Undead, or as I call it AVH2. We're in a period now where the edits are being done as though this were 1978; I'm making edits on the same paper the editors at HarperTeen make edits on. This makes me a little self-conscious; I notice the copy editors at Harper never seem to get coffee stains all over the paper when they send it to me.

Those tabs? You can't tell, but those are how I keep track of global changes. They're coded with letters-- A for information about Alex, M for Ministers, a plot point I need to add a few lines about, S for Sid, R for Reactions, another plot point. And so on. It's useful to have them tabbed like this so I can do all the edits regarding a particular issue at once. If the edits get longer than a few lines, I type them up on a computer, print them out and staple them to the paragraph being replaced.

There's some evidence that the best work is done through mixing word processing and handwriting-- I read recently that it's more efficient to draft on a computer but edit on paper, and for me this is true. 

Halfway through the tabbed edits tonight-- the rest should be done tomorrow night.

Famous Monsters Review of Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising

When I was a kid, there was no cooler magazine than Famous Monsters of Filmland, Forrest J. Ackerman made into a unique creation of black-and-white photos and incredible puns about monsters. In those days, you couldn't hear about a new horror movie or book, and might never learn about an older obscure one, without FM.

So today I got a gift that astonishes the 12-year-old in me: Famous Monsters (now a website) reviewed Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising.


Peter Schwotzer writes:

The characters I though were quite realistic and enjoyable. The story was fast paced and action filled with a little bit of everything for everyone; hero’s, secret society’s, zombies, cool weapons, teachers who aren’t at all what they appear to be and of course vampires…real vampires. Not these whiny ass, lovestruck, wimpy vampires that seem to rise from everywhere these days (pun intended). 
Read the rest here!

Listening to Stephen King's Danse Macabre

This past week I've been reading the 2010 re-release of Stephen King's outstanding Danse Macabre, a survey of the entire genre of horror, from folklore and stories through TV and movies.This has always been a favorite nonfiction book for me, especially because King is so knowledgeable and so opinionated-- he is fair and free with his judgments and tries to plum the meanings of horror while deliberately keeping the tone conversational. It's an outstanding review of horror.

The book has a 2010 introduction entitled "What's Scary?" in which King attempts to reckon in one essay with the thirty years of material that has appeared since King wrote Danse Macabre, and this essay is so good that it only serves to tantalize me with the possibility of a more thorough revision. As it stands, the essay is just a bonus; Danse Macabre remains as it has ever been.
For those who haven't read it: King in Danse Macabre picks the motif of a basic horror "tarot deck"-- the Werewolf (Wolf Man and all transformation stories), the Vampire (Dracula and menacing and seduction stories), and the Thing without a Name (Frankenstein and man's-mistakes-stories)-- and shows how these motifs return again and again. Jekkyl and Hyde? Werewolf. Hulk? Werewolf. Alien? Dracula.
The book itself is dated-- and how could it not be? But it's too good to skip-- too personal and interesting a review of the horror genre-- so we must read it today as a book trapped in amber.When Danse Macabre, the second edition reprinted here, came out in 1983, Reagan had been President only three years. Inflation was out of control but gasoline had just topped out at $1.40 a gallon. It's a different world-- King discusses literature and movies so beautifully, discussing the intricacies of Shelley's Frankenstein and the movies based on it, but of course he hasn't had a chance to discuss the Branagh Frankenstein , nor to have seen Coppola's Dracula of 1992, much less Twilight. You know what else didn't exist? Well, think of something that happened after 1983 in horror, and this book has yet to reckon with it. Off the top of my head I'd list these things that have implications for the horror fan:

• VHS and the home video market, the neighborhood video store, and Blockbuster
• The death of the home video market
• Letterboxing
• Home theaters and giant-screen HD TVs
• Netflix, iTunes, Youtube and Streaming-- all of which now make it possible to actually see "Horror of Party Beach" after reading about it, rather than simply hoping it might turn up randomly on TV, as we would have just ten years ago
• Charles Band direct-to-video movies and the like, which exploded the number of Grade-Z horror films many times over
• DVDs-- and commentaries!
• Stadium seating theaters and the death of old cineplexes
• The return of 3D-- not the Amityville 3D/Jaws 3D period King mentions occurring during the book's writing, but the Avatar period we are experiencing now.
• The explosion of young adult fiction and the Twilight Phenomenon, as mentioned
• True Blood and role-playing games like Vampire: The Masquerade
• Alien-- which in Danse Macabre exists only as Ridley Scott's horror/SF movie, afterwards spawned Aliens and on and on
• Nightmare on Elm Street and the 80s horror cycle-- though King's long 2010 essay/ introduction does gloss very well the modern horror era and offers some wonderful insights
•  Torture porn like Hostel and Saw (again, something King glosses well in his introduction)
• Giant miniseries like King's own The Shining and The Stand
• Stephen King the Phenomenon in a way unheard of in '83

Every one of these make ripples throughout each of King's chapters in Danse Macabre.
The only reason I even mention the datedeness is that King is alive and writing, the book is so well-done. If Danse Macabre had come out in the 30s and its author were long gone, we'd be able to read it as an old survey book. But Danse Macabre is so strong, even today, that it begs for revision-- a more thorough revision than King may want to take time on. (This happens in law, too-- a Professor might write a fantastic book on contract law, but in time it will need to be revised in every chapter. Usually what happens in those cases is later professors do the revisions. I could see that-- King could command King's Danse Macabre, 2012 Edition, with a small army of revisers.)

Should you get it? Yes. Absolutely. But I sure wish you could get a revised one in due course.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is classically haunting

The best murder mysteries present their place as a character itself, so that the tropes of mystery play out against some new place for us to enjoy. It might be a vast mansion or a train or a university campus. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the place that dominates the mystery is the numbingly cold village of Hedestad, Sweden.
I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Swedish film, on the same day that I finished reading Stieg Larsson's novel of the same name. Sometimes that happens-- I finished the book this morning after reading through the whole thing in two sittings, after learning when I was halfway through it that, yes, there was a movie, and yes, it was playing in town.
This is masterful formula material. Larsson provides us first with our heroes-- Blomkvist, a noble, late-40s journalist recently convicted of libel, and Lisbeth Salander, a wounded, angry 24-year-old computer genius whose facial piercings and tattoos speak of defiant bravery against a neverending stream of vicitimizations. Some of the things that happen to Lisbeth early in the book are hard to watch, but it's thrilling to see her get her revenge. And that's just the character stuff, Larsson contrasting the white-collar nightmares of Blomkvist with the bloody and bruising street-level dangers of Salander. But as different as they are, the movie takes its time observing both of these people and showing their similarities: Salander and Blomkvist are both careful with good reason, because they tend to fail spectacularly when they let down their guard.

The movie (and the book) bring the two together to investigate the forty-year-old disappearance of a beautiful teenage girl, the bright light in an aristocratic and insular old family. As might be expected, the family holds secrets, and though the patriarch of the family invites Blomkvist to solve the mystery, the rest of the family seems to quake with fear that he may learn what really happened all those years ago.

So what kind of movie is this? Do you like movies where the heroes breathlessly dig through old microfiche and blow up photographs and hurry to intercept lost witnesses? Because this is that kind of movie-- a perfect Agatha Christie thriller, except with much nastier crimes at the center. I was delighted by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and heartily recommend it.

Awesome Alex Van Helsing review at Blogcritics.org

Mel Odom, who has written more books than seems possible for one human not named Patterson, turns in a review of Alex Van Helsing that keys in on the literary angle:

Interestingly enough, Henderson not only ties the vampire legend to Dracula, but also to Frankenstein, and he’s set the series near Lake Geneva, where Mary Shelley first wrote the famous short story that would later become a book that will live on in the annals of horror – oh yeah, literature, too.
The literary history captivated me. The story of that weekend where Mary Shelley (then 18 years old), Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Percy Shelley has been mined by several writers, but this is a new twist. The two literary histories, vampirism and Frankenstein, are inextricably bound in this book, and it looks like that’s going to be a staple of the series.

Read the rest at http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-alex-van-helsing-vampire/#ixzz0sG2IYtrI

Alex Van Helsing Barnes and Noble Signing Tomorrow, Saturday June 26, at 2pm

First off, I should let everyone know that Saturday (tomorrow) I'll be signing Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising at Barnes & Noble in Southlake, TX. This is a great location-- I was there with my father-in-law a couple of weeks ago (picking up some Stieg Larsson books) and noticed they already had signs for the signing. Believe me, if you're an author, seeing an actual sign is a huge deal. You know what's huger? People actually being there. So by all means, drop by. I'll have some awesome Alex Van Helsing bookmarks, too!

This has been a fantastic week because it's been a busy one for new projects. Over the course of the week I've gotten notes back on a Marvel script, sent out a proposal for a book project, sent out a proposal for a video project, and started working on another requested proposal. Mind you, I work on my writing at night and on weekends, so lately my weekends and nights are crammed. That's all to the good. I have a manic need to be busy.

If you're in DFW, join me tomorrow!

Vampire Empire: Alex Van Helsing "something to sink your teeth into"

Awesome review over at Vampire Empire-- I really love when a blogger enjoys the parts of the book that I most want to do more of; the historical mystery and humor. This is the stuff we live for, you know? Thanks, guys!



The dialog is witty and the characters are enjoyable. The Alex Van Helsing character in Vampire Rising is as likable and relatable as Harry Potter. And , although he doesn't use magic as his weapon, he sure can kick some terrifying vampire butt....
Some of Alex's thoughts made me smile. There are a couple that I wanted to repeat. The first is a Lone Ranger reference. Gotta love that!
"Silver" Alex repeated. In old movies, silver was for werewolves and the Lone Ranger, who when you got down to it could probably hunt werewolves really well."
The second just made me laugh...
"...for a moment his heart raced as he saw a tall rakish figure in the corner. He felt himself crouch and then realized it looked rakish because it was, in fact, a rake. Save your mad skills for the actual monsters, Alex."
Some of my favorite parts of this book are the history references referring back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. How clever. I loved the historical possibilities. This just really added a nice element to the storyline for me.
Would I recommend this book? Yes. For both young adults and adults alike. Boys will especially enjoy it as it is a read of the non-sparkly variety and will give them something to sink their teeth into. 

Read the rest here!

What we do at a kids story workshop

Today I held a one-hour story workshop at the Grapevine Library, the second of these that I've done. Basically the story workshop if something I realized was a lot more fun to do than a reading, because it makes it less about the visiting writer and more about what a writer loves, which is telling stories. We still do a Q&A, but I like that this is more about the reader.

The workshop goes like this: I do an intro to my own work and what I tend to write, then I give the students a scenario: you're a writer, and someone has asked you for a story. You have a few hours. In this workshop, we'll shorten that to ten minutes. But first let's talk about what a story is.

We get into protagonists, antagonists, basic story structure, genre, etc, and then we divide the students into groups and they brainstorm for ten minutes. At the end of that, each team presents their idea.

Today we heard stories of magic, but I noticed that the girls' teams were more emotionally charged, while the boys' story was way more adventurous. And this is in a pitch.

A great experience.

Somewhere a Dog Barked

This Slate article is one of the most awesome I have ever read: Somewhere a Dog Barked: Pick up just about any novel and you'll find a throwaway reference to a dog, barking in the distance.

I don't think I've seen anyone pick apart a go-to cliche this well, ever. The writer reports correctly:
Most authors, however, employ the trope as a narrative rest stop, an innocuous way to fill space and time; since the bark is hollow, a reader can read anything into it, or nothing at all. 

 I think that's true, and though I've read a lot about the use of cliches that draw a lot of attention to themselves (like opening a book with a dream, a daring trick nowadays), I loved that this article spent time on cliches that are almost parts of speech.

Think of it: let's say you're writing a book that will be 300 pages long. Speaking from experience, my upper limit is about 8-10 pages a day, about 2000 words. Sometimes I can really stretch, but generally not; 2000 words is about as good as it gets. 10 pages in 3 hours, meaning one page is taking about twenty minutes on average. One page. As you write your way down, you're working in prose, following the characters, telling the tiny sliver of the story that is this one page. The page is made up of words, phrases, all the crazy tools you use. At this speed it can even be hard to remember what you did multiple pages-- hours-- ago.

And I, like a lot of writers, have a bad habit of leaning on stock phrases to get me from one thought to the next. Most of I catch time you catch them on the re-write, but they're just noise, usually ways of breaking up a thought.

"That's interesting." Bond tilted his head. "That wasn't there before."
What on earth is meant by "tilted his head?" I suppose it means the character is thinking and uses a physical movement to pantomime thinking. But really it's just rhythm. Same thing with the barking dog in the distance. See also arched an eyebrow. And smiled slightly. People in my books also fiddle with props a lot in dialog scenes. Otherwise the dialog would read like a play. All of this is okay as long as it doesn't get irritating, and then it's not anymore.

There are a thousand ways to race to the bottom of the page, and the rough draft will be filled with some awful ones. We have to accept this as writers or else we would not reach the next page.

Writing Workshop with 3rd to 5th graders

I had a great time Friday at DECATS, a Summer Enrichment program for 3rd thru 5th graders. All in all I saw about 200 students, but rather than lecture on writing, I did four half-hour workshops on storytelling.

Here's how it worked: a 50-student group would come in and I'd have 25 minutes with them, so I'd spend 5 minutes introducing myself and storytelling, then given them a scenario: you guys are writing teams. You've been asked to pitch something come Monday morning. Break up into smaller groups and take 10 minutes to plan your story. Then, each team will pitch their idea.

This was a blast. I heard story pitches about giant mutant dogs, spies who go insane, planets where the vegetables eat people, and more. Four groups of 50 students, 20 teams in all; it was a fantastic experience, plus I gave out a lot of Alex Van Helsing bookmarks.


Thanks very much, DECATS! you were really inspiring.