Revisiting How to Become a Werewolf

One of the most popular pages on any of my Web sites is the one where I posted the spell on how to become a werewolf. I can especially see it spike when a popular new book or movie involving werewolves is set to come out. The last Underworld movie, for instance, brought a lot of traffic, and with New Moon coming soon, things are heating up again. Why? What is it about becoming a werewolf that inspires people to want to be one?

I think there are basically two main reasons people want the Gift of Lycanthropy. The first is the same thing that drove Dr. Jekyll to find Mr. Hyde — the desire to tap into an alter ego and perform actions that won’t be associated with our “real” personality. These actions could be as benign as simply finally ignoring the homeless guy at the underpass and not giving him our last dollar, to actually eating him. Either way, it’s because we feel like there is something else inside of us, and sometimes we don’t want to be polite. Sometimes we want to show our fangs and chase poeple away. Sometimes we just want to do bad things because we’re tired of being held back by The Man, The Spouse, or whatever it is repressing us.

Then there’s the feeling that we’ve become soft living in civilization. We want to “get back to nature” in a way that Thoreau never imagined. We don’t want to lie on our belly and watch the ants work, we want to actually become a part of nature, to run with the speed of the wolf, smell the woods with heightened senses, hear the gurgling of streams and sit out with our pack at night and sing to the moon without worrying about someone sending us to the loony bin.

That’s what I think. What about you? Why do you think the werewolf has remained so alluring for so many centuries?

Another brief vampiric interlude

“Drink from me and live forever.”

Remember that? It’s the tag line from the film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I’ve been shopping for a poster from that movie to hang in my classroom and seeing that tag line again reminded me of why the vampire was so scary for so long.

Then I came across this news story yesterday and got to thinking about the response I got to teaching parts of the Bible in my Advanced Placement English class last year.

I offer for your consideration the theory that today’s readers are the most self-absorbed and ignorant since the invention of movable type.

I taught parts of the Bible to these seniors so they would be able to recognize allusion in other works of literature. I was amazed at how little they know about the book that has been the cornerstone of Western culture for 2,000 years. (Keep in mind, not all of them were ignorant, but the majority knew very little about Christianity.)

“Drink from me and live forever.” Readers who only know vampirism through reading Stephanie Meyer, L.J. Smith and others in that vein likely don’t see the horror in that statement. Living forever? Sounds great, right? Me, me, me. I get to live forever. I get to be different than everyone around me.

But when you look at that line as the allusion it is and recognize what it really means, there’s a dark side to immortality. In the Gospels, Christ tells his disciples the wine of the Last Supper is his blood. He also says anyone who accepts him as the Son of God will have eternal life in Heaven.

For centuries the horror of the vampire was that it was a perversion of this promise from Christ. Drink from the vampire and you’ll live forever, yes, but you’ll forever be confined to the flesh and this world and have to feed on others. You’ll be cut off from God, from all that is holy and light. That’s why the crucifix and holy water were effective weapons against the vampire.

Based on what I saw in my AP class, and what I’ve learned talking to dozens of other readers of the new young adult vampire novels, I’ve come to believe the modern generation is woefully under read and they don’t seem to care. It’s better, they believe, that vampires are “vegetarians” that only feed on animals (because it’s okay to completely redefine a word despite its etymology, too) and that they offer not damnation but eternal romantic devotion. Physical death and a broken heart are the only real fears when you are this shallow.

DISCLAIMER 1: I realize some of you are not Christian and maybe because of that you see no problem with the younger generation not being familiar with the Bible stories. As I told my students, whatever your religious beliefs, I think it’s important you understand the principals that helped to establish the culture in which we live.

DISCLAIMER 2: Yes, this site is supposed to be about werewolves, and if I’m going to bash Meyer and her ilk I should focus on what she did to the werewolves. Maybe later.

DISCLAIMER 3: The good thing about young readers is that they are young and still have time to discover the literature that has stood the test of time. Despite what sounds like pessimism and disgust, I do have hope for them.

A trio of reviews

A couple of weeks ago another teacher told me I’d been written up in The Current, an alternative newspaper published in Tahlequah, Okla. Roxann Rumor Perkins’s piece isn’t really a review, but it is all about Murdered by Human Wolves. She never says if she liked the book, but it did inspire her to go visit Katherine Cross’s grave, so I take that as a postive.

Michele Lee gave Ulrik a four-star review. Her review is up in several places, but I found it here at Visual Bookshelf. It’s also here at GoodReads, though she only gave it three stars here. This is the first line of her review: Ulrik stands somewhere between the traditional horror werewolf and the newer urban fantasy werewolf. The review contrasts the traditional werewolf to the urban fantasy werewolf and is pretty interesting.

And finally, Ethan Nahte’s review of Murdered by Human Wolves went up today at Pop Syndicate. He calls it “…an interesting, quick read that should appeal to werewolf fans, history lovers and those who enjoy a good mystery.”

I guess one of the good things about the small press is that books get more time to find an audience. With mass market, they’re out for a few weeks, then the covers and stripped and the book disappears into the void, unless the author was lucky enough to hit some magical sales number.

At any rate, I’m glad people are still reading and enjoying my Werewolf Saga.

A challenge

I made an offhand comment on Facebook the other day about something that happens in the new Werewolf Saga book and Rick Hipson accused me of starting with teasers. That wasn’t really my plan, but … it suddenly sounded like a good idea. So, I’ve created a new Twitter account and I’ll be posting teasers from Nadia’s Children there. When? you ask. Well, not until I get 100 followers. So, you want the teasers, start following me, and tell your friends. There’s  your challenge: Get me 100 minions on Twitter.

People are tired of vampires?

I don’t often promote things from NPR, but this is a good one about the popularity of werewolf fiction by Linton Weeks. Here’s a little quote to get you interested:

Werefiction provides readers with much-needed escapism, says Leila Taylor, co-owner of Creatures ‘n Crooks Bookshoppe in Richmond, Va.: “People are wanting to read something that doesn’t make them depressed and that has a little excitement in it.”

And, she adds, “When it comes to the whole werewolves, werecats, werepanthers thing, people are getting tired of the vampire scene.”

Now if I could just get a major publisher to pick up The Werewolf Saga …

Skandar

Writing on the new Werewolf Saga book, Nadia’s Children, is going very well. I mean, I’m really into the writing. This happened last December, on a project I can’t really discuss yet, but prior to that I haven’t been this engrossed in writing since Ulrik. I only have about 7,500 words at the moment, but I suspect it’ll continue to grow quickly, especially starting next week when I’m done with the teaching workshop I’m in all day every day this week.

I’ve introduced a new character. His name is Skandar. He is an Old One. I’m not sure yet what his role will be in the story, but it seems it’ll be bigger than I originally expected, as I’m fascinated with him.

I won’t make the mistake I’ve made with other books and talk about this one too much before it’s finished. That seems to jinx my progress, but I will post updates here every once in a while.

Please don’t forget about the Vampire vs Werewolf battle/signing with Gabrielle S. Faust next Saturday at Eerie Books of Wylie, Texas. We hope to see you there, and remember that Mission: Wolf and the werewolves can use your $2 donations (see the site for details).

Death of a Friend

I killed a friend yesterday.

I’d known this person since 1993. I met him because of a creative writing course at Francis Tuttle Technology Center. He’d been a good friend, though always a little strange. He didn’t deserve to die, but then life and death seldom play fair. I miss him already.

Fortunately, since he only exists in my fiction, I won’t be charged with murder for killing him. Still, considering I can’t name a single real friend I knew in 1993 that I still talk to today, I kind of feel like I killed a real person.

He’s gone, though. This needed to be done. Knowing it had to be done kept me from really getting started on the next book of The Werewolf Saga. I didn’t want to do it, you know. But now it’s done and I can go on. He may reappear through the magic of flashback and … I have three award-winning chapters and an outline of an historical romance novel that stars him, too. So, as Harley Shaw learned, “Dead ain’t gone, and gone ain’t dead.”

I have 25 pages of the new werewolf book done. That’s about 6,000 words. I suspect it will go pretty quickly now. Much quicker than The Girls Nobody Wanted to Date! This one is called Nadia’s Children. If you don’t know who Nadia is, you can find out by reading the history pages at The Werewolf Saga online. If you can’t figure out who I killed … you probably didn’t read the ending of Ulrik.

Finally, just a reminder about the Vampire vs Werewolf “fight” between me and Gabrielle Faust. It isn’t too late to make a $2 donation to Mission: Wolf for a chance to win all four signed volumes of The Werewolf Saga. Or, yeah, you can support the vampires and have a chance to win four books from Gabrielle by donating to her bat conservatory cause.

Mission: Wolf on board in battle against vampires

I am very pleased to say that Silver Cliff, Colorado-based Mission: Wolf has graciously accepted my invitation to join the werewolves in battle against Gabriel Faust and her vampire minions at Vampire vs Werewolf.

Mission: Wolf is a wonderful organization that rescues wolves born in captivity, as well as wolf hybrids, and gives the animals a safe home in a remote part of Colorado’s beautiful Rocky Mountains. They encourage visitors to come out, see the wolves, camp on-site and wake up to the song of the “children of the night.” They also take wolves on the road to educate people about the truth concerning these majestic and often misunderstood animals.

And, to make it even better, Kent was very cool about coming on board. Good folk there in Colorado! Speaking of which, I need to thank my long-time friend Robyn Lydick for recommending Mission: Wolf.

This is all well and good, you’re saying, then adding, “But what can I do?” I’m glad you asked! Go to www.vampirevswerewolf.com and read about the “battle” between the mighty werewolves and the dirt-sleeping vampires. Or, we can cut to the chase and you can just go straight to the donation page and start buying raffle tickets that will help support Mission: Wolf and put you in the running to win a full set of my Werewolf Saga books.

When you go visit the Mission: Wolf site, make sure you click on the Links page and read about some of the things being done for and to the wolves in North America. If that doesn’t make you want to support an organization like Mission: Wolf … well, I worry about ya.

Last word: Don’t forget to come to the live “battle” between me and Gabrielle at noon on July 18 at Eerie Books of Wylie, Texas.

Vampire vs. Werewolf

Eerie Books of Wylie, Texas, will be hosting a Vampire vs. Werewolf smackdown at noon on July 18 featuring me and Gabrielle Faust. No, Gabrielle and I will not be mud wrestling, boxing, or trying to bite one another. But we are discussing making this a competitive signing. Details on that will come later. For right now, just mark you calendar and plan to be at the best bookstore in Texas on July 18.

A Brief Vampiric Interlude

“Why?” people ask, “Why is the vampire more popular than the werewolf?”

I have a few ideas as to why that is, but first let’s look at the evolution of the vampire. One of the best books I’ve read on this subject is Paul Barber’s Vampires, Burial, and Death. In this book he talks about the “revenant,” the early vampires that had to claw their way our of their graves night after night. They stank. They were emaciated, inarticulate, disgusting and dreaded beings. They were about as sexy as, well, a month-old corpse. A revenant was something to be feared, and the fear had no flavor of erotic danger. It was damnation. It was tormenting those you loved who were still alive.

Of course, the general population was much more religious at the time, too. A vampire was a being separated from God, someone denied the grace and salvation of Christ … denied the communion of Christ’s blood, you could say. The important point being that Christianity was very prevalent.

Then comes the Enlightenment of the 17th century. Science gains popularity and belief in things like vampires and religion becomes unfashionable for those who consider themselves to be progressive. Enter John Polidori with the first vampire novel in 1819, called The Vampyre (and yes, I’m aware of the controversy surrounding the true authorship of this short novel). Polidori based his cultured, urbane supernatural antagonist on Lord Byron; Polidori was Bryon’s personal physician.

Later, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu would follow Polidori’s lead with his short novel Carmilla, about a female vampire. Then, of course, came the master, Bram Stoker with Dracula in 1897. When Bela Lugosi portrayed the Count on screen in 1931 and women got turned on by him, it was all over for the vampire as a starving revenant.

Now, couple the vampire’s new sex appeal with an increasingly secular society and pretty soon you have Richard Matheson’s I am Legend in which the vampire is a result of disease, then Anne Rice, where, in the early books of her Vampire Chronicles, Louis and Lestat actually mock Christianity as they take the Byronic hero idea to a supernatural extreme. This, of course, threw the coffin open to the booming field of paranormal romance we have today and led us to … yes, I’m going to say it … to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight.

Twilight is the height (or dregs) of vampire-love wish fulfillment. The vampires are as sexy as Lestat, but they’ve basically been defanged. They don’t have to drink blood. They don’t have to do any of the “evil” things that have always been associated with the vampire, but they still get the more modern cool things like superhuman strength and speed. It should be noted that the series is written by a Mormon author. So, maybe, some branch of Christianity has finally tamed, or “saved” the vampire, after all.

Where does this leave the werewolf? If you know me, you know how I love the rock band KISS. Think of the vampire as KISS, once a thing feared by religious folk, but now the most fearsome of the original foursome is pitching cherry Dr Pepper and living a scripted lifestyle on TV’s “Gene Simmons Family Jewels.” The werewolf is like The Sex Pistols — raw, nasty, untamed and probably not something you really want to live with. At best it’ll pee on your furniture. At worst, it might eat you.

Ironically, in most cases the werewolf has become more vicious as the centuries wear on. Why? He’s a thing of nature, and we are increasingly a population of city-dwellers afraid to go too far into the woods. He is primal and does not wear a tuxedo. He does not offer a small bite to the neck and some exciting sucking. He tears and breaks and chews and salivates and leaves behind a mess.

On another level, women in general don’t like guys with hairy backs, let alone hairy feet. They don’t have elegant dinners with guys who can lick their own balls. And women, you see, read much more then men today. Publishers cater to readers, and the readers want their monsters tamed, combed and sexy, with just a little trace of danger.

And that, my friends, is why I think the vampire is so much more popular than the werewolf.