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| The Dark Gift |
Join the Full Color Newsletter/FanClub of the 90's it is all Color and has interviews with Real Actors who have portrayed Vampires. Merchandise that is hard to find where you live and all kinds of Photos of your favorite vampires. Even a Page for you YES you can send in Fanfiction or Drawings. It only is a small fee for all of this and you will receive with membership a Photo in any form you choose of your favorite Vamp and a Membership card along with a Thank You letter from the Mistress of the Night. FREE For a Sample Just E-mail me with your Address ([email protected]) $10.00 For a Year Subscription $100.00 For a Lifetime Subscription So don't let the newest Fan Club Die without Biting your teeth into the best Immortal Blood to come around. I promise you won't be sorry give it a try. Vank You, Mistress of the Night http://members.aol.com/avamp2/club/index.htm http://hometown.aol.com/avamp2/myhomepage/club.html http://www.expage.com/page/mistressofthenight http://hometown.aol.com/avamp2/myhomepage/baseball.html Above are Sites that you might Enjoy. (/^^^\) | |||||||||||||||||||
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Where do Romantic vampires come from? Brief history of the literary vampire Fictional vampires did not begin with Anne Rice. They didn't even start with Bram Stoker. Though the idea was Lord Byron's, John Polidori published a short story called "The Vampyre" in 1819 in which was introduced the English language's first vampire protagonist, one Lord Ruthven. Since Ruthven was based on Byron, he was a pretty sexy guy, a charismatic seducer of young women. In the 1840s came James Malcolm Rymer's, Varney the Vampire, the overwrought tale of a man from the 17th century who was turned into a vampire as punishment for killing his son. In 1872 came Sheridan le Fanu's Carmilla. Carmilla was the first lady - well, she wasn't exactly a lady - vampire. Moving on to 1897 we have the best known of all vampire novels, Bram Stoker's Dracula. While not the greatest literary effort in the world, this story, featuring the fearsome, fascinating, voracious Transylvanian caught the imagination of the Western world, and has never let it go. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got into the vampire act with the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire." Moving into the 20th century, there have been more literary explorations of the vampire theme than I can possibly recount here. From the standpoint of writing romantic vampire stories, I want to discuss three writers who have influenced the subgenre, Anne Rice, Fred Saberhagen and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Their influence is immense on the modern vampire romance because they introduced some new twists - and stereotypes - on the old bloodsucking theme. I think television's Barnabas Collins of "Dark Shadows" might have introduced us to the notion of a vampire with a heart that could be broken as well as staked, and a longing to return to mortality, but it was Anne Rice who truly brought the self-pitying vampire to life. Her first vampire novel, Interview With the Vampire was published in 1973, and things haven't been the same since. Her protagonist was Louis, a whiny, depressed dead guy who wouldn't shut up through a long night of reciting his autobiography to a curious journalist. Now I loved this book, but the downer influence Louis has had on vampire writers ever since annoys the hell out of me. As Tami Hoag once said during a conversation about the movie version of the book, "If this guy hates being a vampire so much, why doesn't he take a long walk in the sunshine?" Good question, Tami. Actually, I don't think Louis's influence wouldn't be quite so strong if Anne Rice hadn't counteracted his downer outlook with the introduction of the most red-blooded vampire of them all. I refer, of course, to Lestat de Lioncourt, the villain of the first book who has been turned into the heroic narrator of all her subsequent vampire novels. I recall first coming upon 1985's The Vampire Lestat in Waldenbooks. I looked at the cover, blinked, and said, "Wait a minute? How could she write a book about Lestat? Lestat's a pig!" So I picked it up and read the first page. I took it home. I soon discovered Louis's version of events in the first book was a self-serving tissue of lies. I, along with the rest of the vampire-loving world, was now introduced to the idea of vampire as rock star, vampire as media darling, vampire as sexy brat prince. I love Lestat. I love Ms. Rice's universe. However, from a writing standpoint there are a few problems. The problems have nothing to with her creation, except that her influence has been so strong, many would-be vampire romance writers draw too much on her world for inspiration. When trying to create something original, we have to fight hard against the pervasive allure of her "reality". Fred Saberhagen added to the evolution of monster into romantic leading man with the publication of 1975's The Dracula Tapes. In this retelling of the Stoker book, the narrator, one Vlad Dracula, told his version of what happened back in 1897 when that "old sadist" Van Helsing attempted to come between the much-maligned Vlad and his beloved Mina. While Saberhagen would probably be shocked to hear it, that book was the first vampire romance novel - at least it's the first one this vampire fan ever came across. In it, the vampire wasn't just the protagonist, he was the hero, he fought for the love of a woman, and he got to live happily ever after with her in the end. That's a romance. Another element in the sensualizing of the vampire mythos was added by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro with 1978's Hotel Transylvania, the first in her series about the 3,000 year old St. Germain. While the St. Germain books are finely plotted and written works of fantasy, I believe they introduced an element that plagues vampire romances. I call this the "weenie" factor. In the Yarbro books, St. Germain talked a good game of being evil and dangerous, but the guy was really a pussycat - bearing in mind that pussycats have fairly sharp incisors. Oh, he was great at coming to the rescue - but at all other times the guy was just so nice you wanted to give him a noogie. Well, at least I did. | Female Vampires are looking for you(/^^^\) | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Creatures of the Night |
Male and Female views of vampires I think there are two different kinds of vampires. There's the male version of vampires. Male oriented vampires are symbols of terror and power. They are not nice. They kill for the pure pleasure of killing. In the male vampire fantasy, the monster's fangs can be equated to a weapon of destruction. Vampires are evil, the enemy, the alien other that society must be defended against. In the male version of vampire stories, it's more fun to kill the vampire than to be the vampire. In the male version of vampire stories, women are the victims that have to be rescued from these vile creatures. Then there's the female version of vampires. In the female vampire fantasy, those fangs are symbolic of the penis. The vampire is an object of attraction. To women, vampires symbolize masculine power, but not the power of death. Death is maybe a by-product of what vampires do, but it is not the central theme of interest for female writers or readers. For women death is not what vampires are about. Women writers take a softer, more touchy-feely, emotional view of vampires. The vampire is another variation on the theme of dark and dangerous hero - the sort of messed up, brooding guy women feel this compulsion to take home and fix. With women the vampire finds salvation rather than destruction. Now, women can write the masculine type vampire, and men can write the female type vampire. Most vampire stories contain some elements of both male and female fantasies, but I believe that the stories tend to fall mostly into one or the other category. Also, I think women and men tend to interpret vampire tales differently. In vampire romance novels we tend to depend, perhaps almost too heavily, on the female ideal of what a vampire should be. What is a vampire romance? Simply put, these are books published in romance lines where one of the major characters, generally the hero, is a vampire. The story conflict arises out of this vampire's attraction to a mortal, usually the heroine. This type of plot has been printed by such diverse lines as Harlequin Temptation and Penguin's Topaz imprint. Leisure, Kensington, Harper, Berkley and Silhouette have all published vampire romances. Much of the writing in these books has been excellent. However, even in the best written vampire romances there's been a repetition of plot elements I find not only annoying, but disturbing. Which brings me too: | |||||||||||||||||||
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