Nicole M. Wolverton's Blog, page 3

Monster of the Month: Spring-Heeled Jack

Far be it from me to question whether something is or is not technically a cryptid, but this month’s monster feels more like a random guy in a costume or maybe a wild animal. The legend of Spring-Heeled Jack popped up in London, 1837, when a humanoid figure leapt out of the dark and set upon poor Mary Stevens (a servant). He scratched at her face with claws, and that was that. Then several other women reported the same encounter, describing the figure as shape-shifting, ghostly, wearing gloves in the shape of claws. And most people didn’t think much of it until the following year, when a woman said a guy in a cloak politely rang her doorbell late one night, shucked off his cloak to reveal some kind of white, oilskin suit, breathed fire (or vomited, depending on where you get your information), and then started slashing at her clothes with his big old claws.

My favorite part of this story is that a guy was arrested and tried, but since he couldn’t breathe fire, he wasn’t convicted.

After that, sightings of and attacks by Spring-Heeled Jack, the Victorian Demon, were reported all over England and even in parts of Scotland. That guy–sorry, cryptid–got around. Eventually, reports started coming in that he had fiery eyes, could leap tall buildings in a single bound, and fly through the air, with the final sighting reported in 1904. During his reign of terror (during which no one was actually injured, it seems), a nearly 70-year-old Duke of Wellington set out on horseback to hunt the monster, and the British Army tried to catch him by setting booby traps. There’s even one report that he was shot in the streets of Lincoln but laughed, rubbed some dirt in his wounds (okay, that part is me being facetious), and scampered away.

I wasn’t going to include Spring-Heeled Jack in my Monster of the Month series, but come on–he’s hilarious, and the artwork I’ve found on him is hilarious. Who wouldn’t want to learn about Spring-Heeled Jack? I suppose he’s no more ludicrous than a frogman with an electrified stick, though, like I posted about in July. So hey, Spring-Heeled Jack! Happy holidays!

To Venice We Will Go

This morning I was poking around Google Maps, thinking about what I might want to do in Venice, Italy next year–and I couldn’t remember if I’d been to Ca’Pesaro. Not a crisis, but certainly something that irritated me. In a situation like that, I’d normally head to my travel blog to see if I had a post about it to jog my memory–but my travel blog bit the dust a few months ago. To me, that leaves only one solution: my little blog at this author site is going to have to do double duty. My bad memory demands it!

In point of fact: I have been to Ca-Pesaro. This is going to sound ridiculous, but the thing that finally solidified it in my memory is the museum’s small cafe that is situated right on the Grand Canal. I sat there for an hour with an Aperol spritz during a solo visit to Venice earlier this year, just watching boats flit back and forth on the water. And then I remembered that the museum has an Andy Warhol Brillo Box piece upstairs, among other things. But that is neither here nor there, aside from the fact that it’s strange how much of my sense of recall is based on food and drink.

A friend last year asked me why I keep going back to Venice. He was puzzled–he’d been there and didn’t enjoy it at all. He found it stinky and over-crowded and way too hot. I told him to try again outside the summer months. I’m convinced one’s enjoyment of Venice is entirely contingent on two things: 1] avoiding the city from mid-May through mid-September-ish (the popular cruise ship and day-tripper period) and 2] avoiding the areas around Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square. I am very much a fan of visiting in April. The weather is usually warm but not hot. There are crowds in the usual crowd places, but it’s possible to find peace in Venice outside those hot spots. It smells of jasmine and linden blossoms, maybe a little like salt, instead of sweat and urine. It’s lovely and wonderful. That is why I keep returning. There is nothing quite like arriving at the ferry dock that is connected to the airport, jumping on the Alilaguna, and seeing Venice emerge right in front of you from the water–I get excited about it every single time.

That next trip to Venice in 2024 will be my fifth–and my fourth art biennale, the reason I started visited Venice in the first place. What I’m super excited about for this trip is that I might actually be able to communicate in Italian a little better than normal. Before I visit anywhere, I pick up some basic politesse in the local language. With Italian, I have the advantage of having Spanish and French language experience (probably fluent at the level of your average four year old, which isn’t great, but it’s something), so I’ve been able to scramble by over the years–I can get by in Italian when ordering in restaurants, asking directions, etc. As of this morning, though, I made the decision to take Italian at the local community college during spring semester…and I think my husband will take the course with me!

We’ve never academic-ed together before, so it’ll be a new and entertaining experience, for sure. I’ve been thinking about taking Italian at the university where I work for years, but their classes are intensive–an on-campus, hour-long class every single day. I work from home, so that’s not exactly convenient. The community college course is two hours once each week–I can do that, even during this book launch year. And plus, I’ll have a built-in study friend, although it will be interesting to see how my husband approaches all this. I’m a self-admitted grade-grubbing Type A when it comes to school… while my husband is more laid back. Whatever the case, it’ll be nice to have another Italian speaker at my side, even if neither of us knows much!

Request Your AMoLM ARC from Edelweiss!

The time has come, librarians, bookshop owners, and reviewers–time to request an advance reader copy of A Misfortune of Lake Monsters at Edelweiss! Woohoo! I can’t wait for all of you to meet Lemon, Troy, and Darrin–not to mention the infamous Old Lucy, the (fake) lake monster of Lake Lokakoma!

No word yet on when it might be available for request on Netgalley.

IT’S HERE! Cover reveal day for A Misfortune of Lake Monsters

Five dozen book bloggers. A bunch of very supportive 2024 debut authors. A fantastic bunch of friends behind me. My publisher. All of them putting the cover for A Misfortune of Lake Monsters out into the world today. It is both wonderful and anxiety-inducing, simultaneously.

I woke up at 4am (which isn’t unheard of–I’ve been an insomniac ever since I had a severe COVID infection in the pre-vax days), worried about how today was going to go. Being tired and overexcited is a heady combination. So yeah, you can pre-order if you wish (see AMisfortuneOfLakeMonsters.com for more info on that), add it to your Goodreads TBR list (or wherever you’re tracking your books these days), or head over to this link to see all the graphics I made for today and post one yourself somewhere. The more, the merrier!

Tomorrow is the day!

At the stroke of midnight tonight, the cover for A Misfortune of Lake Monsters is officially cleared for reveal! I mean, I’m not getting up at midnight… but someone might (she says mysteriously). Look, I’m trying to dampen my own enthusiasm here so as not to scare the neighbors, but the reveal involves about five dozen book bloggers–and I’m hoping YOU! Look for more information tomorrow on my Insta, Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon accounts about how to be part of the grand unleashing of Old Lucy on the world. EXCIIIIIITING!

Admit it: you’re getting a We Are the World vibe, but horror-y, right?

Oh, and look at that! Lake Monsters has its very first blurb–from the very wonderful Amelinda Bérubé (whose book Here There Are Monsters spooked me right the hell out). Did you know that Amelinda also has a book coming out in July 2024? Go check out the trailer and marvel at what’s coming!

TWO DAYS UNTIL THE COVER REVEAL!

Yes, I’m totally shouting….

There’s also video of this little graphic–and more teasers from yesterday because I am just that much of a dork!

Sale Time for CamCat

All of CamCat Books publications can be had for 25 percent off at the publisher’s website, now until November 27. All of Morgan Shamy’s great books with CamCat, as well as Helen Power’s books–and all the rest of CamCat’s horror novels. That sale includes pre-orders, coincidentally. Like Kill Call by Jeff Wooten, which contains a sneak peek of A Misfortune of Lake Monsters after Jeff’s excellent story, for instance. Jeff’s book comes out in February, so not a long wait for delivery at this point. If you’re a long-range strategizer, you can also pre-order A Misfortune of Lake Monsters right now in hardcover or softcover large-print for a little bit less. Go forth! Save that money!

Look at me, being financially responsible.

It maybe could go without saying that my concentrated pre-order campaign hasn’t quite begun yet–the cover reveal for A Misfortune of Lake Monsters isn’t until December 1, 2023. Coincidentally, if you’re seriously thinking about pre-ordering AMoLM right now, I’d recommend the hardcover version. Why? There’s a fun visual thing that couldn’t be included in the softcover large-print version.

Closer to my publication date (July 2, 2024) the audiobook version will be orderable as well, if audiobooks are your thing… a regular trade paperback some time after that.

Monster of the Month: La Bête du Gévaudan

It’s not super common to find a cryptid story that has a serious body count—usually cryptids just wander about scaring people, maybe eating a chicken or two. Not so with France’s La Bête du Gévaudan (translation for those who didn’t take high school French: the Beast of Gévaudan). Allegedly, the Beast (or, depending on who you ask, two beasts) killed over 100 people in the province of Gévaudan—what is now a south-central region of France—in the 1700s. A study from 1987 guesstimates 210 total attacks, with 49 injuries and 113 deaths, the majority of which involved half-eaten remains. The Beast was particularly fond of throats, it seems. It even decapitated a few people.

Okay, so what did La Bête du Gévaudan look like? Sort of a big cat about the size of a cow, if the illustrations can be believed. The Beast sported tawny/russet color fur with dark stripes, including one that ran down the length of its back and led to a very long tail. Big claws, big teeth. Oh, and did I mention that some reports say it could fly? I mean, no wings—but flying in that “can leap tall buildings in a single bound” kind of a way. It could also repel bullets and rise from the dead.

The first reported sighting happened in early summer 1764—a woman tending cows said her herd protected her. By late June, though, the Beast killed a 14 year old girl. Eventually the clergy decided the Beast was sent by God to punish the sinful and announced folks should pray the Beast away. Shockingly, this was not a particularly useful solution—the killing continued. King Louis XV eventually got involved in summer 1765, putting a bounty on the Beast’s head, then sending troops and professional hunters to track it down. In August of that year, one of the hunters killed a massive grey wolf, and everyone thought the Beast’s reign of terror was over. Au contraire, mon frere! The attacks started up again by November and continued through 1767… of course, Louis XV was bored by then, so the people of France got no official help, nor did the newspapers dare to report on attacks/deaths.

It wasn’t until June 1967 that a local hunter killed the Beast–then inconclusively identified as a large wolf or wolf-dog. That was the very last reported kill, so we have to assume it was—in fact—La Bête du Gévaudan. While the wolf/wolf-dog hypothesis is the one most people go with, there are other guesses that it was a lion or striped hyena that had escaped from a royal’s private zoo. Between Louis XV being too bored to deal with the deaths and a possible royal being the one directly to blame for having a dangerous pet (and not being a very good steward of his zoo), is it any wonder that the French Revolution started only twenty years later?

Of course, there are those who say the Beast was a werewolf—and if you ever watched Teen Wolf (the MTV drama, not the film), you may have heard La Bête du Gévaudan described as “history’s most vicious, most famous werewolf.” In season 5, there’s even a plot afoot to revive the Beast from the dead—which is ironic considering one of its powers was allegedly rising from the dead.

There was also a TV movie made in 2003 called The Beast of Gévaudan in which it is speculated that the murders were really committed by wolves in partnership with a cannibalistic, sexual predator human.

Interestingly, the earliest known printed version of Little Red Riding Hood, known as Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, dates to 17th century France. There are some people who say that reports of La Bête du Gévaudan were overblown–could wolf fever have derived from the publication of Le Petit Chaperon Rouge in France? Who knows? It’s certainly interesting to consider. Rest assured, though, the true origin of the Little Red Riding Hood story dates far earlier than that, possibly to 10th century France. No word on whether that version was born of a werewolf.

2023 Eligibility Post

This year began with a secret: I had just been offered a publishing contract for my first young adult horror/speculative novel, A Misfortune of Lake Monsters. That was on my mind a lot, but I’m very grateful to have had several other publications this year–Lake Monsters won’t come out until July 2024, and a girl needs to think about other things! So here’s the SFFH work published in 2023 that’s eligible for award nominations (NOTE: for a full list of awards accepting nominations, check here):

“Organic Products” | April 2023 | Last Girls Club Wicked Letters
Nova only wants to publish a cookbook about blood and avoid engaging in the transactional nature of womanhood; her male editor has other, more sexist ideas–and Nova intends to put an end to the cycle for good.

“All This Water” | September 2023 | Not One of Us, issue 76
A woman’s fear of drowning is heightened during a vacation to Venice, Italy–a trip that her husband insisted on. A night time ghost tour of the city and it’s hundreds of canals only makes things worse . . . possibly with good reason.

“From Shore to Sea” | October 2023 | The Colored Lens, Autumn Issue
Summer girl Jeannie spends her last night with local Emma, trying to find a way to force the universe to keep them together in Homer, Alaska—but the universe has other plans.

“Harvest” | October 2023 | The Wordsmiths (anthology), Hollow Oak Press
Jenny’s mama gets hurt on the combine at their farm–and a family legend about the blood-hungry fields and the combine only too willing to help feed them keeps Jenny up all night to see if the legend is true.

“The Sum of Our Parts” | October 2023 | Greater Than His Nature (anthology), Atomic Carnival Books
A murdered woman uses the strength and skills of her sisters to exact revenge.

Absolutely none of these is online/available to read, of course, so if something looks like it might be of interest to you, please let me know at me@nicolewolverton.com–copies are available by request for review. Believe me–I’m positively honored that anyone reads my work, and even more humbled and grateful that someone might consider it for award nominations.

As an aside, most of these stories were part of the short horror story collection I submitted with masters thesis, so it’s nice to see them find homes–especially since I completed my Masters of Liberal Arts (in Horror and Storytelling) in May this year.

Missing Parts, Copenhagen-Style

Last week while my husband and I were in Copenhagen, we stopped into the Glyptotek on the one pouring-down-rain day we had. The Glytotek has a really gorgeous indoor garden, but the bulk of the museum is sculpture. The collection represents the private art collection of the late Carl Jacobsen, the son of the founder of the Carlsberg Breweries, and he apparently had a thing for antique/ancient sculpture from Egypt, Rome, Greece, etc (there’s also an important Auguste Rodin collection there, too). Quite a lot of marble heads, most missing their noses.

There were also a lot of missing penises . . . take this poor fellow, for instance:

Imagine room after room of male sculpture, 99 percent of which appeared to have had their penises very conspicuously drilled out. This was Denmark–they are not a prudish people. And so I got to wondering why exactly the beans were left, but the franks were taken. I’ve seen it blamed on earthquakes. Greece is known for having quakes, and sculpture parts break off. And I’d buy that, except all the sculptures’ penises are removed in the exact same way: as though someone scooped out the offending part with a melon baller-slash-ice pick, leaving a round hole. The noses are often broken off, but the faces don’t have holes in place of the nose. So what gives?

I haven’t found anywhere confirming this yet, but there’s a clue related to sculptures at the Vatican. In the Middle Ages, the religiously damned were portrayed as naked, while the saved were clothed–and in the 1500s Pope Paul IV started having sculptural penises in the Vatican collection covered by plaster fig leaves. Pope Innocent X continued on with the tradition in the 1600s, but with metal fig leaves. Pope Clement XIII swept in in the mid-1700s to demand that any remaining penises bear the fig leaf. Pope Pius IX had any sculpture that hadn’t been properly clothed destroyed in the mid 1800s. Destroying depictions of nudity wasn’t new, though–once people converted to Christianity, statue-smashing mobs were fairly common–and sculpture that survived or were missed by rioters were squirreled away in private homes where the nudity was, ahem, sanitized.

So my guess is that many of the statues in the Glyptotek had once been victim to penis removal and replacement with some kind of fig leaf or other covering–and the Glytotek folks restored the sculpture to the original state as best they could. There is a display of broken-off noses in the Glyptotek . . . which makes me wonder if they might have a box of broken-off penises somewhere in the archives. Or if deep within the bowels of the Vatican, some poor guy in charge of the art collection hid a locked chest of marble penises. One day, hundreds of years from now (providing we survive climate catastrophe), will archeologists discover these long-lost caches of forbidden anatomy? Will the Glyptotek decide to put up a board of removed penises? It’s hard to imagine what the signage for that might look like.

Of course, it also has me thinking about why Christianity more than other religions were so down on nudity and felt like being naked was sinful or that nude people were damned. I’ve read the Bible. I know it claims that humans were designed in God’s image–and I’m aware of the Garden of Eden, and that worldly knowledge allegedly made Adam and Eve suddenly aware of their nudity to the point they had to don clothing to avoid the shamefulness of it. This is delving into religious dogma now, something I’m not really all that interested in debating . . . it all just seems so counterintuitive. And we have sculpture without penises to remind us.