Lois H. Gresh's Blog, page 17
November 8, 2010
BOOK NEWS
BLOOD AND ICE (Jan 2011) -- a weird SF vampire novel!
Join us for the BLOOD AND ICE Book Release Party at ConFusion (Jan 21-23, 2011 in Detroit, MI).
ELDRITCH EVOLUTIONS (Mar 2011) -- 25 tales of SFFH
I'll post the book cover as soon I have it.
PROJECT X (late 2011, currently untitled) -- St. Martin's Press
I have 5 months in which to read well over 100 books and write what I hope will be one of my best non-fiction books to date. A killer topic -- loads of fun!
DEADLY DIMENSIONS (late 2011) -- Arkham House
The plot, sub-plots, pov and other characters, settings, and ideas are all in place. I've outlined the first 8 chapters, and I'm cranking along on the first draft. I expect this novel to hit approximately 90-100K words. It's beyond weird and has some of the wildest speculative science and characters of any book or story I've written.
VARIOUS SHORT STORIES (2011)
I've sold several short stories for 2011 release in various anthologies.
THE ARKHAM GARLAND (anthology editor, 2013) -- all new weird SFFH fiction!
Apparently, I will edit the first original Arkham anthology produced in a very long time. Scheduled for 2013 release. I hope to receive some intensely cool material for this volume -- I'm so psyched about this project!
OTHER FORTHCOMING NOVELS (2011-2013)
I never identify pre-contract projects that editors have promised to me. However, there's quite a lot of exciting news about to unfold, so... STAY TUNED!
October 20, 2010
How to Make a Zombie
Our traditional notion of zombies originated with Haitian Voodoo culture. In fact, the word, zombie, comes from the Haitian word, zombi, which means spirit of the dead. As the story goes, Voodoo priests called bokors studied enough black magic to figure out how to resurrect the dead using a powder called coup padre.
The primary ingredient of coup padre is deadly tetrodotoxin from the porcupine fish, the fou-fou. The tetrodotoxin disrupts communication in the brain and is 500 times more deadly than cyanide. A tiny drop of tetrodotoxin can kill a man.
This weird poison, coup padre, was made by first burying a bouga toad (called a bufo marinus) and a sea snake in a jar. After the toad and snake died from the rage of being confined in the jar, the bokor extracted their venom. The toad's glands held bufogenin and bufotoxin, each being from 50 to 100 times more deadly than digitalis. The bufogenin and bufotoxin increased the victim's heart beat. In addition, the glands held bufotenine, a powerful hallucinogenic drug.
To these drugs, the bokor added millipedes and tarantulas to tcha-tcha seeds that caused pulmonary edema, nontoxic consigne seeds, pomme cajou (cashew) leaves, and bresillet tree leaves. Both of these types of leaves were related to poison ivy. Having ground everything into a powder, the bokor buried the concoction for two days, after which he added ground tremblador and desmember plants; two plants from the stinging nettle family, which injected formic acidlike chemicals beneath the victim's skin; and dieffenbachia with its glasslike needles, which made the victim's throat swell, causing great difficulty in breathing and talking. He then added the sharp needles of the bwa pine.
But we're not done yet...
The bokor next added poisonous animals to the deadly powder. Two species of tarantulas were ground up and added to the skins of white tree frogs. Another bouga toad went into the mixture, followed by four types of puffer fish, the fou-fou carrying the coup padre. The final ingredient was dead, human flesh.
If a family or community despised someone sufficiently, they called upon the bokor to turn that person into a zombie.
After ingesting the coup padre, the despised villager or family member immediately became numb. His lips and tongue went numb first, followed by his fingers, arms, toes, and legs; then his entire body went numb. He was sick with feelings of weakness, floating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and headaches. Quickly, the victim's pulse picked up, he had trouble walking and talking; and finally, paralysis set in: his breathing became shallow, his heart nearly ceased to beat, and his body temperature plummeted. The victim's body was blue, his eyes were glassy. In essence, the victim was in a coma.
While still alive, the poor, despised victim was buried as if already dead. Because he wasn't really dead, the victim often heard his own funeral and was horrified to suffer through his own burial.
Later, the bokor dug up the body and brought the person back to life. Physically, the person appeared as he did before ingesting the coup padre, but mentally, his mind was gone and his soul was dead. Being traumatized, the victim believed he had been reanimated, brought back to life. As a mindless drone, this new zombie remained under the Bokor's power and did the Bokor's bidding. The bokor gave his new zombie an hallucinogenic mixture of Datura stramonium, cane sugar, and sweet potato. There is absolutely no antidote for tetrodotoxin, so once a zombie, always a zombie.
--Excerpted from Exploring Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials by Lois H. Gresh (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
October 13, 2010
VAMPIRES AROUND THE WORLD: PART 3
In Romania, vampires were known as Strigoli, from the Roman word, strix, which referred to the screech owl. It was thought that the strix were demons. Of the various forms of strigoli, the strigoli vii were live witches who become vampires after they died; and the strigoli mort, or reanimated dead. There was also a vircolac, a type of wolf who ate the sun and moon; and this type of demonic being later became known as a werewolf.
Speaking of owls, Lilith from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament supposedly was a monster who roamed at night as an owl. Adam's wife before Eve, Lilith supposedly became demonized because she demanded that Adam respect her opinions. In fact, the myth has it that she was so demonized that she killed babies and pregnant women at night using her owl form. Later it was thought that Lilith became a vampire who attacked all of Adam and Eve's children.
In the English language, the word vampyre or vampire was first noted in the early 1700s. It may have come from the Turkish uber, meaning witch, and from there, to the Slavic upior or upyr, which became vampyre.
The Eastern European Nosferatu also referred to the vampire. The western world learned of Nosferatu when Bram Stoker wrote his famous novel, Dracula.
In the middle ages, many people blamed the black death--the bubonic plague--on vampires. The plague killed perhaps one-third of Europe and was actually spread by fleas and rats.
In the eighteenth century, a major vampire scare broke out across Eastern Europe. Peter Plogojowitz died when he was 62 years old, but he supposedly returned a few times after dying to beg his son for food. His son refused to help the dead Plogojowitz and was soon found dead himself, followed by several neighbors, all of whom died from massive blood loss. Another famous case of vampirism from this period involved Arnold Paole, a farmer who had been attacked by a vampire and who died while collecting hay. Soon after Paole's death, the local farmers and villagers began to die, as well. Government officials examined the bodies of both Plogojowitz and Paole, and their reports were distributed throughout Europe. Terrified of vampires, people began digging up bodies to examine them for evidence of the undead blood-sucking killers. In 1746, Austrian Empress Marie Therese asked her personal doctor to conduct an investigation into vampirism. He concluded that vampires did not exist, and the scare died down.
--Excerpted from Exploring Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials by Lois H. Gresh (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
October 12, 2010
VAMPIRES AROUND THE WORLD: PART 2
From the far east, vampire lore spread from China, Tibet, India, and the Mediterranean to the coast of the Black Sea, and from there, to Greece and the Carpathian mountains: Hungary and Transylvania.
Most vampires in film and literature are based on the Eastern European variety, that of a blood-sucking, sexy creature who returns from the dead. These vampires wear gorgeous clothes and sumptuous capes, and they can turn into bats, at will.
Some of the richest vampire lore comes from Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Poland: the Slavic people. The word, vampir, is related to the Russian word, peets: to drink. When the Slavs migrated from north of the Black Sea, they started converting to Christianity. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Roman Catholic Church were battling for control of overall Christianity. In 1054, the two churches formally divided from one another, and the Russians, Serbians, and Bulgarians went with the Eastern Orthodox Church, while the Croatians, Polish people, and Czechs went with the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox faction decided that the living dead were vampires.
In the beginning, the Slavic people thought that vampires were created from people who were born "on the wrong day," who died under strange circumstances, who were excommunicated from the church, who were buried improperly. Some people also believed that people born with tails or odd teeth could end up being vampires.
To protect the dead from turning into vampires, the deceased were buried with crucifixes, with their chins held upright with blocks, and with poppy seeds so the numerically obsessed vampires could count and count rather than cause trouble. Other dead were pierced with stakes to protect them. Yet others had their clothes nailed to the sides of their coffins.
To destroy vampires who were roaming the countryside, sucking the blood from villagers, people used stakes, holy water, and exorcism. They also decapitated presumed vampires and burned them. Garlic left in the church was said to expose vampires. Later methods of destroying a vampire included driving a stake through its heart, decapitating the remains, and putting garlic into the mouth. And even later, methods became more gruesome, including bullets, dismemberment of the body, and burning of the remains, with the ashes given to people as preventive medicine.
--Excerpted from Exploring Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials by Lois H. Gresh (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
October 11, 2010
VAMPIRES AROUND THE WORLD: PART 1
Vampire lore has been around since ancient times. People in cultures all over the world have believed in these blood-sucking creatures. The ancient Chaldeans in Mesopotamia believed in vampires; as did the ancient Assyrians, who wrote about vampires on clay and stone tablets.
In China, vampires were often portrayed as red-eyed monsters with green hair. In ancient India, vampire legends were evident from the paintings on cave walls of blood-drinking creatures. In some writings in 1500 B.C., the destroyer Rakshasas is depicted as a vampire; and paintings from 3000 B.C. show the Lord of Death drinking blood from a human skull. The Indian Baital vampire is a mythological monster who hangs upside down from trees, much like a bat. The Baital hasn't any blood of its own.
The ancient Malaysians had a vampire called the Penannggalen, which was a human head with entrails. The entrails left the Penannggalen's head to seek the blood of human infants. In ancient Peru, the canchus were devil worshipers who drank blood from children.
In ancient Babylonia, the ekimmu was a vampire spirit who drank human blood when hungry. In Wallachia, the murony vampire sucked blood and operated as a shapeshifter, changing from human to dog to insect to cat, at will. Sometimes, the murony operated in werewolf form.
In Greece, vampires were thought to be winged serpents combined with human females. The ancient Greek strigoe or lamiae were monsters who drank the blood of children. These notions came largely from the lore of Lamia, one of Zeus' lovers; when Hera fought Lamia, the mistress went insane and killed all her own children, then at night, she killed everyone else's children, as well.
--Excerpted from Exploring Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials by Lois H. Gresh (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
September 28, 2010
My ConClave Schedule
Writing 101: what you didn't hear in Creative Writing class (6:30 Friday Ballroom 5)Monsters of Today: vampires, werewolves, and zombies (Saturday 9:30am Ballroom 5)E-media (Saturday 10:00am Ballroom 5)Author Reading from BLOOD AND ICE (Saturday 1:30 Ballroom 5)Writing Your First Novel (Sunday 10:00am Ballroom 5)
Preparing for ConClave
I guess at some point I'll have to do both, but for now, here's what I've done to prepare -- I've assembled a costume for the reading from BLOOD AND ICE. Given that this is a futuristic vampire thriller, I could easily dress as a vampire, but that would be too dull. No no no, I'm going to read from the novel dressed literally as BLOOD AND ICE.
August 6, 2010
BLOOD AND ICE: Update
A year and a half ago, I developed a complex thriller plot that was based largely in Antarctica. I intended to use the plot, which had nothing to do with vampires, for my upcoming Arkham House novel, DEADLY DIMENSIONS. The Arkham deal took awhile to seal, and in the meantime, William Jones of Elder Signs Press asked if I would like to write a vampire horror ...
July 30, 2010
Necon - mini log
Necon was a much-needed writer's happiness boost. I saw my agent for the first time in ages, and it was wonderful to hang out with her again. I met Tracy Carbone in person and enjoyed her effervescent personality. I met Jan Kozlowski and enjoyed her mutual taste in dance tunes - The Cramps zombie surfin' tracks can't be beat. Boogied at the Danceteria with Doug Clegg and K.A. Laity, & others. Met John Skipp and realized he's a nutty as I am, which doesn't happen very often. Ran into man...
June 23, 2010
DEADLY DIMENSIONS - cover art
