Alastair Rosie's Blog, page 6
June 21, 2014
Basic vampire survival
Considering the oppressive religious environment of the day, how did vampires live so openly alongside mortals?
Catriona: To answer that I suppose you’d have to talk about the basic tenets of the Grey Raven Protocols. We do not take blood from humans without their consent, although enemies are a different matter. We also work alongside mortals and try to better their lives. Our vampirism is always kept secret and away from prying eyes. To put it simply, we’re not out to drain mortals dry, it’s not the best idea if you want to survive. The concept of a vampire apocalypse where vampires turn mortals into a ready made food source flies in the face of common sense. There were gangs back then who did terrorise entire districts but they learned to their cost that such regimes were unsustainable. We fought these rogue gangs over the years and the Central Council tacitly ignored our actions because we were in effect taking out the garbage for them. On the outside they criticised us for turning on our own kind but privately they were more than happy to be rid of a gang of rogue vamps who would only endanger the entire race. Read more…
June 16, 2014
I Nearly Had Another Heart Attack
GUARDIAN ANGEL
THE VAMPIRE AS SAVIOUR
It’s a familar scene — an old mansion, a mysterious figure in black, blood red eyes, and an exotic accent. However DS Tom McIntyre’s first encounter with a vampire was in A & E where he was undergoing an emergency procedure after a heart attack. But when the power inextricably failed, the tough sergeant found himself face to face with a vampire, trying desperately to save his life. “I nearly had another heart attack on the table.”
Born in Glasgow, 1960, Tom McIntyre was raised in the east end of Glasgow in the Gorbals and joined the police force in 1978 because as he put it over the phone, “if you couldn’t beat them you joined them.” Rising through the ranks to the level of Detective Sergeant, he had a colourful but successful career that was nearly cut short when he suffered a major heart attack twelve months ago at the age of 53. Whilst the medical staff were trying to revive him for the second time there was a power failure but the emergency generator failed to kick in, forcing the doctor to cut him open and pump his heart by hand. He came to and found himself face to face with a vampire. DS McIntyre is now a close friend of Dr. MacGregor. A few days ago I caught up with him at the home of Tabitha McLean. He only agreed to the interview on the proviso that he check the final draft before it went online. This is the edited version. Read More…
June 15, 2014
Enforcers
DC Sean Ryan talks about his former role as a vampire enforcer. Angel of Mercy will be released on July 1st
What does an enforcer do?
Sean: We keep the peace. The vampire world has its own police force, which has a paramilitary arm as well. Our job was to keep the peace at guilds and safe houses, track down rogue vampires and either bring them back to the guild or eliminate them, and of course we kept an eye out for the Frat boys. With the Frat boys we would stake out their hideouts and strike at a time when the chances of ordinary human witnesses and casualties was minimal. When you’re acting outside the law as we were, then you need to be extra careful. Humans tend to notice when a crew of armed gunmen start shooting. In the last few years we’ve seen something of a global ceasefire that tends to be broken sporadically on a local level. Many of the older Frat boys are dead or too old to be fighting and the younger members are more interested in acquiring vampire blood to sell on the underground sex market.
Read more…
No Man Is An Island
Sean is a minor character in Angel of Mercy but will become a major character in the sequel. Angel of Mercy will be released on July 1st at Smashwords.com and Amazon a day or two later.
The full interview with Sean is available here.
And did you? Find your own feet?
Sean: I found that no man is an island and if you don’t make friends within the vampire world then you’ll never survive. The essence of the rogue vampire is isolation, which leads to hunger, at first for companionship and then for something else. I lasted six months before I found myself knocking on a guild hall in Kensington begging to be let in and shut away. I was in a bad way and about all I had going for me was the fact I hadn’t infected anyone yet. I spent three months in that place and wanted only to live there for as long as possible. Thankfully I met Gerry and he took me under his wing and we drove north to his old stamping grounds in Glasgow. My mentor taught me the vampire customs and ethics, but Gerry showed me how to enjoy myself again. For that kindness I owe him a debt of gratitude I can never repay. I was reunited with my mentor in late 1981 and we took a cruise to New York where I met Cat again.
June 14, 2014
Vampires In Law Enforcement
The Vampire As Detective And Enforcer. DC Sean Ryan Speaks Out.
I recently caught up with DC Sean Ryan in Glasgow for this exclusive interview. Born in Australia, May 1950, he was turned at the age of twenty four and looks to be in his mid to late twenties. One of the Unwilling Turnees, Sean was willing to talk about his experiences before he was turned and what happened afterwards.
You described yourself prior to this meeting as one of the Unwilling Turnees, what do you mean by that? Read more…
June 7, 2014
The Vampire Doctor
Coming soon. Angel of Mercy, Book One of the Raven Chronicles
… It was when we were outside our hotel that she looked at me and outed herself. “Vampires aren’t what you think, Iain. If we were to go around biting people’s necks every night we would never have survived as a species. You’ve just travelled a few miles in a car with a vampire and I can assure you that I would never think of biting you or anyone you knew, we’re not like that,” she looked at me and I mind that I had a chill going down my back.
“So, what are you going to do? Tell all your friends? I’m a doctor, it’s what I’ve been in one form or another for nearly seven hundred years. I fix people and when they die I’m the last one to hold their hand and tell them it’s not the end.”…
Read more…
Bottom – up Management.
Coming soon, Angel of Mercy, Book
One of The Raven Chronicles
…”My staff really are my most prized assets,” she sets two cups on the desk, “and I know that’s a tired old line trotted out to get workers to work harder but I take it seriously. At the end of the day we’re selling clothes not saving lives, people work for money not love but if you show them you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and get to work then you’ll earn their respect. I call it bottom up management. The people at the bottom know how to do the job and if you’re prepared to listen to their views you’ll learn something.”
It flies in the face of conventional management teachings and she concedes that it felt slightly odd when she first started touring the stores and the store managers were also put out.
“I’d get these blank looks when I turned up and asked to be put to work,” she chuckles.
Read more…
June 6, 2014
What Is The McIvor Factor?
Coming soon, Angel of Mercy, Book One in the Grey Raven Chronicle
The last time I was in Milwaukee the Republican push was in full swing during the 2012 election campaign season. I was sent to cover the chaos and try to put enough soundbites together to make up an article. By curious coincidence, one of the people who spoke out that week was Elizabeth McIvor, who in one of her trademark rebuffs to unfettered corporatism, called the Republican campaign ‘the blind leading the naïve over a cliff.’ She laughs when I repeat that remark.
“Someone had to say it and it may as well be me,” she adjusts a garment on a manikin and takes a step back to look at it, “politicians are a lot like store manikins. You change the outfit once every four years and hope no one notices it’s the same idiot wearing different clothes and you can quote me on that.”
Read More…
June 4, 2014
How Do I adopt a Vampire?
In order to survive undetected, vampires are forced to ‘adopt’ mortals on a regular basis who will swear on a stack of bibles that the woman in question is my daughter, sister, cousin or spouse. Contrary to popular belief, the relationship is a reciprocal agreement and while getting involved with a vampire might seem romantic, there are very practical benefits for mortals. A vampire son for example, will provide for his ‘parents’ financial well being, as well as bringing other fringe benefits to the relationship. The saying, money changes everything, is never more true than in this situation and thus vampires choose their families very carefully to avoid the chance of blackmail.
Recently I was invited by Dr. Catriona MacGregor’s parents, Iain and Margaret Ross, to discuss their relationship with a seven hundred year old vampire. Iain and Margaret live in Camelon, a few miles from Falkirk in Central Scotland and the meeting was arranged by Cat.
Read More…
June 3, 2014
The Vampire – Hero or Villain?
Some people will always live in hope…
Tonight I wanted to write another interview with a vampire or with one of the mortal characters in Angel of Mercy but instead I’m writing off the top of my head, always a dangerous thing because I never know what will come out. I’m thinking back to my initial short story that drew me into writing a vampire story, which was by the way, a genre I was never going to touch. It was a rather gloomy Gothic horror that had vampires, werewolves and other dark creatures in it. The story was quietly shelved and I kept one of the characters, Amalthea and started a new story about a vampire queen awakened from a two thousand year sleep. At first she was very much like the old Amalthea, evil, sinister and deadly, but when I let my characters go both Amalthea and her next victim, Wendy surprised me when they made a connection.
That of course led me through a series of half completed novels to Angel of Mercy, which does reference Amalthea but you won’t get to meet her just yet. Along the way my vampires have grown and evolved. Influenced at first by the Underworld series, then Twilight, the short-lived Moonlight series and the Anne Rice books, they’ve shaken off most of those influences to become something entirely different.
The inspiration behind these vampires, who I’ve called the Children of the Raven, goes far deeper than I had previously envisaged. I imagined a race of people who rather than feed upon us or seduce us, actually reached out to help guide us. Imagine if you will, a single mother whose child suddenly needs glasses but the medical insurance won’t cover it. Now imagine a colleague or neighbour slipping an envelope under the door with enough money to cover it. Perhaps a homeless man down on his luck who is taken in by a man for no apparent reason and put back on his feet. The girl working a nine to five job for minimum wage, who after serving a wealthy woman in the store, is offered a dream job or at least a better job.
This imbues my vampires with the status of guardian angels, immortals who look out for our needs and sometimes they put out their hand to stop us falling and other times they hold out a hand and help us up. That simple concept of the vampire as hero/heroine has provided me with a wealth of inspiration. The vampires who rescued a five year old girl whose parents had been arrested by the Gestapo, the boy who was ransomed from a Victorian workhouse and adopted by a vampire and her mortal husband, who in turn owed his fortune to her keen business acumen. The Danish slave rescued from a Saxon pimp Alfred’s England becomes a member of the clan in her own time and rescues others from slavery and oppression.
The vampires in Angel of Mercy are members of an elite club of immortals and while they are still vampires, they are very much members of the human race, interested in our day to day troubles and above all not afraid to tell the truth as they see it. And it’s that aspect that has intrigued me, the idea that if we could stand back and see the grand sweep of history then the sound bites put out by politicians would seem tawdry and ephemeral by comparison because there is nothing new under the sun. History repeats because we do not want to believe that we would be so stupid as to repeat the mistakes of our parents and grandparents. The rise of the far right in Europe, Britain, America and Australia is proof that people don’t read history, they reinvent a history that doesn’t threaten them. The Abbott government’s war on refugees, the sick, the poor and the disenfranchised has made me ashamed to be Australian because I know we Aussies are better than the Abbott government and their backers in the Murdoch press.
Ultimately I hope that those who do read Angel of Mercy are able to view the world around them through new eyes, to reach out to those less fortunate or to those leading as Thoreau put it, ‘lives of quiet desperation.’ We may not be able to change the world and I’m sure my fictional vampires can’t change the world either, but they can change their little corner of it and when all is said and done that is a world of change.
It’s been a long road from that first Gothic horror to Angel of Mercy but I’m glad it’s taken so long because I was a different person back then, a little more naive, more cocksure and blinkered. Along the way I’ve learned that letting go of our characters is scary but it’s often the only way we can move forward. I’m not sure where it’s all going to end up after book two, which has already been through one draft but I’m quietly hopeful my vampires lead me to explore history and open my eyes to the world around me in a new and better way.
Angel of Mercy comes out at the end of June on Smashwords and Amazon shortly afterwards. If you would like an advance review copy please drop me an email and I’ll send you a copy. Reviews are always welcome.
