Clark Hays's Blog - Posts Tagged "wyoming"
Smackdown: Big cities vs. small towns
Kathleen and I wrote this for the For The Love of Reading Blog run by Niina, a fantastic book blogger in Finland and a Goodreadsian.
Blood and Whiskey, the second book in The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series, captures the best and worst of rural and urban living.
In Blood and Whiskey, (Pumpjack Press, May 1, 2012 ), Tucker and Lizzie once again find themselves marooned in tiny LonePine, Wyoming, battling the maddening aspects of small town life (at least for Lizzie) and the murderous international intrigues of sophisticated, highly urban vampires (according to Tucker, the worst kind of city slickers).
One of our favorite things about writing for these characters, and the tensions between cowboys and vampires, is the “opposites attract” relationship of Tucker and Lizzie. Tucker has spent his entire life in LonePine (population 438, with one on the way), with the notable exception of a fevered trip to New York when Lizzie was kidnapped (you’ll have to read The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Darkly Romantic Thriller for more). The evil vampires anxious to kill her and drain his blood were almost as bad as the crowds of people, bumper to bumper traffic on endless paved streets and rows of skyscrapers blocking the view.
Lizzie, on the other hand, grew up in New York and loves the hustle and bustle, the art and culture, the pace and energy and the international melting pot of people. She traveled to LonePine, a wasteland by her cultural standards, to research an article about the dying west. After falling for Tucker, she stays. And while she loves the clean air and wide-open spaces, she hasn’t quite adjusted to small — really small — town life. The highway truck stop is the only place to eat in town, the only play they have is put on by the fourth grade class during the holidays and the library is the same size as the drive-thru espresso shack.
Despite that, Tucker and Lizzie appreciate what’s special and different about the other and that’s what helps keep them together and keeps their relationship strong despite some serious obstacles including, at least in Blood and Whiskey, a price on Lizzie head and a scheming vampire world pushed to the edge of extinction.
That part of their relationship, east meets west, is drawn directly from our own lives.
Whitehall, Montana, meet Washington, DC
Our early years could not have been more different. Kathleen grew up in the very heart of Washington, DC, which has a population of more than 600,000 people and is located in a dense urban area of millions. Her childhood home was not far from the Washington Cathedral and just a stone’s throw from Embassy Row. For her, hopping on the metro and wandering through the Smithsonian, reading at the Library of Congress or taking in an exhibit at the Hirshhorn were all in a regular day. She learned to be confident around people and grounded in the history, creativity and learning unique to America’s capital.
Clark grew up on a ranch in Montana, 15 miles from the nearest town, Whitehall, which had about 2,000 people. His childhood home was a stone’s throw from Fish Creek, near a number of historic stage stops and homesteader cabins and was surrounded by a lot of sagebrush. For him, hopping on a horse and riding up into the mountains, reading a good book under apple trees planted by settlers or building fence torn down by elk was all part of a regular day. He learned to be confident in the wilderness and grounded in the history, beauty and tenacity of western living.
We met and fell in love in Portland, Oregon, a small town by Kathleen’s standards and a big city by Clark’s. We’ve lived here for years now and enjoy the best of both worlds. We visit the east coast often to visit Kathleen’s family and load up on art and cultural events, and we visit the remote areas of Oregon — Plush and Steens Mountain — to load up on the stillness and beauty of the wilderness. Plus, we are able to head over to the lovely Oregon coast frequently.
For us, like our characters, opposites really do attract and start to change each other. Kathleen has learned to love the empty spaces and Clark has become a fan of galleries and museums. With that in mind, here are two “top five” lists based on our experiences.
A city girl’s top five reasons to love small towns:
1) The views are spectacular, especially when there are mountains involved.
2) Clean air and no traffic.
3) Fewer lights make for beautiful starry skies at night.
4) Friendly people — everybody waves at everybody in western towns and really care about how your day is going.
5) There are no distractions for reading and writing.
A country boy’s top five reasons to love big cities:
1) History — especially on the east coast, you can visit buildings that have been standing for two or three hundred years. I know that has nothing on the historical cities of Europe, but for me, it’s old.
2) Art — I love all the shows and museums and galleries, even the ones I don’t really get (which is most of them).
3) Great food — there’s nothing wrong with small town restaurants, but eating at the drive-in every week gets a little old compared to Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Greek, etc.
4) Interesting people — sometimes really interesting, like you cannot look away they are so interesting.
5) Bookstores. And good coffee.
Read Blood and Whiskey to find out even more about the difference between small towns and big cities, opposites attract romantic tension — it doesn’t get much more opposite than a human and a vampire falling in love — and thrill-a-minute action. As Lizzie comes to terms with being undead, she has difficult choices ahead that will make Tucker far more uncomfortable than learning how to hail a taxi. And of course, their enemies are going to make it difficult for true love to last beyond the next sunset.
Blood and Whiskey, the second book in The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series, captures the best and worst of rural and urban living.
In Blood and Whiskey, (Pumpjack Press, May 1, 2012 ), Tucker and Lizzie once again find themselves marooned in tiny LonePine, Wyoming, battling the maddening aspects of small town life (at least for Lizzie) and the murderous international intrigues of sophisticated, highly urban vampires (according to Tucker, the worst kind of city slickers).
One of our favorite things about writing for these characters, and the tensions between cowboys and vampires, is the “opposites attract” relationship of Tucker and Lizzie. Tucker has spent his entire life in LonePine (population 438, with one on the way), with the notable exception of a fevered trip to New York when Lizzie was kidnapped (you’ll have to read The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Darkly Romantic Thriller for more). The evil vampires anxious to kill her and drain his blood were almost as bad as the crowds of people, bumper to bumper traffic on endless paved streets and rows of skyscrapers blocking the view.
Lizzie, on the other hand, grew up in New York and loves the hustle and bustle, the art and culture, the pace and energy and the international melting pot of people. She traveled to LonePine, a wasteland by her cultural standards, to research an article about the dying west. After falling for Tucker, she stays. And while she loves the clean air and wide-open spaces, she hasn’t quite adjusted to small — really small — town life. The highway truck stop is the only place to eat in town, the only play they have is put on by the fourth grade class during the holidays and the library is the same size as the drive-thru espresso shack.
Despite that, Tucker and Lizzie appreciate what’s special and different about the other and that’s what helps keep them together and keeps their relationship strong despite some serious obstacles including, at least in Blood and Whiskey, a price on Lizzie head and a scheming vampire world pushed to the edge of extinction.
That part of their relationship, east meets west, is drawn directly from our own lives.
Whitehall, Montana, meet Washington, DC
Our early years could not have been more different. Kathleen grew up in the very heart of Washington, DC, which has a population of more than 600,000 people and is located in a dense urban area of millions. Her childhood home was not far from the Washington Cathedral and just a stone’s throw from Embassy Row. For her, hopping on the metro and wandering through the Smithsonian, reading at the Library of Congress or taking in an exhibit at the Hirshhorn were all in a regular day. She learned to be confident around people and grounded in the history, creativity and learning unique to America’s capital.
Clark grew up on a ranch in Montana, 15 miles from the nearest town, Whitehall, which had about 2,000 people. His childhood home was a stone’s throw from Fish Creek, near a number of historic stage stops and homesteader cabins and was surrounded by a lot of sagebrush. For him, hopping on a horse and riding up into the mountains, reading a good book under apple trees planted by settlers or building fence torn down by elk was all part of a regular day. He learned to be confident in the wilderness and grounded in the history, beauty and tenacity of western living.
We met and fell in love in Portland, Oregon, a small town by Kathleen’s standards and a big city by Clark’s. We’ve lived here for years now and enjoy the best of both worlds. We visit the east coast often to visit Kathleen’s family and load up on art and cultural events, and we visit the remote areas of Oregon — Plush and Steens Mountain — to load up on the stillness and beauty of the wilderness. Plus, we are able to head over to the lovely Oregon coast frequently.
For us, like our characters, opposites really do attract and start to change each other. Kathleen has learned to love the empty spaces and Clark has become a fan of galleries and museums. With that in mind, here are two “top five” lists based on our experiences.
A city girl’s top five reasons to love small towns:
1) The views are spectacular, especially when there are mountains involved.
2) Clean air and no traffic.
3) Fewer lights make for beautiful starry skies at night.
4) Friendly people — everybody waves at everybody in western towns and really care about how your day is going.
5) There are no distractions for reading and writing.
A country boy’s top five reasons to love big cities:
1) History — especially on the east coast, you can visit buildings that have been standing for two or three hundred years. I know that has nothing on the historical cities of Europe, but for me, it’s old.
2) Art — I love all the shows and museums and galleries, even the ones I don’t really get (which is most of them).
3) Great food — there’s nothing wrong with small town restaurants, but eating at the drive-in every week gets a little old compared to Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Greek, etc.
4) Interesting people — sometimes really interesting, like you cannot look away they are so interesting.
5) Bookstores. And good coffee.
Read Blood and Whiskey to find out even more about the difference between small towns and big cities, opposites attract romantic tension — it doesn’t get much more opposite than a human and a vampire falling in love — and thrill-a-minute action. As Lizzie comes to terms with being undead, she has difficult choices ahead that will make Tucker far more uncomfortable than learning how to hail a taxi. And of course, their enemies are going to make it difficult for true love to last beyond the next sunset.
Love, and Other Glorious Misfortunes
Tucker, from the pages of The Cowboy and The Vampire Thriller Series, writes a guest blog (with a little help from Clark and Kathleen)
A cowboy talks about falling hat-over-boot-heels for a vampire.
One time I saw a grizzly bear get hit by lightning.
I was way up in the mountains doing a little scouting ahead of hunting season and I happened to see this big old grizzly ambling through a grove of aspen across the canyon. I was watching him through my spotting scope while this summer storm rolled in with big old dark, threatening clouds. As if sensing impending danger, the bear sat down on his haunches and was sniffing the air when a bolt of lightning sizzled down and hit the tree right next to him. It gave him quite a jolt and sent him tumbling ass over tea kettle. Of course, being a bear he didn’t know what the hell had happened and roared up ready to fight — all singed and smoking and pissed off — only there wasn’t anything to fight.
It was something to see, from a safe distance of course, and I was having quite a laugh at his expense, but I noticed he calmed down quick. The lightning had split that tree and knocked down a bee hive about the size of a football right to his feet. There was a whole, honey-sweetened bonanza of lightly toasted larvae — that’s what bears really like and not, as some folks suspect, the honey — and soon enough he’d forgot all about the fireworks and the pain and the confusion and was just snuffling happily through a gourmet lunch.
I learned something from that old bear — even when life hits you hard, look for the bright side of things.
Let me tell you about Elizabeth Vaughan. She is the prettiest woman I have ever seen, and that’s counting on the television. She’s also the stubbornest, hard-headedest and just downright most irritating human being. Correction: she’s not human any more, but she was when we first met. We got hit by a bolt of lightning, figuratively speaking, that knocked both our hearts right off their feet.
It didn’t not start off auspiciously. I’ve always had my suspicions that beautiful people think they are a little better than the rest of us — I supposed that could be misplaced jealousy — and I’ve also always been a little distrustful of city folks in general. So when a beautiful city girl with a dictionary-sized vocabulary showed up in LonePine, I kept my distance. It didn’t last long. I blame Rex, that fool dog of mine. He liked her right off, but he’s always been a push over. He still likes her, even though she’s a vampire.
Did I mention that part? Let me tell you what it’s like loving a vampire. First off, you can’t ever have any more fights, ever. Vampires are a lot stronger than us and she’s come close to accidentally breaking my hand just squeezing it affectionately. I can’t imagine what would happen if she got really worked up about something.
Another thing is, they die every morning. Like full on, stiff-corpse dead. Talk about a mood killer when you want to snuggle up and spend the morning in bed with your lady and she’s cold and got the rigor mortis. Lizzie gets to go jetting metaphysically off to some energy field thing — The Meta. She’s tried to explain it; it’s where folks go when they almost die — into the tunnel of light, see grandma, and then come back. Apparently, vampires go there every day. She comes back all rested and rejuvenated, but I’m just getting tireder because stay up all night with her and then can’t fall asleep once the sun comes up.
Also, the vampire world is full of back-stabbing, power-hungry psychopaths. And those are the good ones. The undead are forever scheming and trying to take over the world or kill each other or whatnot. Lizzie has this special power that they want, so it’s even worse for us. Plus there’s whole Hatfields versus McCoys thing between the royal vampires and Reptiles. Two different species, one giant pain in the neck for humans.
Speaking of that, she needs blood to live, and plenty of it. The best kind of blood, the most nourishing, is the blood of evil humans and it’s the best when they bleed out and die in the process. It’s like organic, free range beef to them. There are only 439 people in LonePine, well, 438 now, and even though a fair percentage of them are bad apples, the law tends to notice when folks turn up missing in a small town. I don’t mind sharing a little of my blood from time to time — I’m not ashamed to admit it feels pretty good — but now I’m tired and anemic.
Multiply all of that stuff by her being pregnant, with hormones racing through veins and just idling there during the daylight hours when she’s dead, and an international council of vampires hanging out in LonePine, and you can imagine what my life has become.
Sometimes I feel a lot like that old bear, hit by a bolt of lightning out of the blue — vampire wars and mystical prophecies and a periodically dead girlfriend— and looking around stupidly and wondering what the hell is going on and roaring a lot. But love is a glorious roasted bee hive and there’s no question that my life is the better for having Lizzie in it. I had almost forgot what it was like to feel alive; funny that it took a beautiful undead vampire to remind me.
Note: This is a post we helped Tucker write for the ExLibris blog. Check out Blood and Whiskey for more of his exploits with Lizzie.
A cowboy talks about falling hat-over-boot-heels for a vampire.
One time I saw a grizzly bear get hit by lightning.
I was way up in the mountains doing a little scouting ahead of hunting season and I happened to see this big old grizzly ambling through a grove of aspen across the canyon. I was watching him through my spotting scope while this summer storm rolled in with big old dark, threatening clouds. As if sensing impending danger, the bear sat down on his haunches and was sniffing the air when a bolt of lightning sizzled down and hit the tree right next to him. It gave him quite a jolt and sent him tumbling ass over tea kettle. Of course, being a bear he didn’t know what the hell had happened and roared up ready to fight — all singed and smoking and pissed off — only there wasn’t anything to fight.
It was something to see, from a safe distance of course, and I was having quite a laugh at his expense, but I noticed he calmed down quick. The lightning had split that tree and knocked down a bee hive about the size of a football right to his feet. There was a whole, honey-sweetened bonanza of lightly toasted larvae — that’s what bears really like and not, as some folks suspect, the honey — and soon enough he’d forgot all about the fireworks and the pain and the confusion and was just snuffling happily through a gourmet lunch.
I learned something from that old bear — even when life hits you hard, look for the bright side of things.
Let me tell you about Elizabeth Vaughan. She is the prettiest woman I have ever seen, and that’s counting on the television. She’s also the stubbornest, hard-headedest and just downright most irritating human being. Correction: she’s not human any more, but she was when we first met. We got hit by a bolt of lightning, figuratively speaking, that knocked both our hearts right off their feet.
It didn’t not start off auspiciously. I’ve always had my suspicions that beautiful people think they are a little better than the rest of us — I supposed that could be misplaced jealousy — and I’ve also always been a little distrustful of city folks in general. So when a beautiful city girl with a dictionary-sized vocabulary showed up in LonePine, I kept my distance. It didn’t last long. I blame Rex, that fool dog of mine. He liked her right off, but he’s always been a push over. He still likes her, even though she’s a vampire.
Did I mention that part? Let me tell you what it’s like loving a vampire. First off, you can’t ever have any more fights, ever. Vampires are a lot stronger than us and she’s come close to accidentally breaking my hand just squeezing it affectionately. I can’t imagine what would happen if she got really worked up about something.
Another thing is, they die every morning. Like full on, stiff-corpse dead. Talk about a mood killer when you want to snuggle up and spend the morning in bed with your lady and she’s cold and got the rigor mortis. Lizzie gets to go jetting metaphysically off to some energy field thing — The Meta. She’s tried to explain it; it’s where folks go when they almost die — into the tunnel of light, see grandma, and then come back. Apparently, vampires go there every day. She comes back all rested and rejuvenated, but I’m just getting tireder because stay up all night with her and then can’t fall asleep once the sun comes up.
Also, the vampire world is full of back-stabbing, power-hungry psychopaths. And those are the good ones. The undead are forever scheming and trying to take over the world or kill each other or whatnot. Lizzie has this special power that they want, so it’s even worse for us. Plus there’s whole Hatfields versus McCoys thing between the royal vampires and Reptiles. Two different species, one giant pain in the neck for humans.
Speaking of that, she needs blood to live, and plenty of it. The best kind of blood, the most nourishing, is the blood of evil humans and it’s the best when they bleed out and die in the process. It’s like organic, free range beef to them. There are only 439 people in LonePine, well, 438 now, and even though a fair percentage of them are bad apples, the law tends to notice when folks turn up missing in a small town. I don’t mind sharing a little of my blood from time to time — I’m not ashamed to admit it feels pretty good — but now I’m tired and anemic.
Multiply all of that stuff by her being pregnant, with hormones racing through veins and just idling there during the daylight hours when she’s dead, and an international council of vampires hanging out in LonePine, and you can imagine what my life has become.
Sometimes I feel a lot like that old bear, hit by a bolt of lightning out of the blue — vampire wars and mystical prophecies and a periodically dead girlfriend— and looking around stupidly and wondering what the hell is going on and roaring a lot. But love is a glorious roasted bee hive and there’s no question that my life is the better for having Lizzie in it. I had almost forgot what it was like to feel alive; funny that it took a beautiful undead vampire to remind me.
Note: This is a post we helped Tucker write for the ExLibris blog. Check out Blood and Whiskey for more of his exploits with Lizzie.
Welcome to the Meta, but will you ever leave?
This week, we are talking about Near Death Experiences on our webpage and facebook page. Head on over and vote in the poll for a chance to win a free book.
And check out this post about how the Meta came to be:
Vampires have been around in popular legends for hundreds of years and in popular fiction, courtesy of Polidori and then Stoker, for more than a century. Working with such a popular archetype has its pluses — immediately resonating with readers — and minuses: tiredly expected attributes, like fangs and shrinking, hissing, from crucifixes, can feel tired. That’s why every author hopes to come up with some new take that’s still grounded in the classics.
When we began work on The Cowboy and the Vampire Thriller Series, we were intrigued by several aspects of the vampire myth: how it plugged into religion, the politics of the two castes of vampires and how could an advanced, sentient being die repeatedly — literally; we’re talking full biologic shutdown — only to be resurrected each sundown with all their memories and their personality intact. It’s that last topic that we explore more deeply in Blood and Whiskey.
Because our vampires die, fully, every dawn they have a classic near death experience every single morning. When they die, their consciousness zips off into “the Meta,” a giant energy field and external shared consciousness that contains and sustains all life. At sundown, all of those strands of energy untangle and the vampires return to their bodies once again and arise none the worse for wear. And hungry.
It’s not just for vampires though. Humans go to the Meta as well when they have a near death experience. Think of the classic NDE with the tunnel of light, meeting familiar relatives and experiencing a sense of bliss and meaning. Of course, that only happens to a very small number of people, and to some advanced mental travelers who are able to enter the Meta by meditating.
Vampires, however, enter the Meta every single day.
The concept of the Meta, and what it means for human spirituality, is resonating. In their review of Blood and Whiskey, Kirkus Reviews says:
“While a number of existentialist underpinnings give the series some depth, the book is first and foremost a thriller, upping the ante in every chapter as bullets fly and relationships strain under the weight of old loyalties and new revelations. In a way, it’s a shame more time isn’t spent exploring the existence of this meta world where consciousnesses wait out the daylight hours and immortality has all sorts of ramifications for human spirituality. But with strong writing, funny characters (no irony is lost on one vampiress who takes to sporting a “Future Farmers of America” jacket) and plenty of action, it’s hard to fault the authors for keeping the focus on a story this riveting.”
We agree, and are definitely spending more time in the Meta in book three (we are hard at work on it), but Blood and Whiskey has a huge focus on this new take on the afterlife (and the before and during life as well) based on morphic fields.
Here are a few quotes and sections from Blood and Whiskey that deal with the Meta:
Page 46
After all they shared it was hard to believe Julius was really dead. Lizzie still refused to discuss the details of what happened that night, saying only that she had taken care of the situation. Elita knew he was dead though. She felt his force wither away and bleed into the Meta, smelled and saw his blood on Lizzie’s breath and felt it coursing within her.
Page 65
Lizzie struggled to climb out of what felt like an endless, undifferentiated and always terrifying, darkness. Elita promised her it would get easier, being reborn anew every night, and that soon she’d find her place in the darkness — the Meta — and sense others there too. Not their bodies or their voices, not like in the ghost stories of humans, but their essence, able to feel the part of them that existed after death, the part that existed underneath life. For now, it was all a jumble and still disconcerting.
Page 231
There was a flash of ruby incandescence that erupted from where their blood mingled, growing in power and then consuming her and catapulting her thoughts out of her body. She swirled up into the arch of the sky and beyond, slamming into Virote’s soul on the way. They intertwined, joining together as one, their consciousness and experience of sensations now singular and shared, gloriously rushing along a tunnel of light, spiritual adrenaline flowing, radiant and free.
Page 280
As the sun dropped below the horizon, life flooded back into Lizzie and she sat up with a gasp. Her once dead lungs labored anew as her heart began to beat and formless, racing thoughts reorganized into ‘Lizzie,’ a unique body separate from the Meta. But tonight, as death retreated again into the night, a raw and unexpected power coursed through her dusty veins.
Page 280
A Vampire was present; several, actually, but one was particularly strong. She could feel them all re-inhabiting their bodies as well, their energies so recently intertwined in the Meta now separating back into distinct individuals. Humans too, evil humans; she could taste their corpuscles circulating underneath their skin as they walked around encased in evil and she hungered for them.
Page 284
She closed her eyes again, centering herself and letting energy from the Meta flow through her. Where had it been these last few days? She could feel them approaching, could feel the surge in adrenaline and testosterone, could even feel the blood engorging the penises of her assailants.
Page 319
Lizzie looked at him incredulously. “You seriously never, ever listen to me Tucker,” she said. “I’ve told you about this a hundred times; what it’s like, where our thoughts go, our consciousness, our sense of self, when we die.”
Page 323
“I saw your mother,” Dad said. “She’s waiting for me. In the Metro or whatever it’s called.”
If these have you wondering more about the Meta, check out The Cowboy and The Vampire and Blood and Whiskey for insights into a new and decidedly undead take on spirituality.
And check out this post about how the Meta came to be:
Vampires have been around in popular legends for hundreds of years and in popular fiction, courtesy of Polidori and then Stoker, for more than a century. Working with such a popular archetype has its pluses — immediately resonating with readers — and minuses: tiredly expected attributes, like fangs and shrinking, hissing, from crucifixes, can feel tired. That’s why every author hopes to come up with some new take that’s still grounded in the classics.
When we began work on The Cowboy and the Vampire Thriller Series, we were intrigued by several aspects of the vampire myth: how it plugged into religion, the politics of the two castes of vampires and how could an advanced, sentient being die repeatedly — literally; we’re talking full biologic shutdown — only to be resurrected each sundown with all their memories and their personality intact. It’s that last topic that we explore more deeply in Blood and Whiskey.
Because our vampires die, fully, every dawn they have a classic near death experience every single morning. When they die, their consciousness zips off into “the Meta,” a giant energy field and external shared consciousness that contains and sustains all life. At sundown, all of those strands of energy untangle and the vampires return to their bodies once again and arise none the worse for wear. And hungry.
It’s not just for vampires though. Humans go to the Meta as well when they have a near death experience. Think of the classic NDE with the tunnel of light, meeting familiar relatives and experiencing a sense of bliss and meaning. Of course, that only happens to a very small number of people, and to some advanced mental travelers who are able to enter the Meta by meditating.
Vampires, however, enter the Meta every single day.
The concept of the Meta, and what it means for human spirituality, is resonating. In their review of Blood and Whiskey, Kirkus Reviews says:
“While a number of existentialist underpinnings give the series some depth, the book is first and foremost a thriller, upping the ante in every chapter as bullets fly and relationships strain under the weight of old loyalties and new revelations. In a way, it’s a shame more time isn’t spent exploring the existence of this meta world where consciousnesses wait out the daylight hours and immortality has all sorts of ramifications for human spirituality. But with strong writing, funny characters (no irony is lost on one vampiress who takes to sporting a “Future Farmers of America” jacket) and plenty of action, it’s hard to fault the authors for keeping the focus on a story this riveting.”
We agree, and are definitely spending more time in the Meta in book three (we are hard at work on it), but Blood and Whiskey has a huge focus on this new take on the afterlife (and the before and during life as well) based on morphic fields.
Here are a few quotes and sections from Blood and Whiskey that deal with the Meta:
Page 46
After all they shared it was hard to believe Julius was really dead. Lizzie still refused to discuss the details of what happened that night, saying only that she had taken care of the situation. Elita knew he was dead though. She felt his force wither away and bleed into the Meta, smelled and saw his blood on Lizzie’s breath and felt it coursing within her.
Page 65
Lizzie struggled to climb out of what felt like an endless, undifferentiated and always terrifying, darkness. Elita promised her it would get easier, being reborn anew every night, and that soon she’d find her place in the darkness — the Meta — and sense others there too. Not their bodies or their voices, not like in the ghost stories of humans, but their essence, able to feel the part of them that existed after death, the part that existed underneath life. For now, it was all a jumble and still disconcerting.
Page 231
There was a flash of ruby incandescence that erupted from where their blood mingled, growing in power and then consuming her and catapulting her thoughts out of her body. She swirled up into the arch of the sky and beyond, slamming into Virote’s soul on the way. They intertwined, joining together as one, their consciousness and experience of sensations now singular and shared, gloriously rushing along a tunnel of light, spiritual adrenaline flowing, radiant and free.
Page 280
As the sun dropped below the horizon, life flooded back into Lizzie and she sat up with a gasp. Her once dead lungs labored anew as her heart began to beat and formless, racing thoughts reorganized into ‘Lizzie,’ a unique body separate from the Meta. But tonight, as death retreated again into the night, a raw and unexpected power coursed through her dusty veins.
Page 280
A Vampire was present; several, actually, but one was particularly strong. She could feel them all re-inhabiting their bodies as well, their energies so recently intertwined in the Meta now separating back into distinct individuals. Humans too, evil humans; she could taste their corpuscles circulating underneath their skin as they walked around encased in evil and she hungered for them.
Page 284
She closed her eyes again, centering herself and letting energy from the Meta flow through her. Where had it been these last few days? She could feel them approaching, could feel the surge in adrenaline and testosterone, could even feel the blood engorging the penises of her assailants.
Page 319
Lizzie looked at him incredulously. “You seriously never, ever listen to me Tucker,” she said. “I’ve told you about this a hundred times; what it’s like, where our thoughts go, our consciousness, our sense of self, when we die.”
Page 323
“I saw your mother,” Dad said. “She’s waiting for me. In the Metro or whatever it’s called.”
If these have you wondering more about the Meta, check out The Cowboy and The Vampire and Blood and Whiskey for insights into a new and decidedly undead take on spirituality.
Welcome to LonePine, Wyoming, population 438
It’s like any other small, slowly dying town in the modern American west, only with vampires.
Note: This is a post Kathleen McFall and I wrote for the awesome Book Chick City blog. It's British, which makes us international celebrity wannabes.
Cut off from the rest of the world by miles of open range and rugged snow-capped mountains, LonePine is the quintessential American western town: the county fair and rodeo is still the biggest social event of the year, crusty old ranchers drive to town at sun-up for breakfast — waving at every pickup truck they pass because there are no strangers — and it’s not unusual to see a horse or two tethered outside the Watering Hole, the town’s favorite saloon. Not much has changed there in a hundred years … until then the undead ride into town.
The first vampire to visit LonePine (at least in THIS century: Red Winter) is Lizzie Vaughn, a beautiful, ambitious reporter from New York who falls hard for Tucker, a down-on-his-luck cowboy born and raised in LonePine. From opposite worlds to begin with, their relationship takes a turn for the paranormal when they learn Lizzie is a latent vampire.
Worse, a special power courses through her veins and the entire undead world wants to either control it, or eliminate her entirely. The ensuing clash of urban and rural cultures — between star-crossed lovers and between good and evil forces — is at the heart of The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series.
Fittingly, we came up with the concept for The Cowboy and the Vampire , the first book in the series, in 1999 at a rural western truckstop in the high desert town of Madras, Oregon. We were trying to rekindle our own relationship and the worlds-collide storyline (Kathleen is from Washington, D.C., and Clark was raised in Montana), along with the macabre and gothic elements, fit the moment and our personalities. And the decision to anchor the series in the modern American west tapped into our shared love of the region and the myths that sustain it.
People are fundamentally shaped by their environment, and that is especially evident for those hailing from the western U.S. Cowboy country covers thousands of square miles, from northern Montana down through southern Arizona, from eastern Oregon to western Nebraska, and everything in between. People who live in the west tend to value silence and space because their nearest neighbor may be ten miles away, their daytime view is uninterrupted by buildings all the way out to the craggy mountain peaks along the horizon and at night, most westerners can hear coyotes or wolves (if they are lucky) beneath clear, starry skies.
The west we love is a place where people can be alone with nature and their thoughts, which is why our books feature a distinctive element — a wide open spirituality that’s as big as the west and linked to vampires: the Meta. Along with the expected characteristics of the undead — insatiable blood lust, solar mortality — our vampires die every dawn, completely. That means they have a never-ending series of near death experiences as their souls, their consciousnesses, go racing of into the Meta. The Meta is an external shared consciousness, like a giant energy field, where humans and vampires alike exist before and after death. Experiencing the Meta, just like humans who “come back” after death, gives one a profound sense of calmness, certainty and belonging.
That uncluttered confidence is common in the west, which gets to the heart of the region as an ideal, tangling up history with the golden myths of movie screen cowboys and pulp fiction heroes. Those who settled the frontier were tough, resilient and independent, characteristics which earned them a permanent place in the national, and even international, psyche. Hollywood added a sheen that mostly canceled out any of the negatives associated with life in a hard time — the brutality and cruelty and greed; they were human, after all — until the historic cowboy became an icon and a symbol of all that’s good and right in the world. And the perfect foil for the time-tested symbols of evil, corruption and decadence — vampires.
Of course, nothing is ever exactly what it seems in LonePine — cowboys are not always heroes and vampires are not always villains. The only thing that’s certain is that romance is always hard. We hope you’ll take the time to visit LonePine and meet some of the cowboys, cowgirls, survivalists, ranchers, barmaids, vampires and overly sensitive cowdogs that make it a funny, sexy and scary destination.
Check out Blood and Whiskey to learn more about the Meta and the wide open, wild and undead West.
Note: This is a post Kathleen McFall and I wrote for the awesome Book Chick City blog. It's British, which makes us international celebrity wannabes.
Cut off from the rest of the world by miles of open range and rugged snow-capped mountains, LonePine is the quintessential American western town: the county fair and rodeo is still the biggest social event of the year, crusty old ranchers drive to town at sun-up for breakfast — waving at every pickup truck they pass because there are no strangers — and it’s not unusual to see a horse or two tethered outside the Watering Hole, the town’s favorite saloon. Not much has changed there in a hundred years … until then the undead ride into town.
The first vampire to visit LonePine (at least in THIS century: Red Winter) is Lizzie Vaughn, a beautiful, ambitious reporter from New York who falls hard for Tucker, a down-on-his-luck cowboy born and raised in LonePine. From opposite worlds to begin with, their relationship takes a turn for the paranormal when they learn Lizzie is a latent vampire.
Worse, a special power courses through her veins and the entire undead world wants to either control it, or eliminate her entirely. The ensuing clash of urban and rural cultures — between star-crossed lovers and between good and evil forces — is at the heart of The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series.
Fittingly, we came up with the concept for The Cowboy and the Vampire , the first book in the series, in 1999 at a rural western truckstop in the high desert town of Madras, Oregon. We were trying to rekindle our own relationship and the worlds-collide storyline (Kathleen is from Washington, D.C., and Clark was raised in Montana), along with the macabre and gothic elements, fit the moment and our personalities. And the decision to anchor the series in the modern American west tapped into our shared love of the region and the myths that sustain it.
People are fundamentally shaped by their environment, and that is especially evident for those hailing from the western U.S. Cowboy country covers thousands of square miles, from northern Montana down through southern Arizona, from eastern Oregon to western Nebraska, and everything in between. People who live in the west tend to value silence and space because their nearest neighbor may be ten miles away, their daytime view is uninterrupted by buildings all the way out to the craggy mountain peaks along the horizon and at night, most westerners can hear coyotes or wolves (if they are lucky) beneath clear, starry skies.
The west we love is a place where people can be alone with nature and their thoughts, which is why our books feature a distinctive element — a wide open spirituality that’s as big as the west and linked to vampires: the Meta. Along with the expected characteristics of the undead — insatiable blood lust, solar mortality — our vampires die every dawn, completely. That means they have a never-ending series of near death experiences as their souls, their consciousnesses, go racing of into the Meta. The Meta is an external shared consciousness, like a giant energy field, where humans and vampires alike exist before and after death. Experiencing the Meta, just like humans who “come back” after death, gives one a profound sense of calmness, certainty and belonging.
That uncluttered confidence is common in the west, which gets to the heart of the region as an ideal, tangling up history with the golden myths of movie screen cowboys and pulp fiction heroes. Those who settled the frontier were tough, resilient and independent, characteristics which earned them a permanent place in the national, and even international, psyche. Hollywood added a sheen that mostly canceled out any of the negatives associated with life in a hard time — the brutality and cruelty and greed; they were human, after all — until the historic cowboy became an icon and a symbol of all that’s good and right in the world. And the perfect foil for the time-tested symbols of evil, corruption and decadence — vampires.
Of course, nothing is ever exactly what it seems in LonePine — cowboys are not always heroes and vampires are not always villains. The only thing that’s certain is that romance is always hard. We hope you’ll take the time to visit LonePine and meet some of the cowboys, cowgirls, survivalists, ranchers, barmaids, vampires and overly sensitive cowdogs that make it a funny, sexy and scary destination.
Check out Blood and Whiskey to learn more about the Meta and the wide open, wild and undead West.
Bugging Out with the Cast of Blood and Whiskey
Any self-respecting prepper keeps a bug-out bag loaded with survival gear near the door, and the characters from The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series are definitely used to dealing with the worst.
The rationale behind a bug-out bag is simple — it’s a backpack or some other form of personal conveyance loaded with all the stuff necessary to survive the first few days after some kind of catastrophic event. Say a meteor hits — doesn’t seem so unlikely now, does it Russia? — or there’s a huge, city-leveling earthquake or solar flares disrupt earth communications and turn half the population into solar zombies. Whatever the cause, when (not if) disaster strikes, a bug-out bag provides careful planners with a head start that won’t be enjoyed by his or her neighbors who will be wandering around wringing their hands and wondering what to do. And probably becoming zombie food.A bug-out bag is basically the first step of survival 101. A typical starter bag might have some waterproof matches, a pocket knife, a couple of ponchos and a few granola bars. Moving up the scale of sophistication, start thinking about adding a first aid kid, some duct tape and a water purifier.
We have a modest bug out bag. And so do the characters from our books, The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. Here’s a rundown of what our characters keep close at hand for when the Juan de Fuca plate drops open and a tsunami wipes out half of the west.
Tucker: He’s a tough, resourceful, perpetually-broke cowboy living in LonePine, Wyoming who falls for a vampire (Lizzie). His bug-out bag, kept in a pair of saddlebags in his truck, is pretty simple:
* Duct tape
* A folding knife
* A pair of fencing pliers (sort of the cowboy multi-tool)
* A bottle of whiskey
* A bag of snack cakes with enough preservatives to withstand the end of times
Lizzie: She’s a newly turned vampire queen in love with a cowboy (Tucker). Her bug out bag, though she would be loathe to admit she has one, is focused more on intellectual rather than physical survival. Now that she’s a vampire, she could survive just about anything anyway, except for direct sunlight, which is why she only keeps a few things in her purse:
* A copy of Anna Karenina
* A notebook and three pens
* A juice box of blood
* A body bag (in case she gets caught out doors at dawn
* A corkscrew (hopefully there will be wine after the apocalypse)
Lenny: He’s Tucker’s best friend and a way-off-the-grid-survivalist who practically invented the concept of bug out bags. He lives in a hidden bunker with stockpiles of guns, ammo and freeze dried meals. But Lenny, who has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, knows all too well that a single bunker-buster dropped from a drone would leave him homeless. That’s why he has a bug-out bag by the exit of the escape tunnel from his bunker. Actually, it’s more like a bug-out trunk, with a bug out bag in it, as well as:
* Shelf-stable food and water for five days
* A collapsible assault rifle with 500 round of ammo
* A Geiger counter
* A first aid kit and mobile surgical operating suite
* Bio waste bags
* A hand crank power generator
* Solar chargers
* An emergency radio
* Lanterns
* Flares
* A kindle loaded with every how-to book ever printed
* A tool kit, U.S. and metric
* Fire starter tablets and matches
* A wire saw
* A tent
* Sleeping pads
* Night vision goggles
* A collapsible commuter bike
* A water filtration system
* Much more
Elita: She’s a sexy, powerful vampire who has lived through all manner of catastrophes. No matter the challenge, from feuding vampire species to angry villagers with torches, she always lands on her feet. It doesn’t hurt that she’s painfully beautiful and sexually insatiable. Her bug out bag fits neatly in one pocket:
* Lipstick
* A matching bra and panty set
* A fresh pack of clove cigarettes, but no matches— she can always find someone else to light them
With all the bad stuff going on in the world, a focus on self-reliance is on the upswing and blissful ignorance is waning. People are taking survival preparation more seriously — there’s even a show about it — and after a few killer storms, it doesn’t seem quite so crazy these days to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Some people choose to assemble their own bug-out bags, others buy them fully assembled online to save the time. No matter the source, one thing is clear, no bug-out bag is complete without a copy of The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. It can get mighty boring in a nuclear winter, so bring some good books. Actually bring a couple copies. They can be bartered for supplies.
The rationale behind a bug-out bag is simple — it’s a backpack or some other form of personal conveyance loaded with all the stuff necessary to survive the first few days after some kind of catastrophic event. Say a meteor hits — doesn’t seem so unlikely now, does it Russia? — or there’s a huge, city-leveling earthquake or solar flares disrupt earth communications and turn half the population into solar zombies. Whatever the cause, when (not if) disaster strikes, a bug-out bag provides careful planners with a head start that won’t be enjoyed by his or her neighbors who will be wandering around wringing their hands and wondering what to do. And probably becoming zombie food.A bug-out bag is basically the first step of survival 101. A typical starter bag might have some waterproof matches, a pocket knife, a couple of ponchos and a few granola bars. Moving up the scale of sophistication, start thinking about adding a first aid kid, some duct tape and a water purifier.
We have a modest bug out bag. And so do the characters from our books, The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. Here’s a rundown of what our characters keep close at hand for when the Juan de Fuca plate drops open and a tsunami wipes out half of the west.
Tucker: He’s a tough, resourceful, perpetually-broke cowboy living in LonePine, Wyoming who falls for a vampire (Lizzie). His bug-out bag, kept in a pair of saddlebags in his truck, is pretty simple:
* Duct tape
* A folding knife
* A pair of fencing pliers (sort of the cowboy multi-tool)
* A bottle of whiskey
* A bag of snack cakes with enough preservatives to withstand the end of times
Lizzie: She’s a newly turned vampire queen in love with a cowboy (Tucker). Her bug out bag, though she would be loathe to admit she has one, is focused more on intellectual rather than physical survival. Now that she’s a vampire, she could survive just about anything anyway, except for direct sunlight, which is why she only keeps a few things in her purse:
* A copy of Anna Karenina
* A notebook and three pens
* A juice box of blood
* A body bag (in case she gets caught out doors at dawn
* A corkscrew (hopefully there will be wine after the apocalypse)
Lenny: He’s Tucker’s best friend and a way-off-the-grid-survivalist who practically invented the concept of bug out bags. He lives in a hidden bunker with stockpiles of guns, ammo and freeze dried meals. But Lenny, who has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, knows all too well that a single bunker-buster dropped from a drone would leave him homeless. That’s why he has a bug-out bag by the exit of the escape tunnel from his bunker. Actually, it’s more like a bug-out trunk, with a bug out bag in it, as well as:
* Shelf-stable food and water for five days
* A collapsible assault rifle with 500 round of ammo
* A Geiger counter
* A first aid kit and mobile surgical operating suite
* Bio waste bags
* A hand crank power generator
* Solar chargers
* An emergency radio
* Lanterns
* Flares
* A kindle loaded with every how-to book ever printed
* A tool kit, U.S. and metric
* Fire starter tablets and matches
* A wire saw
* A tent
* Sleeping pads
* Night vision goggles
* A collapsible commuter bike
* A water filtration system
* Much more
Elita: She’s a sexy, powerful vampire who has lived through all manner of catastrophes. No matter the challenge, from feuding vampire species to angry villagers with torches, she always lands on her feet. It doesn’t hurt that she’s painfully beautiful and sexually insatiable. Her bug out bag fits neatly in one pocket:
* Lipstick
* A matching bra and panty set
* A fresh pack of clove cigarettes, but no matches— she can always find someone else to light them
With all the bad stuff going on in the world, a focus on self-reliance is on the upswing and blissful ignorance is waning. People are taking survival preparation more seriously — there’s even a show about it — and after a few killer storms, it doesn’t seem quite so crazy these days to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Some people choose to assemble their own bug-out bags, others buy them fully assembled online to save the time. No matter the source, one thing is clear, no bug-out bag is complete without a copy of The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. It can get mighty boring in a nuclear winter, so bring some good books. Actually bring a couple copies. They can be bartered for supplies.
Research by proxy
When you write about ostensibly mythic creatures, actual research is next to impossible. That’s one of the challenges of The Cowboy and the Vampire series.
Cowboys are easy. I grew up on a ranch in Montana and still remember what it’s like to ride and rope and brand. Plus, Kathleen and I live in the Pacific Northwest which means we are never more than a half day’s drive from cowboy country (central and south-eastern Oregon) where actual cowboys and cowgirls can be found in run-down bars listening to honky-tonk music and drinking beer and after an actual long day of working on a ranch.
Vampires, however, are a bit tougher to profile. I can’t just hop on the bus and get off at Dracula’s castle. That’s why I do research by proxy. The vampires in our books are evolutionarily superior beings, stronger than humans and practically immortal, who just happen to need human blood to survive. That makes them a super predator. To introduce an element of reality, we read all the stories and legends we could get our hands on, and I read a lot of nonfiction books about species that hunt — wolves and grizzlies and, one of my favorites, Siberian tigers (The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival).
But to really pull my share and write convincingly about vampires, I wanted to get inside the heads of beings that completely lack empathy and operate without the “normal” kinds of moral calculations that hold humans back, erhmm, keep society functioning. That brought me to books about sociopathy and psychopathy and, ultimately, to Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain by Kathleen Taylor.
Despite the dark topic, this is now one of my favorite books of all time. I learned much more than just what might motivate a vampire, I learned what it is that makes us human, and how it works in our brains and in society. Here’s an excerpt of my review:
A margin-wrecker: the best kind of book is one that begs to be marked up
It’s odd — maybe not that odd — that a book about cruel, base and disgusting acts would emerge as one of my favorites of all time.
The author, Kathleen Taylor (funny that two of my favorite authors are named Kathleen) is a neuroscientist at Oxford. She brings together the latest in the fledgling field of neuroscience with evolutionary theory, social and cultural anthropology and biologic processes to bring cruelty to life — what it is and why we have it — and helps readers arrive at a better understanding of what it means to be human. She has a vivid, technically precise and funny writing style that kept me hooked and kept me scribbling frantically in the margins as new ideas skittered away.
Cruelty, she argues, is linked to the uniquely human desire to predict and control the natural world. That can be as basic as avoiding dangerous predators or as refined as protecting belief systems important to our culture. And, she says, “…our hunger for control does not demand that our predictions are actively confirmed, just that they remain unchallenged.”
Challenged, we are “…vulnerable to symbolic threats which cause us no physical harm.” But because of the way our brains are wired, “…conflict feels stressful, like pain, and most people prefer to avoid it.”
According to Taylor, we act against symbolic threats the same way our bodies act against dangerous diseases – “learn the warning signs, avoid the source, quarantine the infected and expel the contaminant.” It’s the same approach, and the same language (a blight upon our culture, threats to our way of living), that have been used to tragic result for those considered dangerous for centuries.
It’s all tied to our biologic responses because, she argues, the symbolic brain is an extension of the physical brain. The same systems we use to deal with ingesting putrid food are high jacked by the brain when we encounter a putrid belief system that is, challenging to our symbolic health. It’s the only system we have in place to deal with a threat that makes us feel sick.
Check out the full review here on Goodreads and if you are in the market for a nonfiction tour through the seediest parts of the human brain, check out her book.
Note: this first appeared on our webpage http://www.cowboyandvampire.com
Cowboys are easy. I grew up on a ranch in Montana and still remember what it’s like to ride and rope and brand. Plus, Kathleen and I live in the Pacific Northwest which means we are never more than a half day’s drive from cowboy country (central and south-eastern Oregon) where actual cowboys and cowgirls can be found in run-down bars listening to honky-tonk music and drinking beer and after an actual long day of working on a ranch.
Vampires, however, are a bit tougher to profile. I can’t just hop on the bus and get off at Dracula’s castle. That’s why I do research by proxy. The vampires in our books are evolutionarily superior beings, stronger than humans and practically immortal, who just happen to need human blood to survive. That makes them a super predator. To introduce an element of reality, we read all the stories and legends we could get our hands on, and I read a lot of nonfiction books about species that hunt — wolves and grizzlies and, one of my favorites, Siberian tigers (The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival).
But to really pull my share and write convincingly about vampires, I wanted to get inside the heads of beings that completely lack empathy and operate without the “normal” kinds of moral calculations that hold humans back, erhmm, keep society functioning. That brought me to books about sociopathy and psychopathy and, ultimately, to Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain by Kathleen Taylor.
Despite the dark topic, this is now one of my favorite books of all time. I learned much more than just what might motivate a vampire, I learned what it is that makes us human, and how it works in our brains and in society. Here’s an excerpt of my review:
A margin-wrecker: the best kind of book is one that begs to be marked up
It’s odd — maybe not that odd — that a book about cruel, base and disgusting acts would emerge as one of my favorites of all time.
The author, Kathleen Taylor (funny that two of my favorite authors are named Kathleen) is a neuroscientist at Oxford. She brings together the latest in the fledgling field of neuroscience with evolutionary theory, social and cultural anthropology and biologic processes to bring cruelty to life — what it is and why we have it — and helps readers arrive at a better understanding of what it means to be human. She has a vivid, technically precise and funny writing style that kept me hooked and kept me scribbling frantically in the margins as new ideas skittered away.
Cruelty, she argues, is linked to the uniquely human desire to predict and control the natural world. That can be as basic as avoiding dangerous predators or as refined as protecting belief systems important to our culture. And, she says, “…our hunger for control does not demand that our predictions are actively confirmed, just that they remain unchallenged.”
Challenged, we are “…vulnerable to symbolic threats which cause us no physical harm.” But because of the way our brains are wired, “…conflict feels stressful, like pain, and most people prefer to avoid it.”
According to Taylor, we act against symbolic threats the same way our bodies act against dangerous diseases – “learn the warning signs, avoid the source, quarantine the infected and expel the contaminant.” It’s the same approach, and the same language (a blight upon our culture, threats to our way of living), that have been used to tragic result for those considered dangerous for centuries.
It’s all tied to our biologic responses because, she argues, the symbolic brain is an extension of the physical brain. The same systems we use to deal with ingesting putrid food are high jacked by the brain when we encounter a putrid belief system that is, challenging to our symbolic health. It’s the only system we have in place to deal with a threat that makes us feel sick.
Check out the full review here on Goodreads and if you are in the market for a nonfiction tour through the seediest parts of the human brain, check out her book.
Note: this first appeared on our webpage http://www.cowboyandvampire.com
