One of the pleasures of attending graduation at Northern Arizona University a couple of weeks ago was the opportunity to meet some of Verity’s friends, including a young Navajo man who graduated with a history degree and shared Verity’s love of Monty Python. We spent the afternoon after graduation with this young man. He gave Verity and my wife, Kumie, katsina dolls as gifts. Traditionally, Hopi people created katsina dolls as a way of instructing young girls and women about the katsinam, spirit beings who bring rain and act as intermediaries between the mortal world and the spiritual world. What’s more, many of the pueblos in the southwest have katsina rituals where masked dancers take on the roles of different katsina. Historically, the word has been spelled kachina, but “katsina” is closer to the correct Hopi pronunciation. Having grown up in the southwest, I’ve long been fascinated by katsina dolls and the concept of the katsina. I decided to learn more and dove into a non-fiction book called The Origin and Development of the Pueblo Katsina Cult by E. Charles Adams.
It’s worth noting, Adams uses the word “cult” in the more archaeological or anthropological sense, meaning a system of beliefs and ritual, not the more modern sense of a group of people following a charismatic or unorthodox leader. Also, Adams approached this issue very much as an archaeologist. He didn’t spend a lot of time trying to explain or characterize the katsina belief and ritual system, but rather looked at how it came to be a ritual system shared among peoples living within many of the southwestern pueblos. So, the book is concerned with tracing the beginnings and spread of masked figures in rock art at or near both inhabited and abandoned pueblos along with the development of the architectural structures, namely the enclosed plazas, where katsina dances are held. According to Adams, the katsina rituals seemed to appear in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, around the time the Anasazi began abandoning their large dwellings in places like New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. Evidence suggests that was a period of drought in the southwest and it’s long been suspected that the Anasazi left their lands in response to such a hardship. Adams suggests that the katsina rituals developed as a way to help integrate newcomers into certain pueblos and help them learn the beliefs and become part of the community.
Years ago, right after getting married, my wife and I visited Chaco Canyon. At the time, many archaeologists still referred to the disappearance of the Anasazi as a mystery. Yet, the Hopi and other pueblo people maintained that the Anasazi were their ancestors. This book seems to indicate that archaeological evidence has come to support what Native people have long insisted.
Large portions of my Scarlet Order vampire novels are set in the American southwest and there are beings referred to as “kachina.” On the whole, these are beings from other worlds who see themselves as superior to humans and present themselves as gods or other powerful beings. Like many explorers and colonizers of history, these beings have an elevated sense of themselves and are often misguided. In part, I use the old spelling precisely because these beings are not meant to literally be the katsinam of the Hopi or spirit beings recognized by any native people. They’re arrogant, powerful beings who have adopted a role, much as they adopted the role of being angels in European countries. You can lean more about my Scarlet Order novels by visiting http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order
At this point, I’m less than a month away from my cancer surgery and I’m deep in the throes of getting pre-operative clearance from my primary care doctor and cardiologist. As a result, it feels like I’m spending a lot of time in waiting rooms, either waiting for doctor’s appointments, or for tests. To me, the best way to spend that kind of time is with a good book. To distract myself from dwelling too long and hard on the forthcoming surgery, I picked a fun book based on one of my favorite childhood cartoons. It helps that this particular book was the sequel to one I read recently and truly enjoyed. The book I read was The Dark Deception, which is the second book in the Daphne and Velma young adult series. The author was Morgan Baden, who I’m pretty certain also authored book 1, The Vanishing Girl. The first book’s author was listed as Josephine Ruby, which seems like it must have been a pen-name picked to honor Scooby-Doo co-creator Joe Ruby.
At the end of The Vanishing Girl, Daphne’s friend Marcy suggests that Shaggy Rogers is hiding a deep, dark secret. The Dark Deception opens with Daphne and Velma trailing Shaggy, trying to figure out what that secret actually is. Just as they begin to get their first clues, a batch of crystals suddenly wash up on Crystal Cove’s beach. The town has a history of disappearances being tied to a mysterious crystal. That same crystal happens to be in the possession of Shaggy’s father, who is descended from the original settlers. The town also has a long history of paranormal occurrences, or at least occurrences the populace attribute to paranormal causes. One of the old paranormal stories involved a mysterious figure known as the Lady Vampire of the Bay and people have begun to see her lurking around town. Daphne and Velma begin to think the crystals must somehow be tied to whatever secret Shaggy is keeping. What’s more, Daphne now has a summer job as an intern for Crystal Cove’s newspaper and her boss has her out looking for clues to whatever is going on with the mysterious crystals.
As Daphne and Velma investigate the case, they discover several red herrings. They also have to navigate some real teen challenges such as attractive peers who might make potential romantic partners, challenging friendships, relationships with parents, and building an honest yet positive self-image. Over the years I’ve known numerous people who have wondered why Velma didn’t just get contacts when she was so blind without her glasses. The book does a nice job of allowing Velma to experiment with contacts only to discover they aren’t for her. I was glad to see the journey since it echoed elements of my own experiments with contact lenses several years ago. As I’ve indicated, Shaggy is a much more integral part of this novel and we can see the core group of “meddling kids” starting to bond as a unit. Fred still largely exists as a side character, but he takes a more important role here in the second book. Scooby still acts more like a real dog than a talking cartoon dog, but it works in this novel-length exploration of the characters. The Dark Deception is published by Scholastic Books and is available wherever fine books and ebooks are sold.
As I mentioned in my look back at The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, I thought one of the missed opportunities of the various Scooby-Doo series was to show how dangerous real criminals could be compared to the ghosts and monsters they pretended to be. The Dark Deception gave us a taste of that and did show how a desperate human might actually be scarier than any ghost or vampire. My Scarlet Order Vampire novels also look at how humans motivated by greed and power can sometimes be scarier than so-called monsters. You can learn more about those novels by visiting http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order.
I recently became aware of the term “godpunk.” It’s a science fiction/fantasy sub-genre that sits alongside such sub-genres as “steampunk” and “solarpunk.” While “steampunk” imagines a story set in a Victorian-like milieu and “solarpunk” imagines positive outcomes in a future with climate change, “godpunk” tells stories about the world’s deities their close associates, such as angels and demons. Often these stories are set in a time period outside of the classic stories of these gods. What’s more, while these stories can be humorous or offer wry commentary, they endeavor to be respectful of the traditions represented. Examples of this sub-genre include Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Silvia Morena-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow. I recently dove into Wole Talabi’s godpunk novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obulafon.
The novel opens with a chase on the streets of the “spirit side” of London. Shigidi, recently the Yoruba peoples’ god of nightmares, is in a cab with the Succubus Nneoma. He’s lost an arm and they’re being chased by a giant on a makeshift chariot being pulled by enchanted bronze horses. They’ve just stolen the Brass head of Obalufon, a relic which has been displayed at the British Museum and hope to deliver it to the powerful Yoruba god Olorun. At last Nneoma confesses her love for Shigidi. From here, the novel goes back in time to tell us how we reached this point.
In Talabi’s cosmos, gods live on prayers and worship. The gods of the world have separated themselves into corporations that control different parts of the world. Christianity and Islam are the megacorps of this world. The Yoruba gods are a sizeable, but smaller company fighting to survive and some gods have already faded away. When we reach back in time, we find that Shigidi is a rather ugly god who people pray to so he’ll give their enemies nightmares bad enough to kill them. One night, while on the job, he meets the succubus Nneoma. Although she comes from the Christian side of the cosmos, she’s an independent contractor, doing what succubi do, using sex to steal souls. She encourages Shigidi to go independent with her. When he agrees, she reforms him into a beautiful god. It looks like things are going to go well, but as with many indie operators, they find they have to work in a world dominated by the corporations. They fall afoul of some of the wrong gods, they begin to owe favors to others, and at last, Olorun comes to them with an offer they can’t refuse, steal the Brass Head of Obalufon and they’ll have it made.
Talabi takes us on a wild ride that ranges from Nigeria to Malaysia to London, weaving the elements from the distant and near past that brought Shigidi and Nneoma to the point we meet them at the start of the novel. Infamous spiritualist Aleister Crowley even comes along for part of the ride. Along the way, we see human-like jealousy, love, anger, and vengeance writ large as only the gods can do. I thought this was a fun novel and it’s made me curious to learn more about the Yoruba gods and their influence on world culture.
For myself, I’ve only really dipped my toe into the godpunk waters once. This is in the story “Dusty Violet and Bleached Bones” which appears in the anthology It Came From Her Purse, edited by Terrie Leigh Relf and Marcia A. Borell. The story features a smackdown between the Kachina Crow Mother and La Llorona. You can find the story at https://www.amazon.com/Came-Purse-Terrie-Leigh-Relf/dp/1087882079/
It would be fair to ask if my Scarlet Order Vampire novels count as godpunk with their angels, gods, and Kachinas. While some of the aliens of this world may have inspired a few specific legends, my characters in this series are aliens whose egos are big enough that they’re content with being seen as gods and other powerful beings. Despite that, fans of the genre might find the novels close enough to be interested in reading more. You can learn about the Scarlet Order Vampire novels at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order
The original Scooby-Doo television series debuted when I was about three-years-old. I’ve watched the adventures of the mystery-solving gang and their talking dog about as long as I can remember. Although many of the episode premises are kind of silly, Scooby did help me think critically and skeptically about things. After all, all the monsters and ghosts turned out to be criminals in masks! I’ve enjoyed some iterations of the series more than others. Scooby’s nephew Scrappy first appeared around the time I hit junior high school. That was a period that my interest in Saturday morning cartoons started waning and I stopped watching.
My interest in the series picked up again when they started making direct-to-video movies circa 1998. That was also at about the point I began introducing my own kids to things I liked. Overall, I really liked the earliest of these movies. My only issue was that they decided to introduce “real” monsters, but they did it in a way that paid tribute to the original series and it felt like a natural extension of what we had seen before. The fifth movie in this series was Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire.
More than any of the direct-to-video movies that came before it, Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire reverted to the traditional formula. It opens as promoters are preparing a rock concert in the Australian Outback. A performer goes on stage for a sound check. Soon, a portal seems to open and gigantic vampire called a Yowie Yahoo appears and sweeps the performer off stage never to be seen again. Meanwhile, the Scooby gang are on a haunted cruise ship. As the credits play, they capture the ghosts and put an end to a smuggling operation. Not surprisingly, the cruise ship is on its way to Australia, where the gang has a fine time catching the sights in Sydney. However, they soon learn about the rock festival at the fictional Vampire Rock and go to check it out. That’s when they learn about the Yowie Yahoo.
More than the direct-to-video movies that proceeded it, Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire is a return to the format of the classic animated series. The gang begins to search for clues, they learn about the disappearances of previous bands and ultimately, they unmask the real perpetrators. Perhaps the coolest part of this movie is that it features the return of all the surviving members of the original Scooby-Doo voice cast reprising their original roles. The only person missing, sadly, was Don Messick, the original Scooby, who had passed away in 1997. Another great part of the film is the return of the Hex Girls, a rock band first introduced in the 1999 movie Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, which features Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s as one of the voices.
This movie did make me wonder whether the Yowie Yahoo was really a part of Australian vampire lore. Back in 2003, I wasn’t able to easily look this up. I now have learned that the Yowie, which also known in some parts of the country as a Yahoo, is actually a Sasquatch-like cryptid who tends to appear at night. He’s also one of the most violent of the Sasquatch-like cryptids and has been known to attack and dismember animals and people. I guess it just goes with Australia’s reputation for having deadly, dangerous creatures! Pictures I’ve found do bear a passing resemblance to the giant master vampire on the DVD cover, though without the pointed ears and bat wings.
There is a uniquely Australian vampire with a phonetically similar name called the Yara-ma-yha-who. Unlike Scooby’s Yowie Yahoo, this is a small, red humanoid with a large head, no teeth, and suckers on its fingers. It’s been described as dropping from trees, latching onto people and sucking blood from them. This creature sounds like it could easily be one of Iktome’s failed experiments alluded to in my novel Vampires of the Scarlet Order.
Reviewer Fred Cleaver of the Denver Post noted that my Scarlet Order vampires “form the Scooby-gang to fight evil.” You can learn more about the series, see some videos, and read sample chapters at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order
Hounds, faithful, tenacious, and oft the subject of otherworldly lore. Will they stand beside you or hunt you down? Only time (and the tale) will tell. A Cry of Hounds is an anthology presented in conjunction with the Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival that presents eleven tales inspired by the master of mystery, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, paying tribute to his genius for deduction and his passion for things beyond the ken of mortal men.
When we were invited to create stories for the anthology, we were asked to pick a supernatural hound from folklore to incorporate into the story. As it turns out, Danielle Ackley-McPhail presented the list of hounds on a day I was working at Kitt Peak National Observatory and by the time I woke up for the day, all the hounds had been picked except for one, the Cù-Sìth from Scottish folklore. The Cù-Sìth is described as a fearsome green guard dog of the fae who stalks many of the moorlands. If you’re walking the moors at night and hear the hound bay three times, it will find you and send you to the land of the fae where you will be trapped forever.
The setup almost asks for a retelling of Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” However, an excerpt of Doyle’s novel was already slated to be in the book. So, I took inspiration from Doyle’s story “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.” Although the original is a Holmes story, I replaced the detective with my spiritualist character, Dinella Stanton, who is taking a holiday in Scotland. She hears that a vampire had taken up residence and that the Cù-Sìth had appeared. Thinking the two events must be related, Dinella investigates and does find a vampire – none other than Lord Draco from my Scarlet Order vampire novels. She does indeed find that he’s connected to the Cù-Sìth’s appearance, and now the vampire and spiritualist must work together to set things right.
The other stories in the volume are as follows:
“The Curse of the Baskervilles” by Arthur Conan Doyle. This is the second chapter of Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. James Mortimer has come to Sherlock Holmes to describe the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, who seems to have died of a heart attack. The doctor tells the tale of how the Baskerville came to be cursed by a demonic dog. He then explains that even though Baskerville seems have died of a heart attack, the footprints of a giant hound covered the ground nearby.
“The Night of the Howling Wind” by Ef Deal. A werewolf is on the prowl in an Irish village and a murder has been committed. What’s more it’s new moon. In the story, we learn that many things can cause a werewolf to take wolfly form, including a sudden drop in barometric pressure. Sure enough, a terrible storm strikes the village all while the town doctor and a constable try to solve the murder and find the werewolf.
“The Adventure of the Exploding Airship” by John L. French. Detective Sergent Adrian Hope and his talented canine companion Constable Grace O’Malley investigate an airship that exploded over London. Was it sabotage? Was it an accident? It’s hard to tell when the only person aboard was literally blown to bits. Or were they?
“A Grecian Pawse” by Doc Coleman. Airship adventurers Professor Crackle and Miss Bang along with their companions encounter a three-headed dog while visiting one of the Greek islands. Can they get Cerberus back to his owner before the scared islanders catch them and destroy the enormous three-headed dog?
“Amber Waves of Bane” by Dana Fraedrich. Goldie Cadwaladr can walk between our “material” realm and the spirit realm. She’s summoned to help a boy and his dog who have fallen asleep and won’t wake up. In the spirit world, she finds the boy and dog being attacked by a gwillgi, a great Otherworld canine with sooty black fur and fires blazing around its eyes. Her task it to fend off the dog, then find out why the two mortals were wandering the Otherworld in the first place.
“Weighed and Measured” by Bill Bodden. Edward Bellingham searches the Egyptian dessert for a scroll that contains an incantation which will make mummies walk and obey the commands of the summoner. Of course, if you’re going to wander into the Egyptian realm of the dead, you’re likely to encounter Anubis.
“Progenitor” by Keith R.A. DeCandido. Summerlee and Roxton, associates of Doyle’s Professor Challenger believe they’ve found one of the progenitors of the original Mongolian Wolf Hound in the years after World War I. According to legend, this progenitor was brought down from the mountains by a giant. Of course, Challenger is skeptical of the folkloric explanation but grants the modern hounds may have come from an earlier prehistoric ancestor. They begin an expedition that takes them deep into Mongolia where they discover a community run on clockworks and steam.
“Ember Eyes” by Jessica Lucci. An orphan named Moxie befriends a strange ember-eyed, black puppy in days when she’s working at a factory. Years later, Moxie invents a means of collecting energy from the sun. A jealous man from the factory where she now works means to steal her invention and Moxie learns the value of having loyal friends.
“The Houndstooth Affair” by Aaron Rosenberg. Someone has broken into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and stolen a clockwork hound built by the jeweler, Cartier. Detective Huggins of NYPD is on the case with the best tech available in 1880s New York and more than a few Doyle-inspired quips at his disposal.
“A Glimpse of Death” by James Chambers. Morris Garvey, the richest man in New Alexandria, employs many of the street orphans to be his eyes and ears in the city. When a group of the Troubleshooters get word that the Scottish Ambassador may be killed, they go to investigate and have a close encounter with a barghest, a supernatural hound with fire in its eyes and an omen of doom. Unfortunately, the ambassador met an untimely end anyway and now two of the Troubleshooters are at death’s door. Now Garvey teams up with the Queen of Witches to find out who unleashed the devilish hound and save the two young people.
“They Who Have Lost Their Way” by Danielle Ackley-McPhail. Angel can enter the realms of the dead through her dreams. During one dream, she learns that something is consuming souls and that the souls of her departed mother and brother are in danger. Talented at creating clockwork creations, she finds her father’s invention for bringing one who ventures into the land of the dead back to life. She uses this and a special brew to cross the threshold into the land of the dead while still conscious. Aided by xolos, dogs who guide the dead, she must find and destroy the soul-consuming creature before she herself becomes a permanent resident.
“Sherlock Holmes and the Stonyhurst Terror” by Christopher D. Abbott. A reverend comes to Holmes because something has been digging up graves. He suspects the culprit is a Yeth Hound and once such a creature becomes strong enough, it can attack the living. Holmes takes the case because he believes there will be a rational explanation. Watson and his friend Dr. David Billings help with the investigation and soon encounter what appears to be the creature itself!
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I grew up with comic books and remained a fan through my college years. My interest waned after I left grad school as work, marriage, and children took increasing chunks of my time. However, as my kids reached an age to show an interest in comics, I sought out a new local comic shop in the 2010s and gradually began collecting again. Lurking on the shelves near the end of the alphabet was a woman vampire in a red outfit that was revealing by bathing suit standards. As a fan and writer of vampire stories who is also not immune to artwork designed to attract the male gaze, I picked up a copy or two. I don’t remember much about the earliest issues I read. The writing didn’t engage me enough to keep reading. I’ve since learned this was a period when the writing of Vampirella could be uneven, and a lot of the writers were experimenting with the character’s backstory.
Back around the new year, Tom Hutchison of Big Dog Ink Comics offered a special on some copies of the Vampirella archive editions. These hard cover books collected the earliest Vampirella comics as published by Warren Magazines starting in 1969. In that era, Warren sought to get around the restrictions of the Comic Code Authority by publishing black-and-white horror comics in magazine-sized editions. Their flagship publications were Creepy and Eerie, which I remember seeing on the shelves back in the day.
Vampirella was introduced as a third title to join the lineup in 1969. The title character was intended to be a horror hostess in the style of Vampira, who had been on television about a decade earlier. Vampirella’s “job” was to introduce different stories in each issue of the magazine. Vampirella herself was designed by cartoonist Trina Robbins and “revamped” by Frank Frazetta. Publisher James Warren had famed fan and writer Forrest J. Ackerman create a backstory for Vampirella, introducing her as an alien from the planet Drakulon where blood flowed in rivers, but began to dry up in the heat of the twin suns. When a hapless Earth space vessel crashed on Drakulon, Vampirella discovered that humans have blood in their veins and found her way to Earth. The story proved popular enough, a sequel was penned which described Vampirella on Earth, entering a contest to become Warren Magazine’s new hostess.
The Vampirella Archive Editions collect complete issues of those early magazines. You get the Vampirella stories and the stories she hosts. The Archive Editions are well worth reading if you want to see those early Vampirella stories in context. However, if you want to follow just her story arc, Dynamite Publishing has collected her stories into Vampirella: The Essential Warren Years.
The first two stories were silly, pun-laden fun, but weren’t really designed to engage the reader at a more emotional level. Still, something remarkable happened. Readers continued to want Vampirella stories, so Warren hired Archie Goodwin to pen several stories and the stories turned really good. Goodwin’s writing is enhanced by the art of Jose Gonzalez.
Ackerman’s last story imagined that Vampirella was on her way to a hosting gig when her plane crashed. Goodwin picked up the ball and imagined that one of her fellow passengers was a descendent of renowned vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing. The younger Van Helsing is found dead, drained of blood. Of course, Vampirella is blamed. The younger Van Helsing’s brother Conrad, and nephew Adam, begin to chase the hapless refugee from Drakulon. In the meantime, Vampirella takes refuge at a hospital where one of the doctors develops a blood serum that allows her to feed without drinking human blood. Unfortunately, the hospital also happens to be the lair of the Cult of Chaos, a group devoted to evil. Vampirella escapes the cult and eventually takes a job as assistant to a nearly washed-up, drunken magician Pendragon. Vampirella’s need for blood is nicely contrasted with Pendragon’s need for drink.
Authors such as Tom Sutton and Len Wein take up Vampirella’s story in later stories which were clearly inspired by such sources as the Hammer films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. There’s a strong story arc about Vampirella meeting Dracula. This is followed by a poignant story of Pendragon finding out what happened to his estranged wife and daughter. There’s even a story that posits that vampires have their origin in Ancient Egypt and that Vampirella is, in fact, the reincarnation of an Earth vampire of the period. I couldn’t help but wonder if Anne Rice took some inspiration from these stories when she conceived of the Egyptian origins of her vampires.
Returning to these early stories has allowed me to look at some of the later Vampirella stories with a fresh eye. I see how the writers have envisioned her as a good-hearted, but often misunderstood vampire. The best writers seem to acknowledge her campy and fun roots, while also giving her a solid adventure story.
While I can’t honestly say I was inspired by Vampirella, I was inspired by many of the writings and movies that inspired Warren’s authors. My vampires have ties to aliens. Like Vampirella, many can transform into bats. The vampires of my world attempt to help humanity and while they don’t have a blood serum, they try not to take lives unless it’s absolutely necessary. Author Lyn McConchie recently said my latest Scarlet Order novel was “A clever book that amused and enthralled me.” You can learn more about my Scarlet Order vampires at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order
Happy Read an Ebook Week! You can find my Scarlet Order Vampire novels available now at Smashwords at a promotional price to help you celebrate. Find my vampire novels and many more great books at https://www.smashwords.com/ebookweek from March 3-9! The third volume of my Scarlet Order vampire series was released just last month. This is your opportunity to grab all three books for a special promotional price of just 99 cents each. That means you can get the whole series for less than the price of one book!
Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires
Three vampires. Three lives. Three stories intertwined.
Bearing the guilt of destroying the holiest of books after becoming a vampire, the Dragon, Lord Desmond searches the world for lost knowledge, but instead, discovers truth in love.
Born a slave in Ancient Greece, Alexandra craves freedom above all else, until a vampire sets her free, and then, she must pay the highest price of all … her human soul.
An assassin who lives in the shadows, Roquelaure is cloaked even from himself, until he discovers the power of friendship and loyalty.
Three vampires, traveling the world by moonlight—one woman and two men who forge a bond made in love and blood. Together they form a band of mercenaries called the Scarlet Order, and recruit others who are like them. Their mission is to protect kings and emperors against marauders, invaders, and rogue vampires as the world descends into the chaos of the Dark Ages.
Marita Woywod Crande, author of New Orleans Vampires—History and Legend describes Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires as, “A journey into the time of lords, battles, sailing the seas, and vampires. A wonderful escape into historical adventure.”
A new generation of vampires embarks on a quest to save humanity.
Opening a forgotten crypt during a military exercise, Dr. Jane Heckman is made a vampire and begins a journey to unlock the secret origins of her new kindred.
Elsewhere, solitary vampire Marcella DuBois emerges from the shadows and uncovers a government plot to create vampire-like super soldiers.
Daniel McKee, a vampire working as an astronomer, moves to a new town where he’s adopted by a family, only to have government agents strip those he loves away from him.
All three vampires discover the government is dabbling in technologies so advanced they’ll tap into realms and dimensions they don’t understand. To save humans and vampires alike, Jane, Marcella, and Daniel must seek out the legendary master vampire Desmond, Lord Draco and encourage him to resurrect his band of mercenaries, the Scarlet Order.
Neal Asher, author of Gridlinked and The Skinner, describes Vampires of the Scarlet Order as “A novel with bite. An amalgam of Blade and The Name of the Rose with a touch of X-Files thrown in for good measure.”
Rudolfo de Cordoba has led most of the Scarlet Order vampires to a new home in Colorado where they can regroup and unlock new vampire powers.
Alexandra and Drake have gone to New Orleans to continue their quest for lost Biblical writings when they learn the government’s project to create super soldiers from vampires continues.
Marcella and Roquelaure have traveled to the South of France to avoid trouble only to stumble upon a terrorist plot and an even more frightening means of quashing extremism.
Meanwhile, Special Agent John Lassiter is on the trail of the Scarlet Order vampires. Will the vampires unlock their new gifts and save humanity from itself before Agent Lassiter catches up and ends the vampires’ immortal existence? The only thing certain is that they’ll learn truths about themselves and the universe we live in—and those truths will not leave them unscathed.
It’s February 13 and, fittingly, today marks the release of my thirteenth novel, Ordeal of the Scarlet Order. It’s fitting not only because it’s the 13th day of the month, but it’s fitting because tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. My Scarlet Order novels are not only novels of vampire suspense and action, but they’re also an exploration and celebration of romance.
I’m excited to return to the Scarlet Order vampires after several years working on other projects. I published my first Scarlet Order short story in the magazine The Vampire’s Crypt in 2001. The first novel, Vampires of the Scarlet Order followed in 2005. It told the story of vampires around the southwest encountering evidence of a top secret project to use vampire genetics to create super soldiers. Along the way, we learn the history of the Scarlet Order vampires, a band of mercenaries who fought for the crowned heads of Europe. Without revealing spoilers, the vampires win a victory, but several mysteries remain.
My next novel in the series was Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires released in 2012. This told the story of how Alexandra, a Greek slave, became a vampire and her romance with two other vampires. One of those was the Arthurian-era British General Desmond Drake. The other was the mysterious and handsome assassin Roquelaure. The three pool their strengths and lead a band of vampire mercenaries called the Scarlet Order.
Now, my third novel in the series, Ordeal of the Scarlet Order, is a proper sequel to the first novel. The Scarlet Order vampires know the Federal government will put agents on their tail for ending their top-secret project, so they scatter. They also discovered that vampires have abilities even they have never discovered, so they begin to explore those. Desmond and Alexandra rekindle their romance while exploring New Orleans’ French Quarter. Daniel, the vampire astronomer, and Mercy, who was the basis of the La Llorona legend in the southwest, share a deep mutual attraction, but now must figure out if they have a deeper bond. In France, Roquelaure and the vampire Marcella explore a romance that began a century before. In the meantime, the government is still working on their vampire project and we learn more about the mysterious vampire hunters of the Greek island of Santorini. What’s more, as hinted in the photo, they will meet a sphinx along the way!
If you’ve read the first two Scarlet Order vampire novels, you really want to to pick up the third to find out what happens next in their saga. If you’d like to buy a signed print copy, head over to https://hadrosaur.com/OrdealScarletOrder.php. Once you’ve purchased the book, don’t forget to go to the contact page at the site and let me know who you would like me to sign the book to.
If you’d prefer to pick up the novel from established retailers, that’s great too! They’re a great source for ebooks and I know many of you take advantage of reward programs. You can find the novel at:
So, what’s next for me? Well, I just acquired rights to publish Beyond Mystique by Don Braden. It’s simply one the most page-turning and fun space operas I’ve read in a long time and it’s the sequel to his novel Upstart Mystique which I published in 2020. I’m really looking forward to editing this novel. I’ve also got two other projects in the works that I can’t discuss just yet. Once those are all out the door, I’ll move on to my next novel, which is tentatively slated to be a follow up to my novel The Astronomer’s Crypt. Of course, as noted this past Saturday, I have this annoying cancer thing to cope with. All of this is to say that I’m far too busy for that to stop me. So, buy yourself or your sweetheart a good book and celebrate life! Happy Valentine’s Day!
I first read Anne Rice’s novel The Vampire Lestat a little over 30 years ago, soon after reading Interview with the Vampire and seeing Neil Jordan’s 1993 film. Of course, there has never been a film of The Vampire Lestat, so it’s not surprising my memory of the novel was rusty at best. Still, it seems I remembered most of the important elements, though I’d forgotten several details and I came away with a somewhat different impression of the novel than I remembered.
The Vampire Lestat is an interesting second book in the series because it’s actually something of a prequel to the first book. Prequels seem to have developed a poor reputation, which I suspect is the result of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which didn’t live up to fan expectations. Still, The Vampire Lestat is not a “pure” prequel. In fact, it opens after the events of Interview with the Vampire. The disheartened Lestat has buried himself on the grounds of a New Orleans Garden District house and has remained there for some years until one day, he hears the sounds of rock and roll. This excites him enough to find his way out of the grave and seek out the performers. Lestat falls in love with the primal energy of the music and believes he can contribute, so he begins composing lyrics. He also begins to tell the story of how he came to be in New Orleans in 1984.
At this point, we slip back in time to the eighteenth century where we will spend most of the book. Lestat is the youngest son of a French lord. He tells the story of going out on a hunt where he kills a pack of wolves who have been plaguing the farmers in the area. Grateful, the farmers bring him a wolf-skin coat. A member of the delegation is a violinist named Nicolas de Lenfent. Lestat becomes entranced and the two grow to be close friends and likely romantic partners. Interestingly, I don’t remember reading them as a couple back in 1993, but it seemed much more obvious on this read. Neither young man is especially happy in rural France and after some time, they run away to Paris and join the theater. Nicolas plays the violin and Lestat becomes one of the performers. While performing, Lestat notices a strange white face on certain nights in the crowd. Then, one night, the stranger appears in Lestat and Nicolas’s bedroom and reveals himself to be a vampire. The vampire Magnus take Lestat off to his lair, a distant tower.
This was another point where my memory played tricks on me. For some reason, I remembered Lestat being a prisoner of Magnus for a long time. However, in fairly short order, Magnus turns Lestat into a vampire and then throws himself onto a fire and destroys himself, leaving Lestat with questions about whether or not there are other vampires and how vampires originated. What does transpire over a period of time is that Lestat invests the wealth he inherited from Magnus and then uses it to give his ailing mother and Nicolas the best life he can. He also buys the theater where he performed. In the meantime, wraith-like beings seem to be haunting the edge of Lestat’s perception. Lestat’s ailing mother moves to Paris where she hopes to see her son one last time before she dies. Instead of letting her die, Lestat turns his mother Gabrielle into a vampire.
This is the next part where my memory played tricks on me. I remembered Gabrielle leaving soon after becoming a vampire. Instead, the two spend quite a bit of time together and they almost even seem to become as close as a romantic couple for a time. When Lestat turns his mother into a vampire, it prompts the wraith-like beings to strike. They capture Nicolas and take him underneath one of the Paris cemeteries where they torture him. It turns out, they are also vampires and they’re led by Armand, who we met in Interview with the Vampire. Armand and his followers see themselves as agents of Satan who must live in squalor and send evildoers to hell. With some effort, Lestat eventually convinces the vampires that they’re wasting their lives and that they should live among humans, where they can still serve a purpose by striking down evildoers. As they consider this, Lestat gets Nicolas away and attempts to save his seriously wounded friend by making him a vampire. The only problem is that this proves a bad choice for Nicolas. He’s haunted by his own demons and does not take well to immortality. Meanwhile, Armand tells Lestat about an ancient vampire named Marius, who tends mysterious figures called “Those Who Must Be Kept.”
Lestat leaves Nicolas in the hands of the Parisian vampires while he and Gabrielle go on a quest to find Marius. After months of travel, they end up in Cairo. At this point, Gabrielle wants to use her vampire powers to explore lands no Europeans have seen. She wants to continue down into Africa. However, Lestat wants to continue his quest for Marius. I related to this part of the book much better now than when I read it in 1993. Gabrielle offers Lestat the opportunity to travel with her, but she knows Lestat must go his own way. As a parent, I understood her sadness on leaving him, but also understood how she saw this as the point where their life journeys had to diverge. Not surprisingly, Lestat does eventually meet Marius and he learns that “Those Who Must Be Kept” were Enkil and Akasha, Egyptian royalty who were the first two vampires. If they’re destroyed, all vampires will be destroyed and Marius has been charged with their care. The original vampires are so ancient, they barely move, but Lestat seems to find a spark of life in Akasha, which we’ll learn more about in The Queen of the Damned.
Another part I’d forgotten was that Marius tells Lestat he needs to spend some time just living. While Lestat and Gabrielle were traveling, the French Revolution transpired and Lestat’s father fled to America. Lestat goes to New Orleans to tend to his father and that leads to the events of Interview with the Vampire.
The Vampire Lestat ends where it begins, Lestat’s band is preparing to hold a giant concert. Lestat has told all that vampires exist and he’s named names. Vampires around the world want to destroy him. The book literally comes to a rocking conclusion and sets up the events of the sequel.
I had a lot of fun revisiting The Vampire Lestat and suspect I’ll dive into Queen of the Damned sometime soon. When I first read the novel, I had not yet had children. When I read it this time, I’m the parent of two adult children. I found it interesting how much that changed my perception of Gabrielle and Lestat’s relationship. As it turns out, my first vampire novel was Vampires of the Scarlet Order followed by a prequel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires. The novels also follow themes of vampires seeking out their origins as well as trying to understand their place in the world. The third novel in the series will be out a week from today. You can learn about the Scarlet Order Vampire series by visiting http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order
One of my Christmas presents this year was a signed copy of the Blu-Ray of the film A Place Among the Dead starring and directed by Juliet Landau, who is probably best know for her roles as Drusilla in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Loretta King in the movie Ed Wood. The film imagines fictionalized versions of Ms. Landau and her husband Deverill Weekes making a documentary examining a serial killer who has been operating around Santa Barbara, California. The movie starts off with Landau interviewing such actors and writers as Gary Oldman, Ron Perlman, Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris, and Kim Newman about the nature of evil. Soon, Jules and Dev, as they’re known in the film, go to Santa Barbara and find the killer is not only active, but he may be a vampire. The film’s documentary styling allows us to see events unfold almost exclusively from Jules’ point of view.
It soon becomes clear the film uses vampires as a metaphor for those with narcissistic personality disorder. Like a vampire, a narcissist can weave their way into your thoughts to make you do what they want you to do and the path they’re going to set you on is almost guaranteed to be a destructive one so the narcissist can benefit. The film itself is only an hour and sixteen minutes long, and it pulls you along through its narrative. I enjoyed seeing an assortment of authors and performers I’ve enjoyed given the spotlight and discussing vampires, the nature of evil, and how to combat it, throughout the film. The film was accompanied by a disc loaded with special features where the actors and filmmakers discuss the film’s themes in depth.
Fortunately, I haven’t had to deal with too many people with full-on narcissistic personality disorder and their impacts on my life have, thankfully, been minimal. Still, the film and the special features allowed me to reflect on the reasons I write about vampires. As I’ve mentioned before, American culture almost idealizes the idea of the vampire. A vampire is eternally young and usually strong. They often get what they want. They’re often rich. They have power and charisma. Vampires aren’t often concerned about the feelings of others. While my vampires see themselves in a heroic light and may not be the worst evil in my novels, they still drain others. Rudolfo can’t understand why Jane isn’t grateful he made her into a vampire. Roquelaure has been an assassin and Alexandra has been a thief and they aren’t especially repentant. I find it fascinating how these traits are idolized, especially by the rich and powerful around the world at the detriment of those less fortunate. I also like exploring the notion of whether a vampire can find redemption and I found it interesting that the solution I tend to come to in my novels is much the solution the authors and performers suggest in A Place Among the Dead.
David Lee Summers' Web Journal 