“Diva II” (Preface)

Thank you, Nicole.

From a writing exercise sprang the suggestion that there may be more to a woman named Ellie. The exercise was focused on the house where she once lived, the grand old mansion with a history so checkered you could play chess on it, but Nic made a comment surmising that Ellie herself had a story to tell.

So she did.

Tomorrow’s post is a slice of that story; a small slice, and perhaps one of many to come. I felt a warm affinity to Ellie as I worked with her, a bit like the affection I feel for Ariel Black though that remains more of a mystery because he plainly has no interest in me. Ellie, on the other hand, feels like a friend.

And what an interesting friend to have. A movie star from Hollywood’s heyday, we meet her at a party where her former lover is also in attendance with his bitsy new wife, and the industry holds its collective breath awaiting the quake …

Enjoy.

Year of the Vampire

Back in 1976, my older sister brought home a paperback novel called Interview with the Vampire. A fifteen-year-old Ru read it and it changed her world. Anne Rice’s vampires did what Bram Stoker’s could not—they made the night sexy and romantic and tragic and gorgeous. The story was Louis’, but Lestat stole the show.

Walking through the mall in 1985, I spied a display of hardcovers in the bookshop, each titled The Vampire Lestat. Apparently, the villain in Interview had captured more souls than mine, and while it took Anne Rice a decade to publish the sequel, it was worth the wait. Her writing inspired me to pattern my own style after hers; oft accused of indulging in “purple prose”, she painted scenery and sensation like no one else I’d read. I wanted to paint the pictures in my head with the same robust strokes, employing the same air-brushed hyperbole to burnish the end result. I read each successive volume of The Vampire Chronicles (The Tale of the Body Thief remains my favourite), but hopped off the bandwagon when Ms. Rice veered off to tell stories of ghosts, witches and werewolves. I admit, fascinating as the other creatures of the night may be, vampires top my food chain.

This past year, Ms. Rice returned to the vampire world with Prince Lestat—I am nearly finished devouring my copy (thanks, Ter!), and once again, my imagination has been fired by the beauty in liberating darkness. The ultimate predator, armed with preternatural allure and indomitable will, the vampire does more than inhabit that darkness. He owns it.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve written a slew of my own vampires, each from a wholly different world and possessed of entirely unique and individual personality. Each of my top three exists in his own nocturnal sphere that, like parallel dimensions, operates side by side with, but doesn’t cross over into, the others. I recently had the brilliant idea of bringing them together for a writing exercise, but every one of them wanted to know why he should oblige me.

Except Black, of course. Black flatly refused … which opened the floor to his arch-nemesis, Raymond de Haven, but still, with Julian reluctant and Darius plainly unconvinced, my great idea seems doomed. Unless they have something to say, none of them will cooperate. I guess it’s a sign of pure character development that I can’t make my vamps do my bidding. Apparently I work for them …

… as it should be.

Round and Round the Bradbury Bush

Great saying, eh? I first read it in the Ray Bradbury essays that Nic sent me for Christmas, Zen in the Art of Writing, and I like it so much that I’m putting it on my office board when I get back to work next week.

Back to reality, I mean.

I can’t say I’ve been drunk, but I’ve certainly been tiddly on writing during the past few weeks. I finished the Calista story in November but took this long to nail a title that doesn’t out and out suggest a cheeseball bodice-ripper—my original title of “The Devil’s Duchess” never sat comfortably, and when I ran it past my office-tea-fairy-slash-beta-reader, she did her best not to wrinkle her nose until I wrinkled mine, then she let herself release an unbridled sneer. I’m truly grateful that she didn’t barf, because I wanted to. Eventually, I settled on “The Devil She Knows” and filed Calista under “finished”.

Then, with more help from Ray Bradbury, I got the novel rolling again. Bradbury—whose fictional work I have never read—recommends following a character along whatever path he/she is walking (or running, in the case of sci-fi/suspense) or, better yet, jumping onto a landmine in the morning and picking up the pieces during the course of the day. I took his advice and punched through the barrier that’s hung me up for months on Reijo’s romance. It was more a matter of getting me out of the way and letting the characters run the sequence of events—I had a pre-conceived notion of said sequence and they were ignoring it. My continual efforts to redirect them proved so frustrating that we all gave up on the project. Now that I’m listening again, it’s proceeding much more smoothly, though the debris around the broken barrier will need some big time cleanup in the edit.

And, as of this morning, I am thisssss close to finishing “Black in Back”. I had written my protagonist into such a pickle that she couldn’t figure a way out, so I left her stranded with the villain for a few weeks while I concentrated on Christmas and Calista and a few other non-writing distractions. Again, I threw a Bradbury-style punch and she plunged through the hole, taking me with her rather than the other way around. Now I have an ending in sight and hope to have ’er done by Sunday night.

The biggest Bradbury fan I have known was our lone male in the 21^st Century Poets. His work was very much a nod to his idol’s genre, but Johnny, like the rest of the Poets, had his own magical style. He was also generous with his support for the rest of the gang in our communal flexing of the creative muscle. I will always hold him dear to my heart, but when Nic sent me the Bradbury book, she also sent me a flood of good-time memories, and a little nostalgia for the days of nonstop poetry and prose that I shared with a unique band of creative spirits.

Zen in the Art of Writing is the first collection of literary essays that I am using as a textbook, marking it up with a highlighter and scribbly notes in the margins. Normally I like my books to look like they’ve been read but remain relatively pristine. It seems appropriate that Bradbury, who recommends a punch to kickstart a project, authored the first book to be so punched. I expect to gain more nuggets from the pages, but every time I pick it up, my first thought will be a fond one for the Poets’ JP Jensen.

Wherever you are, write on, Johnny.

Writing Full Time

A few weeks ago, I printed and posted this little affirmation in my writing room:

I write full time and I am paid very well to do it. I am following my bliss.

Shortly thereafter, some staffing changes happened at work, and I was given responsibility for the program newsletter, which is sent out a few times a year to our 60+ contractors and ministry stakeholders. (Don’t you just love government jargon?) Writing is so easy for me that I took more time developing the layout and working with the graphics than I did to compose the content. I also tweaked what had already been written, then added some stuff of my own—at the boss’s behest, of course. She loved my first draft, we did some very minor editing, and the final went out on Friday.

Tuesday evenings are reserved for fiction. Blogging is so much fun that it can interfere with bigger projects, bigger being the unfinished shorts piling up on the hard drive, so I made up my mind that weeknights will be devoted to angels, demons, vampires, and the mortals invariably entangled with them. As a result of that, my historical fantasy has taken off and is nearly finished. After that, I think “Black in Back” is next because I wrote some stuff into the historic piece that, upon reflection, actually belongs with Ariel and Tess.

Black, by the way, really hates being referred to as “Ariel”.

Of course I’m not making money writing fantasy—yet—but it seems odd that within days of me getting serious about affirming that I want to write full time and there’s no reason why I can’t get paid to do it, the newsletter landed on my desk. There’s also talk of rewriting my job description to include it and a bunch of other higher level duties, which will entail a pay raise. That’s exciting for many reasons, especially since I told my exec director that I didn’t care about more money and he said, “Ruth, we have to care about it.”

In short, shut up and be grateful, Ru.

So I’ve been writing, just not blogging. I hope to get back online this week, as I like to keep current and already a couple of pre-posts need updating. Those darned Flyers, for instance …

With love,

Big Bad Wolfe

My best bad guy is a vampire named Darius Wolfe. Few of my devoted followers have met him, but I have seen him through the eyes of too many of his victims to think him anything less than the most villainous villain I have ever written.

And he’s totally good with it.

The stories about him are always told through the eyes of someone else. That will never change. Unlike Julian Scott-Tyler or Ariel Black, it’s a waste of his time for Darius to tell his side of anything. He expects unquestioning acceptance that he does everything for a reason and woe befall anyone who opposes him. I’m uncertain if he’s a psycho or a sociopath; I’d have to consult an expert on whether he fits into a category or is in a league of his own, and I’m not going there because my go-to defence of “I’m just the scribe” might not survive the scrutiny.

Besides, he’s too much fun to write. I’d stopped for a while, three and a half volumes into a series about the woman bound to serve him that may yet see the light of day, albeit in a different way than originally penned. He popped up in last year’s story of a hit man who discovers a girl washed up on the beach, and a couple of weeks ago, I heard from the woman he married when he was still a mortal (I can’t say he was ever truly human). I’ve been working with her since then, telling her side of the tale, and wouldn’t you know, he was a rat bastard in mortality as well. Maybe even worse, given what he did to become immortal.

No, he did not sacrifice his wife. That was Marcel de Chauvigny, who squared off against Julian in the 1890s. Oh, and let’s not forget Raymond de Haven, the bane of Black’s eternal existence. I have a pantheon of vampire baddies to choose from, and of them all, Darius thrills/alarms me the most.

What makes him so scary? Maybe the fact that immortality hasn’t changed him. He wasn’t a mortal so much as he was a dry vampire, waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the potential for limitless power.

I’m writing that story this week. I know how it ends for him (and so does anyone who’s reading this post), but how it ends for Calista, I can’t predict. I hope it ends well for her, but when you’re married to the devil incarnate, being a witch is no guarantee that you’ll survive in one piece.

As with all of my stories, I’ll have to write and see.

“Basic Black” (Conclusion)

Jane’s father worked the night shift himself, as a janitor in the court building. It was easy to see how the kid had felt capable of offing Nana’s vampire without Daddy being aware—what was it with this new generation of mortals? Black had never believed he was invincible. He felt the fragility of his existence more acutely than ever these days. As with wildlife in the woods, vampires were being forced to integrate with humans as the mortal world expanded into their territory. He had known some pretty arrogant vampires in his time, but none of them beat humanity for being pushy.

The kid really wanted to go home. Black relented without a fight. She directed him to a tiny bungalow on the south side of town. Upkeep on the house and garden was minimal—the siding needed paint and the grass needed cutting. The windows were covered with plastic to ward off the increasingly bitter wind; double-glazing was too far beyond their means. Black pulled up to the curb and made Jane sit tight until he had checked the place out. Satisfied that her vampire had not yet appeared, he returned to the car and pulled out the flare gun. “Okay,” he said. “It’s clear.”

“Then what do we need that for?”

“Protection.”

“But you said it’s clear.”

“It is for now, but you left your gun at the home, kiddo, so this is all we’ve got.” He tucked the gun into his belt at the small of his back.

Jane led him to the stoop. A pair of rats scurried across the yard. Next door, a domestic squabble raged.

“Nice neighbourhood.”

Jane unlocked the front door. “It’s rough, but the people aren’t bad.”

He said nothing. His own haunt down on the docks had a similar sense of downtrodden community. It was not for him to judge people trapped by circumstance. He wasn’t any different from them.

The stale smells of beer and cigarettes met them at the threshold. He nudged Jane ahead of him and locked the door from the inside. It wouldn’t stop the vampire, but it would let them know when he arrived. The living room was tidy but not clean. The carpet needed a vacuum and the worn upholstery was tan-coloured under the dirt. Jane led him through to the kitchen, where he checked the lock on the back door while she pulled a bottle of Coke from the fridge. “Want some?”

He shook his head. “Can I see the rest of the place?”

“There’s not much to see. The bathroom is there, and my room is next to Dad’s.”

“Is there a crawlspace?”

She put the Coke, untouched, on the chipped Formica counter. “Are you a cop?”

“No. I just know how vampires work.”

“How?”

“Personal experience. What about the crawlspace?”

She took him around the back. The crawlspace was tiny and floored in dirt. Rats had set up house in the furthest corner; he smelled them in the close, damp air. The two he had seen, probably, on their way out for dinner.

“Well,” he said, emerging from the claustrophobic depths and inhaling a grateful breath, “he won’t camp out down here, that’s for damn sure.”

Jane looked alarmed. “Would he try?”

“He might do, if he meant to nab you right at sundown. You did a stupid thing, trying to take him yourself. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do now.” She shivered in her thin jacket, her arms clamped across her chest. Black softened a little.

“It’s okay. We’ll get him. Any idea when the shifts change at the home?”

“Seven and seven.”

“He can’t have been on staff for long, then.”

She shook her head. “He started at the end of September.”

That made sense. A smart vampire would wait until he was guaranteed at least twelve hours between sundown and sunrise; this guy had to feed on the residents at the home because he had no time to feed before his shift started. And, since work doubled as the wet bar, Black figured that he was either lazy or a glutton.

“How many deaths have there been since he started?”

“A couple a week.”

Definitely a glutton.

They went back into the house. Jane poured herself a Coke and offered Black a beer. He declined. She said her dad would be home after sunup; he usually went for breakfast with his buddies before coming home to sleep. Black wasn’t sure if the information helped. It all depended on how long the vampire took to come for Jane.

Because he would come. He had to. His cover was his salvation, one of those instances where discovery meant death. Ironically, Jane had blown her own cover by trying to take him alone. It was now a matter of who died first.

* * *

She fell asleep on the couch, curled into a fetal ball beneath a tatty patchwork throw. Black flipped TV channels from the old man’s easy chair. If Jane’s vampire didn’t show by dawn, he would have to find shelter in record time, which was more daunting a task than confronting one of his own. He gave his head a shake. How he managed to get into these scrapes was beyond comprehension. He shouldn’t have cared about Jane or her demented grandmother—but he did. The kid had recruited him without either of them knowing until it was too late. The problem was, what was he going to do when the vampire showed up? He disliked killing as a rule. He tried to limit them to self-defense, but that would not apply in Jane’s case. Killing a vampire in defense of a mortal would see him condemned by a jury of his peers—and rightfully so. Vampires did not kill vampires. They didn’t have to like each other—few did—but murder was an unpardonable sin. It was akin to mortals monkeying the apes. Vampires were superior creatures. Killing their own lowered them to the very level they had supposedly risen above.

Black was not an intellectual. He wasn’t much into ethics and morals, either. He did what he had to do within the confines of his own conscience. But accepting this did not solve the problem of what to do when Jane’s vampire appeared.

Time ticked on. He watched old reruns until his eyes ached. Then he scented something new in the air; something lush and luxurious. It wafted toward him on snaky tendrils that encircled his head and squeezed. He was staring at Jane before he realized that his gaze had wandered from the TV screen.

She had grown hot under the throw. Her throat was pink and moist. Her entire body would be just as pink and just as moist, pulsating with the rhythm of blood through her veins. The lush scent intensified as Black absorbed each facet—smoke and sugar and a sizzling snap of ginger. He swallowed once and made himself look away, regretting that he had not pushed his donor for two pints earlier in the evening.

The sky beyond the plastic-sheathed window had deepened to a robust, pre-dawn violet. It was too late for revenge. It might be too late for Black to find shelter; would he have to find room in the crawlspace?

He glanced again at Jane. Young, naive. Stupid, but good-hearted. He related to the stupid part. Heaving a sigh, he got up from Dad’s chair and went out to inspect the crawlspace as accommodations for the day.

The rats had returned. They nested in the corner furthest from the door, the safest spot for rodent and vampire alike. He didn’t want to bed down with roommates, but he had slept in worse places. He should move the car before Jane’s father came home and demanded to know what—or who—his daughter had been doing all night.

Then he heard her scream.

Shit.

Something crashed overhead and he knew she was struggling. Good girl, he thought, pulling the gun as he raced from the yard to the back door. Jesus, he had left the vampire an open invitation?

The smell of raw blood reached him before he hit the living room. He shouted, “Drop her!” but he was too late.

Jane was dead. Black couldn’t save her from lungs stifled by crushed ribs. The vampire was still on her, sucking hard to catch what he could before her heart quit pumping. He was a young one, too; so young that he wasn’t threatened by what he thought was a mortal bearing what he thought was a regulation handgun. Jane’s body hadn’t hit the floor before he launched himself at Black, hissing blood and saliva in an impressive show of fangs that failed to impress the elder. It was easy to derail the lad with a one-handed block to the chest that threw him hard against the wall. The plaster cracked behind him; dazed, he blinked in astonishment on realizing that Black was one of his own.

“You’re—”

“You bet.”

“Then you understand.”

“I understand that you’ve been shooting fish in a barrel.”

The vampire laughed. “Is that what you think? I’m doing them a favour. Those old people, they’re not living. They’re taking up space, and there’s more of them coming. You don’t know what I see in that place. You don’t know how many of them want to die.”

“Neither do you,” Black said sharply. “You’re not their god. It’s not for you to say who goes when. We don’t have to be killers.”

The vampire jerked his head toward Jane. “She tried to kill me.”

“She was a stupid kid. What’s the matter with you? Scared of old people and children. What kind of a vampire is that?”

“I’m not scared. I’m a preferable alternative. If you do it slowly, they fall asleep first.”

“Mercy kill,” Black said.

The vampire grinned. “Now you’ve got it.”

Black shot him. The flare hit the vampire with a solid thunk, sending him to the wall again. Eyes wide, he looked in disbelief at the smoke writhing from his chest, then looked aghast at Black. “We—don’t—kill—”

“Helpless old folks and stupid kids.”

“—each—other—”

Black stuffed the gun into his belt and grabbed the vampire by one arm. Jane’s father would have enough to handle without his house going up in flames as well. He hauled the vampire into the kitchen and shoved him through the door to the back yard. The cartridge began burning in earnest, charring the vampire from the inside out. When the magnesium flared bright behind the staring eyes, a strangled scream broke the pre-dawn silence and set the birds to rustling in their nests. Black watched the body collapse upon itself in a blaze of light to rival the sunrise; even shaded by Ray Bans, his eyes smarted. He decided against using the garden hose. The cops would find enough to piece the puzzle together. CNN would have another vampire murder to report. Jane might be remembered as a courageous kid who died saving the lives of others, but Black wasn’t worried about the outcome of the investigation.

He was more concerned with getting the lock on his car door fixed.

THE END

March 25, 2002

“Basic Black” (Part One)

The car door flew open and a girl plunged into the empty seat. “Drive,” she said.

Black did no such thing. But next time, he decided, he would definitely run the red.

A poke in the ribs pushed his foot to the gas. The Maverick bellowed and jumped forward before the light had changed. Black jerked on the wheel to get around a corner he hadn’t intended to take. “I’ve got to get that lock repaired.”

The second poke was more insistent. “Just drive, okay?”

He slipped a sidelong look at the girl huddled in the passenger seat. She was young, hardly out of her teens and in way over her head. She smelled of blood—among other things. Good thing the window on that side was broken, too. In an enclosed cockpit, the reek of garlic would have sent Black into an asthmatic seizure. “Does your mother know where you are?”

“My mother’s dead. Shut up and drive.”

“Any place in particular? Hospital? Cop shop?”

The third poke almost hurt. He swerved into the first space that allowed him to twist in his seat and grab the barrel of the weapon.

It was a compact umbrella. He forgot about lambasting her in favour of an incredulous gape. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I have a gun,” she warned.

“So have I.” And he showed her.

She drew back. “What the heck is that?”

“A flare gun. Want to see how it works?”

She fumbled for the door release, but the handle was missing and she found herself trapped. Black caught the flash of light on a wet darkness near her throat. Hoping that his instinct was way off base, he slid the gun back beneath the driver’s seat. “Did a vampire get you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You believe in vampires?”

“Don’t you?”

She cast a furtive glance through the back window and fidgeted in her seat. Black understood immediately. He drove away from the curb.

“Are you hurt bad?”

“I dunno.” She fingered her bloody t-shirt. “I think I’m okay. It’s just a scratch.”

“Teeth or nails?”

“Nails. He grabbed me from behind. I threw garlic oil in his eyes and he let me go, but I felt something rip . . . ” She paused to get control of a quavering sob. Black turned left at the next light.

“Does it hurt?”

“Stings.”

“You should get it looked at.”

“Why? It was nails, not fangs.”

“It doesn’t make a difference. You’ll need a tetanus shot.”

She began to shake. Shock was setting in, not from the wound, but from the cause of it. Stupid kid; why the hell had she been carrying garlic oil?

“What’s your name?”

She paused. “Jane.”

“Okay, Jane, you weren’t by any chance hunting this vampire, were you?”

Another pause. “What do you mean?”

“You said your mother’s dead.”

“She died years ago, when I was little.”

“Littler than you are now, you mean. Did a vampire do her?”

“No, it was cancer. Why do you care?”

“I don’t. You’re the one who jumped into my car and threatened me with an umbrella. Do you want my help, or don’t you?”

“I just want you to take me home.”

“You can’t go home. Garlic oil didn’t kill the vampire, it only made him angry. If he’s got your blood on his nails, he can track you from here to Hell’s half-acre—and he’ll do it, too, because you’ve discovered his secret. What sort of gun have you got?”

“It’s my dad’s. It’s—in the bag I left at the home.”

“The home? Where did you meet up with this guy?”

She took a steadying breath. “He’s been preying on the residents at my grandmother’s nursing home. Nana told me that a man has been sneaking into her room at night. At first I thought it was her dementia, but a few of the other ladies on the floor have said the same thing. And people have been dying on a regular basis.”

“Kid, it’s an old folks’ nursing home.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “I dismissed it in the beginning, then I saw him myself. He’s working the night shift, posing as a nurse.”

“ ‘Posing’?”

“I know what a vampire looks like. And even if I didn’t, what happened tonight only proves my point. He is a vampire and he has to be stopped.”

Black was this close to being amused, but the kid’s naivete was no laughing matter. “So you took it on yourself to stop him.”

“I’ve read the books. I know what I have to do.”

“What books? Myths and legends? Pop fiction? Jesus Christ.”

She heaved a deep sigh, resigning herself to lack of experience. “There’s truth to most myths.”

Black shook his head in grim amazement. He couldn’t up and leave her. If she had run afoul of a vampire—and he had no reason to believe she hadn’t—she was in trouble up to the eyeballs. She was so green that she glowed, and if she came to a bad end, a species just starting to accept the reality of vampires in their midst would go completely nuts. It was already happening in pockets all over the world; hardly a day went by without CNN reporting a vampire killing somewhere in Europe or North America. The tragedy was that not all suspected vampires were the genuine item. Some were mortals who liked the idea of playing at vampirism, and these unfortunate souls were not helping the cause at all. Vampires were dangerous and, as young Buffy in the seat beside him had discovered, peasant lore did not always apply. Some vampires cashed in on the publicity and used it to their advantage; others cowered in fear, skulking through the shadows like convicted criminals without having been tried. Though they were best approached with caution, not all vampires were evil. But try and tell a mortal that—especially a mortal whose life had been altered by an immortal’s touch.

Jane’s shoulder started to ache and he decided they had better seek medical attention. He drove her to the hospital emergency room, steeling his nerve against the onslaught of noxious odours waiting beyond the automatic doors. “Don’t tell them a vampire got you,” he advised.

“Don’t worry,” Jane replied.

He hated hospitals. For all the antiseptic and antibiotic progress mortals had made, nothing could be done to quell the stench of imminent death. Jane was signed in and sent to wait for a doctor; bothered by the harsh light and the smell, Black retreated to the parking lot, where he sank back on the Maverick’s dented fender and swallowed great, cleansing gulps of brisk autumn air.

A vampire posing as a night nurse at an old folks’ home. Give the guy credit, it was a plausible cover. Not much better than bargaining with junkies for a pint of their best, though. He sparked back to the bright, hot smell of Jane’s blood drying on her t-shirt, and a brief vision of himself with the cotton in his mouth flared before his mind’s eye.

And she thought she could spot a vampire at fifty paces. Oh, sure.

to be continued …

“Basic Black” (Preface)

Tomorrow’s post is part one of the piece that won fifth place in the Writer’s Digest short story contest in 2005. It actually won fifth place in its genre, which put it in the top twenty-five winners, period. And that’s all the horn blowing I’m going to do, because I wrote it first for love, then to see how it would do. The notice that it did better than I’d imagined was a pleasant surprise.

Okay, in truth it registered 8.5 on the writer’s Richter, but again, that’s all I’m saying.

Though it was written after “Black and Blonde”, in Black’s timeline, it predates his meeting with Tess. I had to condense it to less than 3500 words, so it’s lean, mean, and a fairly accurate thumbnail of Black’s character. I don’t know if the judges liked it or him or what; all I received was the letter saying that I’d placed, a year’s subscription to WD magazine, and a cheque for $50 that I never cashed. Pretty exciting stuff considering I’d expected more from the other story I’d submitted. That’s my Ariel—full of surprises.

I’m posting it here with plans to make the whole series available online; when “Black in Back” is finished, it will go up as well … though it will take significantly more Saturdays to complete.

Naturally, he doesn’t care, but I hope you enjoy.

Entitled

Which comes first? The story or the title?

Usually, it’s the story. Occasionally, it’s the title. When I wrote “Black and Blonde” in 2001, the characters came first, the story came from them, and the title came last. I liked it, though. And I liked the character of Ariel Black so much that I wanted to write with him again. Regrettably, he didn’t have the staying power to warrant a full length novel and I’ve never been hip on writing short stories.

In 2005, I decided to write an urban fantasy piece for a short fiction contest and lit up the Bat Signal in hope that a hero would show up to help. Black answered the call. The story came next, then the title: “Basic Black”. It won fifth place in the contest—woo hoo—and solidified my affection for a character who doesn’t win people easily to his side. Not that he cares. In fact, I highly doubt that he gives a rat’s rear end. I was self-publishing the first two volumes of “Fixed Fire” anyway, so I bid Black a second farewell.

Playing with words has been a hobby for my whole life. I like to mess with phrases and double entendres and all that jazz, so one day I was rolling some stuff around in my mind and snagged a beauty of a title: “Black in Back”.

This time, I called on him specifically. And he said, “Forget it.”

See what I mean about him not giving a $***?

Crap, I thought. Now what do I do?

Well, let it go, of course. Only I couldn’t. It dogged me for days, a clear indication that a story needed to be told, but if it wasn’t Black doing the telling, then who the heck was it? Whose voice could shoulder a title bearing his name? I pondered it for-what-seemed-like-ever. The sequence ran something like this:

Black in Back … Black in Back … Black—in—Back! Eureka! That’s it! He’s in it, but he’s not telling it, hence his status as “in back”! Augh! I’m a genius!

After that discovery, I got traction. It stalled a bunch of times because I got in the way, but over the long weekend, I stepped aside, threw Moist’s greatest hits onto the stereo, and let Tess do the talking. It’s her story; I just didn’t know it when the title first arrived. It’s not done yet, but when it is, I’ll probably post it here. Black was designed for the 21^st Century Poets’ forum anyway, so cyberspace, much as he dislikes it, is as much his turf as the seedy waterfront he calls home.

No, he’s not happy about it, but that’s the chance you take when you consort with mortals …

The Dark Side

On the subject of Chuck Wendig, he also has a character called Black—Miriam Black, to be precise. A psychic who can tell when, where and how you are going to die just by touching your hand. I discovered her after reading JC Hutchins’ guest post the other day. Curious, I hopped on over to amazon.com and took a look inside the first book (there are three). I read the sample and now I’m intrigued. “Hooked” is pushing it this early on, but comparing a good urban fantasy to crack on paper isn’t far off the mark where I’m concerned. Rob Thurman has nailed it with Cal Leandros. Jim Butcher did it with Harry Dresden, though so far I’ve only read the piece he wrote for Dangerous Women. Simon R. Green created the Nightside, a city neighbourhood where it’s always three in the morning and the freaks never go home to bed. Laurell K. Hamilton started me off with her Anita Blake series … though I gave up on Anita after Incubus Dreams—nine books in and the series turned from a fun ride to pretty well raw porn. I like sex, but by then Anita was getting it on with everyone for no discernible reason, and quite frankly, after she chose Jean-Claude the vampire over Richard the werewolf, I washed my hands of her. I didn’t even bother with the Merry Gentry series because I saw it going a similar route. Most recently, Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series had me reading on the limo. Happily, I’m not even halfway through that run and it makes for good summer reading. Joanne Baldwin is a bit like Stephanie Plum with superpowers.

Anyway, I’m planning an attack on Russell Books in search of Blackbirds, to see if Chuck’s Miriam can give my Ariel a run in the Whose Black is Blacker? department. If I go back for the follow up, I’ll know.

“Black and Blonde” (Preface)

 

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Without it, I would never have been invited to become a member of the 21^st Century Poets—an online group of writers who started a forum wherein we posted bits and pieces, chatted back and forth, and generally communed with others of our ilk. It was a small group, more of a cluster, really, but boy, did we jam up cyberspace with our bounty. The forum was a safe place to exchange ideas, ask for reviews, assistance, advice, and assurance on things we had already done, and experiment with things we wanted to try. It was the most convivial, supportive, and creative group I have ever been a party to, and I miss them all—except Nicole, who was a founding member and remains my sister in propinquity—dearly. Nic might even remember this story, posted in installments as I wrote it, with neither revisions nor any idea of what was going to happen next.

 

At the time, I was writing the Julian stories and watching reruns of Miami Vice. Ter and I have all five seasons on DVD, since we were too busy living life on Friday nights to be home for the series in its heyday. It was more inspiring without commercial breaks, anyway. I adore what Don Johnson did with Sonny Crockett, and since I am usually inspired by actors, rock stars or both, I decided it would be fun to write a vampire with attitude.

 

Enter Ariel Black, a blood hunter as different from Julian Scott-Tyler as burlap is from cashmere. He’s cynical, savvy, abrasive, and cursed with a set of morals that most of his kind abandoned long ago. His world also differs from Julian’s in that he operates among knowing mortals—vampires are an emerging reality that we are just beginning to accept. Black has figured out how to live among us without posing a threat, but when a determined mortal woman shows up with a proposition for him, he is forced to reconsider his position …

 

Part one of eight goes up tomorrow. Enjoy.