Get a Heart On

I move that we ban romance from Valentine’s Day. Love comes in many shapes and sizes, but let’s face it, romance is about chemical response and doesn’t go the distance. How many diamonds bestowed today will sparkle for the same lover five or ten or fifty years from now?

Oh, Ru, you’re being cynical.

Okay, maybe so. I may be taking the bait set out by the same big eastern syndicate that made Christmas a crass commercial racket. You know the message: that you’re not a winner if you don’t have a lover to ply you with roses and chocolate and a strand of costly bling.

Pah! I say! Who needs a lover when one has love? And I do. Boy, do I ever! I have a life full of people who love me, and whom I love in return. No love of mine is unrequited... except perhaps the torch I carry for John Taylor. Ah, contrast.

I digress. Love, as I say, comes in all shapes and sizes. Love for a friend. Love for family. Love for a pet. Love for a plant. Love for oneself—and this is no small thing. Too many of us think we’re unworthy of being loved and this is simply not so. Everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone is loved by someone, somewhere.

One of the most beautiful poems I have ever read was written by Ravindra Kumar Karnani. I have no idea what inspired me to post it here, but it seems an appropriate sentiment to help anyone who may feel lost, alone or unloved on this day when love seems more important than on any other (which, by the way, it’s not):

God, Speak to Me

The child whispered, “God, speak to me”
And a meadow lark sang.
The child did not hear.

So the child yelled, “God, speak to me!”
And the thunder rolled across the sky
But the child did not listen.

The child looked around and said,
“God, let me see you” and a star shone brightly.
But the child did not notice.

And the child shouted,
“God, show me a miracle!”
And a life was born but the child did not know.

So, the child cried out in despair.
“Touch me God, and let me know you are here!”
Whereupon God reached down and touched the child.

But the child brushed the butterfly away
And walked away unknowingly.

Rest assured, you are loved.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

All Good Things

It’s Thanksgiving. I usually celebrate the occasion earlier in the month, on Ter’s birthday because, of all the good things in my life, I am the most thankful for her.

I also mentioned to my sisters—wee and Boy—last week that they are among my top five. I didn’t say where, but they were happy just to have made the list. Sillies. My family is second, third, fourth and fifth, and includes older sister, both brothers and of course my wonderful parents.

After family come my friends—those who have become family, those who get me through my workday, and Nicky Bean, who stands alone as a beacon of inspiration, creativity and writerly support, and who also happens to agree that John Taylor is perfect.

I must also to give the nod to my pit crew—my voodoo medicine man, my massage therapist, my foot man and chiropractor. I wish I could be grateful for my dentist, but despite the miracle of having my own teeth (so far), I remain suspicious of how much work is actually required for my health rather than his home renovations.

Big picture, I am grateful for everything in my life, even the challenging stuff though I’m often snarky while dealing with those challenges (like dental work). Mortality can be a struggle, but it provides a plethora of opportunity to learn, to love, to hope and dream and laugh and cry and taste chocolate.

I am most grateful, perhaps, for gratitude itself, for it being the wellspring of abundance and prosperity, and a reminder that I have it pretty darned good in a world seemingly poised on the lip of the Dark Side.

Now, to give everyone something worth being grateful for, I’ll keep this short! Take a moment to consider the good things in your life. You might have to look for them, but trust me, they’re there, and if you focus on them instead of the things that drive you crazy, you’ll discover yourself to be in better shape than you thought.

With love and gratitude,

To Be in Paris

I’ve heard it said that when you ask yourself a question, your heart will answer immediately and honestly. One morning I picked up John Taylor’s autobiography to look for a particular reference, and got lost with him in the mid-80s when he was buying property all over the world. Eventually, he said, he gave up on the “perfume bottle real estate thing” he had going— John Taylor of London, Paris & New York—and finally settled in Los Angeles.

A step down, if you ask me.

The question I asked myself, just for fun, was of the three big cities, in which one would I choose to live? The answer came in the next beat:

Paris.

???

Quelle surprise? I think not. Considering how my new favourite tea is Murchie’s “Paris Afternoon” (thanks, Ter!), I listen most often to the Paris Café channel at jazzradio.com, and I have a thing for Musketeers, it’s hardly a surprise at all. Must be the romantic in my soul—or perhaps a memory from another life, where I am almost certain I got into trouble with a gang of dissolute artists, musicians and poets.

Ironically, I am not a fashion plate. I do not wear French perfume. I would never drive a Citroen, and when I think of red-white-and-blue, the Union Jack pops to mind. I do, however, adore champagne, baroque architecture, and sidewalk cafés.

While in my early twenties, I spent a few days in Paris. My companion was a native so language was no barrier, but I was too young to appreciate where I was for what it was. I visited the Louvre, was unimpressed by the Mona Lisa, took the train to Versailles and blew a whole roll of film on the statue of Neptune Rising from the Sea, ate street food because the restaurants were too expensive, and discovered the joy of Perrier Citron (mineral water with a shot of lemon cordial), though the café waiter was rude and I later found out why: tips were automatically added to the bill, so there goes the incentive to be well-mannered with the tourists.

Mind you, the Parisians are kind of notorious for dishing ʼtude at foreigners. They’ll warm up if you try to speak French—the worst thing you can ask off the bat is “Parlez-vous Anglaise?”—and the whole world has been advised of how immigrants are perceived by the nation as a whole, but still, it’s an elegant, magical, beautiful, romantic, noisy, bustling city of light, art and culture and I would definitely do it differently if I had it to do again.

Or maybe I’ll just live there again in my next life.

John the Divine

The father of my unborn children is playing in Vancouver tonight. Ter asked me if I wanted to go—the timing was right to make it a fab birthday gift—but after the briefest hiccup when my heart rate spiked, I reluctantly declined.

Of course I’d love to see the band. They’re my all time good time band, and Nile Rodgers is opening for them, but I’ve reached the stage where the peripheral hassles of a concert in Vancouver exceed the joy of being there. Paying the ransom to get off the rock, finding a hotel at the height of gouging season, fighting big city traffic—ugh. The adventure is no longer fun.

Besides, last time the boys were in town, I almost got into a fistfight with the twit beside me. She and her string of stupid girlfriends kept tripping to the washroom during the show, resulting in an increased flailing that finally obscured so much of my sightline I had to elbow her out of the way. I won that one, but the residual remorse of being pushed that far has lingered. I didn’t regret the elbow. I regretted that it was necessary. And if any band is going to attract a gaggle of stupid girls, it’s Duran Duran.

So tonight, I’m running a concert DVD (not sure which one yet; I have most of them) while they play live across the strait. Tomorrow, I’ll pull the set list off the internet and burn a CD of it so I’ll have the recorded version—not live, but close enough—of the gig. In time, one hopes, some form of the tour will be released on DVD and I’ll add it to the collection. It’ll be worth having because one thing is certain: they will play songs from their most recent album, sprinkled among classics arranged in new ways. I’ve always said the cool thing about a Duran Duran concert is that you know what you’re going to get, just not how you’re going to get it.

During a recent interview with CBC Radio, John told the story of remarking to Nick Rhodes that none of the current Top Ten features a conventional bass, to which Rhodes drolly replied, “Let me introduce you to the (something or other) synthesizer.” The same sort of thing occurred in 2007, when they hired Timbaland and Nate Hill to produce Red Carpet Massacre—these guys are known for running bass samples through a synthesizer, so JT came to work on the first day and had to ask the question: “Hey, what am I going to do on this record?” Genius that he is, he figured it out. His instinct has made him one of the best players in the biz (no bias here!), so the bass on RCM does more than set the rhythm. It’s actually part of the melody.

He loves his bass guitars, but he has embraced the new technology and now plays a synth bass for a few tracks onstage. I know: I saw it myself in 2007, after I slammed the girl next door back into her seat.

Better All The Time

Except for John Taylor, the Jaguar E-type, and Chocolat’s champagne truffle, nothing is completely perfect. It may seem so at the beginning, but in due course, flaws will become evident. Your shiny exotic sports car will start to misfire. Your dream home will develop a leaky roof. The new colleague you clicked with turns out to be bipolar. Mr. Right comes with two kids and a clingy ex-wife.

You get the picture.

The opposite is also inevitable. What sucks right now will improve. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, that big wheel keeps on turnin’ and everything associated with it is in its own present moment.

What am I trying to say here? Basically, that good stuff co-exists with bad stuff and vice versa. It’s a matter of—there’s that word again—perspective. You can find something positive in chaos and you can find something to kill your joy. It’s your call whether to seek gratitude or not, but it’s also a given that positive and negative happen at the same time. Life is never solely one or the other. It’s always both. What takes precedence is whatever gets your attention. Admittedly, some downers demand attention as part of our learning, but while we’re dealing with the human condition, we can take heart in knowing that everything around us is moving like a Ferris Wheel, some things rising to a pinnacle and others on the descent. Sure, the latter may be construed as depressing, but really, it’s not. It’s life—evolving and revolving.

Many years ago, my father quoted me a Chinese proverb (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Bad luck, like good, cannot last forever.”

And it doesn’t. Change is always happening. The trick is to enjoy the ride—and when it’s scary as hell and you want it to stop, gird your loins and trust that it will, because it will.

With love,

Naughty Santa and Captain Underpants

Decorating for Christmas is almost as much fun as Christmas itself. Pulling the Rubbermaid bins from the closet and unwrapping the crumpled tissue within can unleash a joy that obliterates anything imagined by the Big Eastern Syndicate.

The best part is reconnecting with the memories. Almost every item in our holiday collection inspires laughter and a gleeful, “Do you remember …?”

Case in point: Naughty Santa and Captain Underpants. Photos printed off the internet and slipped into frames from the dollar store, it just ain’t Christmas without them.

Truly, I don’t recall exactly when Naughty Santa was conceived, though the shot of John Taylor wearing a Santa hat and tilting that eyebrow the way only he can was a goofball sock stuffer, one of those off-the-cuff trinkets designed to get a giggle on Christmas morning. I put it together for Ter near the end of our tenure at Rockland, and while she loved it on sight, she retaliated with a vengeance a few years later.

2011 was the worst Christmas of my entire life. What had begun as a fresh start in a new residence had blown up three months into our lease and suddenly our treasured Yuletide celebration became an ordeal to be endured. We did the best we could, but by the morning of December 25, we were going through the motions. The only gift I remember from that darkest of holidays was the helpless laughter that erupted when I ripped off the wrapping to reveal a photo of my hormonal hockey crush, posing proudly in his Calvins. I screamed, I laughed, I cried, and I will love Ter forever for giving me that moment of unbridled joy when I had thought I’d never laugh again.

That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

As the Crow Sings

My music collection has been pared back a few times over the years, but staples remain firmly in place. Duran and Def Leppard, Alan Parsons and David Usher, Sarah McLachlan and Sting figure prominently in that I’ll buy anything and everything they put on the market—sometimes more than once. While de-cluttering for our first residential move in seventeen years, Ter and I discovered no fewer than four cassette tapes of Seven and the Ragged Tiger; a true puzzlement considering that we owned no more than two cassette players in 1987. I’ve grown up a little since then. When the re-mastered special edition was released a few years ago, I sent my original CD of the same album to the used disc shop because, pfft, who needs two?

I recall an interview wherein the father of my unborn children discussed his album collection. Of course he doesn’t listen to everything every day; with any extensive collection, who has the time? But once in a while, he pulls out vintage Bowie or Roxy, gives the LP a spin, then puts it back in the cellar to be enjoyed, like a fine wine, a few more years down the road.

I went on an Alan Parsons bender last year. I just lay on the couch and remembered why I love the Project’s work so much. More recently, the Leppards were trotted out to prep for their tour and, boy, was it fun rocking out to X and Yeah! With Paper Gods due for release in September, Duran is resurfacing on my playlist to reacquaint me with their more recent work (Astronaut is truly brilliant, and not just because it features the Original Five). And, for some reason, last week I began looping my favourite track of Sheryl Crow’s extensive catalogue, so I pulled her CDs on Sunday to remind myself why I liked her so much back in the day.

Actually, it’s a bit of a mystery because she borders on country with her syrupy drawl and penchant for steel guitar, but I bought her first album in 1993 and didn’t stop until Detours in 2008. She played Victoria on that tour; by then she had enough ammo to play a greatest hits set, so of course I went to see her. Great show, lame crowd. I couldn’t tell if I was in an audience or an oil painting. Oddly, I can’t remember if she played The Difficult Kind; I think she did, but nothing beats the album version off The Globe Sessions … currently in heavy rotation on my turntable. This live version got good reviews, though, so please ...

Enjoy.

LeBon Homie

With John Taylor’s birthday as an excuse, I pulled out a couple of Duran Duran albums to play over the weekend. I could have gone, like, totally retro and played Rio, Seven and the Ragged Tiger, or even the jazz/funk Notorious and been happy, but I chose Astronaut—otherwise known as “The Original Five Reunion Album”. For one thing, any of JT’s killer basslines sound fa-boo-lus on the Tiguan’s kickass stereo, and for another, well, the twisted wordsmith in me has always loved Simon LeBon’s way with a lyric and he wrote a couple of dandies when O5 got back together in 2005.

I’ve always considered him to be a poet rather than a lyricist, and while I admit that his distinctive vocal style (some call it “whiny”) can be annoying, he’s a master at using his voice to convey the mood of the song. He once said that his job as a poet is to knock holes in the wall between the conscious and the subconscious without breaching said wall. That way, the darker aspects of human nature are allowed to leak into the light and be dispelled in relative safety. He can write hit radio candy, but from the beginning of the band’s career, his lyrics often took the typical “boy wants girl” theme to a deeper, more contemplative place. As he progressed, his scope naturally widened to reflect social issues and a more mature attitude to romance, but he never lost his ability to have fun.

I can’t pick a favourite track from Astronaut—there are too many goodies in the bag—but I truly love “Bedroom Toys”. It’s a weird, warped lyric in keeping with DD’s renowned love of “artistic smut”, and SLB sings it with a genuinely playful humour. I laughed out loud when I first heard it and even now, ten years later, it’s worth cranking up and singing along.

DD is and has been my all time feel good band; I cannot be depressed when listening to them, for which I am eternally grateful. Paper Gods, their 14^th studio album, is due for release in September—too late to be a birthday present, alas—and as devoted as I am to the bass player, I am eagerly anticipating what SLB brings to this party.

Man of the Hour

Who loves ya, baby?

Not sure which hour, precisely, though my faulty memory seems to recall a teen magazine reporting that he was born around 6:30 in the morning of June 20, 1960. By the time he reads this (as if), he’ll officially be 54 years old ... and still ticking. Still hot, still inspiring, still gorgeous, still my muse, still the god of my idolatry.

He was not, however, my first. That dubious honour falls on David Cassidy when I was ten, who was succeeded four years later by Michael York, who reigned supreme until that fateful day in 1985 when Ter spied JT’s face on the cover of Star Hits magazine.

Yeah, the bass god has pretty well wrecked me. Though I dabble with other lookers, I always come back to him.

I owe him an ode, but after a crazy workweek, words have finally failed me.

Happy birthday, handsome.

Fine Tuneage

pretty much the whole catalogue with a few exceptions

The Father of My Unborn Children is a musician, so is it ironic that an interview on his book tour put me back in touch with my musical history? He did a session in the Google Authors series while promoting his most-excellent autobiography, and during the Q&A, he admitted to a fondness for the old vinyl LP. He still owns a vast collection (and clearly hires someone else to do the heavy lifting when relocating it) though, naturally, he doesn’t listen to everything as frequently as he once did. He likened it to a vintage wine collection, when something is opened and savoured as the mood dictates. After he’s done with whichever Bowie or Roxy album, it goes back into storage for a few years, until he feels like hearing it again.

Most of the vinyl I owned was sent to consignment as I converted to compact discs; the medium is less important to me than the content, so if an LP made it to my CD case, it was a keeper.

During my recent bout of “writing is not meant to happen”, I rediscovered my joy in the Alan Parsons Project. Rightly or wrongly, I associate my sizeable collection of their work with my younger older brother, who introduced me to the concept of orchestrated rock and album-oriented FM radio when I was a teenager. I vividly recall the instance when he started his car and “Hyper Gamma Spaces” (an instrumental from 1977’s “Pyramid”) poured from the souped-up speakers, but I’m sure he had me hooked before then. In any event, I became a fan, collected all the APP albums I could find, and have revisited them in sequence over the past few weeks. And I’ve loved it—so much that it finally occurred to me that there might be a website.

Alas, the Project broke up and co-founder Eric Woolfson passed away in 2009, but Alan Parsons himself continues to produce and record new material. His website is now bookmarked and I am trying to get over the fact that “I Robot” (my favourite after “The Turn of a Friendly Card”) has just been remastered, expanded, and re-released in a 35^th anniversary edition! 35 years? Really? Playing it last week, I closed my eyes and was immediately transported to the couch in my parents’ living room, flaked out in one corner with my older older brother in the other, both of us floating on the groove of the LP’s first release. The memory was so clear that it couldn’t have been that long ago … could it?

The studio technology, so sparkly and new at the time, is dated and sounds a little clunky nowadays, but the albums themselves remain a magical link to my past, to time shared with both of my brothers, and my own visions of a creative future. Now that I’ve heard them all again, back to the wine cellar they go, to be opened and enjoyed again some time down the road.

Birthday Bean

June 25 is the best birthday in the year. Every six months, you get presents.

December 25 probably isn’t the worst birthday, either. Almost any day in December will do there. Close enough to Christmas and you get lost in the holiday hoopla – not to mention the blended birthday/Christmas prezzies that magically match the number of your siblings’ Christmas gifts. Since you can’t actually pick your birthday, if you’re due in December, it’s better to show up before the Christmas crazies get out of hand.

That’s what my buddy Nicole did. Forty (yes, 40) years ago, she interrupted her family’s regularly scheduled holiday to make her appearance. It was a good day for the world. Better than Christmas, though a mere few knew it at the time.

Nicole was in her mid-twenties when we hooked up at Trust The Process. Since then, she’s been a distant constant in my life, teaching me about poetry and music, love and loss, strength and vulnerability, perseverance and forgiveness, creativity, imagination and propinquity. She’s made me laugh and she’s made me cry, putting me in touch with my reluctant heart while thinking naught of giving her own. We have shared ourselves in handwritten card tag, email and online, in cross-country birthday boxes, and through our mutual hero, the Bass God himself. She’s a joy, a wonder, a falling star and a soaring lyric. I have yet to hug her, yet I know the warmth in her embrace. I admire her dedication to art, to her friends and her family. She’s optimistic, hopeful, courageous, generous and everything else that a light being brings to this existence. In short, she’s a marvel.

Today might be her birthday, but to me she is the gift.

 

Happy birthday, my sweet red hot cinnamon jellybean. With love,

Resentments Under Construction

It’s handy having an icon who went to rehab then wrote about it. Naturally, I can’t find the exact moment in the book (In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death and Duran Duran), but somewhere in the pages, John Taylor shared a saying that he picked up in treatment:

 

“Expectations are resentments under construction.”

It struck such a chord with me that I put it onto my office board. I remind myself of it whenever I come away from something disappointed. I try to apply it going in as well, being a person who once viewed optimism as expecting the worst of everything and everyone so that I could be pleasantly surprised if it didn’t happen. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes not. Expecting the best of everything and everyone doesn’t work that well, either. You get what you get, expectations or no, so why have any at all?

Dr. Wayne Dyer suggests that by envisioning things like prosperity and abundance, and expecting the universe to make it so, then prosperity and abundance will manifest. I’ve tried it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I’ve seen expectations exceeded. I’ve also seen expectations go down in flames, and when the person trying to manifest those great expectations deserves the best of everything yet winds up on the crap end of the deal, I have to step back and reframe.

Then I remember the saying from JT’s autobiography.

Resentments under construction.

When expectations are not met, you blame the other person. You blame the universe. Worst of all, you blame yourself. You should have tried harder. You should have prayed more. You should have steered clear of that Mars bar. Augh. Should, should, should! Old programming is really hard to break. It creeps into my new age philosophy whenever things do not go as I, er, expected. I like Wayne Dyer. Some of his theories and affirmations really do make sense to me. As with religion, however, no one spiritual guru has the market cornered on what works. I’m beginning to suspect that the universal response is tailored to the individual anyway. I can build my spiritual wardrobe from the weave of various designers and create a look that works for me. So, today, out with expectation.

Hope is the new expectation. It’s softer, gentler, more forgiving. More accepting. Less accusatory. Now instead of expecting a particular outcome, I hope for a particular outcome. The outcome may be the same either way, being the best thing for me no matter how I perceive it, but there is a grace in hope that expectation doesn’t exhibit when things go sideways. Hope is more gracious in success, too.

No one ever accused her of being a resentment under construction.

The Father of My Unborn Children



The face that started it all ...



It was the spring of 1985. Ter came home from the bookstore with a copy of Star Hits that she swore had leaped off the shelf at her. It wasn’t the magazine that had knocked her breathless. It was the photo on the cover.

I remember gaping, dumbfounded, while she stood quivering with artistic ecstasy at the prospect of painting that face, that face, that beautiful face. Finally, I found my voice.

“Isn’t that the guy from Duran Duran?”

Never mind that there were five guys in Duran Duran. Forevermore, John Taylor was “the guy” in our house and in our hearts. We scooped as much media we could: albums, posters, buttons, magazines, books of photos imported from Japan – you name it, we got it. We became fans of the band proper (especially Andy Taylor), but JT was the driving force. Ter painted four portraits of him over five years. And I wrote a thousand, two thousand, pages about characters who looked just like him. I’ve always modeled my heroes (and no few villains) after my idols, but JT spawned a litter, the most notable being my beloved Julian.

I’m fairly well convinced that without John, there would be no Jules.

My cast of available characters is no longer dominated by sultry six-footers with flowing dark hair and cheekbones to skate on, but the blueprint remains close to my heart for many reasons. Not only did he bring me joy with his music and inspiration with his very being, he brought me a poet. I “met” Nicole in the chat room at his now-defunct website in, I think, 1997. “Trust The Process” was a place to keep current with JT, but was also the forum where fans gathered to share, discuss and occasionally piss off others of our ilk. I ran with a pretty cool cyber-crowd for a while as a result. Though our lives eventually took varied paths in opposite directions, Nic has stayed with me and remains the best thing to have come from my time at TTP. I would not have her except for “the guy from Duran Duran”.

Ter and I threw birthday parties for him in the 80s. Thirty years later, the celebration is less extravagant. We’ll run a few videos and do some reminiscing. I’ll eat chocolate and blow a kiss at the portrait in my room. He’ll never know what he’s done for me, but that’s okay. I know, and that’s all that matters.

Happy birthday, JT.

One Acquainted With the Night

This isn't actually Julian. It's John Taylor ...
but he sure looks like Julian!

Evening is his favourite time of day, so it seems appropriate that he suggests meeting to talk over dinner. He calls at 5 p.m. to tell me that he’s running late, but will be by to pick me up as soon as he can get free.

When he finally arrives, 2 hours later, he does so in a white stretch limousine. The driver holds the door for me and I, felling a bit like Cinderella, accept the long slender hand which extends from within the shadowy interior of the car. He draws me in to sit beside him on the soft leather seat, the door closes with a muted thump, and the limo glides away from the curb.

He is decked out in the trappings of a rock star: black leather trousers and a matching bomber jacket over a loose-fitting crimson silk t-shirt, complete with silver-studded belts knotted at his lean hips, and a pair of Ray-Bans over his eyes in spite of the limo’s tinted windows. He compliments me on my appearance and expresses genuine regret at keeping me waiting while he finished up at the television studio. “We’ve missed our reservations, I’m afraid,” he adds, pulling a battered cardboard box from the far corner. I inspect the contents at his invitation: paté, French baguettes, Edam cheese, petit fours and a chilled bottle of champagne. “I hope you don’t mind,” he says in his soft voice, as classical baroque music begins to mingle with the warm spicy scent of Paco Rabanne. He removes his sunglasses and tosses them aside with a smile. “We’ll have more privacy this way.”

I look at him, wondering whether this is going to be an interview, or a seduction.

copyright 1988 Ruth R. Greig

* * *

This is an excerpt from the biography I wrote in 1988 about a fictional rock band called Jazz. Painful as it is to read, it is also my first recorded encounter with one who has become my best-beloved character – the truly eternal Julian Scott-Tyler.

Classically-trained, born to wealthy parents, alternately temperamental and casually offhand, he was passionate, opinionated, brooding, and wildly romantic. He was also the bass player. Listening to Jazz will never see the light of day, but it was the first big project I ever completed. I was also reading Anne Rice at the time, envying her lushly textural style, and one day lamented to Ter, “I wish I could write a vampire story like her.” To which Ter reasonably replied, “Why don’t you?”

Bwahahahaha! It had never occurred to me that I could, let alone would, write a vampire story. But the idea intrigued me and I immediately set about scouting for my immortal hero. I can’t say that Julian put up his hand – like most of his kind, he was conscripted – but, boy, did he rise to the challenge. I worked with him and his world for years, finally producing a series of short stories collectively titled Stolen Seasons in which he, if not narrating himself, figured prominently throughout the larger tale.

He is one of those characters who stay with you long after the story is over. Seasons is set in the 1880s, but the cool thing about Julian is that he has moved with the times. He fits in the modern world as well as he fit in the old one. This flexibility makes me hopeful that he will one day have more to say – and based on a story I wrote last Christmas, there`s a very good chance that he will. But not yet.

Not yet.

Until he decides to talk again, I remember him fondly on his original birthday (vampires have two – the first to mortal parents and the second to immortality), so to celebrate May 27, raise a glass of cabernet or tomato juice – or O-negative, if you`re that way inclined – and join me in a toast to the eternally incomparable Julian Scott-Tyler.

Happy 378^th birthday, handsome.