November 2009 Global Vampire Community Discussion

Hosted By Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)



Global Vampire Community Discussion on Sunday, November 29, 2009 @ 7:00 PM Eastern US/ET (11:00 PM GMT). If you need assistance with time conversions refer to: http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc The discussion will be held in the IRC channel #vampirevoices on Dalnet.



Topic: The Spiritual Side Of Vampirism



If you have the ability to install or use an IRC client (a program used to connect to an IRC server) to access the discussion, please do so. If you don't have an irc client already installed on your machine, two popular clients are mIRC (http://www.mirc.com/) and xchat (http://www.xchat.org/ or http://www.silverex.org/news/).



If you do not have the ability to access IRC another way, you can access the discussion by going to http://tiny.cc/vampirevoices and entering your desired Username, then clicking "Connect". Please be aware that Dalnet limits the number of people who can connect via the browser-based chat, so if you have another option for connecting, we strongly encourage you to not use the browser-based system.



For anyone who has an IRC Client, use irc.dal.net or another dalnet server (http://www.dal.net/servers/) and join #vampirevoices



Please help spread the word to all those you know in the vampire community. The channel (#vampirevoices) is always open so feel free to drop by anytime you wish. We hope to see everyone there!



- Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)

http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/vvc.html

Book Review: Dark Road Rising by P.N. Elrod

The field of 21^st century vampire fiction is crammed with prolific and enthusiastic authors, most of them female and nearly all of them having published their first vampire story after the year 2000. Every one of them owes a large debt to the handful of authors who have been publishing vampire novels for decades, and who now have to fight for attention in the genre they helped to define.

Texas author P.N. Elrod is among the bona fide “ancestors” of such up-to-the-moment pop culture superstars as Stephenie Meyer and Charlaine Harris. Elrod has been publishing vampire fiction since 1990 and has created several memorable and varied vampire protagonists, including the 18^th century American Tory Jonathan Barrett, the ruthless despot Strahd, and Elrod’s revisionist take on Bram Stoker’s Quincey Morris.

But Elrod’s most complex and affecting character is Jack Fleming, a 1930s Chicago journalist who falls afoul of the Chicago Mob and is murdered—and subsequently embarks on the misadventures detailed in the Vampire Files series. Launched by Ace in 1990 with Bloodlist, the next five books of the series (Lifeblood, Bloodcircle, Art in the Blood, Fire in the Blood and Blood on the Water) shot off the presses within two years as mass market paperbacks. They shrank behind the laughable cover art typical of pulp vampire novels at the time (depicting a long-nailed, white faced ghoul with fangs hanging down to his chin like walrus tusks), but the quality of the books themselves attracted the attention of reviewers and serious vampire fans.

At that time, Anne Rice was the reigning queen of vampire fiction and her mass-murderous, utterly inhuman vampires defined the trope. Jack Fleming fit into a different and far more authentic model. Like Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germain, Fleming retained a conscience and a connection to humanity, and he didn’t need to kill humans to survive. In fact, he tried to avoid preying on humans at all, and became a nocturnal habitué of the Chicago stockyards for his fresh meals. In the first book, Fleming is befriended by an English actor-turned-private-detective named Charles Escott, who offers the newborn vampire a badly needed job. But Fleming’s unlife is complicated by the fact that he can’t untangle himself from his connections to the organized crime network in Chicago—the harder he tries, the deeper he seems to get. It doesn’t help that he falls in love with a singer and former mobster’s moll, Bobbi Smythe, or that several of his best friends are gangsters, including African-American Shoe Coldfield.

In 1998, the series resumed with A Chill in the Blood, but now Ace was releasing the titles in hardcover editions first, and they appeared at much longer intervals. From Book 7 on, the novels form a very tight story arc, each successive volume continuing the narrative from the previous books with scarcely a beat pause. Dark Road Rising (Ace: September 1, 2009) is the twelfth in the series, and readers have been waiting four years since the initial release of Number 11, Song in the Dark.

Dark Road Rising opens a few minutes after the ending of Song in the Dark, with Fleming driving Gabriel “Whitey” Kroun, one of the few other vampires he’s met since his own turning, to a safe place where Kroun can recover from the violent events that concluded the previous book. Fleming has been recovering himself from the aftereffects of severe trauma following his brutal torture by a gangland thug in Cold Streets, book 10 of the series. Some of his vampire powers, such as the ability to hypnotize others, have been lost or sharply curtailed, and Fleming has no idea how to heal himself or whether he even can. He is therefore very interested in the fact that Kroun lacks some of Fleming’s gifts, such as the capacity for dematerializing, which Kroun attributes to the fact that his death left him with a bullet permanently lodged in his skull.

There are other differences between the two, but most intriguing to Fleming is the fact that Kroun has no memory at all of how he was “infected” by vampirism or what kind of life he had before he awakened in his grave. While Dark Road Rising does advance some of the characters’ stories slightly, it focuses principally on Kroun’s efforts to unravel the mysteries of his own identity and how he came to be dead and a vampire. Kroun appears to know things about vampires that Fleming does not, but he doesn’t share Fleming’s driving need to learn more about what he knows and how he learned it. As Kroun persists in tracking down ever more disturbing clues about his past, Fleming’s own recent history sneaks up behind him and catches him while he’s preoccupied with Kroun.

Because of the strong focus on Kroun and his story, Dark Road Rising is structured differently than any of the preceding books in the series. Elrod favors the first person point of view, but all her previous books have been narrated by their protagonist. Dark Road Rising features a dual first person narrative, with chapters alternating between Fleming and Kroun. This device was used by Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott in Vampyres of Hollywood, but I think Elrod pulls it off much more successfully. The two narrative voices are more distinctive in Dark Road Rising, although I tend to feel that first person narrative is very limiting for an author.

Dark Road Rising is the best book yet in the Vampire Files series, further developing the numerous complex characters and taking us, once again, into some very rough territory. My sole criticism is that I found the story a little difficult to follow. I used to grumble that the early Vampire Files novels spent too much time reiterating basic facts and past events in each book, for the benefit of those readers “just tuning in.” Elrod has definitely overcome that tendency. Unfortunately, she has now swung a bit too far in the other direction, especially given the fact that the last few books have been released several years apart. Dark Road Rising assumes that the readers will have read Lady Crymsyn, Cold Streets and Song in the Dark and remember them all in great detail. It continues all the story threads without explaining them even briefly, and there isn’t a way to quickly look up the Cliff Notes version and refresh one’s memory. Given that Song in the Dark was published four years ago, and that the series has evolved a large cast of characters and a complicated tapestry of plot, just a little backing-and-filling in Dark Road Rising would have been very helpful.

Despite this caveat, I highly and enthusiastically recommend Dark Road Rising. Jack Fleming is a “good guy vampire” but these are not romantic stories. Elrod doesn’t flinch from gritty details, or the kind of brutal violence that you’d expect from the series milieu, 1930s Chicago. The supernatural elements—vampires and at least one ghost—are treated with matter-of-fact respect, as Elrod emphasizes character and plot rather than gimmickry and camp.

It’s hard to say whether the Vampire Files series will continue. The first six books have been reissued in a two-volume omnibus edition. A new signed and numbered Jack Fleming novella, The Devil You Know, is currently available for order exclusively on Elrod’s website. Fleming also appears in an occasional short story.

VVC Organizational Statement

The purpose of the Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC) is to develop friendly relations among the various Houses, Covens, Orders, organizations, and individual leaders of the vampire community; to encourage cooperation in solving community related problems and in promoting respect for the views, ideas, and opinions of others without seeking to establish a unifying or governing body; and to be a center for harmonizing the actions of groups in attaining these ends.

Founded in January 2006, the Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC) is an international network of diverse voices from the vampire community. Membership to the VVC is by invitation only and is based exclusively on the merits of an individual's lifetime contributions to the vampire community. The VVC is not established as a broad representative body for everyone who operates a forum, House, or group. It is designed as a serious discussion network for matters that affect our community both internally and externally from the media, academia, law enforcement, and the general public. Membership to the VVC is not based on an individual's social or viewpoint popularity. Prospective candidates are selected in a democratic process of nomination and election by current members. To be nominated, an individual must meet the following criteria:

• Be an active participant in the vampire community and eager to involve themselves in various projects and discussions.
  
• Have previously demonstrated contributions to the vampire community on an intellectual level that exceeds average.
  
• Have previously displayed leadership qualities and proper behavior within the vampire community for an extended period of time.
  
• Have earned the deepest respect and trust of others; and in turn strive to afford the same respect, regardless of individual differences of opinion.

The VVC undertakes various projects to benefit the vampire community such as providing informational materials in the form of digital and print publications, podcasts, educational videos, and RSS feeds. We also work with the media, academia, and law enforcement to ensure the myths, misconceptions, and stigmas attached to real or modern vampirism are not adopted as the basis for their work or professional decisions.

The VVC is not a governing body and will never attempt to act as such within the vampire community. The VVC respects an individual’s right of expression and a group’s right to operate by their own guidelines. We will not police informational content or the behaviors of individuals within the vampire community. The VVC invites you to use the contact form available on the public web site to send questions, comments, or make suggestions.

For more information about the VVC, including the bios of current members, visit: http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/vvc.html

Anti-Vampire Hate Speech in Pittsburgh

On September 14, 2008, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published an op-ed piece titled, Don't let your children grow up to be..." by an anonymous writer identified only with the explanation, "Dateline D.C. is written by a Washington-based British journalist and political observer."

This article is being circulated around the vampiric community blogosphere, probably giving it more free PR and linkbacks than it deserves. The anonymous op-ed columnist writes a preposterous piece of fear-mongering nonsense, purporting that young people going to college are at risk of being "recruited" by evil, mind-controlling "cults." His/her examples of such sinister groups include eco-terrorist groups (the kind that, gasp, liberate test animals from labs) and..."Vampyre cults." Below is an excerpt from the column (note the hypothetical victim's name--"Rosemary" as in Rosemary's Baby).

Rosemary was lucky. She could have been recruited by a "vampyre" cult. Vampires, as we call them, are now active in the vicinity of several campuses. They recruit the Rosemarys of the world into their "vampyre" families.

This is not a replay of Bram Stoker's Victorian world of blood drinking, nor in the mewlings of Southern ladies turned writer in the past decade or so. We can't even blame television, because we are facing a 21st-century perversion using AIDS/HIV avoidance as the hook.

Naturally, hormones rage out of control in young people and an older pair or a trio are the leaders and will recruit seven or eight young women and half as many young males. The young ones will all work as messengers, clerks or shop assistants and their money will be pooled by the elders.

The group is sexually active with one another but with no one outside the group -- thus they believe there can be as much sexual activity as they can handle without fear of AIDS/HIV.

And, of course, there has to be a ritual. There's blood drinking -- cranberry juice or, at worst, packaged blood from transfusion kits. Vampire fangs can be inserted over teeth. Contact lenses are used to change eye color. And photographs can make these sordid rituals and couplings look and feel excitingly exclusive -- and become very expensive.

Debt and strange experiences build up and help to ensure that the Rosemarys won't return very quickly to a more normal society.

Police and educational departments in several major East and West coast cities won't comment. But high school teachers know that recruiting for "vampyre" families starts as early as age 12.

I'd like to think that this anonymous writer was trying to write satire--the claims made are certainly outrageous enough. I can't be sure of that, however--this scenario reads like something right out of Chick Comics, and those were dead serious. It doesn't seem to occur to the columnist that if "police and educational departments...won't comment" there is probably a good reason for their silence: namely, that the question is too stupid to dignify with an answer. But as we all know, there are far too many people out there who are gullible and superstitious enough to see "evil cults" behind every tree.

I wrote a response to the newspaper, but had to trim it down to fit their 200-word maximum limit. Here is my reply:

Dear Editors,

I was appalled by the anonymous editorial piece that you saw fit to publish under the title, "Don't let your kids grow up to be..." dated Sunday, September 14, 2008. Opinions are one thing, but even op-ed columnists should be compelled to check their facts.

For the record: there are no "vampyre cults" recruiting college students, high school students, or 12-year-olds. Everything the anonymous writer claimed is utter and absolute nonsense. Real vampires are law-abiding and solitary people who don't have the slightest wish to "recruit followers" or even be known for what they are. In fact, they're generally very difficult to locate or contact, since they're used to being treated with suspicion, contempt and outright abuse. There is a loosely linked, scattered and highly diverse "vampire community," but it could not by any stretch of the imagination be called "a cult." Real vampires are far too busy struggling with their own unique health issues and needs as they hold down jobs, maintain relationships and raise families to “recruit” anybody. I know what I'm talking about, because I've been part of this community for more than ten years.

You’re welcome to check my websites for factual information about real vampires.

Sincerely,

Inanna Arthen, M.Div
Owner, By Light Unseen Media
http://bylightunseenmedia.com
(my address and phone number, as requested to "verify" the letter)

I doubt they'll print my letter or take it seriously, but I sent it. If you'd like to respond to this column, see the Tribune-Review's Guidelines for letters to the editor with snail-mail and e-mail addresses.

I guess pigs are flying!

In this post on March 10, I reported on a snide remark made against "vampire chat rooms" in the "Annie's Mailbox" advice column. I sent the columnists an e-mail, and so did a number of people I know, although many of them are vampire fans, not vampiric people or connected to the OVC.

The columnists must have gotten a lot of well-written, dignified letters--they wouldn't have paid attention to those that sounded like nut jobs--because, to my astonishment, they have printed an apology.

I have to give them credit for that, even if one of the letters still makes a snide remark about the OVC, and even though the columnists can't resist an idiotic crack about "garlic necklaces." (They obviously haven't read Something in the Blood and don't realize that real vampires love garlic!) At least the column backs off from the whole, "woooooo, the Internet is so dangerous!" bullshit.

Baby vampires and disturbed grown-ups

I read a number of vampiric community messageboards. Several of them include a forum for "troll baiting." Posts made by abusive, or clueless, individuals are moved to this forum and other members of the board are given free rein to ridicule, abuse and denigrate the poster to their heart's content, in this forum only. I suppose the intention is to divert the flamewars that often follow certain kinds of posts from the main body of the board. Whatever their intention, these "troll-baiting" forums are nothing but an excuse for self-indulgent and immature behavior of the worst sort by purported adults. The provoking posts are rarely worth bothering with at all, but the "troll-baiters" quickly surpass even the most abusive of their targets in sheer mean-spiritedness and infantilism. It's amazing how much time some people have on their hands to waste on such trash.

Eight years ago, when I was running my own messageboard, and contributing to others, I tried to convince other moderators that there was only one way to deal with trolls, abusers and nuisance posters--only one, no exceptions. The problem posts are instantly deleted on sight and never discussed, replied to or mentioned ever again. Period. Trolls are usually trying to stir up conflict, and they thrive on flamewars--they get a tremendous sense of self-importance from upsetting other people on the messageboard. But no matter how often this scenario was repeated, and how much I tried to demonstrate to other moderators that they were contributing to the problem, not helping it, people in the OVC never learned. They continued to play suckers and fall into the trolls' trap, every single time. Troll-baiting forums only corral the nonsense into a limited area.

For the most part, this would only be annoying. But recently I watched a "troll-baiting" unfold that had some very unsavory elements indeed. I won't say which messageboard this was on, nor identify the principals involved. I stumbled across the thread because I was looking for updates in a different topic that had been moved into the troll-baiting forum.

A new member of the board, who stated that she was 14 years old, had responded to an "Intro" post by criticizing the poster's grammar. Yes, it was a bit snotty--but no more than 14-year-old girls often are. If it had been my board, I'd have just deleted the post, no comment.

But of course, the purportedly adult suckers on the messageboard started sniping at the young person, and the whole thread was moved into the troll forum, where it proceeded to simply blow up--page after page of long posts attacking the young person for her subsidy-published book, her MySpace page, and other completely irrelevant things. They just wouldn't let it alone.

Now, there's nothing unusual about that--except that these were all self-proclaimed adults, ganging up on a 14-year-old. Not one of them seemed to feel they were doing anything inappropriate. The ringleader in the attacks was a 45-year-old (so claimed, anyway) who made lengthy posts diagnosing the young person as a "Narcissist" and expounding on why "Narcissists" could never change and are intolerable to be around. As far as I know, this 45-year-old is not a mental health professional and is not qualified to diagnose--although this 45-year-old evidently has extensive personal experience with mental health issues. As the 45-year-old continued to pummel the 14-year-old in this thread, I found myself getting more and more queasy. I hate the "troll baiting," anyway. It's stupid and juvenile, which is also how I'd characterize the alleged adults who indulge in it. But this went beyond that. For a 45-year-old to spend that much time and energy heaping public abuse on a 14-year-old for so little provocation was just...wrong. More than wrong, it was sick.

My main concern with the young person was the fact that she'd "borrowed" the name of my website, By Light Unseen, for her MySpace screenname. I reported this to MySpace and shortly afterwards the young person changed her screenname. As far as I was concerned, that settled things. I was curious enough to download the young person's book, which was free of charge, from the subsidy publisher's website. It's...well, it's stories written by a 13-year-old. But it could be far worse, and at least it's not fanfic, that cancer of creativity that is draining the last vestiges of original thought from most aspiring writers these days. Predictably, the troll-baiters crowed that they deserved credit for the young person changing the screenname, although we have no idea why that happened. The troll-baiters also jeered at the young person's listing her age, in her MySpace profile, as "100," as though the young person was pretending to be an "immortal vampire." The young person was claiming nothing of the sort. Many minors use ridiculous numbers for their age in their MySpace profile, because MySpace includes age in the page title. 14-year-old girls who don't want to be harassed by creeps and perverts usually fudge their age. But this young person was honest about her age everywhere else.

The troll-baiters got bored and moved on, finally, and I'm sure that hapless young person will never trouble that messageboard again. Meanwhile, this news item appeared in my online news filters.

It's difficult to imagine an adult, and the parent of a teenager, who could justify being that cruel and deceptive. She definitely has no business being a parent, I'm certain of that. I shudder to think of the model she has been for her own teenager. Whether the young victim would ultimately have committed suicide anyway--since there are numerous clues in the article that her life was filled with problems and she had a history of mental health issues and medications--is something no one can say. But when the victim's mother says, "But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old, with or without mental problems, it is absolutely vile," she is absolutely correct. Vile, and sick. How could anyone be an adult in America these days and still not realize that?

Fun With Search Engines...

For a multiplicity of reasons, I've been running a lot of tests on search engine results. Last night, just out of curiosity to see what actually got the best Google rankings (at least at that moment in time), I did a Google search on "vampire." Not surprisingly, that term returned 39,400,000 hits. I wanted to see, first, what a person who typed "vampire" into Google would immediately be presented with; and second, how close to the top any "real vampire" sites were, and which sites were top rated. What I saw was...interesting.

The top-rated Google site for "vampire" is the Wikipedia page with that name, dealing with vampire folklore. Next came Vampire Wine, which I believe is the old domain that used to be Pathway to Darkness, and hence may be riding on that now long-vanished site's extensive linkage and popularity. Then VampireRave.com, which is a commercial Goth/punk site aimed at Lifestylers and vampire fans more than vampiric people. Then came the two main pages for Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: Requiem at White Wolf Games. Then the Skeptic's Dictionary page on "vampire," which links Sanguinarius.org and Dr. Elizabeth Miller's Dracula page. A technical page was number 7, then VampireFreaks.com, which is a very disturbing site. 9th and 10th on the first page of hits were Sanguinarius.org and Temple of the Vampire. So, two "real vampire" sites appeared among the first 10 hits.

The second page started with two gaming sites, "the vampire random name generator" and the "vampire" section in the site "How Stuff Works," titled "How Vampires Work." This is kind of sketchy, and has a handful of links that need updating. (Among other things, it links a page on this site that is no longer there.) But the fifth entry, the vampire section on Monstrous.com, is a candidate for my Hall of Shame--it's entirely plagiarized! I started to read it and immediately recognized big chunks of text from my old "Human Living Vampires" articles and from Sanguinarius' site, all just jumbled together without attribution or credit. The whole section consists of unashamedly ripped off material. The rest of the page was technical sites, gaming sites, and VampireMeetups.com.

The technical sites are intriguing. There seems to be a trend to name technical products, businesses or projects "vampire" something. There was "Vampire, an extension module for mod_python," "Net Vampire, a file download manager," "VAMPIRE--Visual Active Memory Processes and Interactive REtrieval," and "Vampire Wire," an online store for cables and wiring.

The third page of Google hits included Damien Deville's organization The Vampire Church, and one of my friend Bev's articles on vampire myths. It also contained Vampire Wear, the IMDb page for "John Carpenter's Vampires," a gaming site, a photographer's gallery site, the spoof website "Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency," and the website for the band Vampire Weekend.

And so it went, for pages and pages. Very few serious information sites or real vampire sites appeared among the top, say, 200. Obviously, anyone running a Google search on just the word "vampire" is going to have a hard time finding much information of substance--and not because the information isn't on the 'Net. But Google's method of ranking sites is not angled toward returning the highest quality material. Apparently, it's related primarily to the number of links a site has from other "important" websites.

The results from the same search on Yahoo! are entirely different. Yahoo! returns far more hits, 54,100,000, to start with. The first site on the list is Vampires Among Us, followed by Vampires Only, Dr. Miller's Dracula Page, Sanguinarius.org, Beverly Richardson's Vampire's Vault, and Vampyres Online. By Light Unseen is number 11, top of the second page, and with the correct name. Google still lists us as "Living Vampires," which hasn't been the site's name since 2002. (It still comes up if you Google By Light Unseen, however). Unfortunately, Yahoo! also returns Monstrous.com on the first page of hits, so I really will be contacting Monstrous about their little copyright problem. But the bottom line is: Yahoo! returns a much more substantial assortment of websites at the top of a simple keyword search than Google does.