Vampire Review is happy to welcome publisher Amy Jackson as the guest blogger today. Amy, from Red Rattle Books, is promoting two volumes. Both are filled with a wide variety of delicious vampire short stories. Some are written by authors know world-wide with stories translated in many languages
Read all about it: A Taster of Two New Vampire Volumes
The second, Telegraph for Garlic, is an excellent academic analysis of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It offers a fresh and very different take on the classic vampire legend.
INTRODUCING DRACULA'S MIDNIGHT SNACKS
The characters in Dracula’s Midnight Snacks include some tentative young Argentinean gentlemen heroes. There are also porn stars and plastic surgeons in Los Angeles, cowboys and Comanche raiders, a vampire who is "living" on disability benefits, not to mention a defiant feminist.
Think of one story in terms of black and white silent cinema. There's also Victorian professional wrestlers, an alienated sixties rock-and-roller, and a nightmarish New York; a place so twisted it almost overpowers our favourite anti-hero! As you can probably tell, the vampires in Dracula’s Midnight Snacks make an unusual and ecclectic selection, although reading about each vampire will send a chill down your spine. One story, ‘Comanche Vampire’ not only has a surprise ending but it exploits the western B movie tradition. Still in the 19th century, one story, 'Abraham and Oscar,' highlights a meeting between Irish Novelist and Short Story Writer Bram Stoker and Irish Writer and Poet Oscar Wilde.
Also from
the past are chapters such as ‘Basarab’s Boy,’which is set in the world of early professional
wrestling. Then there's the creepy tale called ‘Episode Of Don Francisco Figueredo,' crafted by the
renowned Author Fernando Sorrentino.
Other stories are rooted in
the modern world and include a trip to see the plastic surgeon in ‘The Porn
Star,’ and ‘Mr D’s Paradox,’ which has our favourite vampire in modern New York
not enjoying the celebrity life, at all.
Without wanting to spoil any surprises, more
unusual vampire lives are examined in ‘LIMA,' ‘The Man In The Ambulance’ and
‘Feel Like Going Home.' The mysterious and haunting ‘Life After Death’ has been
compared to Samuel Beckett, and completes the set of unique vampire tales. Dracula’s Midnight Snacks is available to buy online.
INTRODUCING TELEGRAPH FOR GARLIC
Telegraph For Garlic is a short story book that mixes heavyweight academic investigation of the Bram Stoker novel with critical analysis of two American achievements in the vampire genre. It also contains extracts from the novel itself and the Stoker short story, ‘Dracula’s Guest.'
When the reader feels like taking a break from the challenging analysis, he or she may browse the extracts or read why ‘FrightNight’ is a more complex of a movie than we first thought. Telegraph For Garlic also begins with a lucid and very readable history of Gothic fiction.
The title Telegraph For Garlic" was inspired by Professor Abraham Van Helsing who admonished Lucy Westenra
for that garlic-in-the-room trick. ‘I
had to telegraph yesterday, or they would not have been here.' The book Telegraph For Garlic is available on Amazon. It's a great price for a paperback, especially for one with analytical
text from academic heavyweights like literary philosopher Jean-Jacques Lecercle,
author of Interpretation As Pragmatics, and Claire Bazin, author of books on
Jane Eyre and Janet Frame.
Topics in Telegraph For Garlic cover a wide range and include politics,
madness, the true nature of Lucy Westenra, the importance of the machine to the
text and the use of the word "blood" as a metaphor for the actual text.
Telegraph
for Garlic is available to buy on-line.
You may read about more of Red Rattle's current and up-and-coming titles here.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for the productive reader feedback. Is there something you've read here that inspired you? Tell me about it!