Funny Stuff This Week

Teaching an Old Writer New Tricks

I will be the first to tell you that I am an infernally stubborn creature.  I am also often flummoxed by technology.  My profane vocabulary gets quite the workout daily as I struggle with my computer.  You’d think there was a fight worthy of Mad Max’s Thunderdome going on from the sounds of banging, cursing, and shouting coming from my desk.  Taking these things into account, you can imagine I am not far removed from writing with stone and chisel.

 I do resist change in many cases, so my husband was quite surprised by one item on my Christmas list this past year.  I asked for scriptwriting software, specifically Final Draft.  I kept hearing it was the be-all and end-all of writers both experienced and just starting out.

Scripts and screenplays follow very specific guidelines in formatting.  So specific, that if you don’t get it right, no one in Hollywood, Bollywood, or even small industrial film companies anywhere will take you seriously.  They will laugh, crumple your hard work into tiny little balls, and practice their aim with the wastebasket.

Mind you, I was perfectly comfortable manually inserting tabs, margins, and all that kind of thing.  I could format for film or television in my sleep.  Yet it is a time-consuming process, slowing the flow of idea onto screen.  So I took a deep breath, calmed my ‘if-it-ain’t broke-don’t-fix-it’ mentality, and put this supposedly amazing software on my wish list.  I was apparently a good girl last year, because Santa brought the goods. 

Trembling with nervousness as I always do before launching myself into the great unknown, I loaded up the computer with this program.  Then I opened it.  Then I started typing. 

And lo, there were no sounds of cursing.  No thuds of my fist pounding the desk’s surface in frustration.  No threats to the computer of seeing it crash through a window.  In fact, I believe I might have heard a choir of angels singing.  They should have been; this software deserves praise from On High. 

I am in heaven.  I, the woman who still doesn’t quite understand how to use her phone to text or take pictures, who only just this past Christmas got her first tablet (it was a tech two-fer this year), I was delighted with my gift.  My words poured from the keyboard and the software automatically formatted for me.  I sat there stunned.  I wept with adoration.  I’m now a true believer.  Well, where the scriptwriting program is concerned, anyway.  I’m still lost when it comes to most everything else.  Thank heavens I have an expert in the house (aka, my seven-year-old) to sort that stuff out.

Sunday's Serving - Lilith's Return

 Lena remembered everything from the moment her parents sparked her into being.  Mere hours after sperm fertilized egg, she and Alex were in the midst of a fight for all of humanity.  She’d felt every moment of her mother’s hopelessness, terror, and pain as she battled to exile their enemy.  Despite Lena’s presence and power aiding Alex, the battle had been close, and death even closer.  Had the doomed unborn child Lilith carried at the time not rebelled against its mother, had Lena not reminded her own mother of the power of the coffin nail she carried, Lilith would have won.  Earth would be trembling under her rule right now.

The immortal succubus had come so close to winning last time.  Now Mom, Dad, and Uncle Jacob were going to face her yet again.  Lena knew how tough her family was and how committed to the fight.  They would do all in their power to fend off the great threat once more.  But she had a very bad feeling about it.

“I’m not a prognosticator, I’m a tracker,” Lena reminded herself.  “I don’t see the future.”

So why did she have such a sense of doom?

Lena couldn’t stand it anymore.  She had not fought demonkind in years.  She had forgotten more than a few things when it came to the rituals and verses.  But she needed to be with her family.  She had to face Lilith and stop the demoness, or die trying.

She picked up the phone and called the funeral home.  Aunt Marta answered before the first ring ended.  “Lasham Funeral Home.  How may I help you?”

Without preamble, Lena announced, “I’m going to North Carolina.”

“Your plane leaves in four hours.  Get packed and I’ll drive you to Miami International.”

Lena almost wept; from terror or relief, she wasn’t sure.  “How do you do that?”

“It’s a gift.  Get a move on.  I’m on my way.”

 

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Funny Stuff This Week

Best of the Bloodsuckers: Carmilla

Vampires in literature seem to have a cyclical popularity.  Dracula makes a return every generation in film, proving he is indeed forever undead (though each re-telling seems to make him sexier and more sympathetic than the original).  Starting in 1976 and peaking in the 1990’s, Anne Rice’s vampires became the be-all in vampire lore.  Then came the Twilight saga in 2005, and yet another round of bloodsuckers were in vogue.  The Sookie Stackhouse series, with its television counterpart True Blood, has also been a hit in recent years, though the novels have ended and the show’s run is apparently about to end after the next season. 

Few know to what all these blockbuster successes have to thank for their existence.  It all started with a little novella titled Carmilla. 

Published in 1872, predating Dracula by 25 years, Carmilla is Vampire Version 1.0 in the literary sense.  Told from the viewpoint of a young woman who befriends a mysterious lady who comes to live in her father’s home, it is a tale fraught with suspense, tension, and some overt lesbian-tendencies.  Penned by Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, it is the source from which all Hollywood vampires come.

Carmilla is narrated by Laura, the daughter of a wealthy English widower.  When a carriage accident prompts the enigmatic and entrancing Carmilla to seek shelter with father and daughter, the lonely Laura is captivated.  Carmilla returns the fascination, and the young ladies become fast friends.  Their obvious attraction to one another must have certainly raised a few eyebrows in Victorian society, as that was the timeframe during which this novella was published.  The era is probably also the reason why the scenes never become more scandalous in nature than this example: 

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration.

Beyond the sensual camaraderie is a backdrop of Gothic darkness, however.  Young women all over the village are dying in the night after wasting quickly away.  Then Laura herself begins to fail in health.  Tormented by nightmares of a dark creature that lies on her body, eliciting a smothering sensation, Laura begins to fade.  Meanwhile, Carmilla grows all the more frightening to her, though for reasons she can’t name.

 

Carmilla is the fiend by which I judge all other vampires.  She walks during the night and sleeps most of the day.  She does appear in late afternoon with no ill effects, though she seems weakened at that time.  The original belief that people become vampires as a result of suicide is explained in this book, along with the horrifying truth of what one finds when the vampire’s coffin is opened.  It is no wonder she served as a direct inspiration for Bram Stoker and Anne Rice. 

The understated grotesqueness, sexuality, and terror are so much more effective than the many attempts at vampire fiction that have been made since Carmilla was written.  It proves that graphic depictions of gore and sex are nothing compared to the psychological thrill of a well-crafted old-fashioned horror tale.  This story sticks with you long after you close the pages.  I highly recommend anyone who has not experienced Carmilla to do so.  One warning:  you may find yourself staring into the dark corners of your room when you go to bed at night, watching for any signs of movement.

 

You can get this book for Kindle and Nook for only $0.99 as of this writing.

Sunday’s Serving – Lilith

 

            He didn’t notice her presence right away.  He stared at the window by the bed, his chest hitching helpless sobs.  He really wasn’t much more than a child, she thought.  When she’d first brought him here, he’d been fresh and vigorous, poised between slim boyishness and virile manhood.  Now his chest lay sunken, his limbs as wasted as an old man’s.  His cheekbones stood out from his gaunt face.

            She loved the young, strong ones the best.  Her mother might enjoy dispatching men within hours, sometimes even minutes, but Naamah took pleasure in watching their lives slowly ebb away. 

            The young men in particular felt invincible.  Their helplessness against her first shocked then infuriated them.  They denied such weakness and cursed her while trying to fight.  Their fear started as a pinprick they would at first refuse to acknowledge even to themselves.  From there the terror grew until it finally devoured them whole.  Then they screamed and begged even as their bodies betrayed them over and over.

            This sweet morsel breathed shallowly, every intake of air an effort.  Naamah knew his heart occasionally fluttered in exhausted arrhythmia.  The next time she took him would be the last.  The thought aroused her, and she stepped into the room.

            He saw the movement and turned his eyes from the window.  He moaned as his gaze fell on her but he didn’t scream.  The strength for that was long past. 

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Funny Stuff This Week