When SUNSET arrives...

They laughed when I told them I was writing a "vampire" novel. After all, many had done the same previously. And I had already written some science fiction and literary novels. What was my interest in vampires?

I have to admit I was never much interested in the genre. I saw a couple movies made from vampire novels and was not impressed. I tried to see the story behind the vampire curtain. I worked sorta hard to find the interesting drama with the vampire trappings stripped away - because all stories are ultimately about the people in them. In the case of vampire tales, those people have something additional to deal with.

But I happened to know more, mostly from an old news magazine program I once saw on TV, a report on a man who had to cover his skin when he went into the sunlight, whose face had degraded to such an extent he dared not be seen in public, whose affliction was a bad mix of blood and skin diseases. He looked like a vampire. In the program they jokingly referred to his illness as the "vampire disease". Interesting, I thought, but I was not writing about vampires so I put the information away in a drawer of a cabinet in the lower level of my brain - until I needed it.

If you've followed my blog for a while, you know how this started: the Twilight series of movies and books had held my teen daughter hostage! So I swore to explain to her the medical affliction which was real - more real than the glittery skin of a brooding Byronic hero! I recalled that TV program and went to work researching such diseases. I also researched ancient legends from anthropological texts in which such creatures were reported and described. I came to conclusions.

And then I wrote A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, the "first" medically accurate vampire story, set in my own time and place: Oklahoma City, 2013-2014. In fact the story ended in the book in the same week I finished writing the story. That was it: finished. I had addressed the issue. I moved on from my contemporary literary horror opus. But a tragedy has a way of sticking with you. 

I had left my poor hero in such a dire yet lonely situation. I wrote two other novels while being haunted by him. He hated me for how I left him in that situation. I thought I could let it go, forget him; he was merely a fictitious character and he was in a place which suited the story. But not him. Indeed, he vexed me!

So I returned to the tale and gave him a reprieve, let him out of his unbearable situation, let him move on, and wrote SUNRISE, a sequel to the first novel. The setting had to be in the near future, since the first book was set in my own time. That necessitated a bit of science fictioneering, planning how things would be 13 years from the end of the first novel. Letting him out of his casket, however, proved dangerous. Once I started a Book 2, I knew I would need to write a Book 3, as well.

And so, as the sunrise is followed by flesh-burning day, so does SUNSET follow SUNRISE. It is indeed a conclusion, as well as an apotheosis of the form: the vampire imperium, a horrific expansion of the world in Book 2, and, you will be happy to note, I have let our hero out of the casket for good - and evil. Here is a brief description:

It is the night of the Millennial Ball in 2099 and the Black Storm covers all. Stefan Szekely has taken power in Europe, ruling a continent from Budapest, the seat of His empire, with wars in the west and the east to hold the borders. Different blocks of nations compete for limited resources.

The Emperor has little to amuse Him but serving His own lord and master, The Most High, whom he affectionately calls Luce. His mistress urges Him to mingle among the celebratory audience and in that effort comes the assassination attempt!

Repercussions shake the empire. The terror of His reign stokes the citizenry's fury and the palace is mobbed. The Emperor and his staff lock themselves in the imperial suite as palace guards fight the mob. When the attackers finally break into the suite, the Emperor must flee. A secret corridor leads not only to underground salons but to the instigation of a plan long readied, a plan that will save everyone from the fate the Most High has in store for the world - or, if it should fail, the demise of humanity once and for all!

Three interlinked novellas bring the Stefan Szekely Trilogy to an unsettling conclusion.

And so there you have it, the means to an end, a conclusion which concludes everything about the Stefan Szekely saga, a lesson in how the world works under vampire domination - or, perhaps, merely a clever tome of self-indulgent mayhem, a stretching of the finest membranes of imagination to the far reaches of an aging novelist's craft. Indeed, he digresses....



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