The Future of Vampire Stories (a continuing resolution) Part 2

With a welcome weekend off for the St. Patrick's Day celebrations (There are no naturally occurring Irish vampires, thankfully!), we return with Part 2 of our continuing resolution on the future of Vampire literature: A look into the Future Society.

The 3rd book, SUNSET, in the Stefan Szekely Trilogy opens in 2099 and extends into the 2100s, remarking often on the situation in the world and especially the Empire of Europa, born of the expanded Hungarian Empire, led by the vampire Emperor. His Holiness chastises his governing council, lectures them on how He has improved the world from the way it was in the days of His transformation in 2014:

Case #4

His Holiness, Emperor Stefan: “It needs to be controlled, this world of ours. I agree. Too much and for too long the scientists and the inventors sought to expand only leisure and sloth, leaving the masses unemployed and starving. Those who could work willingly worked for the lowest possible wage. Others were slaves of sloth: no will to enter the night, to make something, no, only the attention to divertissements. For each man and each woman must have purpose in their existence, so we have given it to them: make good your efforts to bear children prior to your transformation, raise them to obey, honor our traditions and maintain our heritage. A logical scheme. Look how we smashed the towers of commerce, those thirty-floor skyscrapers that were not a part of our traditions and our heritage. We return to the common architecture style which represents the best of our land, the best of our history—true art! And we should continue to make works of art and beauty and sing songs that glorify the empire and praise the Most High. Diligently make your specified production each night. Enjoy a sport or celebrate music in your hibernation. Notice the world around you and your place in it. Nothing occurs in isolation. This is what we do within the span of our existence. We do not seek to advance society into some strange new world full of strange objects and stranger beliefs. This is our home. Let us keep it clean and dark.”

Case #5

Later we meet Oklahoma grave digger Bucky Denham and learn of the wars that have been on-going in Europe: the Ukrainian front on the east and the front on the west coast in Frisia (northern Netherlands):

    “Oh, that?” Bucky thumbed to his shoulder. “I was o’er in Frisia for a year, fightin th’ Europa vampires. Got this here wound ’nd they sent me home. Yeah, don’t hurt now, but shee-yit shore did when it was still burning, I mean li’l blue flames rising from each hole, like to beggin for someone ta kill me right off. But I got ta th’ hospice in time ’nd they put out th’ flames ’nd bandaged me tight. Worst year of my life, lemme tell ya.” He shrugged to show it didn’t hurt now. “But they get me good now, takin half whatever I make diggin graves for folks no matter I did my service. My pops kicked off while I was o’er there. My baby boy had with a gal down the street, too.”
. . . 

   “Yessiree. Them vampire brigades come at us during night, firing flares ’nd shee-yit at us. Then they got th’ Black Storm going ’nd they started attacking during th’ day. But it weren’t like no day, black clouds coverin th’ sun, dark as night. They could go out then. Nothin we threw at ’em ever did much. We tried silver bullets but they just went straight through ’em. Silver’s too dang ’spensive. We had ta get some sabers ’nd go fer th' heads. Lop off a head 
’nd they stopped cold dead. Yep, true dead. We heard they kept ’em starved of blood then released ’em at us so they’d tear after us, ya know, ta get our blood. Ya never saw no more gore than th’ battlefields of Frisia. I mean, arms ’nd legs ’nd heads laying ever’where. So many gyawdamn crows peckin at shit.”

Case #6

Finally, as expected, more and more fundamental tasks will be taken over by automation - robots - thereby leaving humans to enjoy their leisure. Sometimes the technology works too well, or doesn't work at all:

    Twice a surveillance drone approached him. Finally, it flashed a red warning: MAXIMUM WARNINGS EXCEEDED. A security patrol drove up beside him, hovering over the pavement.
    “What’re you up to, fella?” asked the robot in a life-like voice.
    “I like the scenery on this street,” he said in as calm a voice as he could conjure, imagining the robot might detect voice stress. “So I’ve been walking this way for my daily exercise.”
    “Residents have complained. Please choose another route.”
    “Yes, of course. Sorry. I meant no harm.”
    “No harm is not no harm,” the robot replied like a Zen koan, eyes blinking. “Residents feel harm even if you intend no harm.”
    “I suppose that’s true,” he said with a smile.
    “Please choose a different route. You are forbidden from this route from now.” The robot’s arm telescoped out from the hovering vehicle, a tablet attached to its hand. 
    “Apply chip here.”
    He was wary of the authenticity of his chip now and stepped back from the neighborhood patrol. He turned his back to the robot and walked quickly down the slope, around the curve, back to his Hoverina parked on the street—recharged with his old paper money converted to credits at a bank, where he was advised to get a replacement chip since his was not connecting properly to the grid.

Case #7

Toward the end of the novel (not to give away any spoilers), a major character travels to Moscow and we see that Russia has not suffered the degradation of a vampire society:

This train ran smoothly, she noticed, a much better vehicle than the old one they had ridden from Budapest. Someone mentioned the train sailed over jets of compressed air. She was entering a modern world. Arriving in Moscow, she could not believe the architecture that had sprouted up like a great forest. There were the Seven Colossi marking the old wall towers of ancient Muscovy, silver office buildings rising fifty floors, topped with great communication towers. Nothing like them existed in Budapest or anywhere else in Europe; the empire disdained anything modern. In the center of the city stood the 800-meter tall statue of Saint Vladimir, savior of the republic. Below the feet of the statue and its mountainous hill of earth and granite blocks, the walls of the Kremlin were crumbling, finally allowed to decay as an unwanted symbol of the Communist era.

She exited Okhotny Ryad station at the north end of Red Square and found the streets crisscrossed by driverless trolleys, stopping to pick up anyone who waved. After strolling the square and assuring that St. Basil’s Cathedral was still as colorful as she remembered—it was, undamaged; Lenin’s Tomb, however, had been occupied by the latest iconic figure—she rode to the west, then north, past the huge Bolshoi Theater extension—the arts were flourishing again, it seemed—and a grand new Orthodox cathedral on Neglinnaya Avenue dedicated to St. Vladimir. Another trolley took her past blocks of solemn gray high-rise apartments where she thought she had lived with Yevgeni. She became confused. Eventually she realized her location and stepped off.

So we see that a vampire tale - its logical, if not unexpected, conclusion, that is - must necessarily describe a transformed society, as well. In this respect a vampire tale must cross over from mere urban fantasy or a paranormal genre into science fiction. Rather than bedazzle readers with the amazing inventions of the future, a vampiric society would, when it had the chance, I believe, return wholeheartedly (no pun intended) to an early age culturally and practically. Yet it is the principal characters we must follow as they function within and attempt to alter the world that we know in 2019.

The Stefan Szekely Trilogy is complete!
(Look to the upper right on this blog for links.)

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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

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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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Future of Vampire Stories (a continuing resolution)

Now that the more exciting half of the month of February has passed, there is only the President's Day non-holiday to give a nod toward. (I say non-holiday because most of us still must attend to work or school.) But fear not, for here is a blog post which empathizes with you. Suppose instead of presidents there were an emperor. Now suppose he had absolute power over everything in your world, including your life and, more importantly, your blood.

In writing the conclusion of the Stefan Szekely Trilogy - which began with my medically accurate vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, set in 2013-2014 - I had to imagine the future of a vampirian society in 2099. Book 2, SUNRISE, was set in 2027-2028, when the problems of our current time were seeing fruition in a world in chaos.
In Book 3, SUNSET  (coming in late February), we see order restored but at a heavy price: oppression at home, wars on the frontiers. Imagining the future, whether utopian or dystopian, is always an exercise in cause and effect.

In Book 2, human-led society in the Hungarian Federation made use of the latest technologies. However, in Book 3, the vampire-led society of the Empire of Europa, has railed against modern advancements, decrying much of what we take for granted today and in its monstrous transformation by 2028. By 2099, at the centennial celebration, and the council of governors meeting that follows, we learn what has happened in the interim.

Excerpts from SUNSET, 
Book 3 of the Stefan Szekely Trilogy

Case #1: surveillance

[His Holiness speaks:]
     “Perhaps you are too young to recall when citizens were monitored at all times, forced to sign their names hourly, compelled to indicate their approval or disapproval on trivial matters by pressing a finger to a painted icon on their monitors. That was not freedom. Fail to sign in and police would hunt them down, examine them for cross-thought or bio malfunction. If found disabled, they would have their amusements suspended. Likewise, if the amusements consumed too much of their nightly tasks, the amusements would be suspended. Yet we learned it was these amusements which compelled many to rise at all upon the dusk. How great the inventions of the past! How the imagination of the Most High corrals us, mends us, makes us into obedient servants despite our best efforts to rebel. How we must free ourselves from the tyranny of technologics! The answer, as we now know, is only in a determined return to the past, to our traditions, to our heritage, to a new society based on the best of the old.”

Case #2: making a world more vampire-friendly

     “Every day our factories are pumping out millions of cubic meters of dark matter to feed the Black Storm. We have managed to blot out the sunshine an average of three-hundred-seventeen days each year, days with seventy-five percent of more darkness. As you know, the natural wind pattern continually blows it eastward. Thus we must continually replenish it. The Russians complain instead of welcoming our efforts to contain the sunshine. Look at what we have wrought on our own soil. The empire is now sixty-two percent fallow, a great improvement over the past decade. Some of the bloodlings complain. They beg for plants, for their crops, for pretty flowers to beautify the yards. Yet fruit and vegetables do not satisfy the vampirian palate. You cannot get blood from a turnip.”

Case #3: artificial intelligence, surveillance

     “Indeed, I recall the electric days of my youth—when everyone was monitored and conditioned and manipulated into all sorts of behavior not ordered by their own minds. The mindless youth, we called them, assembling in hordes to rain destruction upon whatever target their electric masters deemed worth destroying. A violent age. All of their petty demonstrations arranged locally by electric messaging! Yet we have extinguished the grid and freed the masses. Is that not a worthy goal? Cameras everywhere. Spying on us all. Drones flying the skies, often so thick we could not know exactly which of us they surveilled. People deigned to stay indoors to avoid official cameras—and privately commanded drones, too, snooping into windows, reading over your shoulder from kilometers away! 
     “Yet even there, in our own homes, we were constantly watched, our choices on the electric venues noted, our searches for information captured and used against us in the political correction courts and re-education camps. They did not know what they had created, nor did they surmise how their lives had become not their own but merely tools in a government toolbox, each of them put to use as needed, when needed, and put aside when no longer needed—given over to pointless games, animations of birds and puppets and pieces of candy, not to mention the shooting galleries and bat games, all to satisfy an abhorrent need for constant stimulation. While I endured thirteen years with only some books.

     “That was not living—meaning in the old sense of existing inside a prefabricated society that considered us as bits and bytes in a program designed by ‘artificial intelligence’. Oxymoronic drivel! It was called ‘A.I.’ in those days. Do you understand what I say? The electric boxes we now outlaw were common fodder in those days. Ubiquitous. We used to communicate through those machines. Without a machine we could not communicate. And without a code number, we could not use those machines. Predictably, all our communications were checked and double-checked for correctness and compliance with standard norms, and when out of parameters a friendly drone would knock on your door, zap you to unconsciousness when you opened the door, and off to re-education camp you went.
     “No, I mean the term ‘artificial intelligence’—a machine acting like a human brain acts, the machines and the instructions to operate them independent of human thought, in essence a self-operating machine, much like the vehicles designed to carry us about our nightly tasks.
     “Yet such automated machinery can also bring about our demise. Hence we outlawed them. All the A.I. machinery. You may not recall that incident—it was famous, notorious as an example—where the English's prime minister sent the image of his sexual organs to the queen through this electric system—quite by accident, he insisted. It was the work of this artificial intelligence, certainly, yet the queen was not amused. That prime minister had to lose his personal parts to make amends. Pity. Yet we see what can be accomplished without our knowledge or our will. Embarrassment is the least of our concerns...."


Indeed, the opportunity to create a new world, regardless of its positive nature or hideous transformation, is one of the reasons I got into this author business. I liked imagining and stepping into a new situation, an escape from the mundane reality of junior high school or, as it is now, from the workplace. And some of us still enjoy playing God - or at least Emperor!

To be continued...

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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Beware Vampires! SUNRISE is coming soon!

SUNRISE, the end of the workday for vampires...

For Stefan Székely it is a fate worse than death: To be dead yet stuck with his dead parents. After 13 years Stefan can endure it no longer. He wants a castle of his own. But first he must visit his family’s bank in Budapest.

With endless strife rumbling across Europe, Stefan hardly recognizes Budapest, now capital of the Hungarian Federation. The world has changed. 

Nevertheless, he embarks on the reign of terror he always denied himself, living the vampire playboy lifestyle.  Until he gets a stern warning from the local vampire gang. He is not welcome - unless he plays by their rules.

Should Stefan fight for his right to party like it's 2027? Or will an encounter with a dangerous stranger change everything about his new existence? As clashes between vampire gangs and State Security escalate, Stefan just might be the key to changing the fate of Europe forever! . . . If he can survive three bloody nights in Budapest.

The sequel to A DRY PATCH of SKIN continues the trials and tribulations of Stefan Székely, Vampire.

In 2014 my medically accurate vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN came outto a rave review. My main purpose was to counter the hysteria of the Twilight experience with some medical research crossed with established legends. I wanted to tell a realistic vampire tale. I even set the story in my own city and the action in the story followed the actual days and months I was writing the story. The story and my writing of the story ended the same week. Of course, I revised and edited after that.

Then I thought . . . what could possibly happen next? So I chose a gap of, say, 13 years (the number seems significant in horror stories). Now, where did I leave my protagonist? How is he doing? What could have happened since the end of the first book? What has changed in the world during these 13 years? How would what's different in the world affect his own corner of the world? How would he cope with these changes?

As I started on another vampire story I quickly realized that I had to also write essentially a science-fiction story. A futuristic story. If I were setting the story 13 years after the end of the previous novel, then this sequel would be set in 2027. And it would be somewhere in Europe, which is where our hero was at the end of the first book. 

What did I know of 2027? Not much. Like many sci-fi writers writing about the future, I took the present circumstances, the way things are now (both good and bad), and extrapolated how they might logically progress. Remember that novel by George Orwell, 1984? It was published in 1948 just as fears of a Communist takeover gripped Europe. It was supposed to be a warning. Orwell imagined how the concerns of his present might play out in the future. 

With the current strife in Europe, mass immigration, refugees coming to Europe from the Middle East and Africa, the increase in crime, the open warfare between left and right political groups, I could see all of these happenings extending, continuing and growing through the following decade. The moral question that arises is whether the author should follow his/her own beliefs, that is, how the world should be, a Utopian view - or choose a path of development which would be the best setting for the story (given the plot that would likely unfold), however the society might become - or try to take an honest look at current events and let things fall where they might, for good or ill.

I chose both. If I have to make a choice, I will lean toward what makes a good story over what my own beliefs might be. For the sake of this story and for the way I think society will continue to "progress" or develop or evolve over the next 10 years, I'm letting the European conflicts play out in the sequel: my now less-medically accurate vampire novel, titled SUNRISE.

Today, the governments of Hungary and Poland are resisting the  acceptance refugees and other immigrants and the European Union chastises them for it. Both nations have refused to comply with orders from Brussels and are being threatened with economic punishment. Jump ahead 10 years (from now; 13 from the end of the previous novel) and these countries have broken away from the European Union, formed their own economic block, and run business as usual in ways which are more to their liking. This is the landscape Stefan Székely ventures into from the isolated precincts of his family villa.

As described in this sequel, the new Hungarian Federation is a strictly run Euro-centrist society. The State Security apparatus runs a tidy ship and getting in is very problematic. Staying in if you are a "diseased" resident such as a vampire is dangerous. However, our hero, Stefan Székely, is already within the boundaries of the Hungarian Federation at his family's estate in the former Croatia; therefore, I, the author, must deal with the vagaries of that location. It was not an unpleasant effort. I love to travel vicariously.

 

Needless to say, our hero has difficulties - or there wouldn't be a story. Yet as I charged through the final chapters and then undertook the revision stage, the look and feel, the horrors, and the dystopian ambiance seemed right. Will Stefan escape from the repressive Hungarian Federation? Or will evil powers greater than himself and the vampire gangs of Budapest have the final say? 

Regardless, in SUNRISE the world gets darker before the light shines again. Book 3, to be titled SUNSET, picks up the story even further into the future. By then, we are in full-fledged dystopia territory. But, hey! I'm sure everything will work out just fine...if you transform into a vampire in time, of course.

Look for SUNRISE on or about April 1.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How to be a Vampire!

I know it's not even close to Halloween but, you see, a good vampire story can launch at any time of the year - because, as we all know, vampires can exist throughout the year, in every season - but not after sunrise.

The Vampire. From legends far and wide, comes the idea of someone who has died returning to life or of not truly dying but settling into a degree of existence between life and death, what many have termed the undead. It is a frightful situation, both for the poor sucker [pardon the pun] who must "live" such a "life" as well as for those who may encounter him or her. (Read more here.)

Last year I awoke from a nightmare - actually, fell off the darn night mare, hit my head on a stone--and had the idea of writing a vampire tale. Much in the vein of my paranormal-writing colleagues, I sought a story of Gothic pathos, a horror tale of bloody delight! Alas! I could not in good conscience create something along the lines of more recent Vampire fictions. They were too much magic, melodrama, and frou-frou accoutrements than suited my sophisticated tastes.

I knew there were some medical and biological causes of symptoms which are typical of those claiming vampirism. I did my research, both into the legends and customs of Eastern Europe, and into the science behind such disorders as porphyria. Is there such a thing as vampirism as a medical condition? And if so, how does one treat it? Is it genetic or does one catch it from someone who is already a vampire? One valuable resource was the scholarly book by Paul Barber.

So I sought to create a tale as contemporary and realistic as modern science and my twisted imagination would allow.

The result is the amazing true-to-life story of Stefan Szekely, doomed to become a vampire - and to do so at precisely the wrong time in his life. Just as Stefan is falling in love with his Beloved and they are planning to marry, he notices the first sign: A DRY PATCH of SKIN.

“I do care about you,” she whispered.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound positive. “We can’t let a dry patch of skin get between us, now can we?”

But I digress...

Now, comes the sequel to this 2014 medically accurate vampire novel: SUNRISE. Coming in April 2018 - the month of Easter, ironically. The title is not without irony itself within the pages of this new novel. In fact, with a second volume, there comes the urge to continue the story of Stefan Szekely, Vampire, into a third novel - which would make it a trilogy. Book 3 will be titled SUNSET.

SUNRISE picks up where A DRY PATCH OF SKIN left off. It has been 13 years since Stefan met his fate in Croatia. However, he eventually has realized the extent of his misery and seeks to venture forth from his isolated home into polite society. Maybe get his own castle, become a playboy, drink a better class of blood. 

But you can't just show up in the Hungarian capital of Budapest and start doing your own thing. The local vampire gangs have rules. The State Security also has rules: all vampires must be extinguished. Then, while Stefan is struggling to fit in, an unexpected stranger confronts him and upends his entire world, setting off a frantic battle for what may determine the future of Europe.

For further information, I recommend reading the following:

A DRY PATCH of SKIN.

The truth about being a vampire: It is not cool, not sexy. It’s a painful, miserable existence.

Good reason to avoid that situation, thinks Stefan Székely. He's too busy falling in love with TV reporter Penny Park, anyway. Until one day when she notices he has a dry patch of skin on his face.

At first it's annoying, nothing to worry about, some weird skin disease he can treat with lotions. However, as his affliction worsens, Stefan fears that his unsightly problem will ruin his relationship with Penny.

If only that was all Stefan has to worry about! 

He soon realizes there is a lot more at stake than his handsome face. To save himself, Stefan must go in search of a cure for the disease which is literally destroying him inch by inch. 

If only his parents had told him of his family's legacy.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Future of Sequels

It is a fate worse than death: to be undead yet stuck with your vampire parents. After 13 years Stefan Szekely can stand them no longer. He wants to get a castle of his own. But first he must make his way to his family's bank in Budapest.

With endless strife across Europe, Stefan hardly recognizes Budapest. Nevertheless, he embarks on the reign of terror he always denied himself, living the playboy lifestyle, being a bad vampire. Until he gets a stern warning from the local vampire clan: You are not welcome!

Should Stefan fight for his right to party like it's 2027? Or flee to the spa resort he bought and ignore the world? Or will an encounter with a dangerous stranger change everything? Or will State Security actions ruin this vampire homeland?

In 2014 my medically accurate vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN came out to a rave review. My main purpose was to counter the hysteria of the Twilight experience with some medical research crossed with established legends. I wanted to tell a realistic vampire tale. I even set the story in my own city and the action in the story followed the actual days and months I was writing the story. The story and my writing of the story ended the same week. Of course, I revised and edited after that.

Then I thought . . . what would happen next? So I chose a gap of, say, 13 years (the number seems significant in horror stories). Where did I leave my protagonist? How is he doing? What could have happened since then? What has changed in the world during these 13 years? How would what's different in the world affect his own corner of the world?

As I started out on another vampire story I quickly realized that I had to also write a science-fiction story. If I were setting the story 13 years after the end of the previous novel, then this sequel would be set in 2027. 

What did I know of 2027? Not much. Like many sci-fi writers writing about the future, I took the present circumstances, the way things are now, and extrapolated how they might logically progress. Remember that novel by George Orwell, 1984? It was published in 1948 just as fears of a Communist takeover gripped Europe. It was supposed to be a warning.

With the current strife in Europe, mass immigration, the increase in crime, the open warfare between left and right groups, I could see that extending, continuing and growing through the following decade. The moral question that arises is whether the author should follow his/her own beliefs, that is, how the world should be, a Utopian view - or choose a path of development which would be the best setting for the story (given the plot that would unfold), however the society might become - or try to take an honest look at current events and let things fall where they might, for good or ill.

I chose both. For the sake of the story and for the way I think society will continue to "progress" or develop or evolve over the next 10 years, I'm letting the European conflicts play out in the sequel: my now less-medically accurate vampire novel, titled SUNRISE.

Today, Hungary and Poland are resisting accepting refugees and other immigrants and the European Union chastises them for it. Both nations have refused to comply with orders from Brussels and are threatened with economic punishment. Jump ahead 10 years (from now; 13 from the end of the previous novel) and these countries have broken away from the European Union, formed their own economic block and run business as usual in ways which are more to their liking. 

As described in this sequel, the Hungarian Federation (Poland is a separate nation but an ally) is a strictly run Euro-centrist society. The State Security apparatus runs a tidy ship and getting in is very problematic. Staying in if you are a "diseased" resident such as a vampire is dangerous. However, our hero, Stefan Szekely, is already within the boundaries of the Hungarian Federation at his family's estate in the former Croatia; therefore, I, the author, must deal with the vagaries of that location.

Needless to say, our hero has difficulties - or there wouldn't be a story. Yet as I charge through the final chapters, the look and feel, the horrors, and the dystopian ambiance seem right. Will he escape from the repressive Hungarian Federation? Or will evil powers greater than himself and the vampire clans of Budapest have the final say?

Regardless, in SUNRISE the world gets darker before the light shines again.



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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

A Dry Patch of Skin Launches!

It seems Vampires are still the rage! People cannot get enough of them. 

Except me. I've had enough of them--so I wrote this novel to put the thing to bed, as it were, even though it may very well rise again. You know how that meme works.

This week A DRY PATCH OF SKIN launches (Kindle edition, anyway; paperback coming soon Paperback now available!)--just in time for Halloween/Samhain and seemingly in time to ride the coat tails of the Dracula Untold film. While I have not yet seen the film, I was hooked by the trailer and will likely go see it soon, despite the mixed reviews of critics and friends it is getting. 

There are no such mixed reviews of my contemporary vampire novel, fortunately. Not yet, at least. Perhaps never. Perhaps that is because some fear the possible consequences of going against Stefan Székely, the hero or anti-hero of the story. However, he really is quite harmless. Or is he? 

(Or is he? [One never knows what powers one has until forced to use them, eh?])


Accompanying this grand smashing of champagne bottle against book spine, I have been interviewed and an Advanced Review Copy review has been posted. Many thanks to fellow Myrddin author Connie J. Jasperson.

Life in the Realm of Fantasy (Stephen Swartz interview)

Best in Fantasy (Review of A Dry Patch of Skin)


The previous post of this blog has additional information and amusement.


The two questions I seem to be asked most are:

1. What genre is this novel?

2. What does the title mean?

Answers may be partly found in the interview. For those click-phobic few, I offer the short version:

1. I call it a vampire novel, but that is because that category gets across the essential elements of the story. There is constant discussion of vampires, vampirism, history and legend, medical and biological considerations, and theological concerns throughout the book. It could qualify as a medical thriller. Also as a Christian allegory tale. There is also a love story at the center: What would you do to be able to stay with the one you loved? What risky medical procedures would you willingly endure? 

Most of all, I tried very hard to keep it brutally contemporary: 2013-14 for the time setting and Oklahoma City (my present abode) as the place. The story also involves travel to other places, such as New Orleans and Hungary. Die-hard fans of Twilight and other recent vampire TV shows, films, and books may not adjust well to the spoofing of those media that the characters in my book do. Or, they may just as well enjoy the satirical pokes. 

So, in the final analysis, it is what I always tend to write: a genre mash-up. This outing, it's about a man turning into a vampire but he doesn't want to.


2. The title came very early in the writing and I felt it was quirky enough to be a good title. Other options included "A Big Boil on the Skin" and "A Troubling Rash" but I dropped those fairly quick. Briefly considered "But I don't wanna be a Vampire!" So A DRY PATCH of SKIN was the medical winner. 

The phrase "a dry patch of skin" shows up in multiple places in the book, almost always in an ironic sense. Here are a few of them:

      What will be the first sign? Will it simply be a dry patch of skin? An odd blemish? A discoloration?

“I do care about you,” she whispered.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound positive. “We can’t let a dry patch of skin get between us, now can we?”

“So...what brings you here this morning?” asked the perky physician’s assistant, blond and leggy.

“A dry patch of skin,” I said glumly.

We stared at the two of us in the big mirror. It was the measure of our existence: here are two humans, one male and one female, of average attributes, two examples that have copulated previously and might copulate again if not for a dry patch of skin or two. Or thirteen.

So you see that it serves as a kind of motif or meme that appears here and there in the text to signal to the reader what kind of significance a small, simple thing that represents all the ugliness and pathos of the world boiled down to an affliction cursing one particular individual can have. But I digress....

Here is the full cover for the paperback edition, coming soon: AVAILABLE NOW!

The blurb:

The truth about being a vampire: It is not cool, not sexy. It’s a painful, miserable existence.

Good reason to avoid that situation, thinks medical technician Stefan Székely. He's too busy falling in love with TV reporter Penny Park, anyway. Until one day when she notices a dry patch of skin on his face.

At first it's just annoying, nothing to worry about, some weird skin disease he can treat with lotions. However, as his affliction worsens, Stefan fears that his unsightly problem will ruin his relationship with Penny. 

If only that was all Stefan has to worry about! He soon realizes there is a lot more at stake than his handsome face. To save himself, Stefan must go in search of a cure for the disease which is literally destroying him inch by inch. If only his parents had told him of the family legacy.

At this point, I must clarify that any and all skin products readers may find they need while reading this book are entirely at their own cost. However, Stefan Székely recommends the products available at Bath & Body Works. Also, no animals were killed in the making of this novel.

Apologies to those who skin begins to tingle or feel itchy. Check with your doctor.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.