Random Updates

Last Wednesday, I received a signed copy of one of the best books you could ever get on vampire folklore. That's right, I'm talkin' 'bout Jan L. Perkowski's anthology, Vampire Lore: From the Writings of Jan Louis Perkowski (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2006).

The first half reprints his monographs, 1972-1989 and the second half features his articles right up to 2006 (see: "Props for Perky"). Absolutely brilliant. Can't recommend it highly enough.

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I know I've delayed mentioning it, but I actually made another blog entry contribution to VampChix. It was called "So You Want to Be a Vampirologist", in which I give some handy tips on which sources to peruse, etc.

I e-mailed it to her ("RE: Vampire Blog Entry‏", Saturday, 13 February 2010 2:48:07 PM) and made a minor revision ("Blog Entry Revision", Saturday, 13 February 2010 2:58:36 PM).

As with my previous contribution there, some minor edits and mistakes have crept into the transmission.

I'm gonna get pretty pedantic now, so bare with me!

• The "believe" in "how many folklorists actually believe in pixies, unicorns and ogres" wasn't italicised like it should've been. Same goes for the "be" in "Nor do you actually have to be a vampire". Ditto for the "fifty" in "managed to isolate fifty. . ." and the title of my blog after "...if I hadn't started..."
  
• The hyperlink in "blog entries" was meant to apply to "one of my blog entries". Slightly cut down.
  
• The link I gave in the title for Jay Stevenson's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires (2002), was instead changed to an Amazon sidebar ad within in the post. Same goes for Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (1988).
• Michele adds an Amazon link to John Cuthbert Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals (1910). Ditto for Summers' The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928) and The Vampire in Europe (1929).
• The original Amazon.co.uk link for David Keyworth's Troublesome Corpses (2007) is changed to the American version. Same goes for Nina Auerbach's Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995).
• The link to my "Public Service Announcement" was edited out. But, to be fair, I was given a warning about that in advance.
• "That's better!", which concludes the contribution was actually a note I added to the revision I handed into Michele, and not meant to be part of the blog entry itself.
  

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I've decided to add a new gadget to my blog, so I can keep all my contributions elsewhere in one place. A bit of a blog roll anthology, if you will. Got the idea from Andrew Dumas' "Reviews" list.

The gadget's ingeniously titled "Contributions Elsewhere". You can find it sandwiched between "Labels" and "Blogs I Read".

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Settled in to watch Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest (2008) yesterday.

Hoo boy, what a terrible film.

The blurb promotes sword fights (not that I think these have a real place in vampire flicks) and we're treated to about two short scenes where this occurs.

Kelsey McCann (Elizabeth), Amy Lyndon (Mrs. Witham) and Dan Speaker (Admiral Murray) were particularly awful in their roles. Andrew Bryniarski (Dracula) was quite imposing, but was obviously riffing on Gary Oldman's portrayal in certain scenes and was probably a bit too "husky" for the role. Kept getting distracted by his squat fingers.

Even though the flick's rated M here, there's bugger-all violence (or much other stuff, for that matter). All the deaths (except Dracula's) take place off-screen. No close-up bites, nothing.

The plot bares little-to-no resemblance to the actual Bram Stoker's "Dracula's Guest", which was promoted as an excised chapter from Dracula (1897), when it was first published in a posthumous short story collection, Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Tales (1914).

If you wanna read a way more thorough review of the flick, check out Andrew's.

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Borrowed Peter Day's (ed.) Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006) and Harry A. Senn's Were-Wolf and Vampire in Romania (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982) on interlibrary loan today.

Never read Senn's book before. But what I've been flicking through so far, has been quite interesting, even if he does seem to be pretty flexible in his use of the term "vampire".

I'd love to get a copy of this book meself, but the asking price for this book can be quite steep. So, kids, if you wanna avoid forking out that kinda dough, consult your local library about interlibrary loans!

Peace out.

Yep, Another Contribution Elsewhere

Ah, I've been waiting for this one to get published.

What, I didn't mention I had written another contribution elsewhere?

Surprise! Heh heh.

If you mosey on down to VampChix (VC), you'll notice my contribution, which was as requested by Michele Hauf.

In "Just a Quick One", I said I'd explain my "amateur vampirologist" tag at some future point. The blog entry I submitted does just that.

However, just as with my previous contribution elsewhere, some formatting errors seemed to have crept in. Except, in this case, it's also had a few other things snuck in, too.

Time to dissect.

Firstly, I am referred to in the intro as a "self-proclaimed Vampirologist." Ok, fair label. After all, I do refer to myself as one. But I thought the studying vampires bit was self-evident. Vampirology, after all, isn't exactly an established science. There's no real formal qualification to make you one. As Jay Stevenson notes in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires (Indianapolis, IN: Alpha, 2002):

Unlike demonology, which once enjoyed a certain degree of official support from the Church, vampirology has no major institutional underpinnings outside of fan clubs and research societies (28).

Next up, the following portion of my blog entry for VC...

Soon after, I began devouring all I could on the subject. A few books that I particularly enjoyed at this time were Lynn Myring's Vampires, Werewolves & Demons (1979), Colin and Jacqui Hawkins' Shriek! A Compendium of Witches, Vampires and Spooks (1985) and I even attempted to wade my way through Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (1988), even if a lot of it went over my head.

...was interspersed with Amazon links I didn't originally supply.

Nor did I originally include an Amazon link in, "When I got to high school, I found a copy of John Skipp and Craig Spektor's Fright Night novelisation (1985)". Didn't put one in this - "I later read Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) [...]" - either.

More Amazon links magically turn up in the following paragraph:

At this time, I was also buying and borrowing non-fiction vampire works. I got Manuela Dunn-Mascetti's Vampire: The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead (1994) for my thirteenth birthday. Later, it'd be accompanied by works like Matthew Bunson's Vampire: The Encyclopædia (1993) and J. Gordon Melton's The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead (1994).

The link for Tales from the Cryptkeeper, should have led you here, instead of a dead link.

Something went haywire on VC, in which this...

Now, I should state, that I didn't necessarily join it because I actually believed in Manchester's claims (or in vampires, in general), but it served its purpose. However, when it came to discussing certain matters on the Highgate Vampire case, I found my voice being somewhat restricted, so I founded my own forum to discuss it. This would later lead to a blog of the same name.

...was rendered as this:

Now, I should state, that I didn't necessarily join it because I actually believed in Manchester's claims (or in vampires, in general), but it served its purpose. However, when it came to discussing certain matters on the Highgate Vampire case , I found my voice being somewhat restricted, so I founded my own forum http://wampyrinhighgate.multiply.com/journal/item/31 to discuss it. This would later lead to a blog of the same name http://dawwih.blogspot.com/ .

Something similar happened with another paragraph that went from this...

This, in turn, led me to a blog by Danish vampirologist, Niel K. Petersen. We both shared similar interests in vampire folklore and classic vampire studies. His blog was part of the reason I started my own, Diary of an Amateur Vampirologist.

...to this:

This, in turn, led me to a blog http://magiaposthuma.blogspot.com/ by Danish vampirologist, Niel K. Petersen. We both shared similar interests in vampire folklore and classic vampire studies. His blog was part of the reason http://doaav.blogspot.com/2008/07/just-quick-one.html I started my own, Diary of an Amateur Vampirologist .

And lastly, I didn't originally include an Amazon link in Martin V. Riccardo's name.

All said and done, it's one of my favourite blog entries. Hope you like it too!

Online Non-Fiction Vampire Bibliographies

It's not easy coming across online listings for vampire books of a non-fiction persuasion (i.e., the ones I prefer in the vampire genre).

So thank goodness for for Vampress.net's "Non-Fiction" listing.

There's also the relatively scanty "Non Fiction Works" over at The Vampire Library and paranormal romance author, Michele Hauf, also gives listings of such books on her "Non-Fiction" page.

Her list is fairly good and current, however, I also wrote to her a while ago with some corrections:

From: Anthony Hogg
Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 4:25 PM
To: toastfaery@gmail.com
Subject: Notes on Your Non-Fiction List

Good afternoon,

Firstly, it's great to see that you've published a list of non-fiction books, as available here: http://www.michelerhauf.com/vampnon.html

However, I noticed serveral errors on the list, that bear correcting.

They are:

"Conru, Kevin - VAMPIRES: A BLOODTHIRSTY HISTORY IN ART AND LITERATURE - Astrolog Pub. House - 8/03"
The actual author is listed as Diana Phillips-Summers.

"Dickie, James - THE UNDEAD - Pocket Books - 1976"
A collection of short vampire sorts, not a non-fiction book about vampires.

"Hetherington, Grant - EVOLUTION OF THE VAMPIRE - Xlibris Corp. - 7/98"
Deceptive title. It's a work of fiction. See plot synopsis on the Amazon link.

"Jerome, Joseph - MONTAGUE SUMMERS: A MEMOIRE - 1965"
Memoir.

"Johnson, VW - DHAMPIR: CHILD OF THE BLOOD - Mystic Rose Books - 1996 (fiction?)"
Yup. Fiction.

"London, Sandra - VAMPIRES OF TRUE CRIME - Feral House - 10/03"
Proper title: True Vampires: Blood-Sucking Killers Past and Present.

"Lovell, Marc - AN ENQUIRY INTO THE EXISTENCE OF VAMPIRES - Doubleday - 1974 re: Vampire in The Shadows - Coronet Books '74 (fiction?)"
Great title, shame it's only a novel. It is mentioned - with a brief plot synopsis - here: http://www.simegen.com/reviews/vampires/gravedig.htm

"VAMPIRE BOOK: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE UNDEAD - Visible Ink Press - 1994re: 2nd Edition 11/03"
The 2nd edition was actually published in 1998. Or 1999. I'm still not 100% which. The 2003 version, however, is a reprint.

"Perkowski, Jan L. - THE DARKLING: VAMPIRES OF THE SLAVS - Slavica Publishers - 1976"
I think you've gotten mixed up with his 1989 book, which is called The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism. His 1976 book, however, is simply called Vampires of the Slavs.

"DRACULA: ESSAYS ON THE LIFE AND TIMES OF VLAF TEPES - East European Studies #323 - 1991"
I think you mean Vlad!

"Walker, John Edward - THE ORIGIN OF THE VAMPIRE: HOW IT ALL STARTED - Dorrance Pub. Co. - 1/99"
I, too, have been decieved by the book's title before. It's actually a work of fiction. Check out its description on the Amazon link you provided.

"STAGE BLOOD: VAMPIRES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY STAGE"
This book was written in 1994, and is by Roxana Stuart, not Dudley Wright.

"Yougston, Keanne Keyes"
Should be Youngson, not Youngston.

All that said, your list provided me with a serious of interesting sources I've never come across before. So, I appreciate that.

Sinc.,
Anthony Hogg

Remember to be vigilant, folks!