Bell, Book and E-Mail

Shortly after I wrote this, I contacted Mr. Bell ("Food for the Dead", Wednesday, 5 May 2010 4:45:07 PM) as to whether his blog was the upcoming book, or if the book's gonna be available hardcopy.

I also asked about the "privately published" 2009 edition of Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires, that he sells through his site. How does it differentiate from the 2001 Carroll & Graf original?

In terms of the sequel, The Vampire's Grasp: America's Restless Vampires, and its intended format, he mentioned ("Re: Food for the Dead‏", Sunday, 9 May 2010 1:16:14 AM) that, "The blog is basically a preview of some of the material I will be including in a hardcopy version of the new book."

And here's what he wrote concerning Food's 2009 edition:

Food for the Dead went our of print when the publisher, Carroll & Graf, was bought by the publisher of Basic Books, who eliminated the C&G imprint, so that everything that C&G had published was out-of-print. People still contacted me requesting copies, so I decided to have it reprinted. The text, photos, pages of the reprint are identical to the C&G trade paper edition. The cover is glossy instead of mat.

If you haven't got a copy of Food yet, then you're missing out! As I said before, it's "a classic of the vampirological genre." It even won the 2002 Lord Ruthven Award for Non-Fiction.

So, as you can imagine, I'm pretty enthused about the sequel. Still not crazy about its title, though.

More Food for the Dead

Whoa, stop press!

Last night, I found out that Michael E. Bell's got a new book in the pipeline. Name doesn't ring a (heh heh) bell?

He wrote Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires (2001), certainly a classic of the vampirological genre.

The upcoming tome is no mere updated edition. It's a sequel tentatively called The Vampire’s Grasp: America’s Restless Vampires. Can't say I'm too crazy about the title.

But still, a sequel. That's a hell of a rarity in vampire non-fiction. In fact, off the top of my head, I can't even think of another example. I'm presuming, of course, that Bell's using the "sequel" tag literally.

He's got a blog for the book, too.

On review though, I guess his blog is the book. That'd explain the chapter headings...hahaha. Hmm, well, at the very least, I hope it becomes available in hardcopy (with extra material)!

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Have a read of Michael Bell's interview in The Believer's current issue.

Bell's best known for his 2001 work, Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires. It's one I highly recommend, by the way.

Anyhoo, here's a snippet from the link:

THE BELIEVER: How do you know when you’ve found a real vampire?

MICHAEL BELL: Well, when you get familiar enough with the vampire tradition, there are certain cues and motifs—little narrative elements that stand out—and make you realize “OK, this is probably something I’m interested in because it’s similar to the vampire tradition,” and then there are other elements that seem to be directly from popular culture that don’t fit, and you can tell pretty quickly one from the other. Basically I look for cases where the people involved were dying from a specific condition—where they exhumed the bodies, what they did to the bodies—cutting out the heart, et cetera. Those are the things I’m looking for.