Werewolf Week: In Sickness and in Health

I set In Sickness and in Health in Hungary, although the only evidence of that are people walking around named Hristo and Nadia. Jeff and I wrote most of these before the podcasting idea for them was firm, but still with some notion that if I was to read this aloud, I might need access to a Hungarian accent. And an accent different from a German one, or a Russian one, or a Borat.

I've skipped it entirely. From my voice, Hristo and Nadio could be living in Hoboken. Their locaiton doesn't matter to the story, which is partially why I threw it over to a country I knew little about, but knew had enough people there to contain a possible werewolf. I might continue that: there's plenty more international stories in the pipeline, and I don't want to sound like Boris Badanoff or Apu for all these readings. - Sean

Werewolf Week: The Church of the CC Redeemer

CC stands for cynocephaly, but that's a long awkward word that either raises the hackles on your spine or prompts absolutely no reaction other than "huh. Weird word." Google “St. Christopher” and “cynocephali” if you want a freaky bit of information about Biblical lycanthropy.

The Church of the CC Redeemer isn't really about that, but is more about the persistence of faith. The man who does not believe in aliens, after he sees a spaceship, still does not believe in aliens. The man who believes in aliens still believes after finding out Alien Autopsy was a fake. I wanted to take that to a terrible extreme, and so I plunged one hand in water and the other into the third rail of horror writing: religion. Luckily for me, the story's over in two minutes.

Werewolf Week: Cry of the Wolf

Cry of the Wolf is about filming a werewolf movie, and not one I would probably like. I'd watch it, though, and I bet most horror fans would do the same. Good and bad don't quite mean much with horror. Open a horror movie in theaters, and it's more or less review-proof. People want to have things jump out at them, they want to see the latest entry in the genre, and they'll show up no matter what.

A few good horror movies I seek out in theaters (the last one I absolutely had to see in theaters was The Descent last summer) but most I'll catch through assorted methods. TV, cable, Netflix, borrowing it from my brother, streaming it online - there's lots of ways to catch up for under $10. And there's so many to catch up on, why pay $10 for the thing you've got to leave your house for?

That's just my philosophy, of movie theaters becoming exclusively for social purposes. Ironic, since you just sit there silently. All that money is for the ability to see the movie right now, on a big screen, and for five minutes of post-movie conversation. "Yeah, it was good. That, uh, that guy with the hat. He was funny. I'm parked over there. Smell ya later!" That's what you paid $10 for. - Sean

Werewolf Week: Lessons From a Lifetime of Lycanthropy

The title of this story is adapted from a writing book by David Morrell. I heard him speak at the Horror Writers Association meeting last year. One of his big statements was "platform"-- the book industry talk for the support the author has in going to press with a book.

Fiction authors get a pretty cruddy shake with platform, unless they're famous. Nonfiction authors have it a bit easier, but only if you're writing about what your job expertise is and you have decades of experience. Even then, odds aren't good that you book will rise above the chaff of others out there.

Platform runs publishing so much, it seems, that people with platform but without writing ability regularly get book deals. An American Idol I won't name "wrote" her autobiography, where she admitted she didn't know how to read or write. Another "actress" "wrote" a book by posing for the cover image, and having someone else write it. I'm scared to think if these books are selling well: if they are, then marketing has evolved to the point where a spiral of pony loaf will outsell Rudyard Kipling, because the horse belongs to Nicole Ritchie.

Lessons From a Lifetime of Lycanthropy has nothing to do with Morrell -- no Rambo, no Captain America, no descents into creepy abandoned buildings. But it's a thinkpiece, to quote Almost Famous. Which means no on-camera deaths. Sorry. They're implied, though!

Werewolf Week: Battle-Hardened Vets

What an awkward day to post on a horror web site. This being the sixth anniversary of the day that wrecked so many lives - and started the process of wrecking so many millions more - you'd think everyone would have something relevant to say. But most of us come up blank.

Together, Jeff and I just barely have a week's worth of stories about modern terrorism. It's not the sort of imaginative storytelling we're looking to write and you're (presumably) looking to consume. If you want short stories about terrorism-related atrocities, help yourself to the international section of any newspaper. About once a week, I see a story from Iraq that fits the pattern of stories here well, aside from it being real. We only get involved if we think up of stories that just wouldn't be conceivable - and there's not too much that inconceivable in Mesopotamia now.

Our official celebration of 9/11, Battle-Hardened Vets, will mark the occasion the same way most Americans mark it: by doing nothing outside the usual activities, although tinged with guilt that we can't think of something useful of symbolic to do. Free hint on that measure: blood donation. One of the few upsides of the real world over the Daily Scares world is that the blood donations go to real people, and not to the vampires that have infiltrated the Red Cross. - Sean

Werewolf Week: Mean Streak

Werewolf Week brings up one of the problems we'll run into a lot here: tipping our hands in the subject line. We've each got our share of stories with a final sentence of someone noticing a Robin-Williams-level of hirsuteness and saying "Uh oh." And those all have big fat spoilers on them now. We've got enough that from the start . But a few favorites go the other way, and hopefully you don't mind one out of seven having a twist ending that's not too tough to untwist.

Officer Maglorie's fate in Mean Streak is not a particularly strong one, both for the aforementioned subject line and because he's a cop in a horror story. No one ever enters the police force based on their survival rate in horror stories. For all the cliche talk of how African Americans, drug users and the sexually promiscuous get offed in slasher films, when was the last time you saw an intact police force by the time the credits rolled? The survival rate only drops when you shift from well-armed cop to flashlight-wielding security guard. Those poor souls might as well wear signs: "ALIEN PARASITES: EAT ME!" - Sean

Werewolf Week: The Waning Gibbous

I may have said this before, but I want to emphasize it: there is no such thing as a first-person vampire story. None. It doens't exist, it can't exist. It's like a romance about a lonely guy in a box who never ever meets another human being. It's missing a crucial componnet.

That component is the external. Most every culture has a vampire myth, and a werewolf myth. Vampires are the external evil, werewolves the internal evil. Scared a child predator is on the loose? That fear is what fuels Dracula. Scared you might be that predator? Start howling at the moon.

First-person vampire stories obliterate the external evil by putting you in its shoes. It's using the trappings of a vampire story to tell a werewolf story. Imagine a "dragon" story about dragons that turn scaly at the moon and are killed by silver and the next morning the naked guy wakes up in shredded clothes full of shame, yadda yadda ya. That's a classic werewolf story, except with the "werewolf' elements mutated to be draconian. (I know that's not what the word means, but Dragonlance gave us definition number 2 for "draconian.")

I say this because, as a werewolf fan, I'm tired of vampire story after vampire story being werewolf stories using vampire tropes. Put down the face powder and pick up the furry mask. Make it an honest werewolf story.

The Waning Gibbous is such a story, although as you'll see I've taken a rather severe liberty to one aspect of the mythos. Still 100% wolfie, no vampiness to it at all.