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I, Vampyre
by Maya Aranya

"1. A bloodsucking ghost or reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep. 2. One who lives by preying on others; a bloodsucker..."
--- Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

I have always walked among you, a child of the night, who does not drink... wine. You picture me, a "vampire" : sophisticated, European, a natural aristocrat - in short, a Count who talks like Bela Lugosi and walks by night - only by night. For such as I, the blood is the life. I drink the fresh blood from the living, for I have none of my own.

In more recent years, many of your writers have reinvented me in their own imaginations: Tim Powers, Kim Newman, Mercedes Lackey, and many more, though Anne Rice's Lestat and other vampires also have a sophistication about them that is reminiscent of the elegant Dracula played by Lugosi, and later by Christopher Lee. I've made my mark on the silver screen, and how! The movie vampires of today are knowledgeable, elegant, cultured, savage and lawless. Also, (and I approve) they are very good to look at! Recognition at last: part of your modern view of my kind is an element which separates us from all other fiends and ghouls: vampires have sex appeal!

But my most enduring aspect is death - and all the associations with your own mortality: the eternal human questions about death, the afterlife, and whether or not you have a soul...

"The blood is the life," said Bela Lugosi's Dracula (a phrase originally found in the Bible); later adding, "to die, to be really dead - that must be glorious." Life, death and blood: the ancient obsessions that have stayed with you since antiquity are at the very core of my legend.

My story dates back to the earliest times of human civilization to the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Indians, the Egyptians. Though your ancestors did not quite see me the same way that you do today...

They were writing about me in Mesopotamia 3500 years ago, near the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, and with Assyrian writings on clay or stone tablets. The ancient Greeks believed in the lamiae, blood thirsty monsters preying on children. The first Lamia, as the story goes, was the lover of Zeus; but Zeus' wife, Hera, cursed her. Lamia was driven insane, and killed her own children. At night, it was said, she hunted other human children to kill as well.

In ancient India, they were painting me on the walls caves since 3000 B.C. Every Indian child knew of me, the Vaital, hanging upside-down from a tree, like a bat, with no blood to call my own but that which I stole from passing creatures. In ancient China, as Kiang Shi, I prowled at night and drained the blood of the trembling peasants by the great yellow river. In Japan, I was the Gaki who preyed on the unsuspecting traveler who didn't carry the necessary charm to ward me off.

I lived in Mexico before the Spanish Conquistadors came, according to Montague Summers, at least. He wrote a 1928 book "The Vampire - His Kith and Kin" - quite a classic. Beings like me, called Ghul, appeared in the "Tales of the Arabian Nights". And in Africa too, my legend lives. One tribe, the Caffre, believed that the dead could return and survive on the blood of the living.

It was all a misunderstanding, really...

Throughout history, you humans have been blaming my kind for phenomena that you could not otherwise explain. One of the largest disasters that were blamed on vampires was the Black Death in Europe. The Black Death was actually an epidemic of Bubonic plague spread by fleas and rats. The plague may have killed as much as a third of the population of Europe in the 1300s. (Which was made life pretty difficult for me too, believe me.) Many people of the time associated the multitude of deaths with vampires. Can you imagine, they actually thought a person who died of the plague could return from the grave to put the bite on his relatives, turning the victim into a vampire as well.

Some of the peculiar things those people did were actually amusing (well, it's amusing if you have twisted sense of humor, and I do). Many graves were dug up and the bodies of suspected vampires were horribly mutilated to "kill" the monster. There were some truly ridiculous methods used to identify vampires. For example, a virgin was placed naked on a horse, and the horse was paraded through a graveyard. If the horse (no doubt far more intelligent than the people around it) decided not to walk over a grave, this was assumed to be the resting place of a vampire. The body was immediately exhumed and mutilated. Naturally, this had no effect whatsoever on the plague devastating the region, but this only helped to redouble the vampire hunting efforts of the survivors.

Corpses were buried face-down, so that if the corpse became a vampire it would dig deeper into the ground in an attempt to escape the grave. Wooden stakes were planted in the ground above the grave, so if the body rose it would stab itself on the stake - hopefully through the heart. Large rocks were often placed over the grave to prevent the corpse's return: a precursor to the modern tombstone? Those medieval types had odd ideas. They'd go around exhuming corpses at the slightest pretext.

The natural process of decomposition after death convinced people that recently interred corpses were actually transforming into vampires: the hair and nails continued to grow, indicating continued life; the corpse bloated from naturally occurring gases in the body; blood sometimes appeared near the mouth as a natural result of bodily decay, indicating the drinking of blood; the generally horrible appearance of the corpse complete with pale skin, indicated a vampiric need for blood.

Smelly stuff...

The most commonly known substances used to scare me away were herbs like garlic. People during the Middle Ages believed that the horrible smell of the dead was related to the Black Death, and that the deaths were somehow related to vampires. Naturally, herbs would be used to counteract the smell of death, considering the potent aroma of garlic. Garlic had been used as a medicinal herb since the ancient Romans. Personally, I don't care for it much, but to each his own, I always say.

Other methods to prevent vampiric outbreaks gained currency throughout Europe. In England, people who committed suicide were buried at crossroads (a sign of the cross made by roads) to prevent the corpse from becoming a vampire. In some countries, a spike made of ash wood, if driven through the chest, was believed to kill a vampire - this remains the most popular method, a stake through the heart. (Barbaric, really.)

By then, I was clearly seen as a thing of evil, (a clear case of bad public relations) and the believability of my villainy was reinforced by Christian doctrines such as life after death, the resurrection of the body, and "transubstantiation." This last was a concept based on the Last Supper and the dogma of Pope Innocent the III in 1215 A.D., that the "bread and wine" and its equivalent during Christian Communion literally transubstantiated into the actual body and blood of Christ. People who adhered to this belief, and who consumed the blood of Christ, would have little difficulty in believing the corrupted corollary to this - the drinking of blood by evil demons, namely, people like me.

The power of the crucifix or holy cross to scare off vampires dates back to Medieval England. A writer named William of Newburgh discussed the case of a man who died in the 12th century A.D. Supposedly he rose from the dead to torment his wife. After causing much consternation with the local villagers and clergy, the bishop of the region pardoned the corpse in writing for all his past sins. The grave was opened and the actual written pardon was placed over the body of the "vampire." The body was apparently still in good condition without signs of decay, sure proof of vampirism. But fortunately for everyone, once the pardon was placed in the grave, the vampire visited no more. A remarkably more polite way of dispatching the monster than the usual: burning the corpse, ripping out its heart, chopping off its head, or giving it the old wooden stake through the heart. On the whole, I prefer such civilized methods to the alternative.

Eventually, human ignorance and superstition gave way to reason and the rise of the scientific method. Medical science was able to prove that plagues, such as the Black Death, were not spread by evil, metaphysical vampires but had a very physical, although microscopic, biological basis. Of course, this didn't mean that I vanished from the popular consciousness, not at all, no.

But what's in a name...

You've been calling me all kinds of names throughout your history, but 'vampire' is how you know me now. The term 'vampir' was used in Russia and in other lands such as Poland and Serbia. The word vampir may possibly be derived from the Magyar (Hungarian) language, or is perhaps related to the Russian word 'peets' which means "to drink."

In old Wallachia they knew me as the Murony, a shapeshifting vampire who could change into a dog, a cat, or even an insect. Over in that part of the world, every sudden death was laid at my door - or coffin-lid. Sometimes a long spike or nail was punched into the skull of a dead body to prevent it from returning from the grave. I may, in fact, also be the basis of the werewolf legend in the area, a living human who became a dog or wolf at night and hunted animals, especially cattle.

The English word "vampire" or "vampyre" was first seen in the early 1700s. Its exact origin is unknown. There were other terms your forefathers used, from the Spanish vampiro and Latin vampyrus, to the unquestionably German-sounding Blutsaeuger (literally, "Bloodsucker") and the elegant French version: Le Vampire, which I confess I prefer.

"Nosferatu", another Eastern European term, is often used synonymously with "vampire". The Western world became acquainted with this term first with the Irish writer Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula. Later, in 1922, the word appeared again with the first film ever made about the evil Transylvanian count, "Nosferatu."

David J. Skal, a modern researcher of vampires, states that the word "nosferatu" was a mistake or alteration of the Romanian word nesuferit, which comes from ancient Latin and means "not to suffer," or could imply "insufferable" or "intolerable" - all words descriptive of my, er, offensive personality. Bram Stoker may have discovered the word "nosferatu" while doing research for his book. He apparently read a manuscript written by Emily de Laszowska Gerard in 1885, 'Transylvanian Superstitions', (I'm in it, of course) where she used the term "nosferatu" in place of "nesuferit." It is also possible that "nosferatu" could have been a slang term or variant for "nesuferit."

Another very strong part of the modern vampire legend is the association with Transylvania (literally, 'The land beyond the forest') - a real place in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. The people in the region have a very old vampire tradition. Good for them.

The Who's Who of Vampires

Fictional vampires

Other than Stoker's Dracula, there were other literary vampires in the same period: Polidori's The Vampyre in 1819, with its hero/villain vampire character, Lord Ruthven, modeled after the famous poet Lord Byron. As a product of the same writing competition out of which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Polidori developed his own tale of a vampire based on suggestions from Lord Byron. An odd muse, that.

Then there was Carmilla, written in 1872 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; also an 1847 English story called Varney the Vampyre. But the fictional variants were perhaps less frightening than some of the true stories going around...

The "Blood Countess."

The deeds of a 16th century Hungarian countess named Elizabeth Bathory would outdo the tales of horror told in almost any land. When he was doing research for his novel about vampires, Bram Stoker came across a book called The Book of Werewolves by Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould. The work contained a description of the sinister deeds of the so-called Blood Countess. In fact Elizabeth's cousin, Stephan Bathory, would one day become a prince in Transylvania.

Elizabeth was an educated and clever woman, but she had a cruel streak a mile wide. Apparently becoming conscious of her own mortality after the death of her husband, she became sadistic towards her servants and eventually sought to acquire eternal life, or longevity, or at least the appearance of youthful skin, by washing in blood. (And they said Cleopatra and her bath of asses' milk was weird.) Bathory beat her victims routinely and mutilated them. There were possible acts of cannibalism as well; Bathory once took several bites out of the flesh of a living servant girl. As the body count grew, Bathory's servants dumped the corpses outside the castle. When the local peasants found the bodies, drained of blood, naturally they assumed vampires killed them.

In 1610 she was arrested after her ill-judged attempts to kill girls of nobler birth; the grounds for arrest pertained to witchcraft. The countess' assistants were put to death by the authorities and Elizabeth was imprisoned in her bedroom in her Castle in the Carpathian Mountains, until her death years later. The only real evidence of Bathory's atrocities were recalled in her two trials in 1611 -- though she was never allowed to appear personally in court.

And how about the guy you people unquestionably see as the Ultimate Vampire: more than a century after his creation in 1897, Dracula is still the archetypical vampire image.

The Real Dracula

He was known as Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler, or - since his father was called Dracul (which meant devil or dragon) he was also called Dracula, which means "son of Dracul." Vlad Dracula was a real Romanian prince who lived in the 15th century who was noted for his military campaigns against the Turks. In Romania he is considered a patriot and a hero, even today. Vlad was also a mass murderer and whose favorite form of killing was impalement. Vlad Dracula once enjoyed dining amidst a forest of impaled bodies. The stories say he once killed 20,000 Turks in this way and lined them up as scarecrows to terrify any further enemies. For variety, he also enjoyed chopping up and cooking his victims. A real party animal.

Influenced by Vlad Dracula, the vampire which Bram Stoker actually wrote about was uglier than the villain in the film versions. Hollywood really polished up my image. Vampires, according to legend, were essentially ugly, smelly, non-decomposed corpses. But today, most of you think of me as a suave, elegant, somewhat ruthless, but sexy and sophisticated creature. Quite a change there.

The Scientific Explanation (The "Bah, humbug" factor)

In recent years, some of your scientists have theorized that persons accused of vampirism in ancient times may have actually suffered from a medical disorder known today as porphyria. The bodies of people with this condition cannot produce the correct amount of red blood. Cerainly, people with this disease do not become vampires; the porphyria theory is an attempt to explain the irrational beliefs of the ignorant.

Another disorder which could cause people in olden days to suspect a case of vampirism was extreme anemia. In this event, the patient is low on red blood cells. A severe case could make the patient's skin appear pale - clearly a sign of vampirism.

Catalepsy is another medical condition which could have been mistaken for evidence of vampirism. The patient suffers a form of temporary paralysis and appears dead. It is quite possible that some people historically were actually buried alive while suffering from catalepsy. If this person came out of the paralytic state after a premature burial, the resulting confusion with vampirism would be obvious. Imagine witnessing a "corpse" struggling to free itself from a fresh grave or a coffin... They'd be cutting wooden stakes at once.

And finally...

Whatever you may believe, this much, I think, is true: your society's view of the vampire does emerge from your own view of the world. At any given point in human history, the way you see me is a reflection of your own mindset, perhaps revealing more about your society than about me.

Given my famous longevity, it's safe to say that I'll still be around, when your children's children are scaring themselves to sleep around their campfires -
I, Vampyr.

Pissin' in the Wind: Why do we do it? And how can we make it easier for ourselves?
By Phil Colvin

It's the same old story. You have an idea, you have some characters, you've done the research and you've wetted the appetites of your potential audience with the best teaser you can manage. But then, you sit down and try to write the damn thing. Your brain freezes, the ideas suddenly seem twenty times more convoluted than when you cooked them up and you're trying to think of ways to explain Grace's death from the first scene.

Welcome to the world of writer's block. It happens to the best of us, and it can strike at any time. Common scenarios see writers sitting down frozen ands trying to write something, or simply writing crap or maybe not even getting around to the sitting down part because they're trying to do a million and one other things around the house. They say that if you're not a writer by trade, you're going to have to deal with the block before you start. Which is great news for us amateur fanfic writers... But nowadays, the trend has been for the experienced writers to be suffering. Every year the amateur writers continual make marks on the literary world, sweeping the prizes whilst the old hands sit back complaining that this year "the ideas just weren't flowing."

It doesn't help when writer's block is confused with an inability to write, because that's not what it is. If everybody who had writer's block had given in the first time then we'd have a heck of a lot less choice in our English Lit. exams. But why are some people able to produce reams of seemingly well researched, impeccably thorough and beautifully presented prose whilst others are (in the words of G. Knight) just pissin' in the wind? The most major constraint is time. Whether it's not having time to sit down and write, or trying to write too much in a short space of time, it's always your greatest enemy. To put simply, there is no specified amount that anyone should produce in a certain amount of time.

Some writers swear they can only go to bed at night after putting 2000 words towards their next masterpiece, they're lying. And putting such limits to yourself can be damaging. There is nothing worse than rushing yourself. This is particularly true commercially, in the film world writers are sometimes given as little as three weeks to write the script for a Hollywood blockbuster, and it shows. Independence Day was written in a two week "do or die" format, Chris Carter wrote The X-Files Movie screenplay at an average of ten pages a day for ten solid days. To be blunt, it's the not the way to stay healthy.

So making time and pacing yourself can help, just as long as you're in the right frame of mind. Ever tried writing the latest part of that romantic scene in your fanfic the day after you split with your girlfriend? Don't be surprised if you chuck it out in the re-read. And sure, that action scene with the Phantom Clown and twenty megaton bomb looked great after watching Die Hard, but does it really fit in to your Gabe and Grace character building story line? Even if it's only once a week, make sure it's a time when you're in the right frame of mind.

The situation where you're most likely to dry up is when you look at your plan (or are thinking up the plan as you go along) and realize you're going to need at least 50000 words to tell your story the way you want to and somehow you're going to have to transfer it all to paper. Sci-Fi writer Spider Robinson said that "You're always writing, you're just not typing yet." Sometimes, instead of sitting there hammering the keyboard you just need a session where you think the whole thing through in your head. Even reading through last week's work can help, especially if it's a particularly long piece. You may find plot elements you mentioned in Chapter 2 which you haven't even touched on yet which could make the perfect link towards your conclusion. It can help the whole thing gel together, instead of just being a selection of separate stories which appear to be joined by nothing more than situation. Arguably the Titanic script was little more than two movies pieced together. One a classic `girl meets bad boy' romance, the other a "historically accurate" portrayal of a disaster. If there was a persistent theme, it was that of life, whether it be beginning, ending or just sitting there in the freezing cold waiting to die. Yet however ropy it appears on paper, it worked in practice. This brings me on to my final point, sometimes it's all a gamble.

Everyone is their own worst critic. John Cleese still wants somebody to tell him what was funny about Fawlty Towers, he hasn't found it despite repeated viewing. You could find yourself casting off a more than passable piece of work because your own expectations were too high, too low or just totally different. This is true for anybody. I wrote a particularly ropy GK fanfic a couple of years back called Nosferatu, which shamelessly stole off every modern vampire/X-files tale in the last few years yet to this day I still get comments about how much people enjoyed the fresh take on the subject.' And when I re-wrote my Christmas theme fanfic a month or so back because I thought a lot of the one-liners had gone stale, I got mails asking why I'd ruined perfectly good jokes.

Perhaps I have it all wrong, and it's just the readership who are loonies. In a society where voters are actually becoming politically motivated, we have to wonder what the world is coming to. Really, there is only one way to avoid writers block and be convinced of your own work’s worth and that is......err.....sorry, can't remember how to phrase it.....oh geez, writer's block again.....