Fiction Fragments: Patrick Freivald

March 26, 2021March 25, 2021Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week, I spoke with Carol Gyzander about how she’s adapted to the challenges of writing during the pandemic and she gave a little backstory about Writerpunk Press.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes Patrick Freivald, who I affectionately refer to as a belligerent nerd. Patrick is a writer, teacher, gourmand, and bee keeper who makes honey that will burn your soul, among other things.

Patrick Freivald is a four-time Bram Stoker Award® nominated author, a high school teacher (physics, robotics, American Sign Language), and a beekeeper specializing in hot pepper infused honey. He lives in Western New York with his beautiful wife, parrots, dogs, cats, chickens, and several million stinging insects. A member of the Horror Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers, he’s always had a soft spot for slavering monsters of all kinds. He is the author of eight novels and dozens of short stories, from hyper-violent kickass thrillers and teen zombie melodramas to science fiction, horror and fantasy. Find him at Patrick.Freivald.com, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and at www.FrogsPointHoney.com.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Patrick. Your Instagram account is one of the most interesting ones I follow because it gives a tangible snapshot of many of the different aspects of your life: bee keeping, honey making, cooking, teaching, your pets, your wife, and occasionally promotions for your writing. Has social media helped with the promotion of your books? Your honey business? Were you using social media as frequently as you do now before the pandemic? Do you view your social media accounts as an outlet for creativity?

PF: I handle my Instagram rather differently than my Facebook. Instagram is all about food, family, cute critters, maybe a little about teaching (though I try to keep my teaching and my social media very, very separate, ESPECIALLY given the level of vulgarity and cannibalism jokes I’ve actively cultivated on my Facebook page), while Facebook is a mind-dump of whatever’s bouncing around in my skull. Social media has definitely helped with marketing both books and Hot Honey, though by and large I think that’s because it’s been an effective way of marketing myself. I post about whatever I want–science and technology, writing, funny gifs/memes, articles about science or politics or gaming or religion or whatever strikes me as interesting. I sometimes get caught out by people thinking that just because I’ve shared something means that I believe it hook, line, and sinker, but that’s a “them” problem, not a “me” problem…usually my commentary is enough for a reasonably astute person to realize that it’s unlikely I’m fully onboard with whatever I’m sharing. And I’m rarely fully on-board with something someone else wrote.

Facebook has been awesome at promoting Frogs Point Honey (www.FrogsPointHoney.com) — a good number of people hate food posts, but lots of people love them, and I love them, so when I post delicious food things that feature Hot Honey or Rubbit or what-have-you, it draws new and existing customers often enough. The business has built up quite nicely over the past five years, and that’s with pretty much entirely word of mouth advertising, and almost all of that coming from Facebook.

I’m not using Facebook any less than before, and no more, either. I post way too often, to the extent that some people think it must be a managed page rather than just one dude with an obsessive streak and a smart phone, but I’ve been that way with online interactions since the bulletin boards of the early 1990s. When it comes to Facebook as a marketing tool, if all you do is post your own stuff then no matter how interesting you are you’re not going to get a lot of oomph out of your effort–you’ll share a bunch of stuff and get crickets in return. You have to like other people’s stuff, comment, share, etc.; and don’t do it just to game the algorithm, do it because you’ve surrounded yourself with interesting, cool people worth engaging with. It’s an opportunity to be social, to be creative, to share who you are and what you find interesting with the world.

GMM: Tell me about your latest release, Murmur. What is the premise of the book, and what inspired the story? Some of the words used to describe the book include “magical, disturbing, erotic…”. I tend to combine horror and erotica in my own fiction, and I’m always curious about writers who do the same. Why do you think horror and sex make a good pairing in fiction? Is it more difficult to write the sex scenes or the horror? Do you combine the two, or keep them separate in the narrative?

PF: Murmur is, fundamentally, about an affluent New York socialite being sexually stalked by a demon while trying to contend with the one bound to him, that he keeps in a prescription bottle. The inspiration is a combination of an old roleplaying game character and being really disappointed with a movie I’d just watched about demonic possession–it turned out to be very much the same-old same-old, extraordinarily Catholic-themed Exorcist riff, and there’s just so, so much of that out there. So I wrote a book about a kind of half-possessed guy who’d been that way for over a decade and was at a sort of détente with his “pocket demon”, Murmur.

Sex and horror make a good pairing because sex is often beautiful and wonderful and sometimes horrific and awful (at the time or later), we’ve all got our own experiences to bring to the table when we read or watch, and both lend themselves to a great deal of catharsis. I absolutely combine the two–I was somewhat inspired by David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (starring Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, with amazing support from William Hurt and Ed Harris). There are two sex scenes in that movie, the first very playful and loving, and the second very raw and downright angry, and they’re between the same two people, who are husband and wife, after some rather serious revelations upend their relationship. I don’t know that I’ve seen sex used to portray the evolution of characters and their relationships done that well anywhere else, and after rewatching it on cable I started chewing on the idea of sex as a storytelling device. The book is kind of smutty, but oh yeah do the sex and horror merge as things progress. Davis is an unreliable narrator who sees Hell and the real world overlapped all the time, and that lends to a lot of opportunities for really trippy body horror and gore amid the naked wumpledance. I took those opportunities, with gusto.

GMM: You mentioned that the flash piece you submitted as your fragment was written during Borderlands Boot Camp. Can you tell me about your experience participating in that program? What initially drew you to enroll? What did you learn about your own writing? Did you come away with some new skills or tricks to improve your writing? Would you recommend the Borderlands Boot Camp to other writers, and why?

PF: Borderlands is awesome–it’s three days cooped up in a hotel with a bunch of other writers, with workshops specifically tailored toward making you a better writer, run by absolute giants of the genre. The year I went they had the three regulars of Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and Doug Winter, and also the recently-retired editor Ginjer Buchanan and some guy you may have heard of named Peter Straub. They, and all of the attendees, each read your work and gave targeted, specific feedback–and then you had basically overnight to bang out a story using what you learned. It’s pretty grueling, but you make a lot of friends and learn a lot of things you didn’t realize you needed to learn.

I enrolled because almost all of my beta reading group are alums, they’re all fantastic writers, and they all said it was 100% worth the time and money. I learned that the only person who hates words more than I do is Doug Winter–I have a rather terse style, and he cut the bejeezus out of my manuscript, which was awesome. Ginjer had some really insightful points about the evolution of society between now and the future setting of my work, which threw my perspective on science fiction off-kilter a bit in all the right ways; in particular she asked, “Why would these people be married? I don’t believe that the institution of marriage would have survived, at least not in any form we’d really recognize”–and it was a fantastic question, and made me question a lot of assumptions I hadn’t thought to previously.

If you have the money and the time, Borderlands is absolutely worth it.

A Spiteful Man
By Patrick Freivald
“I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man.”
Anna muttered the words again and blinked away tears that obscured her daughter’s image through the scope. She took her finger off the trigger, then tossed the rifle, wig, and sunglasses in the trunk. Squeals of panic and laughter scattered across the field; a boy had plopped a toad onto Sally Walker’s lap.
“Stupid bitch. Stupid coward bitch.” Henry’s words spilled from Anna’s lips as she peeled off the latex gloves and stuffed them into her pocket. Real change took courage. Boldness. All those things Henry never let her be.
She got in the car.
4:28 pm.
Godfuckingdammit.
Twelve minutes home, twenty to clean up and get dinner on the table.
He trudged in on cue, scowled at the kitchen table.
Through sheer will her wince became a smile.
“How was work, Sweetie?”
His tools clanked against the floor, canvas bag toppling against the mound of yellowing newspapers she’d take to the dump some day.
“The fuck is this?”
“Dinner.” She patted his chair. “Stephanie’ll be down in a minute.”
He scowled, opened the fridge and popped a beer. With a grease-stained hand he scooped the fish sticks from his plate, then plucked up the rest from Steph’s.
“She doesn’t need ‘em.”
Anna grabbed his wrist. “Those’re for—”
Light shattered her equilibrium, white hot. Pain spread, red and warm across her jaw. Beer spattered the floor, the wood cool on her cheek. Henry’s boot dug into her back, steel toe a knife in her kidney.
“Your. Daughter. Don’t. Eat. Stop throwing good money after that stupid kid.”
With another beer he disappeared into the living room.
Spiteful man. Hated his wife, hated her daughter. The kind of man ain’t worthy to raise a child, ain’t worthy to walk free. Too stomach-sick to eat, she mopped up the mess and threw her dinner in the garbage before shuffling next to the TV, careful not to block the game.
“You need anything, Baby?”
Henry drained his beer and dropped the can on the floor. She took it and fetched another. And another and another. Drunk past sulking, he’d sleep, and they’d be safe.
#
“Jesus, Anna.”
She jerked away as Frank touched her cheek.
“I fell.”
“He can’t—”
“I said I fell. That badge make you deaf and stupid?”
He leaned against his patrol car, gave her the same cute scowl she’d loved in high school.
“Press charges. I’ll help.”
“I ain’t calling social. They kill families.”
“C’mon, Annie. You got to get out of there. He’s gonna hurt you. I mean, worse.”
“Oh, we’re getting out. I got a plan for me and Steph.”
Frank kicked dirt. “You can stay with me and Bev a while. We got a spare room, car you can borrow when I’m at work. Maybe get you a job down at Lucky’s?”
“I said I got a plan. Henry gon’ shit what’s comin’ his way.”
“Don’t get too clever, Babe.”
“I ain’t. And I ain’t your babe no more.”
“You fuck with him he could really hurt you.”
She met his gaze. “Oh, he ain’t never hurting us again. Bank on it.”
“What’re you—”
She wagged a finger. “A lady don’t kiss an’ tell.”
“Lady?” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Tell me when you find one, would ya?”
#
“I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man.” The stupid wig slipped. A year’s worth of hair rubber banded to a shower cap, some of it had to end up on the ground.
The tick-tock of the swing brought the blond boy into sight at regular intervals. Anna’s bruise throbbed against the wood stock, every pulse a reminder of that sickness, that spite.
Four-fifty. Time enough for Henry to get here, not enough to get home.
“Fuck him.”
She breathed out, held it, and pulled the trigger. The rifle jerked, impossibly loud. Ears ringing, she watched straw-yellow hair puff red before she cycled the chamber.
Red hair, blue shirt. Ben spun to the dirt as the round hit him high-right.
Timmy gaped at nothing until Anna sprayed his guts across the gravel next to the swing.
Running, now. Panic. Bridget’s mom dragged her behind the tractor tire sandbox. Anna took her knee with the fourth shot, rolled, and bolted for the car.
#
Flushed, breathless, she sat at the table, hands folded. Henry’s rifle lay in its case, bullets in their box. The gloves and wig and spent brass drowned at the bottom of Frog’s Point, weighed down with lead from Henry’s reloader in case the cops found them. Dinner sat on the table, three plates of all-day roast she’d have had to baby hours and hours if she hadn’t have cooked and frozen it three weeks earlier.
Henry kicked the shit out of her anyway, and she managed not to smile through it.
Upstairs, Steph slept. Safe.
#
“You okay?” Frank hugged her, maybe too tight for proper, them standing in his guest room with his wife at work.
“I’m good. Real good. First time in a long while, you know. You?”
He scowled. “I had—doesn’t matter. We nailed the bastard. That’s what counts. He…what kind of sick fuck does that?”
She shrugged, looked away. “Don’t know, you know? A monster, the real kind. I’m just…I’m just glad Stephanie weren’t there. We’re free. Finally free.”
Frank frowned. “Steph’s dead, Annie.”
“Dead? No, she’s right…” She scanned the empty room.
“Gone. She’s gone.” Frank squeezed, his embrace warm and welcome and full of poison. “I’m sorry, Sugar.”
“Nonononono. She ain’t dead. Not dead. She can’t, I only shot, it was just the boys. Ain’t no way she’s…She’s okay. Steph’s just fine. It was just boys.” Frank stiffened, stepped back. He plucked the picture from her bedside table, ran his finger down the image of her daughter’s soft cheek. “She’d have been beautiful, our girl. But it’s been nine years, Honey. We’ve both moved on. You got to let this go.”

Do you have a fiction fragment? How about your friends? Would you like to recommend someone to me aside from yourself? Drop me a line at chellane@gmail.com. See you next week!

Guidelines: Submit 500-1000 words of fiction, up to 5 poems, a short bio, and a recent author photo to the e-mail above.

The Cuckoo Girls, An Interview with Patricia Lillie

August 18, 2020Michelle R. Lane Leave a comment

Patricia Lillie grew up in a haunted house in a small town in Northeast Ohio. Since then, she has published picture books, short stories, fonts, two novels, and her latest, The Cuckoo Girls, a collection of short stories. As Patricia Lillie, she is the author of The Ceiling Man, a novel of quiet horror, and as Kay Charles, the author of Ghosts in Glass Houses, a cozy-ish mystery with ghosts. She is a graduate of Parsons School of Design and has a MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She also knits and sometimes purls.

Follow her on Twitter @patricialillie.

Patricia Lillie’s collection of disturbingly beautiful short stories, The Cuckoo Girls, takes on a journey through the darkest parts of the fairy tale forest, into houses haunted by memories as well as ghosts, and reminds us that there is horror in everyday events if we’re willing to peek behind the curtain and allow the madness to seep in. If you haven’t picked up a copy of The Cuckoo Girls, I suggest you do.

GMM: Welcome back to Girl Meets Monster, Patricia. It’s been, what? Two years since your first visit for Fiction Fragments way back in July 2018. You were one of the first writers I featured in that series and since then, you’ve had quite a bit of success. What have you been up to? What are you currently working on? And, what can we look forward to from you?

PL: Wow! That was two years ago? It doesn’t seem like it, which is odd since January of this year feels like ten years ago. As for success—congratulations on Invisible Chains and your Stoker nomination! You should have seen me doing happy dances for you. I take that back. You’re lucky not to have seen me doing happy dances since I’m a klutz. But, do know dances were danced.

What I’ve been up too? A handful of the stories in The Cuckoo Girls were written after the Fiction Fragments piece. As I mentioned there, I had lots of fragments scattered all over my hard drive and I needed to organize them. I did. Which led to some of them turning into stories. Which made me happy—so thank you for setting me on that path.

Aside from that, I have the beginnings of two novels which both keep changing direction. It sometimes takes a while for things to gel with me. I’ve also refilled that fragments folder with more beginnings. I’m evidently good at getting down the first 500–800 words of a story, and sometimes I even know the end, but finding the story that goes in between often takes time. A lot of time. This year, like for many people, hasn’t exactly been conducive to writing, but I’m slowly finding my way back. At least, I hope I am.

GMM: I finished reading The Cuckoo Girls recently and I really enjoyed the collection. I’ve always been able to lose myself in your writing, but there were a few stories that really pulled me in. One of my favorites is “The Robber Bridegroom,” which is a delightfully dark fairy tale about a young woman who is spurned by her family and community because she isn’t as attractive as her younger sister. In fact, she has some sort of deformity that requires her to wear a veil in public. But, she has a secret lover that she meets at night in the forest, and each night he confirms his desire for her even though they know almost nothing about each other beyond their carnal interests. Despite the fact that she suspects that he is dangerous she continues to see him night after night, and even chooses to be his after she finds out the truth about him.

Fairy tales are obviously an influence on your work. Not just this story, but other stories in the collection like “Mother Sylvia.” What is it about fairy tales that draws us back to them again and again? What fairy tales inspired “The Robber Bridegroom”? Which fairy tale was your favorite as a kid? What’s your favorite now? Why?

PL: Thank you—I’m so happy you enjoyed the collection!

I do love fairy tales—or folk tales—but not the idea of “fairy tale” that springs to mind for a lot of people. I didn’t have a favorite fairy tale as a kid. I didn’t dislike them, but none of my favorite stories fell into that definition. I came to love them as an adult when I studied them in conjunction with children’s literature and discovered they weren’t all the happy-ever-after, prettied-up, suitable-for-children stories we’ve come to accept. Oral tradition stories change as they’re told and retold, but some of the greatest changes come when the stories are collected and published. Those changes are often designed to make the stories more palatable to readers.

In the original 1812 edition of the Grimm Brother’s collections, the stepmothers in “Snow White,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and others were biological mothers. The idea of a birth mother planning to slaughter and eat her seven-year-old daughter (Snow White) was culturally abhorrent to the sanctified ideal of motherhood. The bad-mothers were changed to step-mothers in later editions.

Rapunzel and the prince enjoy a “merry time together” resulting in pregnancy, which leads to discovery by the witch. Imagine that in a Disney movie.

At the same time, I discovered stories from cultures beyond the familiar (to me at the time) Western European tradition. As striking as the diversity of these stories is, there’s also a surprising commonality. There are over three-hundred cultural variants (from all over the world) of what we (in our Euro-centric outlook) think of as a Cinderella-story. I’m rambling, but what I’m getting at is the fairy tale tradition is both darker and richer than the “she meets her prince and he is her salvation” idea so many of us were sold. At the same time, many revolve around women. Sometimes they are a prize to be won. Sometimes they are the protagonist. But (at least in the Euro-centric tales) they are often robbed of their agency, either by other characters or by the roles they are expected to fill in family and society. The pressure to be a good girl and find that prince is immense.

“The Robber Bridegroom” uses the main theme from the Brothers Grimm tale of the same name along with elements from Norwegian, British, and other variants of the story. The original story differs from the “meets her prince” fairy tale trope. A young woman escapes from an arranged marriage to a rich man who is not what he appears to be. Which all sort of happens in my story, but as you noted, I took it in another direction. Both of the sisters in my version are expected to fill the role which provides the most value to the family. Because they are female, they’re commodities, and their value is determined by their appearance. Both rebel. It works out well for one of them—because she makes it work out.

GMM: Your stories are often about girls and women who have experienced some form of trauma, or have been given a responsibility that weighs heavily upon them. Where does your inspiration for these characters come from? Do you consider yourself a feminist writer? How much of yourself can be found in the pages of this collection?

PL: When I began to pull this collection together, I was more than a little surprised to discover, “Oh. Hey. There is a theme here.” Where did it come from? Hell if I know. My best guess is from my coming of age during the decades of Second Wave Feminism. It’s hard to imagine now, but I was in high school when women were given the legal right to get credit cards without a man co-signing for them. That’s hardly the only change, but I like to use it as an example because it’s so inconceivable today and it wasn’t that long ago.

Of course, young and optimistic me thought things would continue to get better. Of course, they didn’t. Women’s rights came to a standstill and then moved backwards—as has the fight for equality for POC, LGBTQ people, and anyone who doesn’t fit into the 1950’s standards of power and perfection. It was all supposed to be better by now and it’s not. Life for anyone who doesn’t fit those standards is often a trauma.

As a straight, white, cis woman, the trauma inflicted on women who don’t fit into predetermined roles—or choose not to fill them—is the situation I understand the best. It’s the one I know, and apparently it creeps into my writing. I am a feminist. Am I a feminist writer? I think that’s for others to decide. I always thought I just liked spooky shit.

GMM: The theme of motherhood can be found in many of your stories. Motherhood can be really challenging and sometimes traumatic for many women without the added terror of body horror and supernatural pregnancies. “The Cuckoo Girls”, the first story in this collection, speaks to the horrors associated with pregnancy and motherhood and is an extremely unsettling tale. Why do you think this story is scary? What about pregnancy and motherhood frightens you? Why do you think pregnancy is a trope within the subgenre of body horror?

PL: Pregnancy is terrifying. Another being, nestled and growing inside your body, feeding off you—and at the same time being dependent on you for their life—is bad enough, but add in the pain of giving birth—yeah. Body horror, indeed. My fear of pregnancy is so great, it’s the main reason I’ve never given birth to a child. I have been deeply involved in the raising of a few children, and as wonderful and rewarding as that is, it’s also terrifying. So much responsibility. So much love. So much to gain, but so much to lose if things go wrong. Honestly, parenting is the hardest job a human can take on. I made an active choice not to go through pregnancy and an active choice to be involved in the lives of the children of others. I think the unsettling aspect of “The Cuckoo Girls” is there is no choice. Because motherhood is still a default expectation for women, the lack of choice and lack of control is frightening.

To go back to your previous question, apparently there is a lot of me in these stories. Damn you for making me think so hard. <smiley face here>

GMM: “That’s What Friends Are For” is a great haunted house story with a surprising ending. Have you had any paranormal experiences in your life that inspired this story?

PL: Ha. That story takes place in the house I grew up in. (Seriously. I grew up in a haunted house on the corner of Erie and Elm streets. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?) The bedroom with the closet doors? Mine. The sleepwalking brother who peed in that closet? While not paranormal, also mine. The idea that the unseen residents of the house were simply part of our life and our friends? That’s how we viewed them. Not scary at all.

Long after my parents sold the house, my sister met the then current residents. They were having the same experiences we had. However, they were terrified and convinced the presence was evil. Which made me wonder, what if ghosts are a reflection of how we see them?

GMM: What is your favorite story in this collection and why?

PL: I’m not sure which is my favorite, but I’m fond of “Alyce-with-a-Y” simply because of how it came about. You’ve probably noticed I have a habit of dropping references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice into my writing. I decided to embrace it and use Carroll’s world as the basis of a story. Frankly, I thought maybe doing so would break my Alice habit. I started the story with no real idea where it was going, and I didn’t care. I was writing for fun. I was writing to exorcise Alice. When Alyce showed up, I thought she was someone entirely different than she turned out to be, and she took me on a wild ride all the way to the end. It was a story that just happened. Is it the best story in the book? Probably not. But I had so much fun writing it! (It remains to be seen whether or not the exorcism was successful.)

Thank you so much for inviting me back to Girl Meets Monster! It’s been a blast.

You Want to Put That Where?: A Review of Elizabeth Amber’s The Lords of Satyr Series

May 17, 2020May 18, 2020Michelle R. Lane Leave a comment

About a year ago, while thrift shopping, I picked up three paperbacks with smoking hot half-naked men on the cover. Technically, that would have been enough to grab my interest, especially with this warning on the back of the books:

WARNING! This is a REALLY HOT book. (Sexually Explicit)

I don’t know about you, but as a writer of dark speculative fiction who dips her toes in erotica/paranormal romance, that is a goal worth attaining. It is my dream to have that kind of warning on the back of my books. Honestly, having someone feel embarrassed to be caught reading one of my books is something I am working hard to achieve. While I personally feel no shame in being caught reading Elizabeth Amber’s books, she did her damnedest to make me blush.

Like I said, smoking hot dudes on the covers and the promise of unspeakable perversions would have been enough, but with the added bonus of mythological creatures who worship Bacchus, the original Lord of Kink, how could I not read this series of books?

Ancient Grecian Erotica

Spoilers Ahead

The series examines the romantic lives of nine male characters, all satyrs, and the struggles they face living among humans undetected, threats to their power from both humans (EarthWorld) and non-humans (ElseWorld), while falling in love with their female partners (human and non-human) while the female partners try to thwart the efforts of the smoking hot satyrs to mate and marry them.

The novels are set in Italy, both Tuscany and Rome, with stopovers in Paris, Venice, and of course, ElseWorld. There is a stunning array of villains, all of which would lead you to believe that a certain percentage of the Italian population are sadistic perverts who thrive on enslaving others for their basest desires, and who aren’t above incest.

The female characters, almost all of which are virgins, carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and keep their darkest secrets away from the men who want to rescue them. In each book, the main story arc deals with miscommunication, one of the satyrs saving a damsel in distress after discovering all the sordid details of their pasts that they have almost no control over, and then we get a happy ending. Okay, lots of happy endings, if you know what I mean. So, essentially Elizabeth Amber has written several novels that are at their most basic level a comedy of errors, but you know, with huge satyr penises.

In fact, Elizabeth Amber never wants us to forget just how huge those satyr penises are. And, if that isn’t interesting enough, once a month at the full moon, the satyrs grow a second huge penis that disappears after the first mating during the full moon. In case you’re wondering how that extra appendage gets used during the full moon, think double penetration, but with only one partner. I’ll give you a few moments to let that sink in, pun intended.

Fun Facts About Satyr Lords

So many satyrs to choose from: There are two main satyr clans, one in Tuscany (Nicholas, Raine and Lyon) and one in Rome (Dane, Bastian, Sevin and Lucien); however, there is a satyr from ElseWorld, Dominic, who is super duper hot as well.

Magical semen: Satyrs can control the potency of their semen, and are only able to conceive with their partners on the full moon. But only if they DECIDE to impregnate their partner. Their semen also technically has healing properties and enhances their protective magic to keep their partners safe.

Blue balls = death: If the satyrs do not ejaculate within their partner at least once during the full moon, they will die. No, seriously. One of them almost dies because the woman he is trying to woo keeps refusing his sexual advances. Satyrs use this excuse on a regular basis to get laid, and it totally works.

Satyrs are heteroflexible: Two of the satyrs have relationships with somewhat unusual partners. One is involved with a hermaphrodite who has both male and female genitalia that are fully functional. And another is involved with a creature called an Ephemeral, who must inhabit the bodies of people who are about to die in order to have a tangible physical body in EarthWorld. Occasionally, she has to put on a male skin suit. Body snatchers can’t be choosers. Two of the hottest sex scenes in the novels are technically homoerotic and blur the lines between sexuality.

Virgins are irresistible: In almost every case, the love interests of the satyrs are virgins before they mate with them. Which, in most cases, causes some anxiety for these women when they see the size of the satyr penises for the first time. Not to mention the appearance of a second penis. I mean, almost invariably, the women compare the satyr penises to size of their forearms. Again, let that sink in. If you can.

Satyrs can last all night long: As you might imagine, satyrs have high sex drives and are notoriously good lovers. During full moon, they MUST have sex over and over until the dawn and take every precaution not to injure their partners. They use an elixir to essentially drug their partners, which I suppose is akin to magical Rohypnol. They employ other methods, beyond four play and lube, to make their partners’ experiences pleasurable.

I’m not going to give away anymore of their secrets and spoil all the fun, I’ll let you find out some of the other…interesting methods the satyrs use to prevent chafing. I can’t recommend this series enough. If you enjoy super hot paranormal romance. If you love huge satyr penises. If you love sexy, tall, dark and handsome romantic heroes. If you like kinky sex. If you are looking for an escape from your daily routine to the Italian countryside. These are the books for you.

Seriously, smoking hot paranormal lovers with not one, but two huge penises. What’s not to like?

Fiction Fragments: R. J. Joseph

December 14, 2018December 13, 2018Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week, Girl Meets Monster talked with Glenn Rolfe about the challenges of writing Splatterpunk. This week, R. J. Joseph is here to talk about what it means to be a woman of color writing horror.

R. J. Joseph is a Texas based writer and professor who must exorcise the demons of her imagination so they don’t haunt her being. A life-long horror fan and writer of many things, she has finally discovered the joys of writing creatively and academically about two important aspects of her life: horror and black femininity.

When R. J. isn’t writing, teaching, or reading voraciously, she can usually be found wrangling one or six of various sprouts and sproutlings from her blended family of 11…which also includes one husband and two furry babies.

R. J. can be found lurking (and occasionally even peeking out) on social media:
Twitter: @rjacksonjoseph
Facebook: facebook.com/rhonda.jacksonjoseph
Facebook official: fb.me/rhondajacksonjosephwriter
Instagram: @rjacksonjoseph
Blog: https://rjjoseph.wordpress.com/
Email: horrorblackademic@gmail.com
Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/rjjoseph

Three Questions

GMM: As a woman of color writing about black and queer characters, what obstacles have your faced when writing within the horror genre? When did you decide you were a horror writer? What influenced or inspired you to write horror stories about women of color?

RJJ: I’ve been a lifelong horror fan. I was a small child devouring horror comics, Twilight Zone, and Stephen King novels, well before I could understand any of the themes these stories presented. The horror genre appeals to my naturally dark nature, which was apparent and already well entrenched by the time I was 6 or 7 years old. I always questioned why the folks in the genre I loved so much didn’t look like me, from the writers to the actors to the characters in the books. I wanted to be the monster. I figured creating the monsters was the next best thing, so I had to write them. I started then, even though I didn’t always embrace that part of my writing persona. I couldn’t imagine not writing about the world I inhabited and navigated, a black female experiencing life through this lens. I wasn’t seeing these stories and I had to fill the void.

I wanted to be the monster.

I appreciate that you frame this question in a way that shows you know we have obstacles. They aren’t a figment of our imagination or a quest for race-baiting and creating issues. One of the biggest problems I have is in always wondering why stories are accepted or rejected. I know my writing isn’t perfect and I still have so much growth to experience within my craft, but sometimes I get rejections that just don’t offer any clarity, not even the blanket forms where the spaces between the words don’t reek of any additional interpretation. Sometimes, though, what isn’t said speaks volumes. I get that editors don’t have time to give personalized rejections all the time. But I always go back and read the publications I submit to so I can see which stories made the cut. Reading what was ultimately accepted can be excruciating. So many times, I wish the editors would have just said, “We don’t know what to do with you, blackity black woman, or your blackity black characters with their blackity black fears”. That would make me feel so much better.

I once had an editor explain to me at a book launch for an anthology one of my stories appeared in that he didn’t want me to feel as if my story was a token acceptance because I’m a black woman. He made it a point to let me know he had read some of my previous work and thought my story for the anthology was great. I had to be professional and put on my Appreciative Writerly face, but I really wanted to hug him and cry. That meant so much to me, especially coming from a white male professional in the field. Unless the project is strictly for writers of color, I’m always wondering if the acceptance was just a diversity checkmark or really based on my story.

GMM: I wrote a supernatural slave narrative as my thesis novel at Seton Hill University, and I struggled with figuring out where it fit within a genre. The novel is due to be released sometime next year and I still struggle with that idea of where it belongs. What makes it a horror novel? The violence of slavery? The fact that my narrator is a witch and that her companion is a vampire?

How do you define your chosen genre or genres when you begin with characters that may not typically appear in those genres? Is there an absence of women of color in horror?

RJJ: First, I gotta read your novel! I need to know when pre-orders open. I absolutely love historical horror. That it has people of color and witches? Super plus. My answer to what makes this horror really loops back to another obstacle I try to navigate and that is not knowing where our work fits; really, not knowing where we fit. I would say your novel is an all-around horror novel because it’s rooted in the abject terror of slavery and there is a vampire. I don’t think all witches are necessarily monsters, though, so that’s debatable. Even without the supernatural characters, slavery is horror. Yet, there’s a clear hesitance to categorize this experience in this way because that would require owning up to the facts that 1. Slavery really happened; 2. There was nothing good about it; and 3. The repercussions are still felt today. Stuffing these topics into other corners like literary fiction (the way Beloved was first categorized) or creating a whole new category like urban fiction takes some of that responsibility away. If it isn’t called horror, then the events cannot be deemed horrible. So then when serial killer novels fill the horror shelves, I’m left to wonder why lynchings or slavery aren’t considered serial killings, too…

Black women horror writers have always been around, but there hasn’t always been a willingness of the industry to see us. I think we’ve just had our writing either flat out ignored or placed in different genres because we’re women. I’ve seen industry leaders say publicly that readers only want a certain kind of horror, or that every story/book acceptance is based solely on merit. Both of these prevailing responses mean gatekeepers are fine with keeping certain stories and writers out of the genre. The only thing that might help increase visibility is more gatekeepers of color and black female writers continuing to kick the doors in and create anyway. It’s astounding that the first black female horror anthology wasn’t published until 2017. A second followed this year. How is it that both books managed to locate numerous black female horror writers and yet other anthologies/magazines/publishers can hardly ever find any? What is not genuinely sought will never be found.

GMM: When I write about monsters, I have a habit of turning the relationships between monsters and my main female characters into romantic interests even though I write about dark subjects. Is there a connection between horror and romance in your mind? Do your characters fall in love with monsters? Why, or why not?

RJJ: I envy that you can blend romance and horror so effectively! My thesis at Seton Hill was a romance novel, and while I write in both genres, I’ve not yet mastered blending the two. I do think romance and horror exist on the same continuum, in that both genres evoke such extreme feelings in readers. My favorite series ever is the Vampire Huntress series by L. A. Banks. She intertwined horror and romance so expertly that I’ve never seen anything else quite like it. I make attempts. But I tried to submit a romance short story to a major market once and the editor replied that the story was well written but it was too dark. The monsters in my stories tend to be those created through no act of their own, so they are sort of tragic creatures for whom at least one other character has an affection and some sympathy. Full on romance, though…I still aspire to that.

Left Hand Torment (excerpt), by R. J. Joseph

I was on door duty that evening, although we found we did not really need a protector. Most passersby tended not to notice our nondescript entryway in the worn down building. Even those who did notice it were deterred by the dark cloak of misery in our eyes. Despite my queerness and my race, those doorways to my soul that broadcast unspeakable rot allowed me kinship with the men inside. Her eyes held the same blackness, despite their light gray color, and it announced her as kindred, served as her password into the club. I let her in and followed her up the stairs, as my shift was done.

There was more to her life story than her eyes, apparently. The foulness of whatever tortured her spirit bubbled just underneath the surface of her being. Her dusky colored skin shone with determination and…fury. She glided ahead of me up the stairway and into the parlor, removing long white gloves as we walked. Severe burns covered both hands, the puckered skin reflecting in the lantern lights.

Even Whitson, the resident playboy, did not set his flirtations upon her. He simply asked her what she was drinking, the same as he did the rest of us. He often told us that he did not seek companionship with fellow sufferers. He said their beds were already too full with them and their demons.

“Bourbon, please.” The rich tones slid from her throat and escaped into the quiet murmur of the fifteen of us. She accepted her glass gracefully and settled herself into a chair close to the fireplace.

Not forgetting our Texas manners, we quieted down and allowed the lady the floor. I watched her take a sip from her glass.

“Merci.” She accented the appreciation with a brisk nod to the side. When she gazed back at us, the flames from the fire flickered around the shadows resting beneath the smoky orbs of her haunted eyes. She pulled her bonnet off and placed it on the table next to the chair. Kinky curly strands spilled down to her shoulders and the room gave a collective gasp as the flames caught the sandy tresses. This was the only acknowledgement we gave to her beauty that night.

Without preamble, she spoke, in accented tones. “My name is Dominique Aimee Beaulieu and I was born and reared in New Orleans. I had an ordinary childhood, if that as the daughter of a placee` on Rampart street could be called such. Papa and Maman loved me very much and I was a rather spoiled child. They loved each other, as well. I know Papa loved her more than he loved his wife. But he could not stay with us all the time. I once asked Maman why he had to leave and stay away so often and she explained to me that we could not be selfish and keep him all to ourselves. He had another family with whom he had to stay most of the time, but he was always thinking of us.

“Maman had a picture of a beautiful woman with blond hair and she often gazed wistfully at it when she thought Papa and I weren’t looking. I would ask her about the woman, whose features I saw staring back at me in the mirror, albeit through darker skin. Maman would evade the answer until I turned sixteen. When I finally got my answer, I also got the explanation for our way of life.

“‘This is my sister, your aunt. Papa’s other wife. He met me as he courted her and wanted me for his left hand wife. She knows about us but cannot acknowledge us publicly. But she must accept our existence. You are of courting age now. Papa will arrange for you to attend The Quadroon Ball next year, to find you a wealthy, white husband. Do not waste yourself frivolously on any colored man. Even if he has money, he can’t elevate your status or guarantee that your children will be free men.’

“She grabbed my hand. ‘Just take care to always respect your husband and do his bidding. Love and honor him despite the feelings of jealousy that will come when he takes another to wife. We are the wives they choose, when their other will be chosen for them through making familial alliances. These arrangements are our only way to freedom.’

“I didn’t understand why she beseeched me so dramatically on these points. Our system of placage was shocking enough to discover without her telling me I had to accept it, that I had few other choices. I knew nothing of love between a man and woman, but I could see the love between Maman and Papa. If it meant she had to share him with her sister, did that make it of any less value? Did that make me, the product of their left hand union, any less valuable? Of course, I would love my husband, legally bound or not, because of all the things I did not understand, there was one thing I knew and never wanted to change: my freedom.

She paused her story here, seeming to look at us for the first time. She turned her fierce gaze on each of us, one at a time, her fellow beasts of demonic burdens. She settled her gaze finally on me, the lone other woman in the group. I did not know how I understood that she knew my secret. My fellow club members knew and did not care. “You understand when I say fighting for one’s freedom is a frantic battle when losing means losing your personhood and often, your very life.”

I nodded in acquiescence. I did know what a constant fight for freedom to simply exist required. Dying was preferable to giving in to bondage of any kind, hence my membership there. These, my brothers in terror, did not make anything big over my masculine clothes and obviously feminine body. My haunted heart bore witness to more important things to them. The rest of the world did have problems with me, as soon as my “charade” was discovered. Explaining that this was who I am did nothing but result in a trail of bodies. Thus far, my own body did not increase those numbers.

Do you have a fragment of fiction you’re dying to share? Send it my way at chellane@gmail.com. See you soon!

Fallen Angel at the Crossroads

February 16, 2018August 20, 2018Michelle R. Lane Leave a comment

So, I’m a little behind in my posts this week, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it. It’s been a productive week and here I am writing another blog post whether I am able to write 28 posts in a month, which is a great goal, but simply not possible for me this year. It’s OK. I’ve been writing other stuff and the real goal for me is to just keep writing every day that I can. With that said, let’s get back to February’s theme of fuckable fictional characters.

I celebrated my birthday this week and got an unexpected gift when Charlaine Harris announced that there will be a second season of Midnight, Texas. Ironically, I had written two posts about characters from the series recently, one about Manfred Bernardo and one about Fiji and Bobo. Today, I’m staying in Midnight, because there’s another character I’d like to talk about. A certain fallen angel that makes my heart beat faster and makes my mind wander to very naughty things.

Fallen Angel at the Crossroads: Joe Strong

Joe Strong is a fallen angel who is in a same sex marriage with Chuy Strong, a Mexican American who happens to be half-demon. Talk about a mixed marriage. Although Joe and Chuy are out about their marriage, they aren’t that open about the fact that Joe is fallen and Chuy is part demon. These secrets are part of the reason they live together in Midnight, Texas where they own and operate a tattoo parlor/nail boutique. Joe’s skills as an artist earn them a comfortable living in the middle of nowhere, but his paintings are far more interesting than any body art he’s creating.

When we first see Joe, he appears to be going for a morning run, but when he reaches the creek, he strips off his shirt and reveals a pair of magnificent white wings that are hidden beneath his otherwise human-looking exterior. Joe spreads his wings, takes off at a run, and soars into the air. It was at that moment I fell in love.

I’m not 100% sure why, but I have a thing for fallen angels. Depending on the mythology of the fictional universe you’re writing or reading in, fallen angels aren’t automatically demons. I’m working on a novel that features a fallen angel who is a demon, but I struggled with whether or not to refer to him as one or the other. I think referring to him as a demon has more power in certain ways since he spends a lot of time in Hell and my protagonist is bound to him by an arranged marriage. When they are wed, she has to follow him to Hell. Thems the rules! Beyond my character being a demon and spending a lot of time in the company of his brother, Lucifer, the first fallen angel, he is motivated by a sense of justice and takes his job as an assassin charged with rounding up the baddest of souls very seriously.

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Joe also seems to be motivated by a desire to do the right thing in most situations. He is kind, helpful, willing to fight to keep the people he cares about safe, and the reason he is fallen is because it was his job to kill demons and when he met Chuy he fell in love. He couldn’t justify killing demons if he was in love with one. So, he left his gig in Heaven and decided to live on Earth. In Midnight.

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His choice to live in Midnight initially seems to be because he is in hiding, which is true. But as the first season of Midnight, Texas unfolds, we learn that there is a coming battle between Good and Evil, and this isn’t the first time Joe has been around to witness the carnage. Midnight Crossroads has a dark history and it attracts people with preternatural abilities. It is a magical hotspot, but unfortunately as the veil between worlds weakens, the creatures who are attracted to Midnight aren’t exactly coming to fight on the side of Good.

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Joe is hesitant to talk about the fact that he’s an angel, more hesitant to talk about the fact that Chuy is a demon, and he really doesn’t want to talk about the opening of the veil. He’s worried that if he tells the truth, his friends and neighbors in Midnight might reject them. But, he’s also worried about his Enochian brethren finding him and Chuy. When an angel decides to fall, that kind of pisses the rest of Heaven off. There’s one particular angel who is exceptionally pissed off about Joe’s decision to fall and his reasons why.

Bowie is an older and more powerful angel who was Joe’s mentor back in the day. Together, they slew demons left, right and center the first time all Hell broke loose on the land where Midnight now sits. Despite his reservations about killing, Joe did his duty and was good at his job. So good, that Bowie bragged about her protege and took it personally when Joe fell. Bowie is kind of single-minded when it comes to killing demons and anyone she deems on the wrong side of Heaven. Ironically, she herself falls and becomes something she would have battled against in the past. She is more monstrous than Joe or Chuy, because she embodies several of the Seven Deadly sins, including Pride and Wrath. She threatens the life of innocent mortals to draw Joe out, and goes on a rampage to end Joe’s life.

Chuy and Joe are worried that if Chuy’s demon side shows itself, it will be almost impossible to control it. Chuy has apparently been struggling with the pull of Evil coming from under Midnight, but seeing Joe’s life endangered sets him off and he releases his demon self in a fit of fear and rage. Chuy kills Bowie, but almost kills Manfred and Joe as well. Joe is able to get Chuy under control, but sends him away when he realizes the extent to which the veil is having and effect on him. When the other Midnighters see Chuy’s true face they are shocked and afraid. But once Bowie is defeated and the dust settles, they are a little more willing to accept the truth of Joe and Chuy’s real identities and still consider them friends.

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Joe wants to do the right thing and help his friends in Midnight, but his one weakness is Chuy. If your greatest weakness is lying to protect the love of your life, I can understand the motivation to keep their true identities a secret.

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Let’s be realistic here, folks. Joe is not only a fallen angel. He’s a handsome white man who is in love with a Mexican American man. Even without Chuy being a demon, there are people who would gladly hurt them just for being in love. Add the fact that they are essentially forbidden from being together because of the whole Good vs. Evil thing, and they could potentially be two of America’s most wanted for crimes against good Christian values. Whatever the hell that means. Good Christian values sounds more and more like an oxymoron to me these days. I’m not an Atheist, but I’m also not a Christian by default, which a lot of people seem to think is the case. I don’t have a problem with Jesus Christ, it’s his followers I take issue with most of the time.

There’s a lot more happening in Midnight, Texas than just a supernatural soap opera. Charlaine Harris’ characters challenge a lot of popular mainstream views of how life in the United States should be, and the TV show kicks those characters up a notch by creating interracial relationships at a time when people who voted for Trump are basking in the pastiche of making America great again. Unfortunately, the America they’re hoping to reclaim never really existed. Same sex marriages and interracial marriages, legally recognized or not, are not new editions to the American cultural landscape. Our history is full of examples of both. Just because they don’t appear in the whitewashed version of history found in most textbooks, doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. You can’t make America White Again, because it never truly was.

The Color of Love

February 12, 2018February 13, 2020Michelle R. Lane 3 Comments

As a writer who happens to be a woman of color, it’s important to me to see myself in books, film and art. Seeing other people of color in important roles isn’t as uncommon now as it was for me when I was growing up, but I am not just a person of color. I am ethnically mixed. My mother is white and my father was black. I was raised by my mother’s family and am more culturally white than black according to the tiny boxes people wish to place us in here in America. I am primarily attracted to men of European ancestry and have only dated and had long-term relationships with white men. I don’t think my ethnicity and dating practices make me that unique, but it has taken me nearly a lifetime to see healthy relationships between women of color and white men depicted in films, books, and on TV. In my nearly 46 years, it has been within the last roughly 10 years that it has become commonplace to see interracial couples in commercials, on TV shows, and in films that didn’t have a darker undercurrent. The specter of racism hanging over that relationship and making it nearly impossible for it to exist.

I remember being very excited to see Lisa Bonet and Mickey Rourke’s sex scenes in Angel Heart when I was a teenager, but the older I get the more I realize that their relationship was fraught with many problems, the least of which being that she is murdered. Racism is prevalent in the film. And despite the fact that Harry Angel is aware of racism and segregation in his hometown of New York City, it is even more apparent that blacks and whites don’t mix when he gets to New Orleans. To be fair, the film is set in the 1950s, so Jim Crow is alive and well. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the police officer investigating the string of deaths that seem to follow Harry Angel refers to Epiphany Proudfoot as Harry’s nigger. What should surprise us is that Harry does nothing to defend Epiphany’s honor. I mean obviously he enjoyed her company if his blood-soaked orgy fantasy while screwing her is any indication. So, if he really does like her, at least sexually, and is worried about her safety, then why doesn’t he tell the detective not to call her a nigger? One reason is due to the history of interracial relationships in this country being either forbidden, kept secret or simply flat-out denied and erased from history. But, our history isn’t nearly as lily white as the textbooks would like us to believe.

Like I said, interracial relationships are becoming more common in works of popular fiction, but who is writing them? Who is performing them? How are they being depicted? This summer I was shocked, delighted, and fascinated by the choice to change the ethnicity of two of the major characters in Charlaine Harris’ Midnight Texas series for the TV adaptation. In the novels, Fiji Cavanaugh, the local witch, is a plump little white woman who is head over heels for Bobo Winthrop, the handsome owner of Midnight Pawnshop. Their relationship is complicated in the novels, but the decision to make Fiji a woman of color on TV takes the level of complication to a much darker place. And, the choice to cast a very dark-skinned black man as Lemuel Bridger was interesting since in the novels his is one of the palest vampires alive. The rewriting of Lemuel’s backstory, making him a slave who kills his master after becoming a vampire, is almost a new American mythology of revenge. The first time I encountered this concept of a slave becoming a vampire as a form of freedom, was in The Gilda Stories, by Jewelle Gomez (1991). But as even Lemuel realizes, he traded one form of slavery for another.

The Color of Love: Bobo Winthrop and Fiji Cavanaugh

Bobo Winthrop first appears in the Lily Bard Shakespeare series of mystery novels written by Charlaine Harris between 1996 and 2001. Lily Bard is an amatuer sleuth who gets involved in the darker aspects of the community she lives in. Lily’s past is also dark and she initially attempts to stay out of the public eye, but can’t allow bad people to get away with their evil deeds. She cleans houses for a living and is a martial arts student. Lily cleans the Winthrop house, and Bobo is also a martial arts student who sometimes works at the gym where they workout and take classes.

Bobo is the teenage son of a wealthy well-connected family in Shakespeare, GA. His family is involved in the White Supremacist movement, which Bobo is extremely ashamed of and tries to distance himself from his family once he becomes more aware of their activities and the fact that they have actually had a hand in killing people. Most notably, the bombing of an all Black church in Shakespeare.

When Bobo reappears in the Midnight, Texas series, he’s an adult and has been running from his family for many years. He bought the pawnshop from Lemuel and had established himself as a regular in Midnight, which means he has a dark past and is intentionally trying to keep a low profile. He’s one of the few human characters in the novels, but his past is dark enough to make him fit in, and his fiance is murdered in the first Midnight novel. Because she has lied to him about her identity and the fact that she’s already married to someone else, he slowly discovers that she was plant that brings back the truth of his past that he has tried to escape from.

As I mentioned, in the novels, his best friend is Fiji Cavanaugh and she is a small, chubby white woman who is also a witch. Fiji fantasizes about Bobo and having a relationship, but her low self-esteem and body image issues keep her from getting as close as she’d like to the handsome man with the very dark past. And, he doesn’t exactly profess his undying love for her either. The TV show makes their relationship even more complicated by casting a woman of color as Fiji. Fiji and Bobo are still friends. Bobo’s fiance, Aubrey turns up dead and she is married to a white supremacist who was trying to get information about a legendary stash of weapons Bobo stole from his family to prevent them from killing more people. Fiji doesn’t know about Bobo’s past even though they are good friends. Of course, Fiji has some secrets of her own that cause a bit of havoc as the story develops. Bobo is attracted to Fiji and admits that the first time he saw her, he thought he was out of her league. Her kindness and friendship over the years hasn’t gone unnoticed, and when Aubrey dies, she’s the first one to offer comfort. And, when anything happens to Fiji, Bobo is usually the first to come running to her rescue or to defend her honor. And yet, they aren’t a couple.

It takes the two of them much longer to get together in the novels, but the TV show dives right in and does a mashup of all three books in 10 episodes. Because I read the novels, I had no trouble keeping up. However, the timeline is out of whack, and there are missing characters. I’m doubtful of a second season showing this summer, because, hey, I love the show so it probably won’t get renewed…so who knows what will happen next?

In the show, like the novels, when Fiji discovers Bobo’s connection to white supremacists and is kidnapped because of that connection, she is unable to trust him for a long time. The truth of his past and the fact that his secret put her in danger causes her to take a break from their friendship. Obviously, casting a woman of color as Fiji gives so much more weight to this revelation.

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She loves Bobo, but knowing that he was raised by white supremacists, regardless of his beliefs and actions as an adult, raises some serious trust issues and makes Fiji reconsider her feelings. It doesn’t help that Bobo is showing an interest in her that goes beyond friendship and he even tells her that he loves her.

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Bobo pleads his case, tells her that he’s ashamed of his family, but misses being able to see them. He’s completely honest with her and is worried that she’ll reject him. But, rather than badgering her and begging for forgiveness and trying to show her that he isn’t like his family, he tries to give her the space she needs to figure things out. His feelings are hurt, but he doesn’t blame her for not trusting him. He continues to worry about her and does what he can to keep her safe, let her know he loves her, and has to wait for her to welcome him back in.

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In the meantime, there’s a demon communicating with Fiji who wants to be her new boyfriend so he can have access to her high concentration of witch mojo. In the books, like the show, one of Fiji’s secrets is that she’s a virgin. In her 30s. Apparently, virgin witches over 30 are not only rare, but very powerful. And, the demon wants to get on that. The entire town is in danger, and the demon keeps encouraging people to kill themselves, because it feeds on death and the more death there is, the easier it is for him to rise out of Hell. In the third novel, Night Shift, when we find out Fiji’s secret, the male characters all volunteer to help Fiji with her…problem. Fiji is beyond embarrassed and totally freaked out that all of the men, including Joe who is in a relationship with another man, offer to take her virginity. In the novel, it has to be performed like a ritual on top of the Hellmouth, which means she has to do it in public with the lucky fella. First time jitters don’t even cover that effed up situation.

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In the TV show, Bobo offers the solution to Fiji who initially thinks he’s crazy. So, after weeks of avoiding being alone with Bobo, Fiji decides to have sex with him. Now, we already know that they care about each other and Bobo can’t imagine…or really even tolerate the thought that someone else would put their hands on Fiji. He’s a nice guy, but jealousy is kind of an issue for him beyond the desire to keep Fiji safe. At least they get to do it in private on the TV show.

The choice to make Fiji a person of color was a bold one on the part of the scriptwriters and casting director. It gives the problem of Bobo’s past more weight and addresses some of the typical concerns people have about interracial relationships. Not to mention the fact that NBC put an interracial couple on during prime time while racists are trying to make America white again after Trump’s election. AND, made white supremacists the bad guys, second only to demons. Stick that in your Evangelical Christian pipe and smoke it.

What’s really interesting to me is the fact that Fiji never mentions race in any of their conversations. Bobo simply confesses that he was ashamed and that’s why he didn’t tell her about his family. And she says she’s upset because it was a lie of omission. He lied to her. She doesn’t say anything like, “how could you lead me on and let me fall in love with you when you were raised by racists who you’re on the run from?” His lie almost cost Fiji her life.

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But, once Bobo has deflowered her and chased the demon away…literally with his penis, all is forgiven and they become a couple. In the TV show, Manfred has more of a hand in defeating the demon, but in the novel, some much needed sex magic does the trick. Bobo’s white penis saved Fiji’s life. You read that right. Fiji’s salvation came in the form of a white man’s penis.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As a woman of color who has dated only white men, I have had the misfortune of dealing with racist relatives who make off-color jokes about my sexual proclivities because apparently black women’s vaginas are a source of fear and mystery, reminiscent of the Dark Continent itself. My exes who had never dated anyone other than white girls/women before dating me were either making huge mistakes or conquering some unknown territory according to some of their friends and family members. So, seeing Bobo and Fiji warmed my heart because I want them to be together. Despite his past, Bobo really is a good man and truly loves Fiji. And, let’s face it, they’re a hot couple. If NBC nixes a second season, my dream would be for it to get picked up by Showtime or HBO so that Fiji and Bobo get a lot more sex scenes. No, like a lot of sex scenes so they can try lots of different positions. And, that would also open up the possibility for Joe and Chuy to have a few sex scenes. Because Bobo is hot. Manfred is hot. But Joe Strong makes my mouth water.

As hot as Bobo and Fiji are as a couple, seeing them together and knowing Bobo’s backstory caused me to remember some uncomfortable parts of my own past. Bobo isn’t going to be able to take Fiji home to meet his family. That isn’t an option. Part of me envies that fact. Meeting someone’s family for the first time is usually fraught with fear for me. Fear of past hurts, fear of further rejection, fear of actual physical violence. When I was a teenager, I called my boyfriend’s house, and his father told him that his nigger was on the phone. I was only 14. No one’s father has ever said that to me since, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t thinking it. And, it is certainly always on my mind each time I meet the friends and family of a new partner.

You may ask yourself, why would I continue to date white men if I harbor fears like that? And my answer to you would be, because you can’t choose who you are attracted to or who you love. Maybe the real takeaway from Midnight, Texas shouldn’t be that Bobo’s white penis saved a black woman from damnation. Maybe the takeaway is the fact that people come into our lives and regardless of our pasts, regardless of our differences, we can’t help but fall in love. I’m a cynic and the fact that Bobo’s penis saved the day isn’t something I can completely ignore. None of the penises I’ve encountered have ever been magical enough to save me from certain doom. In fact, they probably caused me more trouble than anything else. I think most women would say the same regardless of their dating preferences. But as cynical as I am, I’m also a hopeless romantic who still believes in love. And, I also firmly believe that the color of your lover shouldn’t matter as long as they love and respect you.

Ghosts of Valentine’s Days Past

February 3, 2017August 20, 2018Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

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I’ve been nursing a slight case of melancholy for the last few weeks brought on by a recent heartbreak. I say mild case because I seem to be pulling myself together much faster than I did the last time I found myself in this state of mind – this state of being characterized by self-doubt and a deep sense of hopelessness. Of course, the last time I found myself here, I was not only suffering from the grief associated with the loss of a romantic relationship, but also the after effects of being manipulated by a mind-fucking, lying, narcissist. If I can survive what my therapist called “a mild case of Stockholm Syndrome,” then I can pretty much get through anything, right? Right.

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February has always been a bit of a turbulent month for me. Primarily because it is my birth month. I was born on February 14. Valentine’s Day. A day characterized by grotesque gestures of forced affection and inflated expectations of being showered with insincere overtures of love and romantic gifts like heart-shaped boxes of candy and grocery-store-bought bundles of roses.

Having your birthday land on a holiday is a pain in the ass for most people. I feel sorry for the folks who were born on Christmas who often get cheated on the gift front, but since my birthday falls on Valentine’s Day, I can only express so much sympathy.

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If I had a dollar for each time a romantic relationship ended on or near my birthday, I’d have…well…$5.00. I seem to be perpetually single on my birthday. Some years have been worse than others. Some years I wished I was single, because the relationship I was in at the time was absolutely miserable. Watching someone you used to care about scramble to impress you with gifts and acts of kindness to prove their affection for you on Valentine’s Day is like watching firemen pull charred corpses out of a burning car crash. You hate to look, but morbid curiosity gets the better of you.

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I once dated a guy, a vegetarian, who cooked me a whole duck for my birthday. Before you get all weepy and think’ “how romantic,” this guy was a vegetarian because he hated animals and refused to “eat their dead corpses.” I had two cats at the time that he barely tolerated and constantly threatened to kill. He put a lot of time and effort into preparing that meal, but each time he did something nice for me, whether it was my birthday or not, there always seemed to be an undertone of resentment. Even though he was a good gift giver, the gesture was always spoiled by his nearly psychotic need for gratitude. The duck was delicious, but his expectation for me to give him my undying appreciation made it a bit hard to swallow. You see, we dated for nearly five years. Lived together for three. And each time someone asked him when he was going to pop the question, he’d say “I do all the time, when are you going to clean the cat box.” He cracked himself up every time he said it. Yeah, he was a real keeper.

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I should have left him after the first year we were together, because in hindsight, he was a textbook abuser of the emotional and psychological variety. His specialties were back-handed compliments, comparing me to other women in his life, and making me feel like my goals were pipe-dreams. But he had no problem taking credit for all the thankless support he claimed to provide when I reached those goals time and again. Goals I reached despite his constant stream of bullshit geared toward making my self-esteem non-existent.

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What was the final straw that broke the camel’s back? Seeing him, a 41-year-old man, throw a temper tantrum because he couldn’t get his Oomp Loompa Halloween costume together fast enough. Watching a grown man cry over a Halloween costume kind of cuts off the last shred of desire for him you might be clinging to. FYI, temper tantrums are a HUGE turn off. And just for the record, so are Oompa Loompa costumes. Everyone knows Willy Wonka is the sexy one.

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Perhaps the fact that I am single most years on my birthday, or wished I was, is one of the Universe’s cruel little jokes at my expense. Or perhaps the Universe has been trying to show me a different path that doesn’t involve romantic relationships. At least, not until I am stronger, more confident, and completely in love with the person I am becoming – or perhaps always was. I was just too busy fighting against men who were trying to steal my strength to make up for a lack of their own.

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This time feels different. I’m not nearly as angry as I used to be when a romantic relationship came to an end. I don’t feel completely alone and helpless. Maybe that’s because the relationship itself was good. You would think that when a good thing comes to an end you’d be more upset about it than when a terrible thing comes to an end, but no. It’s weird, I feel more hopeful about what happens next whether I have a significant other in my life or not. I’m trying to learn that I am enough on my own. I still hope to find someone who wants to stay in my life to share and grow, and build something together. But before that can happen, and be a real thing, I know I have to be ready to welcome that person into my life. I’m getting closer to that, but I’m not quite there. I still have a lot of personal demons to confront, but rather than condemning myself for having those demons, I’m going to embrace them and try to figure out how to turn them into positive aspects of my life.

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My birthday is 11 days away. This year I want to use this time for reflection and planning. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been living my life on too small of a scale. There are much bigger goals I’ve had in mind since I was a child and before I allowed people to do their best to crush my dreams. I want to see more of the world. I want to reconnect with my old friends who live in other parts of the country and in Europe. I want to write more. I want to push myself to become the healthiest version of myself ever. I want to make new friends and build stronger relationships with the ones who are already close to me, the ones who are always there for me no matter what.

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And, while I’m doing these things and making more plans, I’ll continue to work through the events in my past that have left deep, shadowy scars on my psyche by seeing my therapist and writing about my life, my fears, and my dreams.

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I’m sad that I lost my lover, but I’m going to be okay. I always manage to pick myself back up and move forward. I fully expect to have days where I cry unexpectedly because the melancholy that took roost in my heart and mind when I was a child demands to be heard.

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But I’m not going to allow that melancholy to be my compass. I want my goals and aspirations to be my guides, with the hope that the successes that follow will keep leading me toward the person I want to be. The person I believe to be my true self. My happier self. My whole self.

Transformation: My First Tattoo

January 9, 2017August 20, 2018Michelle R. Lane Leave a comment

This weekend I got my first tattoo. This was no impulse body-modification trip to the tattoo shop after too many drinks. I made plans ahead of time with my friend, Dan, to go get tattoos together. Not only did we schedule our sessions a few weeks in advance, but we were both getting tattoos we had contemplated for nearly two decades.

Like myself, Dan is experiencing a time of growth and transition. I won’t go into the details of Dan’s journey, because it isn’t my place to do so. But I will say that his current path has allowed me to gain a treasured friend who is a constant source of strength and inspiration. He insists on showing me a good time when we’re together, and in many ways has gently nudged me to become an even better version of myself. This includes transforming my body through exercise, healthier eating, and now ink.

Dan lives in Pittsburgh, and had gotten his first tattoo from the same artist at Armature Tattoo Co.. First of all, it’s a beautiful shop with lots of interesting artwork on the walls (there’s a mixed media portrait of H. H. Holmes) and on the skin of the four tattoo artists – two men and two women. The shop is well lit, clean, and full of positive energy. I felt comfortable and welcome right away.

Originally, Dan was supposed to get tattooed on Friday night and I was supposed to get tattooed on Saturday night. But when we arrived, the tattoo artist, Jessi, talked to Dan about the fact that his tattoo would need a bit more time for layout and she wanted to suggest some changes to the original design. That meant I was going first. In hindsight, I’m glad things worked out that way, because I didn’t have time to build up any extra fears about getting tattooed. For years, people have been trying to explain what it feels like, but the only way you’re ever going to know is to get one yourself.

Did it hurt? Well, sure. But nothing like I anticipated. I’ve heard people compare getting tattooed to giving birth. Of course, these people have been men who have zero fucking clue what it feels like to have a period, much less the pain associated with labor. I don’t know what that feels like either, because I had a C-section when my son was born. However, I do know what an epidural feels like and the tattoo needle is nowhere near as large a gauge as an epidural needle that gets inserted into the base of your spine.

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To be honest, it was less painful than some of the dental work I’ve had done, and I chose a fleshy part of my body for my first tattoo. There’s quite a bit of blackwork, which was more painful than the line work, but in the hands of a skilled tattoo artist who also has a knack for interesting conversation, the experience was actually pleasant. What really surprised me was the fact that there were certain areas of my skin that felt pleasure in the midst of the pain. My emotional response wavered between joy and catharsis. And, even though the pain wasn’t overly taxing and my session only lasted about 45 minutes, I felt slightly fatigued. I wondered if it was a chemical reaction to continuous pain, regardless of how low-level it was. I mean, was adrenaline being released into my bloodstream in small doses? According to an article on tophealthnews.net, “This Is What Happens To Your Body When You Get A Tattoo!,” I was:

When needles penetrate your body, this is a form of trauma and your body responds in kind. Your Sympathetic Nervous System kicks your fight-or-flight response into gear in response to the pain. The result is a rush of adrenaline.

And, that weird emotional feeling I experienced was probably caused by the release of endorphins.

Endorphins, your body’s natural pain relievers, are also released. These chemicals come directly from the brain, flooding your body. When those endorphins are released, it’s a heady feeling that is sort of intense yet relaxing at the same time.

While fascinating, I wanted to talk less about the science of body chemistry in relation to getting tattooed, and more about why I decided to do it at this point in my life. And, why I chose the image that now decorates my skin.

Like I said, I am not Dan’s publicist, so if you want to know the story behind his tattoo(s), you’ll have to ask him. But, I can show you his before and after pictures from Saturday evening.

You’re probably thinking, “That’s a big fucking tattoo.” And, you’d be right. This first stage of Dan’s tattoo, an artistic spin on Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, took just over 3 hours, and two snacks from the coffee shop up the street, to complete. He has at least one more session to add details to this back piece, but possibly more sessions depending on how detailed he wants the final version to be.

During his 3-hour session, we made jokes about Francis Dolarhyde, the fictional serial killer from Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, since the character has an enormous back piece taken from William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon Paintings. We debated about watching Red Dragon, but settled for the first few episodes of season 1 of “Hannibal”.

So, now that you’re super impressed, and potentially creeped out about Dan’s tattoo, let’s talk about mine.

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I first saw the image in a book of essays that deconstruct the various versions of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, aptly titled The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, edited by Jack Zipes. The book is dedicated to the late Angela Carter, one of my writing heroes who happened to write one of my favorite stories about werewolves, “The Company of Wolves.” If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest that you do. She is famous for her versions of fairy tales, rewritten with an adult audience in mind. If you’re looking for something new to read, and think you might enjoy some erotic literary fairy tales, I’d suggest stopping by your local library and picking up a copy of her collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.

I found Zipes’ book in the library at Hull University. I was studying abroad through an exchange program during my junior year of college, and lived in Hull, England for a year. While I was there, I started becoming more interested in myths, legends, fairy tales and folktales. About the same time I found Zipes book, I also was introduced to The Morphology of the Folktale, by V. Propp. The next thing I knew I was writing all these papers about rape narratives, and cannibalism, and other sexual taboos in fairy tales. That was nearly 25 years ago.

In that time, the meaning of the image has changed for me. When I first saw the drawing in Zipes’ book, I simply saw a woman being held by a werewolf. Sexy, right? I mean, vampires have their sex appeal, but there’s something deliciously primal about werewolves. Not only is the woman being embraced, rather than ravished in the image, but she appears to be happy about it. In fact, it looked as if she had found peace in his arms.

The original artwork was done by Catherine Orenstein (1990), who later wrote Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. If you’ve ever read any of my other blog posts, you know that I have a special place in my heart for monsters. In fact, monsters can be extremely sexy. Werewolves embody the aspect of the psyche where our signals sometimes get crossed — fighting, fucking and eating all seem to serve the same purpose in the mind of the werewolf — pleasure-seeking at any cost. And the cost may be your life. But in Orenstein’s image, there’s something different happening. The woman isn’t just being held by the werewolf, she’s accepting it in all of its monstrous glory. If she is in fact accepting the werewolf, that also looks a lot like a shadow or darkness itself, brings to mind the idea of making peace with the darker parts of ourselves. Making peace with our demons.

This isn’t my first attempt at transformation in my life. I’ve been trying to reshape myself since I was 12 years old. Weight gain, loss, and regain has been a constant pattern in my life. A few years ago after I gave birth to my son, I lost 70 pounds on Weight Watchers. During one of my meetings I described myself as having a beast that lives inside me that wants to eat all the time. And, sometimes it gets out and loses control. Not unlike a werewolf. It was at this point that I searched for Orenstein’s drawing, because it had a new meaning. I considered getting it tattooed on my body then, but for some reason never went through with it. That was almost ten years ago.

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Back in April I rejoined WW, and since then I have lost 30 pounds. I’m proud of myself for doing that. And, I have made a commitment to myself to continue my journey. I am learning to accept myself — fat, wrinkles, white hair, and all. And, I am relearning what my body is capable of doing. I started running using the C25K app on my phone. I forgive myself when the scale goes in the opposite direction and shows a gain rather than a loss. I am not perfect. I never will be. And, I’m beginning to understand why that’s so fucking amazing. I love my demons. I embrace them. Make peace with them. And by doing so, I am learning to love myself. Now, when I look at the drawing, I see a woman accepting herself. And now is a perfect time for my skin, the skin I am becoming more comfortable in each day, to tell that story. This tattoo is a reminder of my strength. The progress I’ve made. And the journey yet to come. Of course, there will be days when I still do battle with my darkness, but now I’m going to own it and show it some love.

Battling Our Demons: Fighting the Influence of Evil

October 14, 2016August 20, 2018Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

The other day, while looking through some of my folders of old writing and abandoned projects, I stumbled across an essay I wrote back in May 2015 for my Readings in the Genre: Contemporary Mysteries course at Seton Hill University as part of my MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. Of late, I’ve used this blog as a way of kick starting myself into writing on a more regular basis; something I struggle with on an almost pathological level. My friends will tell you that I’m writing all the time. This year, since February I have written a total of 27 blog posts about fictional characters I find sexually appealing, and since around May, I’ve written over 120 haiku poems. I’ve drafted chapters in a novel I’m writing, and I’ve written a few short pieces of fiction here and there. So yeah, I guess I have been writing. But, I don’t feel like I’m writing enough.

And, although I had a short story published in an anthology back in November 2014, I haven’t been able to sell my first novel, Invisible Chains, acquire an agent, or get any other bites on the poetry I’ve been submitting. I currently have poetry out to three publishers and I’ll be submitting three short stories within the next month to different publishers. I’m going to participate in NaNoWriMo 2016 in the hopes of completing that second novel I mentioned, A Marriage Made in Hell. I WILL finish the first draft of Marriage by November 30, come Hell of high water.

Anyway, if you’re interested in reading some of my writing that doesn’t involve lewd comments about my favorite fictions characters, read on…

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Battling Our Demons: Fighting the Influence of Evil in Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

In his famous study on human behavior, Beyond Good and Evil, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warns us to take care to not be influenced by the intrinsic and often seductive nature of darkness when confronting our demons. He proposes, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you” (Section 146). Sage advice, but is it possible to confront Evil and not be somehow changed by it? Can you keep company with monsters without becoming like them? This is the dilemma faced by both Sookie Stackhouse in Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark and Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Each character must face her demons. Tempted as they may be, each character still manages to avoid becoming Evil.

Evil can be a very subjective concept. Each of us defines it a little differently based on our own personal experiences, but we can usually agree on the difference between “right” and “wrong.” The mystery genre uses this dichotomy as one of its central themes or plot points, and while an amateur sleuth or police inspector may be driven to solve a crime in order to uphold the law, at the heart of most mysteries is the desire for Good to win out over Evil. “Crime fiction in general, and detective fiction in particular, is about confronting and taming the monstrous. It is a literature of containment, a narrative that ‘makes safe’” (Plain 3). The battle between Good and Evil has been fought in fiction since before written communication. In the oral tradition, people told tales of epic battles between men and monsters – Beowulf, The Epic of Gilgamesh. With the advent of writing, the popularity of monster tales never waned – The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Inferno. Monsters have always been with us. They are creatures of myth and legend, and they often stand in as metaphors for the less palatable human behaviors and emotions. Judith Halberstam suggests in her book, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters that even though our desire for stories about monsters and villains never seems to fade, the appearance of those monsters evolves to meet cultural needs. She says, “The body that scares and appalls changes over time, as do the individual characteristics that add up to monstrosity, as do the preferred interpretations of monstrosity” (8). Monsters change as our society changes, and the monsters of our current fiction, which is especially true in the mystery genre, tend to be humans more so than the beasts of Homer and Dante’s creations.

Like Sookie and Lisbeth, we sometimes find ourselves in less than ideal situations and come face to face with monsters. For some of us, the monsters we must face are people we thought we could trust who later betray us, or worse, cause physical as well as psychological damage in the form of abuse, rape, and ultimately murder. In her essay, “Vivid Villains,” Sandra Scoppettone tells us that “the nature of the villain, and how absorbing a character he or she is, will affect the flavor of the whole rest of the story” (86). The nature of the villain should definitely determine the nature of the protagonist. Whether we’re talking about a serial killer, someone seeking revenge, or jilted lover who commits a crime of passion, as we gain a better understanding of human psychology, we also understand that we are the monsters represented in the fiction we read. Darkness lurks within all of us, but for most people, it will continue to lie dormant until some violent act or traumatic experience awakens the beast within. The real challenge then for any protagonist facing such a worthy opponent, as Nietzsche warns, is to avoid becoming a monster. Sookie and Lisbeth are sexualized others who both fall victim to violence at the hands of human monsters.

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“Forty-six percent of women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man” (Larsson 139). In his novel The Girl with Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson wishes to make it very clear to his reader that violence against women is a cultural reality in Sweden, and to most Swedish women, much like his protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, the threat of violence, sexual or otherwise, is an expectation if not an inevitability. Lisbeth is a ward of the state and becomes the victim of rape at the hands of a man assigned to her case. She is an adult, but due to her designation based on a history of aberrant behavior as a youth, she is treated like a child, mentally deficient, and then taken advantage of due to her abuser’s belief that she is somehow stupid. While Lisbeth has experienced quite a bit of emotional and psychological trauma, some of which is not revealed to us, she is far from stupid, and definitely not mentally ill. In fact, she is uncannily smart and more than capable of looking out for herself, except at the hands of the sadistic monster Advokat Nils Bjurman. Over the course of several meetings, Bjurman makes it very clear to Salander that she is at his mercy if she would like access to her bank accounts. Each encounter with Bjurman becomes more and more inappropriate until he forces Salander to perform oral sex on him in his office. Larsson reinforces his point about the violent nature of Swedish society by making Salander another statistic. “In her world, this was the natural order of things. As a girl she was legal prey, especially if she was dressed in a worn black leather jacket and had pierced eyebrows, tattoos, and zero social status” (249). Later, when Salander seeks revenge for this assault, Bjurman restrains and rapes her at his apartment. It is this second act of violence that pushes her to her limits and flips a switch that begins her own transformation. She falls prey to the desire to do monstrous things herself. “Bjurman felt cold terror piercing his chest and lost his composure. He tugged at his handcuffs…He could do nothing to resist when Salander bent over and placed the anal plug between his buttocks” (282). Salander reverses the tables on Bjurman. She assaults and humiliates him much like he did to her. She attempts to restore balance through an act of revenge, pushing her closer to the edge of the abyss. Lisbeth unleashes her darkness to reclaim her power and walks a fine line that could easily transform her into a monster worse than Bjurman. She threatens Bjurman with blackmail and bodily harm to prevent him from hurting her again—an act of self-preservation. By marking him, she hopes to save other women from becoming his victims. Justice is served.

On the surface, Sookie Stackhouse and Lisbeth Salander couldn’t be more different as protagonists go, but when you take a closer look at these two strong female characters, you’ll begin to notice some commonalities. First, they are both amateur sleuths with unique abilities that allow them to have access to information others aren’t privy to in the narrative. Salander’s abilities are half-heartedly explained through the eyes of Salander’s lover, Mikael Blomkvist, who assumes that the young hacker has a form of Asperger’s. Since Sookie’s world has paranormal elements, she has the benefit of being able to hear other people’s thoughts. Calling this ability a benefit is debatable, as Sookie herself sees it as a handicap.

Second, both women often find themselves at the mercy of men who threaten them with violence. Or, at the very least, objectify them sexually. Although they come from very different cultural backgrounds, they both have “zero social status” (249) in the economy of sexuality and gender equality. In Dead Until Dark, a serial killer targets young women who seek out vampires as sexual partners. Sookie not only shares this in common with the victims, but she also fits the profile with her high school education and minimum wage job.

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Monsters exist in Sookie’s world – vampires, weres, and shifters – all of which can be quite dangerous. In fact, her boyfriend is a vampire. Despite the fact that there is trend in fiction romanticizing relationships between vampires and humans, vampires are still monsters. Even if they don’t kill you outright, there is always the chance that things might get out of hand, and a moment of passion may end with the human’s funeral. Even if the vampire poses no direct threat to his partner, the secret lives of vampires seem to be violent by nature – ancient enemies, unresolved love affairs, power struggles with other supernatural beings. All of this adds up to danger for any human who meddles in the affairs of monsters, much less falls in love with them.

Sookie could literally become a monster if she continues to drink vampire blood. Bill Compton gives Sookie his blood several times to speed up the healing process. But when Sookie is recovering in the hospital after her encounter with the serial killer, she refuses to accept Bill’s blood for fear of losing her human qualities. “‘I’ll heal you,’ he offered. ‘Let me give you some blood.’ I remembered the way my hair had lightened, remembered that I was almost twice as strong as I’d ever been. I shook my head” (Harris 310). Sookie resists the urge to become monstrous by refusing to act like one. Sookie reclaims her power by maintaining her humanness.

Sookie and Lisbeth are victims of violent crimes. Both women fight back to protect themselves. They are survivors and each play an important role in vanquishing the monster, or at the very least, identifying the villain. They both realize there are too many villains in the world to fight. Even though they have temporarily restored the balance in their worlds, they know the fight between Good and Evil will continue. Not only externally, but internally as well. Each time you gaze into the abyss, the abyss changes you. So, to answer my earlier question, is it possible to associate with monsters and not become Evil? Yes, but only if you remain vigilant to protect your humanity, and in Salander’s case, the humanity of others.

Works Cited

Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Print.

Harris, Charlaine. Dead Until Dark. New York: Ace Books, 2009. Print

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2009. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1989. Print.

Plain, Gill. Twentieth Century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and the Body. New York: Routledge, 2014. Kindle.

Scoppetone, Sandra. “Vivid Villains.” Writing Mysteries: A Handbook by the Mystery Writers of America. Ed. Sue Grafton. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2002. 86-90. Print.

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Fuckable Fictional Characters: John Constantine

February 20, 2016August 22, 2018Michelle R. Lane 6 Comments

Yesterday in my post about Mr. Darcy I talked a little bit about how he wrong actor can make an excellent fictional character a disappointment to fans on screen. I mentioned the poor casting choices of two of my favorite fictional characters, Lestat and Louis in Interview with the Vampire. Anne Rice’s vampires are some of the most interesting characters on the page and they deserved to be played by actors who could capture their essence on screen. I’m sure most of us can think of at least one example of how our favorite characters from books have been destroyed by the wrong actors.

One of my favorite comic book characters comes to us from the DC Universe. To be more specific, from their Vertigo imprint. Typically I fall for heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe, but sometimes DC does certain things a little better. And, when you’ve got Alan Moore involved it’s kind of hard to go wrong. My love of this character gives further credence to the fact that I am a hopeless anglophile. An anglophile who loves stories about magic, demons and Hell. If you haven’t checked out the Hellblazer comics you probably should. I need to thank my good friend David Magaro for turning me on to these comics. Don’t you love having friends who clue you in to things that make life a little bit more interesting?

February 20: John Constantine

John Constantine is an antihero who battles demons and you know, tries to save the world from time to time. Sounds like a nice guy, right? Well nothing is every truly black and white, so don’t get your hopes up too high. Constantine’s heart is usually in the right place, but his decision making often has dire consequences and his methods for achieving his goals are a bit shady and usually dangerous. Like using black magic to combat darker magic and supernatural beings.

Constantine is called Hellblazer because he’s been to Hell and back. More than once. I mean he doesn’t consider it a vacation spot, but his job sometimes requires him to visit. That alone gives him serious street credit when it comes to hunting and exorcising demons. But he’s got other mad magical skills. Aside from his grasp of magic, he can summons demons and angels. He wears a snazzy trench coat full of demonic power, and he’s an accomplished con artist and lock picker.

Constantine’s an interesting guy. He’s been described as a “working class occult detective,” and while he comes from Liverpool, he’s usually stationed in London. Like an well-crafted character he’s got major backstory. His mother died giving birth to him, and while in utero he strangled his twin brother with his umbilical cord. His mother’s womb was weaken by a previous abortion his father forced her to have, which caused the birth complications. Rather than taking responsibility for his wife’s death, he blames John and they spend his childhood hating each other. His dad was an alcoholic, abusive, and arrested for stealing a neighbor’s underwear. So, you know, excellent role model.

Constantine’s bloodline connects him to some very powerful magicians, and as he discovers his ancestry he develops a keen interest in magic, and he began practicing magic at a young age. Some pretty complicated and impressive spellwork for someone his age, like hiding his childhood vulnerability and innocence in a box so he no longer has to deal with it. Growing up in London in the 1960’s and ‘70’s he formed a punk band, Mucous Membrane, and later become a stage magician in the 1980’s where he earned a name for himself by predicting Reagan’s assassination. Seriously, how cool is this guy.

One of his first attempts at becoming a hero in the occult realm went terrible wrong. In order to banish a demon that was conjured by an abused child to take revenge on the adults hurting her, Constantine and his friends summon their own demon. As you might imagine, it doesn’t go well. They didn’t have control of the demon, and when it destroys the child’s monster, it torments John’s friends and drags the child to Hell. Soon after, he commits himself to a mental hospital because he can’t deal with the guilt.

Are you hooked? You should be. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for Constantine’s adventures. When I began this post I mentioned that problem of casting the wrong actor to play a great character. Well, the first attempt at putting Constantine on screen was the live-action 2005 film starring Keanu Reeves in an Americanized version of the story.

Well, he is smoking. That’s a start.

The film itself isn’t terrible, but Reeves just isn’t believable as Constantine. The rest of the cast is impressive—Tilda Swinton as Gabriel, Peter Stormare as Lucifer, Djimon Hounsou as Papa Midnite, and Pruitt Taylor Vince as an alcoholic priest who communicates with the dead. Oh, and Gavin Rossdale plays a half-breed demon, Balthazar. Great cast, right? Sure, but the most important character missed the mark almost completely.

Cats have something to do with magic, right?

In 2014 NBC brought Constantine to television with Welsh actor Matt Ryan. Finally, a believable Constantine. He looked like Constantine. Sounded like Constantine. Had his bad attitude and a big heart. And they did their best to stay within cannon.

Yep. That’s John Constantine.

I was glued to the TV each week. But apparently I was one of the few people watching, because the show got canceled after one season. I was disappointed. It was off to a great start and I had so many high hopes for the show. In the short time it was on TV, I fell hard for Matt Ryan’s Constantine.

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Wow, it’s like someone bothered to read the comic book.

Matt Ryan has reprised Constantine in a 2015 episode of Arrow on the CW. I would hope that this might inspire another network to pick up the series or at the very least think about bringing a more believable film adaptation to the big screen. A fangirl can dream, right?

Smoking is sexy. You should start tomorrow.

Am I the only one who enjoyed this show? I can’t possibly be the only one who sees how Matt Ryan is perfectly cast as this super fucking cool fictional character.

John Constantine is hot. Seriously, he’s on fire.

I mean he’s even in the mental hospital in the first episode.

Don’t people usually check themselves into a psychiatric facility to avoid crazy shit like this?

Seriously, give this show another chance.

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I need more magic in my life.

Girl Meets Monster

Writing, Reading, and Helpful Hints for Dating in the Underworld

Tag demons

The Cuckoo Girls, An Interview with Patricia Lillie

You Want to Put That Where?: A Review of Elizabeth Amber’s The Lords of Satyr Series

WARNING! This is a REALLY HOT book. (Sexually Explicit)

Spoilers Ahead

Fun Facts About Satyr Lords

Fiction Fragments: R. J. Joseph

Three Questions

Fallen Angel at the Crossroads

Fallen Angel at the Crossroads: Joe Strong

The Color of Love

The Color of Love: Bobo Winthrop and Fiji Cavanaugh

Ghosts of Valentine’s Days Past

Transformation: My First Tattoo

Battling Our Demons: Fighting the Influence of Evil

Battling Our Demons: Fighting the Influence of Evil in Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Fuckable Fictional Characters: John Constantine

February 20: John Constantine