The Paranormal Romance Guild gives a five-star review: “The characters were wonderful, there were secrets, lies, betrayal and surprises. Reading this book was a view of what happens to an honest and devoted man who loves someone who can only bring him down.”
TTC Books gives four purrs: “This is a fabulous vampire story. You have the darkness, they are evil, yet you can’t help fall for them….If you like dark story, great world building, dark vampires, twists and a gripping heart wrenching story this is for you.”
GLBT Bookshelf gives five stars: “I found the book irresistible; it’s for the reader who likes a cross between the techno-thriller and hunt/chase story….The science is very credible – one of the facets of the book that makes it so different. The setting switches from Boston to the Potes region of Spain (Bay of Biscay coast, in the north), and back to Boston, and we get a close-up look not only at the vampire community that’s trying to make a place for itself alongside humankind, but also at the ancient European community that’s all about blood and the willingness of humans to succumb to addiction and self-destruction.”
A “newborn vampire”—when I saw this quote out of context, the term newborn struck me. Being newborn is to experience everything anew, with wonder. It’s to be present, in the moment. We hold on to that ability in childhood and often lose it as adults. Maybe a vampire provides a path to rebirth, whether good or bad.
Is the vampire’s path to rebirth part of their lasting appeal?
Rebirth As Passionand Wonder
I hear the terms melodrama and purple prose often used in critiques of vampire novels, and the critiques aren’t incorrect. However, isn’t that, at least for one segment of the vampire genre, sort of the point? I know it’s why I read vampire novels—for the chance to experience the lushness of life, the miracle of things we hardly see anymore, the chance to be naively poetic and to wonder at everything.
New love—whether love of another person or love of history or art or cooking or mathematics—is infused with passion, focused and dedicated, wondering at each new feature learned. Emotions are intensified, senses in tune.
Is the vampire’s path a rebirth of knowledge or love?
It was for me when I first read Anne Rice’s novels as a teen. And it is for me as I write my vampire short stories and novels now. I’ve also heard the appeal of melodrama attributed to escapism. I don’t deny luxuriating in the sensual world might be escape from daily living and even from finding refuge in something grander. But I find that often in vampire stories, vampires do come to find something beyond themselves, turn to something ethical or sublime. It’s a journey this rebirth.
Of course, vampires appeal to writers and readers for other reasons too: power, immunity, vengeance, immortality. But for this moment, I’m looking at these particular words from Anne Rice, reassured that vampires in fiction are still around for a reason.
Beside the Darker Shore is available in ebook or paperback at most online retailers. Universal Buy Link.
TTC Books and More has reviewed Beside the Darker Shore, a vampire thriller and mm love story.
“…oh wow! This is a fabulous vampire story. You have the darkness, they are evil, yet you can’t help fall for them. I was even rooting for Arturo to find what he was searching for . . . There is several turns and lots of action. It’s quite gripping and page turning and shocking… Yet it’s not actually a romance. You could probably say it’s a love story in a way.” — TTC Books and More
Love Bytes Reviews posted an interview on my newly released novel Beside the Darker Shore. When asked to speak about my favorite character, the vampire Arturo de Rosa gladly took over.
Available in ebook and print on Amazon and most online retailers. Universal Buy Link.
Beside the Darker Shore
What might the ethical Governor David Gedden give up for one man’s exquisite beauty? It’s terrifying to consider when the man is a destructive blood prostitute and David is responsible for the state’s peaceful vampire community. Blood sales in Boston are up, blood taxes support a thriving new nightlife, neighborhoods have been refurbished, and deaths by vampires have plummeted. David is assured reelection.
However, the blood addict Stephen Salando has returned from exile with one unalterable plan: to turn the good governor into a vampire. Stephen is an immortal dhampir, whose beauty obliterates reason, who rouses in David a fierce desire he’s ignored his whole life. But for David to have Stephen, he must ally with an ancient vampire, the community’s seductive archnemesis. To have him, he must become a killer himself.
Will David hold on to his ethical public life? Or will he follow what he most desires, a kiss with a killer to become a vampire himself?
The Paranormal Romance Guild gives a five-star review to Beside the Darker Shore, a vampire novel about love and lust, duty and responsibility, and what it means to be fallibly human.
“The characters were wonderful, there were secrets, lies, betrayal and surprises. Reading this book was a view of what happens to an honest and devoted man who loves someone who can only bring him down. This is not an easy read but a worthwhile one because the author did a wonderful job of keeping me interested and glued to the story till the end.” – Linda Tonis, Paranormal Romance Guild
The vampire novel Beside the Darker Shore is available from JMS Books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other ebook and print retailers. See the links below!
If you do read about these struggling characters looking for love, I’d love to hear feedback or to just chat about what kinds of books you enjoy.
Where to buy the vampire novel Beside the Darker Shore
Five-star-reviewed vampire novel explores the risks of love. What would you give to have all you desire?
Beside the Darker Shore
What might the ethical Governor David Gedden give up for one man’s exquisite beauty? It’s terrifying to consider when the man is a destructive blood prostitute and David is responsible for the state’s peaceful vampire community. Blood sales in Boston are up, blood taxes support a thriving new nightlife, neighborhoods have been refurbished, and deaths by vampires have plummeted. David is assured reelection.
However, the blood addict Stephen Salando has returned from exile with one unalterable plan: to turn the good governor into a vampire. Stephen is an immortal dhampir, whose beauty obliterates reason, who rouses in David a fierce desire he’s ignored his whole life. But for David to have Stephen, he must ally with an ancient vampire, the community’s seductive archnemesis. To have him, he must become a killer himself.
Will David hold on to his ethical public life? Or will he follow what he most desires, a kiss with a killer to become a vampire himself?
Vampire, MM, Paranormal, Paranormal Thriller, Vampire Mystery, Paranormal Romance, Gay Fiction, Fiction and Poetry
What makes a character in a book or a movie memorable? What makes the character interesting? Sometimes what attracts us to someone is a bit of a mystery, and good characterization requires a little mystery too.
Seeking the Carnivalesque
In the screenplay book I’m reading, Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay by Andrew Horton, the author uses the term carnivalesque when explaining how to develop real and memorable characters. Characters are never complete, set, or finished, but instead are always glimpsed in motion from a certain perspective, Horton says, and quotes Seymour Chatman, “The horizon of personality always recedes before us.”
In a carnival, people are thrown into a place of the unknown, where anything can happen. Carnival is the time when no rules hold, when one can become whatever they wish. And even if the writer knows a character’s core personality and uses this “core” knowledge to drive the plot of a story, there should remain a mystery, “a realm of the unresolved,” in Horton’s words, something neither the writer nor reader can fully know or understand.
The mystery of character, or creating the carnivalesque. Photo by Scott Webb, on Pexels
The Appeal of Uncertainty
“The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty,” the poet Yoshida Kenko says. “Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.”
In a good book or film, sometimes we understand something without being able to explain it; we feel it and don’t know why. When I read these ideas, I thought of one scene in Little Miss Sunshine. When the teenage boy who had all his hopes set on being a pilot finds out he’s color blind, he runs off from the family, screaming out his rage and frustration. He refuses to return to the family van. The sister eventually comes down the hill where he sits and squats beside him. Nothing is said, nothing explained, but we understand without explanation why he returns to the van.
Do any characters stand out as memorable to you? Are you able to pinpoint why? Did you understand them sometimes without understanding why you did?
Horror can range from stories that elicit heart palpitations to cringing and nausea to an unease that won’t let go. Horror that makes me jump and then laugh at the adrenaline rush can be fun, and I can appreciate the imagery of a well-done slasher scene—both designed to shake us, give us a quick thrill?—but I generally seek out horror that evokes that unnameable unease, that makes me think and wonder and try to establish how the horror might fit in myself or the world I’m part of.
Horror and the Unknown
I think the unknown plays into most horror; however, I’m drawn to horror that remains a bit of a mystery, that entails the ambiguous, something that might lie within us if not without, or that we finally perceive with a sense of near awe because it is beyond our control and yet part of this world, not to go away.
Blurring the Line
In the new anthology Blurring the Line, editor Marty Young, founding president of the Australian Horror Writers Association and an Australian Shadows Award winner, has pulled together stories that blur the line between reality and fiction, reflecting the strange, often surreal, mystery of our world. Each day, upon the book’s release, authors in the collection will answer some questions about horror, from what horror is to them to what writers have influenced them most.
I will add links to each interview below as they appear each day. Blurring the Line is now available, in time for holiday gifts or for a taste of the more sinister during the winter season bustle!
Patricia J. Esposito is author of Beside the Darker Shoreand has published numerous works in anthologies, such as Main Street Rag’s Crossing Lines, Cohesion Press’s Blurring the Line, AnnaPurna’sClarify, Timbre’s Stories of Music, and Undertow’s Apparitions,and in magazines, including Not One of Us, Scarlet Literary Magazine, Rose and Thorn, Wicked Hollow, and Midnight Street. She has received honorable mentions in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collections and is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Spell check doesn’t necessarily catch words that are spelled correctly but chosen incorrectly. Here’s a list of some of the most common I’ve found in my editing experience. (Written in a certain vein, because vampires need proper grammar too.)
accept/except:
Of course I’ll accept (agree with, allow) your tongue at my throat. After the summer drought, I thirst for everything except (excluding, omitting) the thought of your departure.
affect/effect:
What will be the effect (result) of this dry, hot summer? More than these lost barley rows, the drought will affect (influence/cause a response) the substance of my blood, my ability to quench your constant need.
(Usually, “effect” is the noun, and “affect” is the verb; however, “effect” is sometimes used as a verb, as in, The drought effected (to bring about) great change in my body. And sometimes “affect” can be used as a noun, as in, He affected (assumed) a wry humor that belied his concern at the loss of blood.)
capitol/capital:
On the stairs of the old capitol (the building only), we waited for the sun to rise over the state’s capital (town or city holding government). For a moment, we forgot our impending death, content with the joy of last night’s capital (financial assets) blood gains.
ensure/insure:
If she were to acquiesce to his demand, Emily would first ensure (make certain) the well-being of her family. She would insist the vampire insure (plan money payment for loss) her against the loss of her royal blood.
farther/further:
I will not go one step farther (physical distance) if you speak any further (abstract quantity) about my own lust being greater than yours. We are the same.
its/it’s:
It’s (it is) the memory of sun on new green leaves and its (possessive/belonging to) bright heat on the farmhouse porch that keeps me at the window past dawn’s torturous waking.
lightning/lightening:
Although the heavy storm clouds were lightening (lesser in weight) beyond his black cape blowing, the horizon sparked with lightning (electrical force).
principle/principal:
The principal (main, foremost) goal of our midnight meeting was to establish the principles (rule, truth) by which our passion could be sated—without offending the now sterile principal (chief person, head) of our vampire coven.
proceed/precede:
The wedding party will precede (to go or come before) the vampire bride, who will then proceed (to go on or move forward) into the reception hall to taste the guests.
stationary/stationery:
Before composing my letters of consolation on this vibrant green stationery (writing paper), I must find a table more stationary (motionless, unmoving) than these skeletal remains of my month-long feast.
their/there/they’re:
They’re (they are) forever dancing up there (in a place), all these black and starless nights, in their (possessive, belonging to) translucent skin and ghostly gauze dress.
who’s/whose:
I hope that the vampire who’s (who is) dancing above my ceiling knows whose (possessive, belonging to) black heels and heart have danced there once too.
you’re/your:
With all these rules you devise for self-protection, you’re (you are) still left no choice but to follow what most ignites your (possessive, belonging to you) absolute and undeniable need.
For proper grammar, think about how you’re using the words which vs. that.
Essential or Nonessential Generally, the word which introduces a clause that is not essential to understand the meaning of the sentence (nonessential) and can be set off with commas. The word that generally introduces an essential clause, which is needed to understand the sentence. A vampire might demonstrate the difference this way:
Blood that dripped freshly to his lips excited him more. [blood dripping as opposed to some other method excited him]
The blood, which dripped freshly to his lips, renewed his strength. [the blood renewed his strength and happened to be dripping] Which vs. That: Academics Often Misuse Them Often, people mistakenly use the word which in the attempt to sound more academic or in thinking it is the more proper usage. It isn’t. In choosing which or that, remember, if what follows the word is needed to understand the sentence, use that. If not, you can probably set it off with commas and use which.
A Few Other Uses Following a preposition, use the word which, as in the following example:
The blood, for which the vampire had risked her freedom, did nothing to quell her appetite. The blood, in which the vampire now basked, did nothing to quell her appetite. but The blood that flowed did nothing to quell her appetite
Grammar that suits a vampire. Photo from cottonbro on pexels.com
I’m no longer sure there is an appeal to vampires that’s any different from the appeal of other antiheroes, such as pirates or cowboys/girls or folks in uniform or witches and warlocks.
One reader says the appeal of vampires is the heightened senses conveyed in their stories, another says it’s the bad boy allure, another says it’s their immunity through power, and still more call it the aspect of danger or the tortured soul or the gift of eternity.
Vampire as the Antihero
Couldn’t most of these appealing traits be applied to any antihero? Someone who is set apart whether by job or by personality or by general essence? There is something different about them. A challenge to the norm. We have to step out of ourselves and what we know, take a chance, take the risk in following them.
The desire to take a risk isn’t necessarily the same as liking the “bad boy” or “bad girl.” Look how many have fallen in love with the good vampires of Twilight. But vampires do offer something different and, perhaps, on some level, also recognizable. Is that what makes the desirable antihero?
What is it that makes one reader develop a passion for the vampire antihero and another the pirate and another the lone space cowboy? Maybe it reverts back to people’s first awakenings of sensuality or first taste of adventure.
The Sensual Awakening
When I was fairly young, my older sister sat me down to watch Christopher Lee as Dracula. I saw something I’d never seen before—a man bent over a woman who leaned her head back willingly, opening her neck to his lips. I saw something in their eyes that I’d never seen in kid-TV. Sensuality. Heightened pleasure. It looked a little dangerous but irresistible. A bit like sex.
For someone else, it might have been the cowboy sweeping the wild-haired woman up onto his horse. Or maybe that look on the pirate’s face when she saw the reward of his travels: adventure. Maybe a lifelong passion derives from our first taste of something new, something that sets the adrenaline pumping and imprints in our memory.
The sensual awakening. Photo courtesy of cottonbro on Pexels.
Stories imprint in our memory. Something sticks. I’m not sure we always realize where our desire comes from, but our peculiar passions are part of our growth. Vampires have not only grown into our different cultures, they have grown into our individual psyches. Vampires are frightening creatures of the night, on the one hand, and also the night’s intriguing potential.
Like the werewolf, vampires have held a lasting appeal. I imagine all antiheroes do, in whatever dress they wear. They offer something different though recognizable, something to take us out of ourselves while seeing further in. They require a step away from safety, with the promise of adventure, the promise of good or of wicked pleasure—which perhaps comes in knowing more of ourselves.
I wanted to write a story about a vampire guitarist. A friend scoffed: “If I had a nickel for every story about vampire guitarists…” Despite this quick dismissal of whatever need or passion was driving me to the sensuality of the vampire and the sensuality of music, I had to examine the idea that the story has already been written. I had to ask, What are recurring myths, and why do we read them?
Authors often hear that every story has already been written: the same love stories told again and again, the epic heroes on their quests, the rags to riches fantasies, the tragic hero’s fall. Joseph Campbell’s idea of the monomyth, for example, describes the basic patterns of the hero’s journey as it appears time and again in books and in movies.
Do Stories Have to Be New?
So what’s the point of writing if an author’s allowed only to write something never done before, and yet everything has been done before? How do we define new? A werewolf guitarist? A vampire drummer? I’m deliberately trivializing because I can’t imagine dismissing anyone’s story idea without knowing what compels the writer to write it and how the writing of it might bring something new to life—or something old to life again.
Many writers, at some time or another, strive to retell myths and fairy tales and legends. Maybe they want to extend characters and story lines from the ancient myths or even from their favorite TV series. It isn’t only authors. Think about novels you’ve loved, paintings that have provoked you, or songs that have stirred you. The evocation, the act of love for the story makes people want to extend the experience.
Myths and fairy tales pervade time and cross generations. Photo courtesy of Francesco Frilli on Pexels.
The Comfort of Myths
A good story lives beyond the final word. A good story transcends cultures and generations. However people have changed in society, something remains the same at the root. Myths and fairy tales are retold because, in them, people recognize the basic human traits that pervade culture and time. And in recognizing that, there is comfort.
What we are, we have already been. Names change. Quests change. Gender changes. Nationality changes. The journey to a foreign land becomes the journey into the psyche. The battle with the giants becomes the battle with oppressive bigotry.
Are we justified in our fear of great power if we witness that same fear and the struggle to overcome in the ancient myths, still being told? What in stories of gods coming down from heaven to mold our fates can be found in tales of youth fighting society’s expectations or the questing soul coming to peace with the path life has drawn? A fairy tale resonates in different ways for each person, each generation, each culture, depending on circumstances of place and time. A single story can be retold, reinterpreted, reimagined, relived a thousand times.
Gimmick or Truth?
While we fight for individuality, for the way to say something fresh, I want to be careful in defining what fresh means. If the goal is to say something new, the result often feels more like a gimmick, the work contrived and conniving. Maybe it’s not saying something new that matters but reliving what’s old and what resonates in that universal way—telling stories that makes us part of our history and our present and assures us a future as human beings.
Stories don’t die unless we forget them.
What if we do forget the old myths and fairy tales? What will that make us?
——-
“Eight writers modernize ancient mythologies in Distorted, proving that not every story has been told” (or at least not told in quite this way). Available from Transmundane Press. “Tantalizingly bloody tales featuring human pitted against beast and gods, with the true majesty and horrors of the afterlife, with love and death and desire…”
Blog writer Patricia J. Esposito is author of Beside the Darker Shore and has contributed to Distorted the short story “Where the Arrow Flies,” a retelling of the Apollo and Daphne myth, in which thwarted love seeks its failed cure.
She walks with her sister down the apartment complex sidewalk. In the green, four teen boys bat a volleyball around. They look; she looks. She talks quickly to her sister about their visit. Rapid talk. And while her mouth says things like, “She looks healthy, happy.” Her mind says, “Hot boys. Don’t look. Don’t look.”
Their shirts are rolled up to their chests. Brown skin darkened already by summer sun. One has the Bruno Mars hair (why, guys, why?) but cute nonetheless. Eyes flicker. She talks and walks faster.
Past them now, she nears the parking lot. At the first row of cars, she stops to give her sister a hug and kiss. The four, at a distance now, stand still in a line, as goodbyes are said, and she and her sister head to their separate cars.
She gets in and sighs with relief. Phew, hot. And the volleyball comes winging, then bouncing over, through the lot, to roll in the car space next to hers. Bruno Mars comes jogging over to retrieve it, bending, standing outside her window. She rummages through her purse till he moves on. She drives away.
How genre can change a story:
Fantasy: As he bends for the ball, the string around his neck slips out of his shirt. A flash of turquoise. I gasp and look away. It’s a polinar. There’s nothing I can do but stare ahead as he tucks it back into hiding.
Western: He twirls the ball on one finger and swaggers over. Sun glints off his buckle. He nods without a smile and moves on, taking the empty sidewalk into shadows.
Erotica: He picks up the ball but makes no move back to his friends. Standing, shirt rolled up his chest, he flips the ball hand to hand. His dark eyes stare. I unroll my window.
Mystery: It was a ploy. Obviously. The ball had to be kicked to reach this far. But they couldn’t know what was in my trunk. David said he’d put it there before sunrise.
Literary: I looked away as he bent for the ball. His shoulders were too broad to call him “kid” anymore, but still, who wasn’t susceptible to the mockery of peers? He deserved space to collect himself. In this complex, eyes pried through slitted window shades, and mean grins slammed the doors. He walked head up.
Romance: He snatched up the ball and sheepishly smiled. What had he done to his hair? I thought and couldn’t help but smile back. I could see him moussing it up, laughing at himself in the mirror. But that memory was two years old already.
Choosing genre or story first:
How much does genre choice influence our stories? I know some people write a specific genre regularly. It’s what they read; it’s what they write. Some writers, however, aren’t aware at the initial writing stage what genre they’re aiming for. I tend to blend genres, and see many publishers asking for this blending.
Readers do have expectations when they choose a western or romance or mystery, but readers are also adventurers. I say write the story first, the true and honest thing. Then tweak if necessary. The result might surpass all expectations!
“Show, don’t tell.” All writers have heard the importance of learning this technique. But good writing isn’t as easy as following a list of ten rules. In too many blog tips and how-to lists, the concept has become oversimplified to a quick-and-easy fix, as if changing an adverb to an action fulfills the quest for reader involvement.
I recently came across a writing handbook that suggested showing rather than telling a story and gave a short example: Telling: “No, I won’t go,” Angie said angrily
Showing: “No, I won’t go.” Angie slammed down the phone.
Within the context of a story, this might work. As readers, we might have been feeling Angie’s anger building for three paragraphs and the phone slamming is exactly what we would do too. But as an example of learning to show and not tell, I think it fails. And I see lessons like this too often. If the reader isn’t feeling the same anger, the action of slamming the phone will be as ineffective as “Angie said, angrily.” So what?
“Show” Is More Than an Action
“Show, don’t tell” isn’t simply replacing a stated emotion with a physical action (Jillian felt sad/Jillian wiped a tear). It involves writers becoming so immersed in the story that they stop consciously telling it. The story begins happening around the writer; the story’s world reflects the feelings and governs the actions. The reader is then involved in that world because the writer is involved.
“Show” Is Finding the Life in the Moment
I came across a passage from Elizabeth Chadwick’s novel The Summer Queen. I would present this as a superb example of an author showing us the story as the character lives it rather than telling us what the author thinks the character feels about the story. By its closing, the reader’s breath tightens, suffocating on the news.
William broke the seal, read what was written, and turned to Alienor. “Madam, perhaps you should sit down,” he said, gesturing to a carved bench near the wall.
She stared at him. Dear God, Louis was dead, she thought. She did as he suggested. Roses overhung the seat, heavy and red, their perfume filling each breath she took.
A frown clouded William’s smooth brow. “Madam,” he said gently, “I grieve to tell you that Raymond, Prince of Antioch, has been killed in battle against the Saracens.”
Alienor continued to stare at him. The smell of the roses intensified and the air grew so thick that she could barely breathe, and what air she did inhale was drenched with the syrupy sweet scent of flowers on the edge of corruption.
“Madam?”
She felt his hand on her shoulder, but it was a flimsy anchor.
I would suggest delving deeper into “show, don’t tell” by reading respected writers who have proven their skills over time. I would look at passages in which you, as a reader, have felt the emotions deeply, have experienced a setting and become lost in it.
When Action Feels Distant, Dive Back In
To show and not tell isn’t as simple as phrase replacement. When I’m editing my work, I sometimes come across pages in which the story feels distant to me. I’m not involved. Nowhere in them do I necessarily find a pointless dialogue tag or have a narrator tell what the character is feeling (“Samuel felt confused.”) I use action; yet, something is missing. Despite steering clear of what appears to be mere “telling,” the story isn’t immediate; it’s not “showing” the world in an authentic, immediate way that makes me feel without thinking and know without being told.
It’s Like Playing Pretend
Think back to when you were a child playing pretend. You were called for dinner, and suddenly you realized that you had been gone from this world, lost in something else just as true. Think of those day or night fantasies, those moments when you imagine a scenario and forget you’re driving or become startled as someone speaks. I think writing requires that same state of being lost to one world and alive in another. When we pretend, we don’t tell. We are doing. And in a good story, that doing is shown to a reader.
Play pretend! Photo courtesy of Mathias Zomer, Pexels
Don’t Guide It; Live It
So, to those quick-and-easy writing tips, I would add just a little more: Don’t simply slam down the phone. Be there to know the phone and the table it’s on, to know the clipped, tense language that surrounds you, to know if the air is thin or heavy, to know the history of the relationship happening over the phone. Be in that place and time with that character so that what happens is inevitable and what the reader feels is assured (even if that feeling is ambiguity!).
Show the reader what you saw when you were there, so that they can be there too, without instruction, without clear guidance, but inevitably as they follow your character, as they read the next words.
“Esposito has a vivid and delicious power of imagery reminiscent of Ray Bradbury; every dewdrop sliding off every blade of grass and the crackle of every autumn leaf resonates in a narrative that flows like sweet, dark wine. The story takes us from the streets, harbor-side parks and alleyways of Boston to the villas and forests of Spain in a tale of political ambition, moral conflict, love and insatiable animal passion.”
“Complex and unpredictable, this one will keep you guessing, like an on-going nightmare landscape of sultry silver moonlight. Go buy this one.”
[Author’s note: The review is so beautifully written, and I’ve found the author has many of his own works out. You might like to check those out too! I know I’m going to.]
“Beside the Darker Shoreis different. It is not your usual vampire tale. There is no sex in the book, per se, but it is one of the most powerfully sensual books I have read. When humans offer their blood to vampires, the eroticism of the bloodletting has no need for sex. When Stephen is in the throes of his addiction for donating, he is lost to everything but that act in that moment. Ms. Esposito beautifully conveys the addiction and the yearning for the giving through her words…I liked the characters. While there are villains inBeside the Darker Shore, they are not the stereotypical villains of vampire novels…I hopeMs. Esposito is planning a sequel or prequel. There are many unanswered questions and these are characters that have not left my mind since I finished the book.”
From the peach tree, ripe fruit drops to the dark hillside. Under his cool lips, her skin is tender and ready to be pricked. Full-leafed branches tremble at the wind. With her shiver, a rain of ready fruit drums to earth, thunder in her gut, her blood ready to pour.
The ten most beautiful women. The ten most beautiful men. We jump to leaf through the lists, knowing that, amid the ten, there might be one on which we agree. Oh, the others might be appealing, might have features we appreciate, but are they the epitome of beauty? Sometimes only one, sometimes none really stand out for any given person. Who is top on your list? And do you know why?
For that matter, what natural wonders of the world are the most beautiful? Is a beach sunset the purest beauty or a mountain peak sun-glistened? If we disagree on what is most beautiful, is beauty subjective? Or is it objective, with one true definition?
Was Keats Right in His Poem?
When, in mathematics, a theory is defined in the perfect equation—simple, accurate, absolute—it is often called beautiful. In chemistry, the blending of compounds is sometimes called a beautiful synthesis. Is it true what Keats said in his poem? Beauty is truth, truth is beauty?
While looking at life events, recording memories, creating sketches of people I see, and responding to things I hear or read, I hope to look at all life’s seductions, the things that spark us, that stand out as real, as beautiful in one way or another. I believe that something in our subconscious responds to equations of truth, those poignant moments, the world when it shows us true grace.
Can beauty be an equation, where all variables equate to one need? what is beautiful to you?
What Is Beautiful to You?
The many moods of nature might offer fear to one and peace to another. Each holds truth, and, in that, maybe beauty.
Writing exercise 1: Choose a photo in a magazine or online, someone you don’t know. Choose a mood (eager, excited, sad, angry, in love, in lust, vengeful). Then free-write a description of the person.
Through black-rimmed glasses, his eyes squint under the tug of pure pleasure. He smiles, his high-boned cheeks a shine, hair fringed careless under baseball cap—a man caught in spontaneous and unaffected beauty. This is him, undiluted. What he feels, you will see. In those brown, summer-sun-flecked eyes, there is no lie. Anger glares hard; doubt calculates and surmises; frustration burns; mischief tempts and teases; he dares, he challenges, he demands. So when that strong jaw, etched with unshaven care, relaxes, when those luscious lips spread wide—white-smiling, cheek-appling, eye-glinting in glimmering-sun-rayed-dance—you dismantle in a tingling melt. Let it come: beauty in its most genuine essence. Him: life at its most worthwhile.
We daydream when we’re driving, right, in that quiet space and time? Oh, the radio might be playing, and sometimes a song draws us in. Or sometimes the music is just a rhythm in the background of our thoughts. It’s a bit of space in the day when we’re not doing work and chores, attending to meetings and phone calls, worrying about the news and the judgments in advertisement.
Then we pull into the gas station, where sun shines off the pumps and the few decorative trees shiver a bit in the light wind. A landscaping truck is pulled beside the air pump; men stand about and talk. A white-haired woman holds her cash card, hesitant before fitting it to the slot. Pumping gas: a few minutes of stillness, a moment to let the world around sink in while there’s nothing else to do. Present—for this moment we are in a present space and time.
Be in the present space and time. Image by Harrison Haines, on Pexels
Except now, when I open my door, I’m blasted with talk. Gas station TVs, commercials talking at me, media overload. Loud voices crash over the vibration of leaves.
I don’t like this innovation. The body is most at rest when it’s in the present, experiencing the moment that is. Even stressful times can be better managed if we don’t look ahead, aren’t bombarded with all the possibilities at hand. At the gas pump, I can’t walk away. The video screen has found a hostage audience.
The men who lean against the truck, cross their legs comfortably and laugh with each other. They’re far enough away not to hear. I want an option. An off switch. I want to lean like those men into only the sounds of sunlight on chrome.
Do you have any moments in the day when you feel more aware of your surroundings? Would you like to share a memory of a time you felt present and at peace?
I was very happy to hear that my vampire novel was chosen as Reviewer’s Choice for December at Two Lips Reviews, where the reviewer had this to say:
“Beside the Darker Shore is different. It is not your usual vampire tale. There is no sex in the book, per se, but it is one of the most powerfully sensual books I have read. When humans offer their blood to vampires, the eroticism of the bloodletting has no need for sex.
“While there are villains in Beside the Darker Shore, they are not the stereotypical villains of vampire novels. There was no right or wrong. There is an air of ‘what is best for me’ for each character. … For the pain each of these men brings to the other, it is hard to dislike any of them. Each is fighting for what he believes …these are characters that have not left my mind since I finished the book.”
For more of the review or to see what other novels were selected for the Reviewer’s Choice Award, visit
Two Lips has given my vampire novel Beside the Darker Shorea five-star review, saying “It is not your usual vampire tale. There is no sex in the book, per se, but it is one of the most powerfully sensual books I have read. When humans offer their blood to vampires, the eroticism of the bloodletting has no need for sex.”
Of the four men struggling for happiness, she says, “While there are villains in Beside the Darker Shore, they are not the stereotypical villains of vampire novels. There was no right or wrong. …For the pain each of these men brings to the other, it is hard to dislike any of them. Each is fighting for what he believes.”
She ends saying the characters remained with her well after the reading, which makes me happy, since I do intend a sequel!
The question of vulnerability came up in a story discussion once. Being vulnerable to truth I understood. We often have to face things in others, in life, in ourselves that are scary, that leave us open to having to trust or to move on, to make change or make what we have be our choice. There’s a lot of responsibility involved in knowing truth, and truth is kind of exposure, opening us to the risk of living with others.
Beauty As Exposure
For me, whether beauty makes us vulnerable was more difficult to understand. How could something visually pleasing leave a person vulnerable? Isn’t it instead the universe’s gift to us? In the story we were discussing, a beautiful young man walks into a house buried in snow, into a family living with the lingering grief of a husband and father who silently left them. The young girl has relegated love and romance and sex to the fantasies she reads in literature. They satisfy; the stories are known and don’t change.
But when this beautiful young man walks into her house, his beauty steps past her barriers. He is genuine and exquisite, and she feels suddenly open and vulnerable as he reads her desire.
The Power of Beauty
So what is at work when we see something or someone so beautiful that it makes us stop? What does this beauty strike in us that we need to gaze, to share it with others, to paint it, to snap a picture, to store it in our memory? Something inside must be stirred—something we see within the person or landscape, what emanates from it, recalling or waking something in us. Maybe it wakes a human memory, or maybe it connects with something deeper, connecting us to a broader existence.
To keep that beauty in our life, in a sense, is to let it have power over us. When we feel attraction to a person, that is the first step in allowing someone to cross into our lives. Before we even shake hands or say hello, they’ve crossed over, waking something, creating a slight change, if only for a moment—and sometimes creating a lasting change if the gap between closes. When we build our home on a lake, soothed by the water’s constancy, by the sun and moon’s predictable but never uninspiring beauty, we can be mesmerized again and again. If we take the time to look, beauty affects us. It changes our decisions. It confirms our trust.
Beauty Amid Struggles
But life is unpredictable too. While we watch the beauty of cranes flying over a twilight sky, a healthy teenage girl suffers five heart attacks while being brutally raped. While the moon rises orange and we stand outside and gasp, a hurricane tears away thousands of lives. Hard news like this, or hard words surrounding us at home, take their toll, but sometimes the smallest thing, the greeting of a soft-lipped wide smile on a face that captures us, can soothe the day.
Beauty As a Balm
Maybe beauty is a balm for pain, and we have to be vulnerable to it to let it work its magic. Trust leaves us vulnerable to betrayal, loss, and pain. We never know what might happen. The unknown has always been key to human vulnerability—having to trust, to hope, against odds. The sun and moon keep shining their brilliance and magic, and people keep watching them—mesmerized, curious, and even a bit in love. We connect to something beyond us, and maybe that is where healing is, where truth is too, in that beauty.
In discussion with people, some issues came up to reiterate: We don’t always see nature’s beauty though it’s right in front of us. And that’s also why I think when we’re attracted to someone’s “beauty,” that we’re really attracted to some inner need at the moment, some expression of ourselves even, that we perceive in someone else. (This is not meant to imply we only act for ourselves in an egotistical way but that connections happen based on what we’re feeling on a deeper level.)
When I was a kid growing up on a dead-end street in Hillside, factories at the top, factories at the bottom, all playing fields to us, we had an ice-cream man who served soft ice cream along with the Good Humor bars. The most expensive item on the truck was a chocolate shake.
The block was full of kids ranging from me and my best friend Anne, the youngest, to older brothers and sisters, in their late teens and early twenties. None of us could really afford the chocolate shakes. I’d stare at the picture as I counted dimes. One day, my brother was there, watching us in line. He must have seen me counting, figuring, looking disappointed, because he got up off the curb and said, “What do you want? My treat.”
I was afraid to say the shake, but he guessed it and said, that’s fine, and he pulled what looked like a fortune to me from his pocket. I’m sure it wasn’t, but slicing a dollar bill from what looked like tens and twenties had my eyes open wide. He worked. He was older. From that day on, if he was ever around when the ice cream man came, he’d jog over and buy me a shake.
That wasn’t his only magic. He let me play in his bedroom when he was out. He had swords and daggers hanging on his walls, medieval wall hangings, a spiked flail hanging over his pillow. And he had a wall of model cars. I didn’t take anything down, I just touched things gently, and then lay on his bed and made up stories. I liked cars and dolls equally as a kid; I liked swords and easy-bake-ovens. He encouraged my imagination in what others might have dissuaded.
And he was an artist, is an artist. He’d let me watch him draw. I’d sit at the kitchen table and watch the array of pencils bring out shadow and light to form trees and mountains and cabins and our own small house in a little street.
He’s taken to going on vacations with my family now. And I tell him he has to bring his paints and canvases. It takes him nearly the entire week to get up inspiration, and then he sighs and unwraps the canvas and sets out the paint jars and palette. I wonder if he’s doing it just because I’m waiting. We bring home at least two small canvases, little things he says aren’t worth anything.
I love them. I have two of his large paintings hanging in my house, along with the little things. I still have the sketches he drew me when I was kid, even the fire engines he helped me draw for a school project. He’ll be retiring soon, and I told him he has to come out more often, have dinner with us. He and Gary are very good friends. Maybe we’ll go out for ice cream, and maybe I’ll order the biggest dish!
Older brothers can be magic to a younger sister. I wonder sometimes how much he’s responsible for my opinions of men and my underlying belief they’re good guys.
In Romania, the Varcolaci vampires hunger, not for the red blood flow of humans, but for the light of the sun and the moon. Sometimes depicted as small animals, but also as pale and parched humans, one legend has it that they’re created at midnight if a woman spins without candlelight. They travel wherever they like on the thread of this midnight spinning, as long as the thread isn’t broken, and an eclipse is the Varcolaci satiated by that lost sun or moon.
I woke this morning thinking about favorite fictional characters, whether in books or movies or TV or any other media. The characters that first popped into mind for me ranged from crushes to heroes to soulmates. I’m beginning my list, as they first came to mind, and might keep adding if I remember more.
I’d be curious to hear what characters have influenced or remained with you!
Aragorn (Lord of the Rings) Eowyn (Lord of the Rings) Shep (The Hoax) Stephen Dedalus (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) Quentin (The Sound and the Fury/Absalom! Absalom!) Alyosha (Brothers Karamazov) Ged (Wizard of Earthsea trilogy)
Baltasar (The Campaign) Orphan Huerta (Christopher Unborn) Nayeli (Into the Beautiful North)
Dante and Aristotle (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe)
The first image that pops in my mind is the pointed gray hat. Not any gray wizard’s hat, but a softened hat, slightly bent, worn at the edges, a sense of not only history in him but comfort, no need for embellishments or flash. A true hat, a used hat, a fitting hat.
For each character, there is probably some defining image. My mind flashes with Aragorn’s boots, worn too, mud-stained, a foot traveler, a strong and steady stride.
And what about images that represent not a character alone but an entire story or a theme? Why does the hollowed hiding place in the tree linger with so many of us after seeing To Kill a Mockingbird? On a broader scale, what do the wide expanses of frozen white make us feel in Fargo, and do they come to represent the movie as a whole?
In storytelling, whether in novels or short stories or movies, images can convey as much as dialogue or action. The image doesn’t have to be specifically symbolic, as in a one-to-one relationship like the “A” in The Scarlet Letter, or how a key might come to represent unlocking a secret. Sometimes an image carries with it universal associations that we can’t define: water, doors, open skies, passageways, lone trees, shadows, a sun rise.
A movie or a book can be subconsciously more powerful if the writer or filmmaker incorporates resonant imagery, letting the setting convey ongoing themes or character transitions, letting a single image speak rather than the characters themselves.
Imagine a scene in which two characters stand face to face: one is shouting about an important missed phone call, while the other is unable to speak. The argument has nothing to do with what’s really happening between them, which is a betrayal and a broken promise. As they argue, the silent character’s focus is on a china teacup, narrowing in on the crack running between flowers, a crack that appears larger and larger as the argument goes nowhere.
If later in the book or movie, a teacup is once again seen, in a different house, perhaps an older woman holding a fine cup, never broken, we might not consciously ask, what does this mean, what shift is happening here? But somewhere in our subconscious the new image recalls the old; somewhere inside, something stirs and we sit up, become more engaged with the story, without knowing why.
There’s magic in the subtle play of images. Sometimes you might see a movie or read a book that brings to mind a color. I’ve heard people say, “That movie was so blue,” or “That book felt orange.” Obviously, the writer or filmmaker associated a color with the mood of the story or with the characters’ emotions. Often it’s not a conscious choice, but something that happens in the writing stage, which is taken up unconsciously by the reader or viewer.
But when revising any story, the writer should look at the potential of an image, at what the character might not say, at the action that might not happen, but that the image might show. And trust that the reader, the audience, shares a similar consciousness, and will intuitively know.
Often it’s the subtle image working at the deeper level that stays with the audience, that creates a reaction that feels a bit like a mystery, a stirring inside that lingers after the story is finished.
“The future of publishing: eighteen million authors in America, each with an average of fourteen readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.” — Garrison Keillor
Arturo de Rosa was born in the year 965, Cordoba, Spain. He currently resides in Potes, Spain, but is visiting Boston on the urging of his human blood prostitute, Stephen. In this scene he’s walking the street of the vampire community’s leader, envisioning Alec Marshall, whom he knew in those early years in Cordoba.
Excerpt:
Arturo strummed the cool wrought-iron rails, and sniffed at the row of potted flowers that sat stiff and brown. The lamplight blurred in the descending fog. He paused, closed his eyes, then looked up at the house.
“Alexandros,” he whispered.
His vision broke at the sound of footsteps.
“If you’re looking for Alec Marshall, he’s at the State House gala tonight.”
Arturo remained staring at the house. “Not at all. I’m looking for something sweet to suit my fastidious palette. Not one human … not one has walked this street tonight.”
The vampire stepped forward. “No. You see …”
As Arturo turned, the vampire stopped, marking a distance between them.
“Simple hunger,” Arturo said.
“Yes … you see … Le Cauchemar isn’t far. You’ll find bank blood there. Or livebloods.”
“Livebloods? Ah, blood prostitutes, you mean. But I have one already.”
This vampire was young, his skin still somewhat porous, not the white sheen that he and Alexandros now had, and his heart beat with erratic weakness. Four humans with torches could overpower and easily kill these community fledglings.
Still, he seemed to be making an attempt here, this staunch community supporter. And in that he resembled Alexandros. “At some of the clubs, you’ll find humans who give blood freely,” the vampire continued, “or for a price, but the bank blood is available …”
Ignoring him, Arturo stroked the iron rail and gazed back at Alec Marshall’s redbrick home.
“Sir, if you haven’t registered at the department …”
The fence was built with perfectly spaced iron spears, the tips wet but gritty to Arturo’s touch. “Comprende, I sculpt with subtle, sloping lines, nothing as sharp as he’s chosen. Nor anything as refined as the symmetry his house commands.” Arturo sighed dramatically and finally turned to the vampire. “It has made me pause to consider.” He then brushed his hands down his coat. “But mostly, I’m famished. There are humans here, no? In this fine habitat you made?”
The vampire backed up farther. “You’ll need to register. You’ll need to …”
Laughing, Arturo pulled off his long coat, and draped it over the railing before Alec’s home.
“Nine hundred years. That’s how long I’ve battled your careful and conscientious Alexandros Mersecal. I know his many names. Is he still as beautiful?” Smiling, Arturo held up his hand. “Shhh…. Say nothing. My imagination conjures better.”
Then leaving the coat, Arturo disregarded the vampire and headed back down Bethany Street under thin lamplight, a pale yellow gauze that roused his taste for skin.
At the corner, he turned back. “South, would you say? Will I find your humans if I go, say … this way?”
The young vampire turned and, quickening his pace, headed back where he’d come from.
Arturo watched bemused. “City of proselytes, Marshall belongs only to me.”
Sometimes a story or a scene in a novel just isn’t working. Yet we can’t pin down why. Our brain, trained in the dos and don’ts of writing, can’t come up with a solution. That’s often when it helps to begin the scene over, write it fresh.
But author Stuart Spencer, in The Playwright’s Guidebook, offers another couple suggestions that might, even more than starting over, help writers let go of what they know, what is there and not working, to find instead what’s supposed to be. He calls the technique using reversals: interchanging character names or changing an essential element in the scene to its opposite.
For example, he says, if Joe is in love with Mike and wants to tell him, try writing it again, exchanging the names, with Mike in love with Joe, wanting to speak. Or change the element: if Joe is in love with Mike, have Joe wanting to kill Mike instead. Spencer’s theory is that “when that first choice doesn’t work, it’s because the intellect has covertly intruded on the work that belongs to the subconscious.”
By shaking things up so dramatically and diving back in, the writer is more apt to return to that place where the subconscious writes. And “the subconscious knows more about the truth than reasoning intellect.” As they say, when making a difficult decision, trust your intuition, trust your subconscious. Whatever lists you make of the pros and cons, somewhere deeper, you actually know what’s right. Sometimes in writing, we have to abandon the lists and trust the story that comes.
My novel Beside the Darker Shore is due out this June. Arturo and Stephen are getting antsy waiting. They’d like to say hello via a short scene.
Stephen is a human blood prostitute in love with Boston’s human governor David Gedden. He wants the vampire Arturo to change David into a vampire so he can satisfy his lust for bloodletting with the man he loves. In this scene they’ve just abandoned David in a vampire club at the mercy of hungry vampires. (For reference, Alec is founder of Boston’s peaceful community of vampires.)
Arturo spotted Stephen beside the black traffic light, waiting to cross back to Alec’s splendid new vampire park. He met up with him before the light changed. He could feel Stephen’s heat already, five feet away, two feet. His breathing heavy and molten right through his chest.
Arturo pressed him against the light post, swept back the black satin hair, and placed a hand on Stephen’s burning forehead. “What do you want from him?” With his thumbs, he gently closed Stephen’s eyelids, closed those warm and frightened eyes.
“You know what I need.”
Frustrated, Arturo let him go. “I can’t make him a vampire if he won’t acquiesce.”
“I can’t have him any other way. If he won’t take your blood, then he’s useless to me. They’re not figuring out how to reverse immortality. That Elena, she just wants more immunity.”
Arturo studied Stephen, then checked back at the club entrance.
“So, do I rescue him?”
Stephen started across the street. “I’ll be at the park. I don’t need to watch the asshole fall in love with you.”
Arturo laughed delighted, and called after Stephen, “Can you blame him, mi bello?”
In the screenplay book I’m reading, Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay by Andrew Horton, the author uses the term “carnivalesque” when explaining how to develop real and memorable characters. Character is never complete, set, finished, but always glimpsed in motion from a certain perspective, he says, and quotes Seymour Chatman, “The horizon of personality always recedes before us.”
In a carnival, people are thrown into a place of the unknown, where anything can happen. Carnival is the time when no rules hold, when one can become whatever he or she wishes. And even if the writer knows a character’s core personality and uses this “core” knowledge to drive the plot of a story, there should remain a mystery, “a realm of the unresolved,” something neither the writer or reader can fully know or understand.
“The beauty of life is in its uncertainty,” the poet Yoshida Kenko says. And in a good book or film, sometimes we understand something without being able to explain it; we feel it and don’t know why. When I read these ideas, I thought of one scene in Little Miss Sunshine.The teenage boy who had all his hopes set on being a pilot finds out he’s color blind, runs off from the family, screaming out his rage and frustration, and he won’t return to the family van. The sister eventually comes down the hill where he sits and squats beside him. Nothing is said, nothing explained, but we understand without explanation why he returns to the van.
We all know those moments from books and movies. Creating them? I think to do so, we have to let our story have a life of its own, guided but not quite pinned down. There’s magic in that and I think the audience feels it.
A vampire’s quick look at the proper use of “I” or “me” in sentences:
Most everyone is accustomed now to using “I” as the subject pronoun in a sentence:
“The vampire and I slipped through the city’s shadows, a chill without source.”
NOT
“The vampire and me slipped through the city’s shadows, a chill without source.”
After all, if you removed the vampire, would you say “Me slipped through the city’s shadows…”? No.
But because we’re taught to use “I” as a subject pronoun, saying, “The vampire and I slipped through the city’s shadows…” we often try to correct what isn’t wrong when it becomes the object:
“You glance behind at the trailing shadow with a shiver for him and I.”
or
“You glance behind at the trailing shadow with a shiver for him and me.”
Which is correct? The easiest way to find out is to remove the other person “him.”
“You glance behind at the trailing shadow with a shiver for I.”
or
“You glance behind at the trailing shadow with a shiver for me.”
Obviously, you’d use “me.” “I” is the subject pronoun; “me” is the object pronoun.
“Anton and I raised our cups. You poured the blood for him and me.”
“Now it’s our turn. Cups to the sky, let’s milk the moonbeams, cream for the blood they’ve given you and me.”
REMEMBER: Remove the other person, and you’ll know which pronoun to use.
Every now and then (once in ten years?), the perfect story or novel title comes to me in a flash of brilliant perfection. For all the other thousand times I need a title, I fret, I struggle. In discouragement, I settle, and then I rethink, toil again. And still it’s just not right.
Titles are a chore for me. I’ve even had two magazine editors very generously suggest new titles for stories I’ve sent them. My gratitude is immense. I wish I could always have someone title my works for me. Like artists titling their paintings, I want to call my stories, “Vampire with Apples,” or “Graveyard at Dusk.” This just doesn’t do for someone working with words.
A recent blog post asked if titles are important. Yes, I think they are, though for me, often it’s after the fact. A title can draw us in to a story, or make us pick up a book, but often I find I don’t really notice the title until I’ve finished reading. Or maybe it’s that the title doesn’t quite take on meaning until I’ve read the work. Then, yes, then, I go back and say, ahhh, that’s what the author meant!
In titling my novel, Beside the Darker Shore, I removed the preposition a dozen times. Who needs prepositions? But in a sense, that was the point. Just as I chose “darker” rather than “dark.” The main character is a tentative, cautious man, who is more likely to skirt the edge than dive in. Also, he’s aware of the thrill of shorelines, both sunlit and moonlit, hopeful and deadly. He has to make a choice and spends the novel “beside” that choice, which is a bit “darker” than he’d like.
The same blog asked about character names. Are they important? We’ve all heard the advice about avoiding similar names, or names that begin with the same letters. Unfortunately, in that same novel, I’ve been unable to give up the similarly initialed Alec and Arturo. Alec represents reason and restraint; Arturo represents emotion and wild abandonment. They are the choices the main character faces. I wanted the similarity. I hope it doesn’t confuse the reader.
I nearly always look up the meaning of my characters’ names, and choose names based on meaning. But there are times the name comes to me and I simply see the character and I feel changing the name would be stealing his or her natural identity. Why is Stephen named Stephen in that same novel? I could say because it means “crown” or “wreath,” and he is the glorious and gorgeous immortal in the novel. But really, I just always liked that name and it came to me as him.
Whether the meaning matches the character or not, I do think the name should feel like the character, have a softness or harshness, a practicality or romanticism that settles easily with the reader. For me, Alec, which is harsher, could not be the romantic that Arturo is. And Stephen is softer than the protagonist David, who skirts that darker shore.
Titles, character names–I’ve heard some people say they use song lyrics for titles, that they pull names from the endless lists of baby-name sites. I’m always scouring those baby-name sites, or looking up derivations of words to find related names. When I’m struggling for my title, I take others’ advice–I search for an image that stands out in the story; I condense the theme to a phrase. Sometimes it works; sometimes, sigh, I seem to hit delete for weeks on end.
I’m wondering what you do. What comes easily? How much do you worry about a title or a name? I think back on character names that remain with me in books I’ve read, or in movies. I like that. And I like speaking a favorite book title with reverence or affection because it stands for something I love. Yes, they’re important to me. And when a story works, they become important to the reader.
Spell check doesn’t necessarily catch words that are spelled correctly but chosen incorrectly. Here’s a list of some of the most common I’ve found in my editing experience. (Written in a certain vein, because vampires need proper grammar too.)
accept/except:
Of course I’ll accept (agree with, allow) your tongue at my throat. After the summer drought, I thirst for everything except (excluding, omitting) the thought of your departure.
affect/effect:
What will be the effect (result) of this dry, hot summer? More than these lost barley rows, the drought will affect (influence/cause a response) the substance of my blood, my ability to quench your constant need.
(Usually, “effect” is the noun, and “affect” is the verb; however, “effect” is sometimes used as a verb, as in, The drought effected (to bring about) great change in my body. And sometimes “affect” can be used as a noun, as in, He affected (assumed) a wry humor that belied his concern at the loss of blood.)
capitol/capital:
On the stairs of the old capitol (the building only), we waited for the sun to rise over the state’s capital (town or city holding government), and for a moment, we forgot our impending death, content with the joy of last night’s capital (financial assets) blood gains.
ensure/insure:
If she were to acquiesce to his demand, Emily would first ensure (make certain) the well-being of her family and insist the vampire insure (plan money payment for loss) her against the loss of her royal blood.
farther/further:
I will not go one step farther (physical distance) if you speak any further (abstract quantity) about my own lust being greater than yours; we are the same.
its/it’s:
It’s (it is) the memory of sun on new green leaves and its (possessive/belonging to) bright heat on the farmhouse porch that keeps me at the window past dawn’s torturous waking.
lightning/lightening:
Although the heavy storm clouds were lightening (lesser in weight)beyond his black cape blowing, the horizon sparked with lightning (electrical force).
principle/principal:
The principal (main, foremost) goal of our midnight meeting was to establish the principles (rule, truth) by which our passion could be sated without offending the now sterile principal (chief person, head) of our vampire coven.
proceed/precede:
The wedding party will precede (to go or come before) the vampire bride, who will then proceed (to go on or move forward) into the reception hall to taste the guests.
stationary/stationery:
Before composing my letters of consolation on this vibrant green stationery (writing paper), I must find a table more stationary (motionless, unmoving) than these skeletal remains of my month-long feast.
their/there/they’re:
They’re (they are) forever dancing up there (in a place), all these black and starless nights, in their (possessive, belonging to) translucent skin and ghostly gauze dress.
who’s/whose:
I hope that the vampire who’s (who is) dancing above my ceiling knows whose (possessive, belonging to) black heels and heart have danced there once too.
you’re/your:
With all these rules you devise for self-protection, you’re (you are) still left no choice but to follow what most ignites your (possessive, belonging to you) absolute and undeniable need.
