Vampire

They come from Transylvania, and they come to drink your
blood. This is the legend of the vampires, and it’s been
around for a long, long time.  In 1897, Bram Stoker’s novel
Dracula created a minor sensation. Today Anne Rice’s
Vampire Chronicles and TV shows like Buffy the Vampire
Slayer have brought the legend to life for us.

And that’s a contradictory statement, because vampires are
not alive – at least not in the same way we are.  They are
the dead brought back to life, or sometimes brought back
from the brink of death, as in the case of someone being
bitten by a vampire.

Vampires are very pale. Their touch is icy for human warmth
no longer warms them. They have long fangs they use to suck
the blood from their victims. They often dress all in black
and wear flowing capes.

Vampires need blood to live. Preferably human blood, but in
the case of an emergency when no human blood is available,
animal blood will suffice. They also prefer blood from a
living person, but, with the plentiful supply in hospital
blood banks, an emergency supply is never far away.

Vampire

Want to get rid of a vampire? A wooden stake through the
heart should do the trick. Or lock him outside in the
bright sunlight and he’ll burn to a cinder. Vampires cannot
tolerate a crucifix. Holy water burns them, and they cannot
enter a house where garlic protects doors and windows.

Legend also has it that these creatures are unable to cross
running water. If the stories are true, vampires cannot
enter a person’s home without an invitation.

Because of their aversion to sunlight, vampires sleep
during the day and roam at night. They love to sleep in a
coffin on a bed of graveyard soil. Vampires have no
reflection in mirrors or glass, and they cast no shadow. 

Did vampires ever exist? Perhaps, in some form, for usually
every legend has some basis in fact somewhere. There have,
however, throughout history, been people who have come
close to vampirism. Count Dracul, who once ruled in
Transylvania, killed criminals by impaling them on a stake.
He was the basis for Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel.

Peter Kurten, in Dusseldorf, killed young women by biting
their necks and breasts and leaving them to bleed to death. 
Gilles de Rais of France is said to have murdered more than
forty children and drank their blood.

Countess Bathori, however, thirsted, not for blood, but for
beauty. Legend has it that she killed over 600 virgins so
she could bathe in their blood, believing this practice
would keep her young and lovely.

Some of today’s mass murderers might also fit the picture.
Sadistic and blood thirsty, some of them have even had
cannibalistic tendencies.

Watch out for these “human vampires.” But don’t forget the
other kind as well, the ones that come from Transylvania.
They come to drink your blood.

They come to suck your blood

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Chikadee

Yesterday my son and his fiancé tucked me into a wheelchair and took me for a walk along the path around our small lake. I was entranced by the brilliant autumn colors, the gathering ducks and geese, and the squirrels.

 They brought along a bag of birdseed, and stopped along the way to hold handfuls of seed out to the chickadees that came to eat perched on their hands.

 It brought back memories of my son’s dad, my husband, Norman. Folks called him the Birdman of Beaverdam.

——————————————————————-

 The smoky dusk of early evening lurked among the willows and lingered beneath the spruce trees. Mist hovered above Angling Lake. Not a leaf quivered in the hush of approaching dawn.

 Then the silence was shattered by the voice of a meadowlark. More birds joined in singing an anthem to the sunrise. Morning had come and the village of Beaverdam was awakening.

 Most of the birds congregated in the trees surrounding Norman Cardinal’s cabin. Folks in the small hamlet called him the Birdman of Beaverdam. Every tree in his yard boasted a birdhouse or two. Bird feeders hung from branches and topped posts. A birdbath mounted on a pedestal

Hummingbird

stood in the shade beneath a maple tree. Hummingbird feeders filled with sweet red nectar swayed in the breeze.

 The sun crept over the horizon and a sunbeam lit up the feeder fastened beneath the cabin

Grosbeak

window. Several grosbeaks landed on the feeder and began to sift through empty sunflower seed hulls in a search for food. The supply needed to be replenished.

 Tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Hungry beaks rapped against the windowpane. Come on, old friend, they seemed to say. It’s time to get up. Time for breakfast. An ever-increasing cacophony of noise demanded attention.

 The back door opened, and a heavy-set man stepped outside carrying an ice cream pail filled with sunflower seeds.

The grosbeaks retreated to nearby branches, not, it was obvious, from fear, but merely to allow their mentor room to work.

 Norman scooped the empty hulls from the feeder with a cupped hand, then refilled it with fresh seeds. Before he could open the door to go back inside, the birds had returned to the feeder and were eagerly pecking at the seeds.

 The grosbeaks weren’t Norman’s only feathered visitors. The birds varied from season to season, but all through the heat of summer and on into the icy winter winds, it was a rare day when no bird at all appeared.

Woodpecker

Grosbeaks, hummingbirds, several varieties of woodpeckers that gloried in pecking at the frozen suet nestled in the crotch of a tree when the temperature dropped well below zero. Blue jays, wrens, melodious larks and wild yellow canaries, all were regular visitors to that lakeside cabin.

Bluejay

Many of these birds were strangers in Beaverdam before Norman moved in.

It was not unusual to see Norman sitting outdoors at his picnic table, sparrows perched on his shoulders or even on his head. Canada jays (better known as whisky jacks) swooped down to neatly snatch bread from his hand.

 He was truly a friend to all birds. He designed and built all the birdhouses and the bird feeders. He made the bird bath and kept it clean and full. None of the feeders ever had a chance to become empty.

 His only income was a small disability pension. He oftenwent to town and returned with a large sack of sunflower seeds and a jumbo package of hummingbird nectar mix while his own pantry shelves remained nearly bare.

 Other birds were also attracted to this man. He loved to fish. It wasn’t unusual to see a flock of

Gull

seagulls following a boat, but if Norman was on the lake, the majority of gulls congregated above his boat.

Fish too small to keep ended up in the ample pouches of hovering pelicans.

Pelican

Norman is gone now. He passed away many years ago, but he

is well remembered in the little hamlet of Beaverdam. Some of his birdfeeders still decorate the trees and the birdbath stands in the yard. His friends and neighbors leave them there as a tribute to the Birdman of Beaverdam.

Whiskeyjack

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Writer

I am a writer. Therefore, I write. Sometimes I write ceaselessly, for hours or days or even weeks at a time. Then, having written, I take off my writer’s hat and become – a marketer.

 A marketer, simply put, is someone who markets. As a marketer, I search for publications, whether magazine, newspaper or ezine, that might be interested in what, as a writer, I have produced.

Magazines

Occasionally I am successful and sell what I have written, even less occasionally, for a fair sum of money. More often than not, I am unsuccessful, so I put the writing away for revision or perhaps only another try at a later date. But this process makes me no less a writer.

 A freelance writer is one who writes what he wants, where he wants, when he wants. Most writers do, at least to some extent, fall into that category. Only those writers who work at a corporate level producing, perhaps, ad copy or company brochures, are not really freelancing, but again, they have chosen to do this.

Writing

 I write a regular weekly article for the same publication. But I chose, and still choose, to do that. I also write other things. Sometimes a publication sets a deadline but that makes me no less a freelance writer, because I have chosen to write for this publication and to adhere to the rules and deadlines set by the editor.

 What is a creative writer? Simply put, a creative writer is a writer who creates. Again, this is all writers, because, whether we write fantastic opuses about life on a distant planet or an article on why eating spinach is good for you, we are still creating. We are painting pictures with words although those pictures are as different as — well — a bump by bump tale of a ride in a rocket ship gone mad or an egg by egg recipe for a spinach omelet. 

And this brings us full circle, back to the original question: What is a writer? Simply put, no matter what you write, where you write or when you write, a writer is one who writes.

Freelance Writer

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My husband Norman, sitting in his favorite easy chair, shook his head and
groaned. He didn’t much care for cats. Besides, I’d had cats before and he knew
how losing them broke my heart.

It was too late. I’d already fallen in love. With his dark gray striped fur, tufted ears and brilliant yellow eyes, the kitten resembled a miniature bobcat.
This, I thought, is one feisty little cat. I named him Tiger.

We lived on the third floor of an apartment block in a small town, and, for the
first two years of his life, Tiger’s only experience with the out-of-doors was
the balcony where he sat for hours each day watching the world pass by beneath
him.

The next year, when my father passed away, we moved to my mother’s home to help
her through her grief. She had a large fenced yard and, for the first time, we
could let Tiger experience the outdoors. The first time Tiger set foot outside,
the grass mystified him. He tippy toed across the lawn like a ballerina dancing
across the stage; then he raced for the house. With a snort of laughter, Norman
opened the door for the cat who was rushing into the house to use the only
bathroom he’d ever known – his litter box.

In September, autumn came, a northern Alberta autumn with heavy frost. The first morning when the temperature dropped well below freezing, Tiger rushed outdoors to use his new bathroom in the flower bed. The nice soft dirt he had been  accustomed to was now hard and unyielding and he finally gave up and returned to his litter box, looking quite put out by the whole thing. He continued to use the “indoor plumbing” until the snow came. He didn’t seem to mind the cold white stuff a bit. In fact, he was happy because once again he had somewhere to dig holes for his daily toilet duties.

In 1990 we bought a camper and moved to Angling Lake for the summer. The wild
bush behind our camper was the haunt of coyotes, cougars and the occasional
wolf. Muskrats sometimes left the lake to explore the weeds and skunks,
notorious cat killers, abounded. I was a bit worried that we might lose Tiger
and suggested we leave him with one of the kids.

My husband would have none of it. “Tiger comes with us,” he said. “He can look
after himself.”

My worries were unfounded. Tiger chased birds and squirrels, sat in the sun and
purred, and never strayed too far from the safety of the camper and yard.

This was ranch country, and many ranchers owned dogs, big mongrel animals
accustomed to being kings of their domain. These people became our friends and often rode in on their horses, dogs following close behind.

Tiger, with his brazen manner, fluffed up, and hissing and spitting, didn’t hesitate to let those dogs know that they were now in his domain. Here Tiger was king. To our surprise, and that of the ranchers, Tiger intimidated even the largest, fiercest dogs in the neighborhood.

“Stupid cat,” Norman said. “Going to get himself killed.” But I detected a note
of pride in his voice.

One night we were awakened by a loud ruckus outside. Tiger was howling and
spitting, and then we heard a thud against the bottom of the camper. After a few
seconds of silence, we could hear Tiger wailing and his voice became fainter and
fainter.

Norman and I rushed outdoors where a full moon illuminated the countryside.
There, on the hill behind our camper, stood a red fox with Tiger in his jaws. My husband got his rifle. Afraid he might hit Tiger, he fired over the fox’s head. The animal dropped our cat and loped off over the hill.

Tiger lay unmoving. Feeling certain that my cat had chosen the wrong foe this
time and was either dead or injured, fear and sorrow flooded my mind. Then Tiger
staggered to his feet, and, with head and tail held high, stalked back to the
trailer.

“Too dumb to know a fox from a dog,” Norman said as he picked Tiger up and ran
gentle hands over the cat’s body, looking for injuries.

Tiger spent the next couple of years moving back and forth with us between our
summer home and our townhouse. It became obvious, though, that he now found town
life boring. For that matter, so did we, so we bought a cabin at the lake and
moved there to live year round.

Ice fishing was a big part of Norman’s life, and one wintry day Tiger tried to follow my husband out to his fishing shack. Someone else had drilled a hole in the ice and Tiger, claws scrambling uselessly at the slippery surface of the lake, slid into the hole and splashed into the freezing cold water. When my husband brought him in shivering and dripping, I grabbed a towel and rubbed him dry him. He must have been numb, and as the warmth brought the feeling back into his body, he yowled and began to run back and forth across the cabin floor meowing, obviously in pain.

Norman shook his head. “Too dumb to see a hole in the ice,” he said, but he was
the one who held Tiger that evening and stroked his soft fur until he purred.

Over the years I saw a growing attachment between my husband and the cat.
They were always together. When Norman went out in the boat, Tiger sat on the
dock and watched for his return. Both cat and man loved fish. When Norman
filleted his catch Tiger stood on his hind feet, front paws resting on the side
of the table, awaiting his share. The cat even rode to the dump when Norman
took the garbage out each week.

Norman suffered a serious heart attack in 1995 and could no longer work. I
found a job in town, but the half-hour drive back and forth morning and night
made for a very long workday. I suggested we move back to town, but Norman loved
the country and his hours out on the lake fishing.

Winter, driving on icy, drifted roads, often in darkness, became too risky. After
a few weeks of soul searching and a couple of near accidents, I finally rented
an apartment in town and only went out to the lake for weekends.

“I’ll be fine,” Norman said. “I’m not alone. I have Tiger.”  The cat now slept
at the foot of his bed at night and followed him everywhere.

Norman’s health began to worsen, but still he refused to return to town. He
suffered from a heart condition, sleep apnea and diabetes and became depressed
and moody. His illnesses made him so irritable that I stopped spending all my
weekends at the cabin.

“Don’t waste your time coming out here every weekend,” he finally told me. “I
don’t need to be babied.”

Although his harsh words hurt, I knew he hated my seeing him ill. Because of the
sleep apnea he often had to fight to stay awake long enough to carry on a
conversation. It was obvious he preferred to be alone and really didn’t want me
there. He knew he was ill. And he worried, not about himself, but about Tiger.

“I hope the cat goes before I do,” he told me one day. “Who’ll look after him if
I’m not there?”

We knew after all this time at the lake, the cat would find it hard to adjust to
town life with rumbling traffic and little room to wander. We didn’t think tiger
would be able to survive in town and there was no one near enough to the cabin
to take over his care.

Then one evening, Norman phoned me and said, “Tiger never came in for his supper
tonight.” 

It was early March, with a hint of spring in the air, so I told him not to
worry. Tiger was probably just out hunting or exploring the lakeshore somewhere
and would be home and hungry in the morning.

The next morning, Norman phoned again and I could hear tears in his voice. He’d
found Tiger asleep under his truck. Only the cat wasn’t asleep. He was dead.
There wasn’t a mark on him. Nor did he show signs of illness. He was just an old
cat and his time had come. I drove out to the lake that evening and we buried
Tiger behind the cabin under the old maple tree he had loved to climb. For the
first time in far too long, my husband and I held each other, and we both cried.

A week later, sometime in the night, my husband passed away. I like to think
that Tiger had gone first to free my husband to leave this world knowing that
his old friend wouldn’t suffer. I like to imagine them together now in the Great
Beyond, just two old friends whose time had come.

 Book stores carry shelf after shelf of paranormal books. They may be labeled horror, and some of them are true-to-life horror – topics like stalkers and serial killers. But the majority are pure, unadulterated paranormal.

 Authors have made a fortune writing about it. Stephen King writes on everything from telekinesis:  (Carrie) to Vampires  (Salem’s Lot) to haunted castles  (The Shining.)  Anne Rice wrote terrifying novels about vampires and witches. Witness the popularity of the vampire Lestat in The Vampire Chronicles  and the witches chronicles in The Mayfield Witches. Dean Koontz writes about a variety of paranormal topics. Even romance novels have embraced the paranormal with werewolves, vampires and ghosts all represented.

 Movies are no different. In fact the authors mentioned above all have stories that have been translated to the big screen. And it doesn’t end there. Hardly a month goes by without a few new paranormal entries on the new features list. I’ve even seen movies entitled Sasquatch and Chupacabra.

 Television boasts its own assortment, going back to 1959 and the advent of  The Twilight Zone, soon followed, in 1964, by The Outer Limits.. Why not throw in an afternoon soap with a vampire lead, and we have Barnabas in Dark Shadows. 

Buffy

I have all seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel. I also have all nine seasons of  The X-Files. True, a lot of the episodes were concerned with an alien conspiracy (and even that has its ‘paranormal overtones) but many episodes took a walk on the darker side of the unknown – werewolves, vampires, even a chupacabra.  I loved Lost. Was it paranormal? I thought so. I just received the DVD of the final season, and my collection is complete. 

Books, movies, television have all been invaded by the paranormal bug. And I haven’t even touched on the numerous science fiction movies, series or books. Many people consider UFOs and extraterrestrials as a part of the paranormal field.

 The question is why has the paranormal forged all these inroads into the entertainment field. Why has it taken such a hold on the imagination of the world?

 A fascination with the unknown is as old as mankind itself. Early caveman looked up at the stars and wondered. A need to know has led man deeper into every field from science to exploration and even into religion. Even children’s fairy tales fostered an interest in the paranormal. Talking wolves in Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs could only be werewolves, and Alice in Wonderland was a fantastic tale of the supernatural.

 What’s out there? Why does this happen? What powers do we possess, and I believe we are all psychic, but most have allowed those psychic abilities to lie dormant.

 We’ve passed through the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age. Some call where we are now the Solar Age. Perhaps next will come the true “New Age,” the “Age of Enlightenment” when the power of the mind will finally be accepted as the highest power of all.

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It was finally accepted and put under contract by a small publishing house. I say ‘finally,’ but I have to admit it’s the only place I’ve ever sent it. They had it for over two years, and nothing was done. Maybe I was too impatient, but I finally asked for, and was granted, my rights back.

Instead of immediately sending it out somewhere else, I started another round of revisions. And I discovered something. I was changing things back to the way I had originally had them. Could that be right?

I was leafing through some old copies of Romance Writer’s Report (RWR) and saw an ad from Ninth Moon and a quote from Rabindramath Tagore. (1913 winner of the  Nobel prize in literature) that struck a chord in me: “I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”

Time to stop stringing my instrument, time to stop re-revising. My novel goes out one more time this week so I can go on to some of the other stories in my file and in my mind.

Then, in the early 1990s, I read my first Silhouette Shadows, and there it was – romance AND the paranormal, all wrapped up in a neat little bundle. And I was doubly hooked.

Vampires have been an important part of our literary heritage since Bram Stoker and Dracula. Anne Rice helped to bring them into the modern world with Lestat and Interview with a Vampire. They can be violent and downright frightening, but, as we soon discovered, some are  more sensitive and likeable. Of course, they are also handsome or beautiful and make ideal heroes and heroines.

Close on the popularity of vampires come my favorite Other Worlders - werewolves. Perhaps our fascination with this shapeshifter goes back to childhood fairy tales full of wolves. Remember Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs and Peter and the Wolf.

Other shapeshifters evolved from the werewolf – werecats, giant birds, bears. I recently read a story where the hero shapeshifted into a horse.

But other stories strain my belief. Dragons, for instance, not just because of their huge size, but also because they are mythical, so we are being asked to fall under the spell of two very different myths,

Gargoyles are other creatures I find difficult to envision. I guess that’s because they aren’t living beings. Just lumps of stone. I find it hard to see them come to life and shift into a lovable hero – or even a detestable villain.

A recent book I read, however, not only strained my belief, but was upsetting for other reasons. It concerned zombies. True, the story didn’t try to turn a zombie into a hero (though that may come in future novels.) These zombies were violent and deadly. (As well as dead.)

Included were scenes with hunks of flesh falling off, missing facial features, a stomach turning stench and, the worst, for me,, zombies scooping up handfuls of human brains and eating them.

These scenes might be okay in a pure horror novel, but they aren’t the things I want to read in a book that professes to be a romance novel.

Ever since I learned that those strange marks on the paper were actually words, I’ve wanted to be the one who wrote those words, the person who used those words to write the hundreds of stories that inhabited my head.

But first, I had to get my education and learn how to do what I dreamed of doing. I had to learn how to become what I wanted to become.

Life moved quickly after that. Graduation, finding a job. Boys, boys, boys. And for a while those childhood dreams were forgotten – almost. But still in the back of my mind this little tickling urge remained. Okay. Later. My time’s still coming.

Rings

Then I met HIM. Dreams of marriage, children, a home, chased away all except the faintest reminder of what was supposed to be. There’d be time for writing when I was done having babies, when the kids started school, when they all left home. When, when, when…………

Then we were free at last, free to travel, to have fun together, to just be ourselves. There’d be lots of time after retirement for writing.

Then my husband became ill and I had no time for anything except nursing him and worrying, and I had to keep my job to take care of expenses. I lost him twelve years ago.

For a while I lived in limbo. Then my old dream returned. Now I was finally free to write. And I did, mostly articles about sleep apnea, the disorder that took my husband’s life.

But that was no longer enough. Now I wanted it all – articles, short stories, poetry, a novel. I scattered my energies far and wide, until not enough remained for any one project.

And where am I now? In a Senior’s Lodge, living on canned oxygen and pushing a walker. And still scattering my energy to the four winds. But my novel is slowly progressing. The dream has not died.

Old Age