Writer & Editor
Great news: WolfCop is now a reality. Writer/director Lowell Dean and his filmmaking team managed to advance through multiple fan-voted rounds of CineCoup’s development-spurring competition. When they made it into the Top 5 finalists in the inaugural CineCoup Film Accelerator, I had hope they might make it all the way — and on June 10, they did.
I really wanted to love Red Moon. I asked the Books editor at the Free Press months in advance whether I could review it, and was thrilled when the ARC showed up. However, as much as I enjoyed Benjamin Percy’s writing and his narrative voice, there were elements of the story and the background world of his werewolves that just didn’t hang together enough, in my opinion.
This was touted as a hot book long before it hit shelves earlier this month — if you’ve read it and disagree, I’d love to hear about in the comments.
THE werewolf has often embodied our fears of what is wild in nature or within ourselves. In Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon, the werewolf is cast as terrorist in what could be a provocative analogy, but it ultimately fails to deliver.
OK, this isn’t strictly speaking a werewolf souvenir, but you have to admit the image of a Canadian wolf on the face of a pure silver $20 coin is appropriate for lovers of all things lycanthropic. The new coin, issued by the Royal Canadian Mint, was released this year. According to the mint’s website as I write this, the mintage of 250,000 coins is already 97% sold out.
It’s my pleasure today to host urban fantasy author Rhiannon Held, writer of werewolf novels Silver (2011) and its sequel Tarnished, which is out now. I asked her about a possible writing soundtrack, but also about what she thought of the werewolf’s place in culture today. As befits a writer whose werewolves’ social dynamics are rich and complex, she had some fascinating thoughts to share. Take it away, Rhiannon!
When David invited me to do this post, he asked for my thoughts on an interesting topic: What does the werewolf mean as a monster in today’s fiction? I don’t know the answer myself — but while we’re overrun with vampires and zombies, the werewolf seems stuck — at least in the popular consciousness — in old tropes, and doesn’t seem to have the same impact on pop culture.
I think at least part of the answer lies in an idea that I’ve held for a while: we seem to use or discard our monsters based on what kind of metaphors they’re good for. What do I mean by that? Let’s take vampires as an example. Back in history, when they were hairy-palmed ugly monsters, they seemed like more of a metaphor for the unknowable evil that jumps out at you from the dark.
In case you haven’t been keeping up with current events, some of the best werewolf stories are coming from women these days. None more so than Allison Moon, who began her Tales of the Pack series with Lunatic Fringe in 2011, and launched the second book in the series, Hungry Ghost, on April 9. (You can find more information on both at her website.)
In Lunatic Fringe, Allison introduces us to Lexie, a first-year university student from Wolf Creek, Ore., who moves to nearby Milton to attend school. Not only does she fall in with a strong-minded group of women known as the Pack, she also falls in love with a woman for the first time. In addition to navigating the sometimes tense sexual politics on campus, Lexie is dismayed to discover that she, as well as some others in Milton, are werewolves.
Indie author Allison Moon has been making a name for herself with her feminist take on werewolves, first in Lunatic Fringe (2011). That same year, she was named a Lambda Literary Emerging LGBT Authors Fellow and was a runner up for the Victoria Hudson Emerging Author Award. This year, she continues with her second book in the Tales of the Pack series, Hungry Ghost, available now.
We’ll have an interview with Allison later this week about Hungry Ghost, but in the meantime she was kind enough to write a guest post for As You Were on the music that inspires her as she writes her werewolf tales. Read on, and give it a howl…
