Horror, like anything else, has its trends. Vampires have gone mainstream thanks to Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer; zombies are the new vampires, if 28 Days Later and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are any indication; and ghosts, while they haven’t made waves since movies such as The Sixth Sense and The Others more than ten years ago, are the only spooky creatures that people actually still believe in. Where, then, does that leave werewolves?
Posts Tagged with werewolf
Werewolf Wednesday: David Wellington’s Frostbite
If revenge is a dish best served cold, then what better place for it than the Canadian North? In the bizarre landscape of the Arctic’s “drunken forest” and forsaken settlements such as Port Radium, David Wellington crafts an intriguing, original take on the werewolf mythos in Frostbite.
Wellington had already shown his taste for revamping classic monsters, in novels such as Vampire Zero and 13 Bullets. In Frostbite, he makes the rules for his lycanthropes all the more strict and frightening, while at the same time presenting a very human story.
Werewolf Wednesday: Nu Yang’s lycanthropic playlist
Nu Yang is author of “A Good Mate is Hard to Find,” one of the fresh new tales of female lycanthropy in Wolf Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny. The anthology was published this summer by Hic Dragones.
Nu’s atmospheric, visceral tale starts off with a rash of murders causing grief for the local werewolf — but not in ways you would expect. It turns out finding an appropriate and worthy mate is even tougher for werewolves than regular folks, which means the old “it’s not you, it’s me” conversation is more than just awkward for the supernatural creatures among us.
Werewolf Wednesday: Soundtrack of the Apocalypse
For those who don’t know, Jason McKinney is an author who has tackled zombies (Memoirs of the Dead), werewolves (Dog World and Dog ‘Verse) and both at the same time (Werewolves of the Dead). One thing I really wanted to know, since his latest novel deals with the (inevitable) werewolf apocalypse, was what would make his playlist? Check your music catalogue and crank up your iPod so you, too, can be ready.
Parson, composer, werewolf hunter: Sabine Baring-Gould
Sabine Baring-Gould is by no means a celebrity today, but in the 19th century he brought a modern sensibility to an ancient body of superstitions: werewolf lore.
I first came across his name thanks to A Very Special Christmas, of all things. On the 1987 compilation album, among the carols recorded by the then-current crop of rock stars was “Gabriel’s Message,” by Sting. The liner notes credited S. Baring-Gould as the composer.
Born in 1834, the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould was a prolific writer, composer and collector of folklore. Among his scores of published works are a multi-volume Lives of the Saints, hymns including “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and The Book of Were-Wolves, a classic survey of werewolf folklore first published in 1865.
For fans of gothic literature, the first chapter alone makes the book worth picking up. As the introduction in the edition I have puts it, Baring-Gould’s account of his stumbling across pervasive belief in werewolves while on holiday in France is worthy of a Victorian novel.
If you think comic books are expensive, try publishing one
Creating your own comic book series can be an all-or-nothing endeavour. Just ask Rachel Deering, the woman behind Anathema.
Telling the story of Mercy Barlowe, a woman whose lover, Sarah, is burnt at the stake for being a lesbian, the first issue shows us how Mercy seeks out supernatural help to rescue Sarah’s soul from a sinister cult. (You can read the As You Were interview with Rachel on her career and her own experience with homophobia here.)
