Hiatus
Hello All,
I am deeply sorry for the incommunicado of late. Life (as its has a tendency to do) has become very hectic and unfortunately, I have not been keeping up to date with things.
After careful consideration, Oberon’s Law will be taking a hiatus. Any outstanding submissions are now free to submit elsewhere (not that we dont like simultaneous submissions anyway).
While this saddens me a little, Oberon’s Law will be back.
Thanks,
Kester
Fiction, Portrait of a Vampire by Alyne de Winter
Portrait of a Vampire by Alyne de Winter
Gina always dressed for the occasion: vintage evening dress of gleaming black satin,
Czech crystal beads, magenta hair teased rock star high. A good bottle of Corvina
always stood on a small table at her side, with two gold-leaf goblets, both filled, one
for her and one for her “model”. The walls of her small studio were covered with black
drapes that kept all natural light out. Only rings of candles flaring from two Baroque
candelabra were permitted. In that spectral glow, Gina sat painting, with small, careful
strokes, so as not to make a mess, the single image that obsessed her: the face of her
beloved Laurence, whom she affectionately called Lorenzo.
Portraits of Lorenzo hung all over Gina’s apartment. She couldn’t bear to part with them.
She set them like jewels in elaborate golden frames, hanging them sequentially on her
slate-blue walls, like a gallery of ghostly ancestors. Lorenzo’s image changed subtly with
the years, as if he were still alive rather than frozen in perpetual youth under the earth. At
first, Gina preferred to think of him living, far away in some exotic country like Illyria or
Bohemia, rather than where he really was.
She’d met him in a club, of course. Where else? That’s where she always was with
Amylie (Emily really) of the sheer black hair (dyed of course) and ample bosom, and
mousy, lisping Jen the Wren who didn’t really fit in with the glam-Goth scene, but liked
to watch all the “creatures” as she called them. Laurence had approached Gina out of
the darkness, a slim, blue and gold satin aristocrat with shimmering bleached blond hair.
He came very close, surveying her face, penetrating her soul with the bright green eyes
of a big cat. He didn’t ask her to dance, merely pulled her out onto the flickering dance
floor. There, he began a sinuous tango, holding her so tightly against his pulsating body,
twirling her, bending her, forcing her to his rhythm, dancing her as she’d never been
danced before. It was an uneasy pleasure playing puppet to his mastery.
Coming away breathless, Gina hurried back to the safety of her friends.
“What’s his name?” Amylie asked, adjusting her tight dress, smiling towards him.
“I don’t know,” said Gina. “We didn’t get that far.”
“He’s definitely into you,” said Jen.
“Gorgeous,” Amylie sighed. “You attract all the lookers.”
His eyes never left Gina. She saw them shining in the dark across the dance floor like two
green flames.
“I wonder where he came from,” said Amylie. “I’ve never seen him before.”
After that first meeting, Laurence was always there at the club, waiting to dance Gina to
death like a pair of red shoes. It was so annoying when Amylie and Jen began smirking.
They both warned her about being monopolized so quickly. Of course Amylie was
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jealous because he never once glanced at her and her cleavage. Jen, who nobody noticed
anyway, was merely worried. Gina had her own concerns. Laurence wasn’t her type.
She preferred dark, quiet men. But then of course, she reasoned, in the arcane theater of
her world one never knew what was real or made up anyway. And when it came to her
type, she didn’t seem to be their type. Gina’s type always made a bee-line for Amylie
who usually dumped them complaining of “too much drama.” Perhaps, she decided,
she should stop being so stubborn and give poor Laurence a chance. He seemed to be so
desperate for her. The way he gazed into her eyes, his warm breath on her cheek, his lips
so close, but holding back, leaving it all up to her. A real gentleman.
“So, Lorenzo, do we always have to meet here? Come over to mine for dinner tomorrow
night,” she said into his ear. He bent her back almost double and lifted her gracefully up
again.
“I don’t think so,” he said. His deep, baritone voice sent chills through her. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?” Gina said, disappointed. It had been three weeks after all.
She twirled off the dance floor back to her friends.
“What’s he waiting for?” she snapped at Amylie and Jen.
****
After the invitation, the dreams began. Deep in the night, she woke with the palpable
sensation that Lorenzo was lying beside her in bed. Next she knew, he was all over her,
kissing her, fondling her, finally penetrating her so deeply she thought she was going to
die. She moaned, and came to, as if waking from a nightmare. Meeting him at the club
after that was a kind of shameful torture. As he floated towards her across the dance
floor, she backed away, all her Catholic upbringing surging up like the flames of the
Inferno. Did he know what she’d been dreaming?
In his arms she was melted wax. Dancing cheek to cheek, she thought she really was
dying. Let him carry me, she thought, into oblivion.
“Lorenzo, please, come over to mine tonight,” she said in his ear. Surely all he needed
was a little encouragement.
“Not tonight, my lovely Gina,” he said. “Not tonight.”
****
Amylie and Jen understood she couldn’t bear to be alone that night. They came into her
apartment and dutifully sat on her red velvet sofa like two patient aunties while Gina
roved around the room tearing her hair.
“If you ask me,” said Amylie, “That guy is one big tease.”
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“But why?” Gina asked.
“Power trip,” said Jen.
“Maybe I should stay away for a while. Where else can we go?” Gina said.
“How about the Alligator,” said Jen. “That’s a cool place.”
Amylie sneered, shrugged. “It’s all right.”
“Well, maybe I should stay home for a while. You guys can go without me. Let him
wonder where I am.”
“If you can stay away.” Amylie smiled Mona Lisa style. “We’ll tell him you’re sick. That
should bring him around.”
“Prove how much he cares,” said Jen.
“Don’t you think it’s odd, though, that he doesn’t seem to want to be with me after all
this?” Gina said.
“It’s really weird,” said Amylie. “I don’t know how you can stand it.”
****
Staying away, Gina spent the entire weekend watching her favorite DVDs and eating
chocolate, drinking wine, looking at the clock, the dead silent phone. Her films played
behind shining visions of Lorenzo that filled her mind without cessation. His eyes
searched the crowd for her, flashed with anger when he didn’t find her. That was a
surprise. Finally, even over the long distance, penetrating wall after wall after wall, he
homed in on her. Their eyes met, ignited, and the dreams took over.
“Oh, Lorenzo, please, leave me alone,” she groaned. “No, don’t!”
I’m lost. Totally, effing, lost…
****
Monday morning arrived with a bland sunny flatness. Gina rose with a weird erotic
hangover. How could she go to work looking so worn out?
“Did he ask for me?” Gina asked Amylie over the phone.
“Not a word,” said Amylie. “He sat in a corner all night brooding.”
“Did he miss me, do you think?”
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“Must have. He didn‘t dance with anyone else.”
****
Gina planned carefully her entrance back into the club. Lorenzo’d been in her dreams
all week, making love to her more fervently than before. Surely he would want her now,
especially since she’d lost just enough weight to wear her garnet 1930’s silk evening
dress cut on the bias. Indeed, he watched her, with his usual fascinated expression, come
into the bar. But rather than rushing to meet her, as he always had, he slid into the crowd
around the stage and disappeared. Gina’s heart sank.
When he pulled another girl onto the dance floor, she felt sick.
“I’m going to the ladies room,” she said.
“I’m coming with you,” said Amylie. “That jerk.”
“Wait for me,” said Jen.
Gina dragged herself through the crowd and staggered into the ladies room. She looked
into the mirror. Black mascara rimmed her eyes, her lipstick had faded. She refreshed it,
then powdered her nose.
“You look peeky,” said Jen. “Are you sure you’re ok?”
“He’s been using me,” Gina said, fighting tears. “But what for?”
“He’s a fantasist,” said Amylie. She primped her beehive hairdo, adjusted her neckline “I
get those all the time.”
“What a jerk.” Jen said. She bent over, vigorously brushed her hair, then stood up and
looked in the mirror. “Hey, should I dye my hair black?”
“But the fantasies are so real. Has it been like that for you?” Gina asked.
“Not really. I just blow them off,” Amylie said.
“It seems kind of crazy to me,” said Gina.
“Maybe your problem is,” said Jen. “You like him too much.”
“Well I’m not coming back here. You guys will have to go dancing without me,” said
Gina.
“Oh, come on, Gina. Just tell him to fuck off,” said Amylie.
“Yeah, you do that,” said Jen. “Fuck you Alonzo!”
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Jen flipped her finger into the air.
“It’s Lorenzo,” said Gina. “Laurence actually.”
****
Gina felt sick to her stomach all the time after that. The dreams still invaded her sleep.
Helpless under the hypnotic gaze of Lorenzo’s dream eyes, she could not begin to fight
him off. There was someone else in the mix, too. She felt it. Saw in her dreams, that
other. That was why she was sick to her stomach. Someone had come between Lorenzo
and she. Gina reached out in her sleep to push them both away, but they only bound her
tighter.
If he found someone else, why wouldn’t he leave her alone?
“But I love you, Lorenzo. I do, I do, I do.”
She wept into her pillow, soaking it.
****
Gina couldn’t eat. The bias-cut dress had fewer feminine curves to flaunt, but she wore it
to the club anyway. She had to see Lorenzo. Life was unbearable without him. Entering
the lobby, she was so nervous, she was shaking. He was there, standing at the bar. He
glanced over his shoulder at her like a startled animal. Gina shyly waved. He held up a
glass of red wine to her, swallowed it, then disappeared into the crowd.
She didn’t see him at all after that. She figured he must have left.
****
Later that year, in blustery November, a shock arrived in the mail: a newspaper clipping
with an unmistakable photo of Laurence above a short obituary notice. Apparently he’d
been sick for a long time.
He’s dancing with death now, she thought. Met the old angel of death at the club, no
doubt.
Amylie, and the now raven-haired Jen, insisted they hold a funerary feast for Laurence.
Gina let them in the door with their black candles and silver dishes, let them make black
food while she drank black-red wine and sank into a stupor.
Black hair didn’t suit Jen, Gina thought. Made her look washed-out. Makeup might
have helped, a little attitude, a little style instead of that shapeless black thingy she was
wearing.
Jen lit the candles reverentially; smiled at Gina through the upstart flames.
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Portrait of a Vampire by Alyne de Winter
“I see you’ve been sketching,” Jen said.
“Oh no!” Gina cried. She jumped up and strode towards the kitchen where she’d left her
drawing pad. “Nobody’s supposed to see those.”
Amylie was there, balancing on her hand a platter with huge chocolate cake on it.
“This will put some flesh back on your bones,” she said. “I want you to eat the whole
thing.”
Gina scooped up the drawing pad and held it against her rebellious stomach. She smiled
wanly.
“Drawing Lorenzo I see,” Amylie said. “You’ve captured him perfectly. Why don’t you
put one on the table in his honor.”
“You guys must think I’ve totally lost it,” Gina said. “Next thing I know you’ll be buying
me a copy of Women Who Love Too Much.”
“You just ruined Christmas,” said Amylie and carried the cake out to dining room.
“Oh, it’s wonderfully bleak and black,” said Jen standing back to admire the candlelit
table. “I love all the silver plates on that black brocade table cloth.”
Indeed, the banquet gave off a fiery, dusky, funereal beauty.
“Thanks, you guys,” said Gina, wiping tears. “I really appreciate this.”
Jen had set a place for the Deceased at the head of the table. Gina set her best drawing of
Lorenzo there, all tousled blonde hair, penetrating eyes, Edwardian cravat setting off his
feline jaw. She put a branch of black grapes and a hunk of dark chocolate on his plate,
filled his glass with red wine.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know he was dead. Those dreams are still so vivid,” Gina said.
“Did you know he was gay?” asked Jen.
Gina felt a cold hand reach out of a grave and slapped her face.
“What? That’s impossible. If he was gay why would he spend so much time thinking
about me – in that way? Who told you that?” Gina said.
Jen shrugged. “You know what he died of, don’t you?”
Amylie broke in. “Jen, cool it. Gina, we never saw or heard anything about his sexuality,
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but you should thank God you never slept with him.”
A cold wave washed over Gina’s head. She looked at both of her friends unable to
comprehend.
“How did you find out? How he died?”
“Word went around the club. You haven’t been there. A lot can happen in three months,”
said Amylie.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Gina said and put her head in her hands.
“I think it explains a lot,” said Amylie. “Here, have some cake.”
Gina sighed. Her stomach hurt. The cake tasted like dirt.
After they left, Gina puked into her gold spray-painted toilet and passed out on the black
rug. When the morning sunlight beamed into the black bathroom and struck her face, she
staggered out to the dining area.
The table looked as if someone had been dancing on it.
Lorenzo’s plate, and his goblet, were empty.
****
Every evening after work, Gina was at her easel. She couldn’t help it. He was there. She
sensed him casting an eerie, watery light throughout her apartment. The atmosphere
pulled her under, into his mind, into his world. She had to have something of him,
something real. She needed a memento of his face.
She began by copying the obituary photo. Average, unfinished, even dorky looking,
young Laurence was not at all like Lorenzo. Gina’s hand traced and re-traced the image,
seeking the seed of the sublime creature she knew and, seeking, found the point at which
a dumb kid had transformed himself into a god. His face gradually emerged from the
dreamlike hues of the painted canvas, perfect and alive.
Gina loved the portrait, but the raw edged canvas against the, then, apartment-white
walls, looked boring. The painting demanded a heavy gold frame. In fact, the entire
apartment had to change. At the paint store, Gina was compelled to mix that subaqueous
shade of slate blue and, despite her constant fatigue, cover the living room walls with it.
She used half her paycheck to buy an elaborate frame for Lorenzo, hanging him between
her “frescoes” of two Renaissance angels who appeared to carry him up to Heaven. She
put a candle branch below to light him, and stood back.
“That should exorcise you,” she said. “I hope you’re happy now.”
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She did feel better, for a while.
****
The phone was ringing.
“Oh, Hell!” Gina said, hauling herself up from the couch. She picked up the
receiver. “Hello.
“Gina. What’s going on?”
It was Mom.
“Nothing.”
“Are you coming home for Christmas? We want to see you. Your brother is back from
the Navy.”
“I have to work. Retail, you know?”
“They make you work on Christmas?”
“Not Christmas day. How’ll I get down there?”
“We’ll fly you. How about coming for Christmas day and the weekend? We can fly you
back to Seattle in no time.”
Gina felt her eyes glaze over. Her head spun.
“Can I call you back? I have to figure something out.”
“OK. I’m worried about you. Are you eating?”
“Yes, Mom. I’m eating. Ciao.”
The doorbell was buzzing.
“Oh please, leave me alone,” Gina moaned. She hurried to the mirror, sighed at her
hollow-eyed reflection, then picked up the insistent intercom.
“Who is it?”
“Amylie and Jen.” Amylie’s voice crackled over the wire. “Hey we want to show you
Jen’s new look. She’s got a date tonight.”
Oh my God, Gina thought and hit the buzzer.
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Next thing she knew they were barging in the door.
“Hey!” Amylie embraced her. “You’re like a sack of bones.”
“Thanks.”
“Look at Jen.”
Jen had changed her hair again. Cut it shorter and bleached it blonde, spiked it up, bed-
head style.
“That looks great,” Gina said. “And the eye makeup… very cool. Did you do that
yourself, Jen?”
Jen rolled her eyes. “Well no. Amylie helped me. She showed me how.”
“You look awesome. Who’s the lucky guy?”
“Oh, nobody,” Jen said looking away.
“Yeah right. He’s only the best looking dude at the club now,” said Amylie.
“Not another Lorenzo, I hope,” said Gina.
“Certainly not,” said Jen. “This one is straight.”
“You hope,” said Amylie with a snide smile. “So, Gina, you’re ready to start coming to
the club again, right? I mean it’s not like he’s there any more.”
Gina recoiled. She sat on the sofa and leaned her elbows on her knees.
“Oh, come on,” Amylie said. “It’s not as much fun without you. We want the old Gina
back.”
“She’s still in mourning,” said Jen. “Look at that picture of Alonzo. See, Amylie. Look.”
Jen tugged Amylie to view the portrait.
“Its like a friggin’ shrine,” Amylie said.
Amylie looked at Gina as if she was seeing her for the first time.
“You don’t want to keep going down this path, you know,” she said to Gina.
“You’re right,” Gina said. “I just can’t seem to stop. I just got fired from my job too. Ha-
ha! Imagine getting fired from a fashion boutique during the lead-up to Christmas!”
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“Oh no, Gina!” said Jen. “What did you do?”
“I just couldn’t make it in,” Gina said.
****
Gina picked up her paintbrush, and Lorenzo took shape before her. She found if
she blocked all the light from the room, his presence shimmered more brightly. In
candlelight, he glowed.
She set a chair for him, angling it to allow the candlelight to catch his high-cheekbones,
straight nose, and handsome jaw from the most seductive angle. He was most obliging.
As she drew and painted, she spoke to him. He never answered back, though sometimes
his voice passed through her mind murmuring unbearable intimacies.
With each painting, Lorenzo emerged more vividly into life, especially in her dreams.
Rising from the turbulent sea of her bed, he kept her awake with endless, exquisitely
loving ministrations until dawn. After it was over, she fell into sleep so heavy that no
alarm could wake her.
Jobless, Gina lived off of credit cards. At some dim point in time, she had an “episode”.
Someone called an ambulance. The doctor diagnosed her with pernicious anemia.
Anorexia. They fed her through tubes. That made her gag, but she didn’t really care. She
was a puppet again. Of course, laughing made her choke.
When she was “cured”, they sent her home with recipes and menus to fatten her up. Mom
came up for two weeks and cooked pasta, crying the entire time that her kids would die
before she did. She looked at the portraits once, said nothing; just gave Gina that “look”
and pretended that they weren’t there.
Disability checks began arriving in the mail. Everything seemed to happen as if
orchestrated by invisible hands.
The “episode” was clearly a God-send. Her red blood cells revived, her curves restored,
her rent paid, she had all the time in the world to paint. She switched her subject matter,
copying models out of Vogue magazines, adding surreal touches.
“I’m a true artist now,” she thought. “Devoted. Like a nun.”
Somehow, inexplicably, the dreams stopped, and she was her old self again.
Gina got a card in the mail. A Novena to the Virgin. The note read: “I’m doing this to
protect you against that crumb. Love, Mama.”
Gina tore the silver saint’s medal off the card and hung it around her neck.
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****
The new subject matter never made it out of the sketch pad. Gina missed Lorenzo so
badly that all the Vogue models began looking like him.
Amylie and Jen came by to inform Gina that Jen was getting married. Gina had lost track
of time by then. She only recalled them standing in the living room surrounded by her
paintings of Lorenzo.
“Wow!” Jen said gazing around with bulging eyes. “Is this all you’ve been doing?”
Gina smiled. “Yes. I feel I’ve grown a lot as an artist.”
Amylie smirked. “For all the thanks I get.”
“What do you mean?” Gina said, alarmed, though she didn’t know why.
“Well, who do you think called the ambulance, you asshole?” Amylie said.
“You?”
“Damn right it was me. I tried so many times to get hold of you, and you totally ignored
me. I was afraid you were dead.”
“I hate to say, Gina,” said Jen, flipping her cute hairstyle from her face. “But you don’t
look all that well.”
“Why don’t you guys just leave?” Gina said.
“What?” they both said.
“All you do is criticize. Oh, and congratulations Jen. I hope you’re very happy.”
****
Gina was definitely not happy. But at least she had a purpose.
“I wouldn’t be content to be some dorky housewife,” she muttered.
She looked around at her work. All those pictures of Lorenzo. Her heart sank. Who was
she kidding?
I’ve driven my friends away.
“Are you happy now?” she shouted at the walls, at him.
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****
The roots of her thick, dark hair had grown to below her chin. Gina cut off thirteen inches
of dry, pink ends. Three bottles of peroxide later, her hair was white blonde. She gazed
into the mirror watching her hair dry. Her brown eyes looked very dark, her skin tanned
compared to the lightness of her locks. She pulled her hair up, teased it, sprayed it to look
like the model in the Vogue magazine lying open on the toilet-pedestal.
She leaned so close to her reflection that her breath fogged the mirror. “I look just like
Lorenzo… I think I’ll wear my 1920’s blue velvet dress tonight.”
The portrait almost painted itself, but it was different. Lorenzo’s eyes glared at her. His
face was so white, his lips a red slash. He was thinner; his hands, under his lace cuffs,
were bones.
I’m not giving him enough, she thought.
****
A card came in the mail, addressed to her by hand. An invitation to Jen’s baby shower.
Gina groaned. She’d missed the wedding. How could she have done such a thing?
“God, I’m a horrible friend!” she shouted.
Inside was a photo of glowingly pregnant Jen cuddled up to the guy who must have been
her husband. Gorgeous. Beside her was a red-haired Amylie, smiling in the tatooed arms
of her new boyfriend.
Gina, please come! We are dying to see you!
Love,
XXXXXX
Jenny
Pleeeeeeease!
OOOOO
Amylie
“I’m sorry. I don’t belong in the presence of new life,” Gina said to the photo. “I live in a
different world now.”
Gina knew the name of that world, but wouldn’t say it.
She dumped the invitation in the bin and shut the lid with her foot.
****
The dreams returned. They, too, were different. Lorenzo was no longer loving or tender,
but greedy. He demanded, he tore at her. At times she thought she saw wolves prowling
in her room. Vines grew out of her mattress, wound around her, held her down while
Lorenzo took without giving. She began to fight.
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“Leave me alone! Oh, leave me alone!”
Gina’s stomach grew such knots, she couldn’t eat. She dwindled.
****
He was sitting for his portrait every night, and every night she painted, caressing the
canvas with her brush. It was the only loving gesture she had left. To surrender that,
small as it was, was to lose herself forever.
The portraits were increasingly stark. She wondered if Lorenzo was finally rotting in
his grave. She wondered if she was rotting in life, for she was so thin and pale, so weak
and sick—-perhaps they were going down together, like Paolo and Francesca, into the
Inferno. Blood appeared on the canvas. Around his lips. Gina tried to wipe it off. It
smeared.
No, red lips, not blood lips… she thought. But the teeth were long like needles. Vampire
teeth.
He needs blood, she thought.
Gina jabbed her thumb with a needle, used it to paint Lorenzo’s mouth.
It looked cool. So Gothic.
“I’m really living it,” she whispered.
After that, every picture of Lorenzo received an offering of Gina’s blood. Not much, just
a finger prick, a drop or two.
But then again, that wasn’t enough. She gave more. Soon the dreams and the sittings
merged, and she did not have to go to sleep, not ever, to dream about Lorenzo. He was
growing strong. Soon they were dancing through the apartment, stepping to Gina’s
favorite CDs, ethereal, Gregorian, operatic, Gothic fairy tale music.
****
Amylie and Jenny got the building manager to let them into Gina’s apartment.
“Please wait. Don’t come in,” Amylie said to him. “We just want to make sure she’s ok.”
“All right, all right. But you let me know if something’s wrong. I don’t like the smell in
there,” the manager said.
“I know what you mean,” said Jenny, and followed Amylie in. “Oh my God look at those
paintings!”
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Amylie winced. “Is that blood?”
Both of them touched the red streaks that dripped from Lorenzo’s painted mouths, the
stains that soaked his canvas shirt fronts.
“It’s paint, right?” said Jenny.
“Gina! Gina!” Amylie shouted.
“Gina!” Jenny cried.
Amylie dashed across the living room to the closed studio door and knocked softly.
“Gina, you in there?”
Silence.
“I’m coming in, ok? It’s me and Jenny. We’re coming in.”
Amylie pushed the door open. Something moved out of the guttering candlelight and
melted into the black velvet of the drapes.
“Gina!” Amylie swallowed hard. Jenny felt as if her eyes were about to fall out of her
head.
Gina lay back in her chair, her white neck arched and bloody. In a white lace over
tulle wedding gown with her hair bleached, her skin drained of color, she was a white
phantom. One arm hung down, and a loaded paintbrush dangled between her fingers. The
fingertips of her white lace gloves were scarlet.
Sobbing, Jenny shut her eyes. “What was she painting? Look at the painting. Look…”
Amylie circled carefully around to view the canvas.
“It’s that bastard, Laurence, again. But he looks normal…. He looks like Gina. Come
see,” said Amylie.
Jenny slipped behind Gina on the chair and saw.
“He’s taken her soul,” she said.
****
They hadn’t gone to the club for ages, but something about Gina’s funeral compelled
them to go back to “the scene of the crime,” as Jenny called it. Leaving their two
husbands safe at home, they carried bouquets of lilies and roses to leave on their usual
table in Gina’s honor.
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Amylie and Jenny drank sloe gin fizzes and watched the dancers. Baby Goths all, dressed
in their vampiric finery, they executed the dances of a new generation that harkened back
to the ancient traditions: minuet, pavane, and grande pas de gavotte.
It was towards the end of the night, when they were about to go, when a magnificent
couple emerged from the crowd, two shimmering sapphire blue aristocrats with hair like
white fire. They moved as one being down the center of dance floor, driving the other
dancers to the sidelines to watch.
“It’s them,” Jenny breathed and clutched Amylie’s hand. “How? How can it be?”
Amylie swallowed hard. “It sure is.”
They watched like birds before a snake as Lorenzo and Gina parted, and entered the
crowd to draw forth their new partners. Two young people surrendered to the embraces
of the glamorous vampires with languorous, dazzled eyes.
“What should we do?” Jenny asked.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Amylie. “I sure hope those kids know what they’re getting
into.”
“I don’t think they do,” said Jenny. “They better watch out.”
Finis
Interview, SJ Tucker
A little background. SJ Tucker. Dear god. If you have not heard her music i will forgive you…eventually. Search for it and listen to it. A lot. And then buy CDs and everything you can think of. I also want to say how fantastically gracious she is. This interview was a while in the making and she’s just fantastic. I ran into her following a recommendation by Laurell K Hamilton on her site and found her again after Catherynne Valente collaberated with her on a project for the Orphan’s Tales. Oh, and Palimpsest.
Without further ado, please welcome SJ Tucker to Oberon’s Law!
1. It seems like being a traveling minstrel (with ten albums according toWikipedia, two Pegasus Awards, and multiple collaborations with people like Cat Valente, Alexander James Adams, and Seanan McGuire) isn’t the typical thing one wants to be when one grows up. How did you get here?
Actually, if I’d had the words to say exactly what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would have said I’d want to be the type of person who gets to collaborate with such wonderful creative people. (smile) What I wanted most when I was younger was to get out into the world and find what I called my tribe. I grew up in a small town, and I didn’t have many people to talk to. In many cases, my tribe found me. I’ve been very fortunate.
For somebody who didn’t have that many people to talk to as a kid, I’ve certainly made a ton of amazing and creative friends as a result of my career, my music, and my travels. I wouldn’t trade the authors and fellow musicians
who’ve become friends of mine for anything in the world. Our lives are colored so much by the people we share them with. I’ve got an extremely colorful life at this point, thanks to my collaborators, bandmates, fans and friends.
2. What’s been the coolest part of being a performer?
I love getting to travel and to see so many beautiful places. I love that I’ve been able to make a life of doing what I love to do best, of writing songs and singing them for people. But I think I love it best of all when other people share their stories with me, whether they come up to me at an event and just want to talk, or whether they email me later. Sometimes a person will share a story with me of something that happened to him/her in a faraway and beautiful place; sometimes he or she will share something that a song of mine reminded him or her of, something s/he’d thought lost and gone. Sometimes it’s wisdom I would never have found on my own that s/he feels compelled to share- that’s such a huge gift. Sometimes a friend I’ve made along the way will tell me how I’ve touched him or her with my music after years have gone by. Sometimes I get an actual handwritten fan letter from someone who had a profound epiphany after only having met me in passing. We all have such an effect on each other; I’m grateful when the people who touch my life take the time to tell me that I have touched theirs as well. There’s no better compliment.
3. What projects are you working on right now?
I’m writing my first film score, for an independent fantasy film called Ember Days. It won’t be a large-scale release at all, but it’s an interesting film, with faeries and Greek gods and fallen angels all chasing each other around with swords and guns. I’m looking forward to producing the soundtrack album. I get to work with several
of my dearest friends on this project- Bekah Kelso and Alexander James Adams to name two, and I also get to challenge myself as a composer, learn a couple of new instruments, dust off some that I haven’t played in a while. I’ll be tinkering with everything from MIDI keyboard to harp to fujara (traditional Scandinavian flute) if I can find one!This winter I’m also hoping to complete, first and foremost, an album called Wonders, which is to be a tie-in with Catherynne M. Valente’s novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. The book is
delightful, and the album is shaping up to be a good match for it- songs about quests, flying panthers, disgruntled witches, and scary river spirits are in the works, all of them inspired by characters and events in the book.After that, I’ll be working with some of my favorite collaborators, including engineer and mastermind Ginger Doss, on my next earth-spirituality-themed album, which will be called Rootless. I have an album of spooky love songs
called Stolen Season that I’d like to work on as well. Tricky Pixie is on the verge of picking up where we left off on our second album, and I’m hoping that my bandmates will collaborate with me on a Red Riding Hood rock opera soon.When I have scads of time, I like to compose harder-edged electronic music, and I’ve been promising an album of that to myself and to fans for years.
Once I get all of this done, I’ll go climb a couple of mountains and learn to tango. (grin)
Next year I get to tour with Tricky Pixie and with the Heather Dale band a bit. I’m also hoping to tour with the aforementioned miss Bekah Kelso, who is fabulous, and with our friends Big Bad Gina, who are taking the womyn’s music
scene by storm. Inbetween recording marathons, I’ll be working on tour schedules for 2012 and beyond. As things get confirmed, I’ll post them on my tour schedule website (http://www.skinnywhitechick.com/shows.php) and I’ll be crowing to my email list about them.
4. If you could give your teenage self advice–of any kind–what would it be?
You’re doing it right. Keep shining and keep singing; it’s gonna be worth it, sooner than you think. Your family-of-choice, your community, and your tribe of the heart are out there, and you will find them. Keep dreaming, keep singing, keep writing, and don’t let anything stop you!
5. If you were a fruit, what fruit would it be and why?
Olives are my favorite, but I’ve been eating a ton of pomegranate seeds lately. The story of Persephone from the Greeks is all wrapped up in my personal folklore in recent months. In several versions of the tale, Persephone eats six pomegranate seeds while she’s in Hades’ lands, and Hades reckons that she must stay with him for six months out of the year as a result. I visit so many wonderful places on my travels, and I am often tempted to stay. Sometimes I deliberately eat pomegranate seeds when I’m in a place that I dream of staying in, and I smile. I’ve eaten entire pomegranates from time to time- that’s one way you know- and I know- that I really like where I’ve ended up.
Poem, Mapping by John Grey
MAPPING
Ursa Minor, Draco,
the little bear, the dragon,
Camelopardalis, Auriga,
the giraffe, the charioteer.
Pointed ears, bright tail,
the lynx prowls the night
in company of Canes Venatici,
the rampant hunting dogs.
Hercules strums Lyra,
Cygnus floats, Lacerta creeps,
Perseus oscillates his victory,
holds aloft the sparkling gorgon’s head.
The sky’s no atlas.
It’s a story book.
Travel the heavens’ map.
Your heart will thank you.
Interview, EE Knight
A little background: Several years ago i was sitting at a (now defunct) Borders waiting for a friend to get out of work. With a six hour wait, i needed books. What i found were Dragons! I cannot speak highly enough for this series of books and am thrilled to welcome EE Knight to Oberon’s Law!
1. You have two fantastic series with a new novel, Dragons Fate, out in December. How did you get to be where you are now?
The first publication credit was the tough one. Way of the Wolf, the first in the Vampire Earth series, made the rounds and was rejected by everyone. Finally I posted some excerpts on an experimental publishing site called iPublish, a dot-com boom creation of the AOL/Time Warner book Group (now defunct). The idea was that people could read your posted excerpts and comment, and editors looked at the ones that seemed to be getting a positive reaction. The editor liked it, asked to read the whole thing, and I ended up with a deal for them to do two books in ebook/POD (print-on-demand) format in 2001. iPublish disappeared when the bubble burst, but it had sold enough copies to attract the attention of an agent and a traditional scifi imprint, Roc. My agent, John Silbersack, extracted the rights from the iPublish ruins and got me my first three-book deal.
2. What other projects are you working on right now? Could you give us a snippet or a favorite line?
Right now I’m finishing up the tenth Vampire Earth book. I’m also working on a big sword-and-planet novel, sort of a Flash Gordon-meets-Cecil B. DeMille. I’m not able to give you a line or snippet, because without context it seems an empty exercise.
3. Why do you think both vampires and dragons are so popular?
Both are drawn from deep-dug wells in the collective unconscious. A dragon is the beast on the plain that hunted us when we first descended from the trees, an object of fear and possibly worship for its strength. Vampires are the demons who look like us, the Other in disguise, waiting for the moment when they will suddenly turn and kill. They’re both naturally interesting because of the power, danger, and ferocity they possess.
4. If you were to go back in time to give your teenage self advice–of any sort–what would it be?
I’d probably tell me that the reason the teenage years are so exhilarating and so tough is that everything is happening for the first time. Because this is your first real ride through adult emotions, the heights and valleys both seem insurmountable or unsurvivable. I’d tell me that once you’ve been over the tops and falls a couple times, you’d develop coping mechanisms that eventually turn into wisdom. I’d also probably tell myself to take a useful minor (at the very least) in college.
5. If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be and why?
That’s a bit Barbara Walters for me, but I suppose I’d go with fig. In the Bible, they’re synonymous with richness, delights and pleasures. Fig orchards were one of the earliest forms of agriculture. They’re also a pretty tough tree that can make it in a variety of conditions.
Three (3) Poems by John Stocks
Dancing Stardust
It was then that the star dimmed,
A light, swallowed by eternity,
Smothered into terrifying silence
Somewhere on the dark side of tomorrow.
And the light, the light is everything,
We who know nothing will light our candles
Build our thought traps to try and re-capture,
The rapture; the mortal essence of you
Before the last closing of the circle.
Sometimes grieving can be beautiful
That day on the beach when the clouds parted,
The night when Orion winked at you.
Beginnings and endings may mean something,
And our thoughts and words, the love we shared
Endless, eternal, precious, who knows?
We are ocean, we are dancing stardust;
We carry the weight of the world on our shoulders,
That is all.
Alicia’s Diary
Meet me and I shall know you, light and shadow
A formless, fantastic distillation,
Confection of smoke and fogs and gaslight.
Meet me and I’ll watch you as you wander
Dreamily up pea-souped side streets,
Long neck hidden by black buttoned collar,
Your exhaled breath a ghostly miasma,
Drifting past the clanking city tram-cars,
The news boy who teases you, calling out your name.
Meet me on Fargate, waiting at Cole’s corner,
Top hat and tailed, tapping with my cane,
Yours for all eternity my darling,
Yours beyond the final cutting edge of time.
Late for your theatre tea, warm hands wrapped in velvet,
Hat pulled down over your pert, pink ears,
Your diary shows me all your sweet conceits,
And makes me long to hold you- snug as the grave.
Hermitage
In the Hermitage a girl lights candles,
Twilight softens to a burnished light
As a scoop of moon above the courtyard,
Settles this moment, in space and in time.
This is her life, all sublime certainties,
A pure, unblemished, transcendent faith
Embedded; as real as if it were real
When she sleeps, she sleeps with her eyes wide open.
How to imagine the peace of it all,
In her private garden of miracles,
Pay homage to her distinct unreason,
Once imbued in my consciousness.
No wilderness, no dark sea of troubles,
No torments or sensual desires,
Tonight I wish to dream, to cloak myself
In her beauty; for truth is not enough.
Interview, Thomas Sniegoski
A little background: I ran into the Fallen quite some time ago, and was taken by the play of angels. His series continues to be enthralling. His adult series (Remy Chandler) is a slice of heaven, taking on the mythology of christianity and making it work for the sf/f universe.
So without further ado, welcome Thomas Sniegoski, to Oberon’s Law!
1. You have a veritable publishing empire from comics to young adult fiction , adult and children’s books. How did you get to where you are?
TOM – A veritable publishing empire . . . HA! I love it. How did I get where I am? Lots and lots of work. Seriously, I just kept on writing and tossing it out there and hoping that something just might stick . . . which it did. Perseverance is the key! Being too darn stubborn to quit.
2. What’s been the coolest part of your profession thus far?
TOM – Probably just being able to do what you love (and something that you’d probably be doing anyway) for a living. There’s nothing more satisfying than loving what you do, and getting to do it every day and actually being paid for it is just the icing on the cake.
3. What projects are you working on right now? Could you give us a snippet or a favorite line?
TOM – Right now I’m plotting out Vol 4 of the new Fallen series, finishing up the writing of the newest original Bone novel (Quest for the Spark 3) and starting to think about the newest Remy Chandler book that I’ll be writing in the Spring. Phew . . . that’s alot, and there will also be some new comic book projects that I’ll be working on that I really can’t talk about yet. As far as a snippet or favorite line, most of the stuff is in the planning stages so I really don’t have anything concrete yet. Catch me in a month or so.
4. If you found yourself trapped on a desert island could have only one book with you, what would it be?
TOM – Jeez, that’s a hard one. I have no idea . . . maybe Where The Wild Things Are . . . I LOVE that book.
5. If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be and why?
TOM – Maybe an orange? Because I have layers, and sometimes I can be sour, and other times sweet? Man, that’s just freakin awful. HA!
