What Women Want…in Horror
From the archives: Paula Guran interviews women writers, editors, and readers — including Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Tabitha King, Joyce Carol Oates, and yours truly — about what women look for in horror film and fiction.
A lot of the appeal of horror for women comes from its gothic roots,” says writer, editor, critic Pam Keesey. “Gothic literature, often dismissed as ‘women’s literature,’ was women’s adventure literature, women’s quest literature. Traditional gothic literature often put women at the center of the story, testing their strength, intelligence, bravery, and endurance, often in the face of supernatural adversity. Those elements still appear with frequency in horror films and literature — John Carpenter’s Halloween comes to mind — and I think is, in part, what women find appealing about horror.
Read the full article: What Women Want…in Horror.
Queer Vampires: A Morbid Curiosity
Queer vampires, Vampire-Con, and me featured in Frontiers in L.A. magazine
From Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire and Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer to today’s craze over Twilight and True Blood, the vampire genre has come from out of the grave to take center stage.
DaughtersOfDarkness.com Resurrected
My MySpace page is now all things Daughters of Darkness! Do you have a MySpace page? If so, won’t you be my neighbor…er…friend?
As a favorite philosopher of mine once said:
Friend. Good.
Jane Austen, Vampire
This just in from Kate Ward at Entertainment Weekly:
Look out, Jane! Austen’s work has already been attacked by brain munchers in Seth Grahame-Smith’s best-selling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Now her classic tale will meet up with bloodsuckers. Authors Amanda Grange and Regina Jeffers have reimagined Pride’s hero as a vamp in Mr. Darcy, Vampyre (due out Aug. 11) and Darcy’s Hunger (Dec. 1), respectively. Meanwhile, Michael Thomas Ford has penned Jane Bites Back (Dec. 29), a novel that envisions the author herself as a vampire. One person who can’t quite wrap his head around the supernatural Austen phenom? Quirk’s editorial director Jason Rekulak, who dreamed up Zombies’ concept. “I just thought it would be funny to desecrate a classic work of literature,” he says. “For the longest time, Seth and I were the only two people who thought it was a really good idea.”
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
I’m a Jane Austen fan. Really. I think I’d read everything she’d written by the time I was 14. And let’s not forget the classic film adaptations, especially Pride and Prejudice (1940), starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier (still my personal favorite).
When I heard that a revisionist Pride and Prejudice was on its way, one that includes zombies no less, I didn’t know what to think. I mean, I love zombies as much as the next person (in fact, probably quite a bit more than the next person), but Jane Austen? And Pride and Prejudice at that?
I had absolutely nothing to worry about. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an absolute delight. Seth Grahame-Smith has written a thrill-a-minute book of martial arts and zombie mayhem that is a loving tribute to the original novel. Grahame-Smith is true to Austen’s voice, and the delicious satire of her original novel is enhanced by Hong Kong style martial arts action and some kickass zombie decapitations.
And for those book group types among you, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies even includes an appendix of discussion questions to get your conversation rolling like oh, so many recently decapitated zombie noggins!
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