Please join me with Amber Benson and friends from the cast of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” for a performance of the short play “Asylum” from DRACULA IN LOVE, and then party with us from venue to venue through Halloween evening. The music, food, and entertainment gets better as the night goes on. If you haven’t sampled the delicacies and wine at Allston Yacht Club yet, you haven’t lived!
http://bhliteraryescape.com/join-us-weekend-incredible-book-club-experiences
NEW ORLEANS FRIENDS! See below for book events leading up to Halloween.
OCTOBER 31. AMBER BENSON & FRIENDS FROM BUFFY WILL PERFORM “ASYLUM” FROM DRACULA IN LOVE AT A LOCATION TBA WITH A PARTY AFTERWARDS. STAY TUNED!
SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER 3:
Karen Essex’s Dracula In Love
7:30p
Books Inc.
1344 Park St.
Alameda, CA 94501
In-store performance of scenes inspired by Karen Essex’s Dracula In Love, entitled Asylum Scene. Participating in this event are student actors from Encinal High as directed and supported by Teacher Gene Kahane.
NEW ORLEANS:
Wednesday, October 27th, 4-7pm
Boutique du Vampyre
Location: 633 Toulouse Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Program: Reading and Signing
Contact: Marita Jaeger, maritavampire@yahoo.com, 504.561.8627
Thursday, October 28th, 6:30pm
Octavia Books
Location: 513 Octavia Street, New Orleans, LA 70115-2055
Program: Reading, Q&A, Asylum Performance, Signing
Contact: Tom Lowenburg, tom@octaviabooks.com, 504.899.7323
Friday, October 29th, 7:00pm
Vampire Film Festival
Location: Shadowbox Theater, 2400 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117
Program: Reading from Dracula in Love, followed by an introduction to film screening (The Thirst for Blood — A Collection of Vampire Shorts)
Contact: Asif Ahmed, asif@reelenergy.com, 626.616.6771
Saturday, October 30th, 3:00pm
Vampire Film Festival
Location: Shadowbox Theater, 2400 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117
Program: Panel (Why Do Women Write Bloody-Good Vampire Fiction? Rice, Meyer, Harris and Beyond with Sue Dent, Karen Essex and Gabrielle Faust) , Q&A, Signing, followed by Reception with the authors
Contact: Asif Ahmed, asif@reelenergy.com, 626.616.6771
Thanks to all for your support. It’s been so much fun to catch up with so many of you around the country.
Above, just some of the readers from Kathy Louise Patrick’s Pulpwood Queens & Timberwood Guys Book Club (the largest book club in the world, people!) who turned out in costume for our Victorian banquet in Jefferson TX. That’s Kathy’s daughter dead center, who read the Mina role when we performed ASYLUM, and she was phenomenal! Kathy, the Queen herself, is in the hat next to her daughter in the splendid steampunk hat.
Hope to see you on the road!
As ever—
Karen
At the HNS Conference, C. W. Gortner and I caught the great Margaret George red-handed in the bookstore buying our books. We were so thrilled that we had to have the incident preserved for posterity!
KE: At the Historical Novel Society Conference this summer, Margaret George, C. W. (Christopher) Gortner and I answered questions about gender and the art—and marketing—of historical fiction. Margaret’s novel, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (1998), is now a beloved classic, and it was written in the voice of a man, about another man, but by a female author (I sound like I’m pitching Victor/Victoria!). Christopher’s new novel, The Last Queen, has received much acclaim, and it is written in the voice Juana “la Loca.” I have written in the male voice, and I feel that two of the most authentic and inspired character portraits I have ever written were Julius Caesar and the eunuch Meleager, both from my Kleopatra series.
I want to apologize profusely to anyone who came to Davis Kidd Bookstore in Memphis last month to see me. I’d spent the day doing local media to promote the event, and apparently, a nice group had arrived at 6pm. Too bad that I had been asked to arrive at 7pm! I was six minutes away in a hotel, yet no one called me. I could have been dead! Anyway, stuff happens, but a big mea culpa.
Still, Memphis is a great town! I walked along the Mississippi River and toured ever-gentrifying downtown with my good friend Andrea Woods who treated me to one of my favorite Southern delicacies, Shrimp and Grits. I stayed at the historic Peabody Hotel, where every day at 5pm, a red carpet unrolls, and the resident ducks promenade from the lobby fountain, where they live by day, to the Duck Penthouse, where they reside at night. It’s really something to see!
I was moved by the monument of the Victorian boxer Thomas Sayers, who wanted his faithful dog, Tim, commemorated as well. Though boxing was illegal in the 19th century, Sayers was enormously popular, and his funeral was attended by 10,000 people—a larger funeral than the Duke of Wellington’s.
“The Victorians had very small weddings and very big funerals.”Thus said our cheery guide by way of explaining the elaborate monuments of Highgate Cemetery, where I and my friend Caroline Kellett-Fraysse, fellow writer and journalist and connoisseur of all things esoteric, recently spent a sunny Tuesday afternoon. We had wanted to inspect this final resting place of Karl Marx, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and a host of other famous and infamous folks, and discovered that the older and more interesting part of the cemetery was only open by tour (unless one actually dies). Immaculately kept, it has a studied overgrown quality, the sort perfected by English gardeners over the centuries.
We specifically wanted to explore Highgate because it is the fictional resting place of Lucy Westenra, the vixen/victim of the vampire in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” though Stoker changed the name of the place to Kingstead. As we walked past the more ornate monuments like the Egyptian Hall, done in a style reminiscent of the Valley of the Kings, or the many-sided Circle of Lebanon, a many-vaulted tomb sitting dramatically beneath an ancient Cedar of Lebanon tree, I imagined poor Lucy buried within the vaults, only to be disentombed and subsequently slain and beheaded by the vampire hunters.
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