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Monthly Archives: December 2012

Corcitura Excerpt #2: Nightmare

19 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Excerpts, Fun Stuff

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corcitura, Eric Bradburry, Excerpt, Fuseli, Louvre, Melika Dannese Lux, Paris, sneak peek, Stefan Ratliff, The Nightmare, vampires, Vladec Salei, Vrykolakas, werewolves, writing

Taken from Corcitura, Chapter 4, Hello, Good-bye…Hello

(For future reference, this excerpt will be permanently housed under its corresponding tab.)

       “The Winged Victory of Samothrace, or Nike, as she is known, came to the Louvre in 1884.”
       We were standing at the Daru staircase underneath the giant headless, armless stone statue of the winged maiden of the Aegean. I had latched onto an English-speaking tour and seen all the great spectacles of the Louvre in the interim, but now the time was ripe for me to escape in search of Stefan. It was a quarter past noon already, and still he had not shown himself.
       I hung back as the tour moved on. Once they were out of sight, I hastened away and made for the Melpomene Gallery, taking a cursory glance at the giant statue of the hall’s namesake on my right as I passed by. I had thought Nike was gigantic, but this muse made her seem almost Lilliputian in size. Apparently, all Louvre statues were enormous. It must have been a prerequisite.
       I walked down this gallery and came out into the Salle des Caryatides. As I moved into the hall, I caught sight of my erstwhile companion, thankfully Boroi-less, staring at a large canvas that had been propped up in the center of the salle. I thought it odd that a painting would be on display in a hall filled with statues, but I didn’t let the incongruity of the situation trouble me for more than a second.
       “There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Where have you been?”
       I was expecting to receive a response and would have been happy with one of his sarcastic remarks, but he acted as though I did not exist. Very well, then. I decided to give it another go. “Been walking the same halls as the Kings of France and that great poisoner herself, Catherine de Medici, have you?” I was beginning to sound like Luc.
       Still nothing. He just stood there, head tilted to one side, his hand on his chin, absorbed by the painting before him. It had taken me forever to finally locate Stefan, and this was all the response I received? Not even so much as a flicker of an eyelid. Now we would have to rush out to the entrance to meet Vladec Salei, whom I hoped by some miracle was still waiting for us. My plans were crumbling before my eyes. And did he care? Absolutely not. He was as still and lifeless as the statues surrounding him. “Honestly, Stefan,” I said hotly, “what’s so bloody fascin…”
       I stopped dead when my eyes finally flashed toward the painting. I hadn’t bothered to look at it until then, but now as I took in the nightmarish spectacle painted on that canvas, a shudder passed through my body and chilled me to the marrow.
        A woman, shrouded in white, was draped over a divan in a dead swoon, her arms hanging limply over her head. In the background, a horse, nostrils flaring, eyes aglow, stuck its head through the crimson drapery. The horse looked crazed. Its lips were drawn back in a grimace that made it look as though it were sneering. But the most horrifying aspect of the painting was not the half-mad horse, nor the seemingly dead woman.
       It was the demon.
       A grotesque, dwarfish creature crouched atop the woman’s chest. They weren’t very visible in the foreground, but I could just make out the shadows of the thing’s horns reflected off the curtain. The creature’s entire visage was hellish, yet there was something taunting about its colorless eyes, pug nose, and grim, frowning mouth. I felt as if the thing were challenging me to push it off its perch. I doubted I would have possessed the courage to do so had this tableau been real.
       I laughed nervously and immediately felt ridiculous for chuckling aloud. The incident this morning with Sorina had turned me morbid. Try as I might, I could not shake the feeling of unease the painting had instilled in me. Nor could I make myself turn away. It was demonic, yet fascinating, and it had captured Stefan’s imagination, too, for his eyes were still fixated on the painting.
       “Amazing,”he whispered. “What do you think it is?” he said, addressing me without taking his eyes off the canvas. “A demon?”
       “A vampire.”
       The voice must have come from the painting, it had to have—there was no one else around. I looked about warily, trying to avoid the now self-proclaimed vampire’s eyes, but could not discover any other source from whence the voice could have come. But there was someone there, as it turned out. A slight cough signaled his arrival. I still couldn’t figure out where he’d materialized from, but here he now was, standing at Stefan’s side.
       Strangely, my first reaction was not relief at the sight of Vladec Salei but rather confusion as to why he was fully cloaked indoors. I thought it odd that he had not bothered to remove his overcoat and gloves. Maybe he had stumbled upon us through mere chance as he was making for the exit.
       I sent a silent thank you heavenward, but I doubt it ever reached the Pearly Gates. My heart sank as the confusion of the moment dispersed, and I saw that Salei was alone.
       “An incubus, to be exact,” he continued.
       “It looks as though it crushed the life out of her.” Stefan was still staring at the painting. I wondered momentarily if he had even realized the person he was conversing with was not me. Nothing seemed to be getting through to his brain this afternoon.
       I, for one, had had quite enough of Mr. Fuseli’s Nightmare, as I now knew the painting to be named. A small placard bearing a short history of the artist and painting had been set up beneath the canvas. I failed to see what the Swiss artist’s work had to do with the Roman statues surrounding it, but some genius must have made a connection that was lost on me, so I let the matter drop.
       “Nightmare,” I said, musing over the title. “How appropriate.” I turned my attention to Salei, who was staring rather amusedly at Stefan. “Oh, pay no attention to him,” I said lightly, unsure of what to make of the look in Salei’s eyes. “That’s his morbid Transylvanian soul talking.” I knew Guildy’s phrase of the night before would suit nicely someday. “He has an inherent fascination with death.”
       Apparently, it was my day to be ignored. “You are quite right, my young friend,” he said to Stefan. “Although it is the Vrykolakas that crushes its victim to death.”
       “Vrykolakas?” Stefan asked.
       “Yes. A vicious Greek vampire, though some believe it to also be a werewolf.”
       “That’s tidy,” I shot in. “How nice of the Vryko-what’s-its-name to be so accommodating. A vampire and a werewolf,” I concluded, chuckling. Did he take us for complete imbeciles? I’d never heard such nonsense in all my life.
       Salei skewered me with a look of contempt that made me shrink back despite my resolve to not let him rattle me.
       He angled himself closer to Stefan. “The incubus there, well, it has more carnal motives, if you take my meaning.”
       For the first time, Stefan tore his gaze away from the painting and looked at Salei with an expression so wide-eyed it was almost comical. “Oh…” he said, then, “Oh! Yes, well, of course, I mean, rather,” and laughed awkwardly.
       I am by no means a prude, but Salei’s last bit of information made me feel decidedly uncomfortable. And it didn’t help that he seemed to be warming to the subject.
        “You see, it subsists on the life force of its chosen incubator, in this case the woman, which explains why she looks nearly drained of life. So in essence, it is in fact a vampire, or could at the very least be considered one. I, for one, am more inclined to believe that than the demon myth.”
       I half expected him to finish this little lecture with a flourish by saying voilà. “You seem to know a great deal about it,” I said icily. I did not see the point of this morbid conversation, for I was certain I would never need to make use of this knowledge. And, furthermore, Salei’s interest in the subject disturbed me. I was beginning to think the Borois had learned everything they knew about the macabre from their patron. Maybe this visit wasn’t such a good idea after all. He could have been a second Gilles de Rais or Marquis de Sade for all we knew. And since my prospects with Leonora had now vanished, I didn’t see a reason for us to keep company with Vladec Salei a moment longer.
       I wanted to bolt from the room with Stefan in tow, but then I noticed that Stefan was rapt. Utterly, completely in thrall to Vladec Salei. From whence this fascination stemmed, I had no idea, but it was there, plastered all over his face.
        “It is a hobby of mine,” Salei explained. “Obscure folklore fascinates me. Your friend and I met at the Opéra Garnier last evening. So you must be Stefan. Allow me to finally introduce myself. My name is Vladec Salei.”
       It must have been that Slavic bond. Apparently, becoming matey at once with a complete stranger was what Stefan had meant by “Ha!” I should have been gloating over my success. After all, it was I who had been certain they would have so much to talk over. But all I could feel was a childish discontent that bordered on jealously—anger that my best friend no longer needed me. Not that Stefan ever had, but still. We hadn’t even been gone a week, and although we certainly had not come to hate each other, I felt as though something between us had changed the moment we entered France.
       For the next hour and a half, I idled, mentally cursing Fuseli for not keeping his fantasies to himself, the museum’s curators for their complete loss of sanity in displaying a copy of the blasted painting in a hall of statues, and Vladec Salei for being a walking encyclopedia of esoteric knowledge. Once or twice, they had asked me to comment on some triviality, but for the most part, I was ignored. Obviously, there was no place in their conversation for my non-morbid English soul.
       I knew when I was not wanted, but I also knew the day was waning and we had a train to catch.
       “Well, it’s been wonderful, truly, Mr. Salei,” I said, leading Stefan away, “but we really must be off.”
        “And where are you two headed?”
       “Rome.”
       If I had struck him a blow, it wouldn’t have produced anywhere near the jarring effect the name of the city did. His face contorted so severely, I doubted he would be able to return it to its normal expression of hauteur when this little outburst of his subsided. “Rome!” he nearly shrieked with a vehemence I could not fathom. But all the venom of his tone was consigned to that single word, for after he had shouted it, he seemed to regain his composure. “Detestable city,” he said calmly and with his former high-class disdain restored. “Filthy, not a single thing worth viewing there. Filled with nothing but shrines to false prophets and run by men so old and obsolete they should have been bricked up in those supposedly sacred vaults ages ago. Men as archaic as the basilicas themselves.”
       Well, he had established that he wasn’t a churchgoer. And I did not intend to stay around and have him infect Stefan, who had seemingly become as impressionable as clay while in Salei’s presence, with his noxious ideas.
       “Why don’t you come with Leonora and me to Greece?” He said it so innocently, yet there was a persuasive undertone to his words, like a man trying to bribe a child with a sweetmeat. He knew my weakness, the cheeky devil. And, fool that I was, I actually entertained the notion of giving in.
       “What a splendid idea! Eric told me all about…ahh!”
       “Ahh?”
       “What he means is,” I said, shooting Stefan a glance that warned him to keep mum or he would get another jab in the ribs, “we really would love to, but we can’t get to Greece for another few weeks. So sorry.”
       “I see. We’ll be in touch, then?”
       “Of course, good-bye!”
       And without waiting for him to say more, I bustled Stefan down the hallway and didn’t stop until we had exited the museum.
       I was halfway into the cab when Stefan grabbed my arm and pulled me back out. “Wait one moment. This whole blasted Louvre scheme was your idea. Why are you in such a hurry to escape?”
       “No, he suggested it. I merely agreed, which was a mistake, I now see.”
       “And just exactly how?” The stubborn gleam had come into his eyes. There was no reasoning with him when he was in one of these moods. Years of experience had taught me that he was capable of any sort of mischief in this state, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he rushed back to Salei and agreed to the Grecian scheme just to spite me.
       I motioned to the driver to wait, then cast a glance back toward the Louvre to make certain Salei hadn’t followed us. “Something’s not right with him. I don’t know what it is, but I wouldn’t trust him from here to that lamppost. So get it out of your head because we are definitely not meeting up with him when we get to Greece.”
       “You’re doing it again!” he said, exasperated. “What happened to all that twaddle about fostering relations with my Slavic brethren, eh? And I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t take his advice. Who wants to go to Rome anyway…stuffy, detestable city that it is.”
       Parroting someone else’s words was the first sign of intractability. In many ways, Stefan had never grown up. He was still that sulky little orphan David and Marishka Ratliff had stumbled upon in Romania.
       But on this matter, I wasn’t about to budge. “Look,” I said, pulling out my watch. “The train to Marseilles leaves in two hours. And unless you want to journey there on foot, we have to go now. So forget all about Vladec Salei and let’s try to get on with this blasted grand tour of yours, all right?”
       “Fine,” he said, and huffed into the carriage.
        I settled into the seat across from him and shouted to the driver to take us back to the hotel. Stefan, arms crossed, face clouded over, wouldn’t look at me. I knew he would hold his defeat against me. He had always had a vindictive streak I could never understand, but I had overlooked that and many other things over the years.
       I leaned my head back against the cushion and studied his averted face until I felt sleep tugging at my eyes. A short rest before reaching the hotel was just what I needed. My eyes had begun to close, but then I had the unmistakable feeling that I was being watched. I looked across the way to see Stefan staring at me. He was smiling, but something about the smile made me uneasy. It was secretive, threatening, and somehow knowing all at once.
       “Why are you smiling?” I asked, not truly wishing to know the answer.
       “Oh, nothing,” he said quietly. “I was just thinking of your friend Sorina Boroi.”
       The mention of that name startled me. I had purposely not said anything about the Borois to Stefan. My shock, coupled with my failure to press him for further details about this woman, made my guilt apparent, which I knew was just what he had intended to do.
       The smile was now self-satisfied. He looked down at the floor, snorted softly, then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. I no longer had any doubt that he knew what she had done to me that morning. And, horribly, I felt he was glad of it.
       What had she shown him during their outing? His face was like a mask, unreadable, Sphinx-like. Whatever secrets she had imparted to him, I knew he would keep hidden, for he seemed to have taken her side against me, though he had known her scarcely more than a few hours. If I spoke now, I would only make the situation worse. I needed time to think, to plan my strategy…to reevaluate my relationship with the friend I had called brother for the last thirteen years.
       I shoved myself into a corner of the cab and focused my attention on the passersby, trying to distract my mind from the gnawing anxiety in my chest.
       This grand tour had seemed like the adventure of a lifetime. But now, in light of my fears, I was beginning to regret ever agreeing to Stefan’s blasted scheme.

© 2010, 2013 Melika Dannese Lux and Books In My Belfry, LLC™. Unauthorized use or reproduction of this excerpt without the author’s permission is strictly prohibited.

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Why should I read Corcitura?

08 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Fun Stuff, News

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

background, children of vampires, corcitura, female vampires, Germany, Greece, Prague, Romania, son of vampires, the inside story, Upyr, vampires, Venice, Vrykolakas, writing

(For future reference, this article will be permanently housed under its corresponding tab.)

If you are a devourer of vampire fiction (from Dracula to Twilight and everything in between), you probably think all new territory has been explored. Let’s face it, there’s not much left that can be written about everyone’s favorite bloodsuckers. Corcitura, however, has been called “a startlingly original take on the vampire mythos.” Yet if you are still not convinced that this book is right for your discriminating vampire fiction palate, allow me to try and persuade you.

What starts out as a story of two best friends experiencing their first taste of freedom by setting out on a solo tour of Europe quickly explodes into a twisted untangling of centuries-old secrets as our protagonists are forced to flee from people who turn out to be much older—and somehow possess alarming otherworldly powers—than they originally appear. I am talking, of course, about vampires, and in this novel, the two that attack one of the main characters are the stuff of nightmare.

But vampires are only one facet to this multi-faceted tale. Not only are the vampires horrifying, and their trickery something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but they have fascinating histories that are inextricably linked with one of the main protagonists and his family—especially his sisters, who have a crucial role to play in how this story works itself out. If you love seeing female vampire protagonists having a major role in the outcome of the story, then you will love the two in this book. Let’s hear it for the girls! They have enough history and chutzpah to fill volumes more—which is my intended plan. They also happen to be werewolves. And if that duality doesn’t intrigue you, I don’t know what will! 😉

If you read to lose yourself in different times, places, and worlds, this novel will certainly fit the bill. Not only is it set in the late 19th century, but you basically get to travel around the world for the price of admission. Of course, vampires are chasing you all over Europe, but what a ride! London, Paris (twice, the return trip being my personal favorite because of the scene in the Musée Grévin wax museum: talk about creepy! You’ll never look at clowns the same way again), Athens, Greece (where the first attack occurs), Brasov, Romania (where hidden relatives reveal themselves and the second and final attack takes place, solidifying one of the characters as the Corcitura), Venice, Italy (probably my favorite scene of the book—gondolas, Sangue di Vita, vampiric revelations, a den of the undead, shattered windows, and twenty foot drops into Venetian canals—you know, just another average day in La Serenissima), end of the century New York (watch out for the scene at the shop window), Prague (is there any city more fitting for mystically creepy shenanigans than this one?) Cluj and Sighişoara, Romania (where even more spooky doings and confrontations take place), Cologne, Germany (where the “Legacy” of the Corcitura is revealed in startling fashion), and finally an orphanage in London, where the last link in this tangled family chain is discovered.

Although vampires provide the conflict for the story, the main focus is on the characters and how they deal with the (oftentimes) awful and terrible things those vampires do to try and destroy their lives. If you tire of being shackled to the same narrator for an entire book, you will not have to endure that here, for Corcitura is told by using three different narrative voices. For more than half of the novel, our main narrator is Eric, who begins the story as a callow 18-year-old and ends as a 26-year-old with more knowledge of the world of “vampiric politics” than anyone could ever want to know. Then there is Madelaine, whose fascinating story beings midway through the second half of the novel in 1894 New York, and whose entrance into the saga could quite possibly prove to save one of the character’s lives in the end. Madelaine is fiercely loyal and as exciting and entrancing as the milieu in which she lives. The section in New York introduces a whole new world to Eric and makes him see that what he went through with the vampires in the past does not have to define his future. The characters Eric meets in this interlude grant him a much needed reprieve from the constant anxiety he has endured fighting for his life against creatures that by all rights shouldn’t even exist. But once marked, forever marked. After Eric has settled into what he hopes is a new and happy life with new friends and new loves, the vampires come to call and everything spirals out of control for him and those dearest to him from that point forward.

Out of all the narrators, Zigmund Fertig, the last character to tell his story and bring the book to a close, is my favorite, and I hope you will love him as much as I do. What a history this man has! His past weaves through the other sections in the novel before he even comes on scene, especially his connections with one of the main female vampires. The meeting of the two after so many years apart, and so many misunderstandings, is one of the most impactful and harrowing parts of the book, for Zigmund must make a decision as to whether to hold on to specters of the past or put aside his anger and join together to set his family and newfound friends free from the plague that has haunted them for centuries. Zigmund’s chapters crystallize all the narratives, history, and threads/character storylines into place and end the novel with a bang. Literally. There are not one, but three “endings beyond the ending” that keep you breathless and in suspense about how much influence these vampires truly have even until the last page is turned.

If you love terrifying vampires (And who doesn’t?), a thrilling, intricate story where something mentioned in chapter four has a huge bearing on the outcome of the story and not a word in this 700 page novel is wasted…but most importantly, if you want to read about characters you’d wish to know in real life (Except those vampires!) and root for them to have lives by the end of the book, then I invite you to lose yourself in this otherworld where vampires abide by no rules but their own.

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Genesis of Corcitura

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Fun Stuff, News

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

background, children of vampires, corcitura, female vampires, Greece, Romania, Russia, son of vampires, the inside story, Upyr, vampires, Vrykolakas, writing

(For future reference, this article will be permanently housed under its corresponding tab.)

“I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all. I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei. Plague carrier. Living death. Drainer of life. The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word could. Vampire. And for me, the uninitiated, that single word meant death.” ~Eric Bradburry, Corcitura, Chapter 8 

December 9, 2003—that’s when the idea for the Corcitura crawled into my mind. At that time, however, I didn’t have a name for the book or the creature at all. It was just known as “That Gothic book with vampires in it.” For three months prior to that date, I had been mulling ideas for a novel with some sort of vampire that had never been explored before. In September of that year, I had scribbled my fragmentary ideas down in my oh-so-stylish rhinestone-studded Brooklyn Bridge notebook:

My rhinestone-studded Brooklyn Bridge notebook

Snazzy, no? I decided that the best way to tell the story would be to have “My Boys” (Eric and Stefan) go on a Grand Tour. Just think of it: dazzling locations, the clash of cultures, and the opportunity for all kinds of tricky vampiric subterfuge to be enacted on them in far-flung locales. From the outset, I chose to have the book “voiced” by three narrators: Eric and two other characters, Madelaine and Zigmund, who were only vaguely defined at that point. I knew he would play a very key role, but for a while, Zigmund remained the most nebulous of all—traipsing around somewhere in the fog. As for the rest of the story, everything else was up in the air. I knew I wanted to write about vampires, but while I had the rudiments of a novel, my vamp was content to stay in the background, kicking through my mind until he finally distinguished himself enough to get the story going. Until then, he’d be nicknamed “Our Combo.” 

A year before I even got the idea for the Corcitura, I had seen a painting that sent my mind reeling with all the possible implications behind it. The painting was “Oh, what’s that in the hollow?” by Edward Robert Hughes.

Oh, what's that in the hollow?

I took one look at that painting and screamed “VAMPIRE!” There’s something so morbidly entrancing and enigmatic about that painting. Is he dead? The sheen of his nearly translucent eyes certainly seems to suggest it. But what if he’s just resting until the moon rises? I only recently found out that he is dead! But back then, I was still in the dark, and so I did what all good novelists do: I totally ignored the inconvenient facts behind the painting and ran roughshod with my inspiration. Those translucent eyes were never far from my mind and inspired me so much that they found life in the book’s eponymous creature. 

I’ll bet you’re probably wondering what in the world said creature’s name even means, right? Well, I’ll tell you…in a second. Before the novel was called Corcitura, it went by a bevy of names: “OhmygoshthisissoawesomeIcan’twaittowriteit!” when I was still in the first blush of excitement and idealizing over how fun the writing of this novel would be; “That beast!” when I was in the thick of the conflict and was furiously writing my brains out and the book was taking on a life of its own; and finally “Corci,” which is what I have been affectionately calling it for the last couple of years. 

Originally, the novel was titled Nocturne because of an incident that occurs in a scene in the second half of the book.  Yet after lots of musing on the title, and how important a title is when catching a reader’s attention, I decided to name the book after the creature the two vampires create.  It seems obvious now, but at the time, it really never crossed my mind until I started thinking about how generic Nocturne sounded.  Now, when people hear the title, their reaction is “What does that mean?!” which usually results in my saying, “It’s funny you should ask.” This segues nicely into a pitch for the book. 😉  

Now back to the meaning. It was important for me to have something based in reality in a novel where the creatures were mythical, so I didn’t want to just make up a name for the new vampire species. I wanted it to be grounded in fact. Once I knew my creature was going to be a hybrid—created after being bitten by two vampires of differing species—I took the next step in finding out what that word in Romanian was (since Stefan’s family has a long and torturous history deep in the soil of that country). I have Romanian ancestors, so digging deeper into the country’s myths and legends was an added bonus. When I discovered that Corcitura meant hybrid, I thought about it, and since I didn’t like any of the names I’d made up, it eventually stuck. I know it seems strange now, but even though I had used the word throughout the novel, it never really occurred to me to change the title until the book was practically halfway written. Oddly enough, I made the decision at a wedding reception. My cousin had gotten married in the late summer of 2009, and as I sat talking to one of my cousins-in-law about the book, I paused in the conversation, stared off into space, and said, “You know what?  I’m almost 100% certain I’m changing the name to Corcitura.” And that was the end of that. 🙂 

So, why vampires, after all? Out of all the monsters of myth, vampires had always been my favorites.  I had always been fascinated by how they could be suave and alluring on the outside (or when the sun wasn’t up), but with the flick of a barbed tongue, turn into slavering, fang-toothed, bloodsucking beasts. The juxtaposition fascinated me, since in original folklore almost all vampires are essentially plagues. Some just know how to mask their true nature better than others. 

I knew if I was going to write about vampires, they’d better be different and intriguing, and since I’ve always been crazy for folklore from different parts of the world, this idea gave me an excuse to explore vampire mythology. It’s fascinating reading, freaky, but fascinating. Yet the real impetus behind the idea of having the victim be attacked by two vampires came down to one thing: sunlight.  Yes, that’s how the whole “combo” idea started—finding a way to make sure my vampire would be able to frolic around during daylight hours without being charred to ashes by the sun’s rays. For three months, I went back and forth on how a vampire could achieve this, during which time I whittled down my choices for favorite vampire candidates. Once I started seeing how different the strengths and weaknesses were, and understanding how much more indestructible the combined blood of two vampires would be (plus the human blood of the original victim), I knew I was on the right path.

Out of all the vampires I researched, the two that won in the end were the Upyr (from Russia) and the Vrykolakas, which hailed from Greece. The Vrykolakas (referred to as the Vryk from this point forward) was a jackpot find for me, mainly because he’s a virtual unknown in literature, but mostly because it is unclear if the Vryk is a vampire or a werewolf. You see where this is going, right? Just before I hit the halfway point of the novel, I realized I would have to be crazy not to exploit that gray area to the hilt. It only made sense to embrace this ambiguity, which led to a whole new story arc being created for my two female Vryk protagonists later on in the novel. I am so happy I did this because it launched the second and third halves of the novel onto a completely different plane, with the book beginning to essentially write itself from that point on. To quote Colonel Hannibal Smith, “I love it when a plan comes together!” 😉 

The Upyr and the Vryk are two sides of the same coin. Where the Vryk was plague-ravaged, nasty, and didn’t do anything to hide his true nature, the Upyr moved heaven and earth not to show his hand. My Vryk was rabid and couldn’t do much to control it. But the Upyr…he was a bird of an entirely different breed. Debonair on the outside, but blacker than the foulest dungeon, he was ten times more deadly than the Vryk and no one would ever be able to tell. He was my linch pin and turned out to come on scene much quicker than expected, which goes to show you that when the character wants out, you’d better listen, because from the moment he waltzed into the story, everything was transformed.

After doing all that research and character planning, I came up against my next problem: how to outline a novel with three narrators (different voices and perspectives were a must with a story this long and with this many converging arcs) and several different plotlines and locations? Simple, really. You write an outline, then throw it out the window once the characters hijack the story and take it where they will. My original outline had the book being even longer than it turned out to be. I am so thankful that outline changed—and dramatically.  Since the boys were going on a Grand Tour, there was originally going to be chapter upon chapter of what I realized quickly would be nothing but a travelogue, and a dull travelogue at that. In a novel billed as a thriller, one can only tolerate so much local flora and fauna before the hair starts being ripped out of the scalp.  So, if I was getting bored, something needed to give.  That all got scrapped when Vladec Salei decided to make a pit stop in Paris and bring along his particular brand of trouble much earlier than expected. 

Finally, things were in place. In May 2008, after five years of planning, outlining, scalping said outline, and gathering my research and ideas, I was ready to begin, and this was the line that sparked the flame: “But the hour grows late, and Eric needs me.” Short and sweet and loaded with hidden meaning, Madelaine’s line from a letter sent to Zigmund in the epilogue was what set the whole process in motion. And yes, I wrote the end before anything else. I had written Chapter 8, A Tavern in Venice, back in 2005, and also the first chapter of the novel that same year, but those were drastically overhauled when I sat down and actually started writing the book seriously on May 22nd, 2008. That line that started the ball rolling is indeed still in the epilogue, but the epilogue itself was turned on its head and bears little to no resemblance to what I had originally thought it would. Aren’t plans wonderful? 

I began this process thinking I would just write a vampire novel with a new twist, but what started as a story about hybrid vampires quickly morphed into something beyond what I had been planning to write.  Probably more than anything else, Corcitura became the story of the corruption of a soul and how this has a domino effect on all those who encounter him—life is overturned for everyone; everything they have ever known is distorted past recognition; nothing can ever go back to the way it used to be, for now they live in danger, fear, and some that loved him most meet their ends at his hands. 

As I entered the second phase of the novel, Corcitura had become not just a name for a dual natured creature, but a metaphor for the duality of our own natures, of the constant battle between base motives and our “better angels.”  By this point, having three narrators really helped me define this theme. Letting Madelaine and Zigmund pick up the threads of the narrative in the second and third halves of the novel forced me to look back on Eric’s narration and see if he really was as reliable or as clear-headed as he meant to be, especially in regards to Madelaine. As other characters began to make their way onto the page, the premise of upending centuries of accepted vampiric behavior and tradition began to become more and more important. Several times in the novel, characters are given a choice. Will they uphold the status quo and prove everyone who ever judged them or their “kind” right? Or will they go against the call of the blood and turn their back on their very nature by deciding that they will be the ones to put an end to the cycle of destruction? This was the most rewarding, and fun, part of the novel for me to write, since some characters made the choices I wanted them to, while others categorically refused to cooperate and hence went their own way—often to their own annihilation. 

After everything was said and done, and the book marinated and went through countless edits, I realized that Corcitura is, in fact, a horror novel, but not in the normal sense. It’s horror on many levels. The first part deals with the visceral, blatant horror of the vampires and the terror of having no way of stopping these creatures from corrupting you, body and soul; the second with the horror of deception, lying, treachery, betrayal, with thinking you know someone but discovering they have lied to you about practically everything; the third with the horror of abandonment; and lastly with the horror of the unknown—the uncertainty of things to come. But Corcitura is also a historical novel, a thriller, a book with that unnerving Gothic feeling that permeated the stories I grew up with—novels you could lose yourself in for days at a time, tales filled with characters you’d miss when the final page was turned. That’s what I set out to write, even more than a straight up vampire novel, because it’s really not about vampires in the end. It’s about the people whose lives they destroy, the people who choose to fight against them, who team up with vampires who have decided that it doesn’t matter what the legends have taught them, they will do everything in their power to stop the undead from claiming even more souls. 

The novel is not only about Eric and Stefan, but the coalition of unlikely allies whose lives intersect with vampires past and present. Each of them, in his or her own way, must overcome anger and hatreds that have been festering for centuries if there is to be any hope of survival. Some of this band, however, are not so different from the creatures hunting them—two half-vampire, half-wolf women who had the “gift” thrust upon them when they would have rather died; the last of the Corcitura’s untainted siblings, a woman whose choice might finally lift the five-hundred-year-old curse laid on her family; a scarred, hunted man who for thirty years thought the most important person in his life was dead; a young bride who was forced to become fearless in a heartbeat to save the man she has just married—the man she is beginning to understand she doesn’t really know—from becoming the vampire’s next sacrifice; and, finally, the son of two vampires, the child who cries blood—the boy who just might be the salvation of them all. 

Nine years, twenty-three edits, thousands of revisions, and 700 pages later, Corcitura is finally here. Welcome to a world where an ancient Upyr plots your destruction and a half-wolf, half-vampire haunts your doorstep, its barbed tongue poised to rip into your throat the second you answer its call. 

Button up your collar. 

Keep the flame burning. 

And come along for the ride.

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