Are Vamps and Werewolves too overdone?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

We need more FAE...Seelie and Unseelie Court. To date, the only place I've seen this come up is Jim's work, Matt Wagner's Mage,Delint's Jack the Giant Killer...and my unpublished stuff.

For what it's worth, there's Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, and Kara Dalkey's Steel Rose which is pretty much a direct response to the Bull.  Both very good books.

[The Corvidian]

Most of the ideas I have with vampires and werewolves have them being the trouble makers. They have come to believe their own PR that they are the "Lords of the Night", something that many of the other supernaturals like to dis-abuse them of.

[DragonFire]

We need more FAE...Seelie and Unseelie Court. To date, the only place I've seen this come up is Jim's work, Matt Wagner's Mage,Delint's Jack the Giant Killer...and my unpublished stuff.

There's so much more to the mythos than bloody elves.

Hmm, mine revolves around the Sidhe coming to 'reclaim' the earth.
Atlantis and Avalon pop up too.
I figured while I'm minign the mythos, I should go full throttle

[Mickey Finn]

For what it's worth, there's Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, and Kara Dalkey's Steel Rose which is pretty much a direct response to the Bull.  Both very good books.

Oh! I've read both of those. Good books.

Nobody's cuter than Prince.


BTW, Emma Bull is not what you'd expect in real life. She's like an american version of Emma Thompson, and charming as hell. She has a new book in the works, btw.

[Kiriath]

There's more Fae than that!

How about Holly Black's Tithe and its sequels.
Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry...
Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely, which had a lot of advertising on Locus's website for a while.

EDIT: Or do you mean fae that's not young adult? That's more rare to find...

[Cyclone Jack]

I'm conciously attempting to avoid all mytho-folklore tropes in the fantasy work I'm doing now. This is beastly, bitchily hard considering that the very structure of storytelling is bound up with those tropes.

It can be done, though. LeGuin's mid 70's and early 80's short work, Jeff Ford's entire career. Jeff VanderMeer, Hal Duncan and Steph Swainston also labor in this particular garden.

My...hmm, direction may be the best term...at the moment is a sort of focused use of the unexplained as both a reflection of and map through various human conditions, which are then distilled through the individual characteristics of normalized characters. The responses of everyday folk faced with 'reality unmasked; naked and with no excuse' to quote a work-in-progress (Meeting The Last Man On Earth, For Coffee: A Raincheck) functions as a form of hyperactive allegory. The metaphor rests not in the description, but in the interpretation of events and facts that fit no previous dataset.

All an experiment of course. Hell, I once wrote an entire story just to see if I could make a ridiculously convoluted plot make sense with no explanation whatsoever. I'd seen other writers do it and wondered if I could. Not to be snobbish, but the great joy of not writing to sell is that I get to pay attention to no voice but those that babble in my own head.

ETA: Oddly enough, the decision to use a framework of a completely unreliable universe teeming with unexplainable events has produced my most realistic stories ever. Might be a lesson in that.

[The Corvidian]

There's more Fae than that!

How about Holly Black's Tithe and its sequels.
Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry...
Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely, which had a lot of advertising on Locus's website for a while.

EDIT: Or do you mean fae that's not young adult? That's more rare to find...

I would also recommend Yasmine Galenorn's Daughters of the Moon series. I like her version of the Otherwold, and that there is more then one race of Fairy.

[RMatthewWare]

Nothing is new.  It's the way you present that can be new.  Anything BAD is overdone.  But you could write something about elves and if it's good, no one will complain.


For Fae stories, Holly Black is good:  Tithe, etc.

[meg_evonne]

RMatt--any interest on the publishing end?  Wishing you the best!

Could not believe another series that uses the term, "Otherworld".  I thought I was being clever.  Yeah about as clever as fried hamburgers.  Put the thinking cap on Meg....

[RMatthewWare]

RMatt--any interest on the publishing end?  Wishing you the best!

Still working on it.  An agent is still (after two months) reviewing my manuscript.  No faeries in this one, though.  I'd like to work on a fae novel sometime.

[fivestyle]

Just this morning I was thinking about how almost all the real famous monsters have their beginig mythos tale. For instance Vampires have Dracula and zombies/undead have Frankenstein. But Werewolves don't really have one.

So on the way to work I was contemplating how one could create a begining to the Vampire legend.
So far the best I've come up with is sort of build off of Jim's examples of werewolves in Fool Moon and more so on Norse mythology. Where the story takes place about a Viking (said to be son of odin)having a run in with Fenresiflr(sp?) and killing him. Loki distraught over his sons death curses the viking to walk the earth bearing the mark of the wolf which causes the soul of Fenresiflr to posses the vikings body at each full moon.

[Cyclone Jack]

Just this morning I was thinking about how almost all the real famous monsters have their beginig mythos tale. For instance Vampires have Dracula and zombies/undead have Frankenstein. But Werewolves don't really have one.

Actually, vampires and the undead predate those Victorian novels by hundreds of years. Thousands in the case of African folklore.

Werewolves have just as long a historical/folklore tradition. The beserkers of Viking lore, the Romanian varcolak, similar beasts in almost every European tradition. Lycanthropy is a Greek word, and comes from the legend of Lycaon -- a man cursed with becoming a wolf after indulging in cannabalism.

[Ms Duck]

Speaking of greek, although modern vampires and eastern vampires have been done to death, how about the tradional vampires, the Lamia and the Vrykolas?

Lamia: Female vampire/ demon, ancient meditaranain.. lots of stories, many of them conflicting. A vampire that turned to a shadow by day? Or sucked blood thru the soles of men's feet as the walked over her grave?

Vrykolas: A 'temporary' vampire, could be called from the grave, was someone who died leaving a major promise unkept. Could be called forth by the promised one, and forced to fullfill the oath..

The oldest stories ussually involve a young man promising to care for a younger sister, only to be killed and the girl kidnapped. the elderly granmother forces the man to rise from the grave to find his sister...

[Cyclone Jack]

Speaking of greek, although modern vampires and eastern vampires have been done to death, how about the tradional vampires, the Lamia and the Vrykolas?

Lamia: Female vampire/ demon, ancient meditaranain.. lots of stories, many of them conflicting. A vampire that turned to a shadow by day? Or sucked blood thru the soles of men's feet as the walked over her grave?

Vrykolas: A 'temporary' vampire, could be called from the grave, was someone who died leaving a major promise unkept. Could be called forth by the promised one, and forced to fullfill the oath..

The oldest stories ussually involve a young man promising to care for a younger sister, only to be killed and the girl kidnapped. the elderly granmother forces the man to rise from the grave to find his sister...

Good stuff, ms! Far more interesting than the beat-to-death 'I am the sensual doomed Euro-boy. Fear my angsty hunger!'
 

[Ms Duck]

A couple of yers agao I came up with a 'is it a vampire test' for Ad&d.. went kinda like this..


Does:
 He/She speak french?

Wear Black?

Have hair impossibly long?

Obviously Bisexual?

Sigh with angst on uneccacary occasions?

Cant tell if he/she is a he/she or it? Double points for answer c: all of the above.

In a modern setting, have ridulous ammounts of firearms, or know someone who does?

Are they related to a well known historical figure?