About Vampires, Of Course

In Terri Windling & Ellen Datlow's clear summary of vampire lore and evolution in the world of novels in the Introduction to 'Teeth - Vampire Tales', there's a line that read "Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before."

WELL. EXCUSE ME, I KNOW BUFFY VERY WELL, ALL SEVEN SEASONS OF IT. Including her terrible sense of fashion, and some great fanfiction. It did make me wonder if I should stop reading at this point. Reading this book out in public is a tad embarrassing. The cover is extremely unflattering. I could feel eyes zooming in on the cover, and thoughts of some going "OMG, she's reading one of those trashy vampire tales." Ah well. You know I'm not into glittering vampires and the likes of that category of the undead. Same thing for tv. Not 'Vampire Diaries', but 'True Blood', but give me 'Underworld' anytime. Sure, Buffy bound many to Joss Whedon, but it's Firefly that made me a fan. Okay, I digress. Anyway, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have edited other anthologies that are quite good. So I read 'Teeth' based on that. Also, the familiar writers of these short YA vampire tales prompted me to strive on.

The first story was already rather funny. Genevieve Valentine's 'Things To Know About Being Dead' touches on the concept of a Chinese vampire, a 'jiang shi' who was kinda dead, then jolted back to life and looked normal. Suyin could walk in the winter sun, and was fed a mug of warm human blood by her grandmother, till the old lady died of natural causes. I was giggling because the undead still had to grapple with graduating from high school and considerations of college. "23. It's just as weird as being alive. You figure it out as you go." Sure.

Yes, yes, Neil Gaiman's name's in the book. He contributes a poem 'Bloody Sunrise' that doesn't hold any punctuation. In his typical fashion, the poem might or might not deal with the topic; his words, when strung together, can mean just about anything.

Every night I put on my smartest threads
and I go into the town
and I don't even look dead

Every night I smile and I say hi
and no one ever smiles back
and if I could I'd just die

Remember, this is YA. Young adult fiction. It's most refreshing how they re-work the concept of the vampyre and Dracula. There's also this little bit in all the stories that deals with growing pains, and I end up grinning at teenage angst. A lot of eye-rolling mostly. Some stories can be found here for now, like Jeffrey Ford's 'Sit The Dead' which talked of how the 'disease' laid dormant in a particular bloodline regardless of the passage of time.

"Every fifty years or so, one of us Cabadula is born with the gritchino in the blood. You can't tell till they die. But this one" - he pointed at the coffin - "I always had a feeling."

A favorite in this collection belongs to a talented writer/artist/singer I'm fond of- Cecil Castellucci. She wrote 'Best Friends Forever'. It tells the tale of a friendship between a frail dying human, and a jaded vampire. I totally get her. To have a friendship like that, to know such a form of friendship in one's lifetime, is the truest blessings one can receive with enormous gratitude.

One of them was going to live and one of them was going to die. But not exactly in that order. 

And then, as if by magic, or by complete mutual understanding and love for each other, the absolute knowledge that they would never condemn their truest friend to their lot in life, they both moved at the same time as they put their weapons away. 

Amy settled back into her chair and read a magazine and lived, as undead a life as it was. 

Gina settled back into her pillows, closed her eyes, and died peacefully, in her sleep.