The Dead Travel Fast

San Francisco Vampire Tour

My evening attending the San Francisco Vampire Tour is featured in The Dead Travel Fast. Its host Kitty a.k.a. Countess Mina, was also a fellow tourist on the Dracula-themed tour of Romania that's also featured in the book.

I just ran across this video of the Countess, featuring some highlights of her and her tour. For some reason, they won't let the video be embed in external pages--so just click the link.

Happy Halloween!

Darkwing Manor

A friend of Tim and Tina posted a few videos from this year's Darkwing Manor. As noted in The Dead Travel Fast, every Halloween Tim and Tina turn their home into a vampire-inspired haunted house. These videos are from the year following the time I spent with them for the book, but many of the things I mention in the book are featured.

Video #1: Features Tim giving the opening speech/greeting for visitors. Also shows the crank ghost, some of the cast, one of the antique funeral hearses, and shots of the house and grounds.

Video #2: Tina gives a tour of the Morguetorium--her collection of Victorian funeral stuff.

Video #3: Tour of the parlor and paying respects to dead Uncle Therman (this was the job I did for most of the evening when I worked there). This guy is significantly more hammed up than I was (believe it or not).

Video #4: More inside the house and then out into the yard again.

Back from the dead

Originally uploaded by tychay.

Back when the book was going to be called "Bloodlust: Stalking the Vampire from Nosferatu to Count Chocula" (I know, I didn't like it then either, I think it had two previous titles before The Dead Travel Fast), I thought I was going to include a chapter just about LARPers--or live action role players--who got very, very serious about the game Vampire: The Masquerade. It didn't really work out as planned, and a lot of the material felt repetitious to other parts of the book.

Below is something off the cutting room floor with one of the LARPers I met while I still lived in Ohio, when I went to spend the evening with him. You'll also note that the tone of this is a little different than The Dead Travel Fast--as this was some of the earliet suff I wrote for it.

WARNING: The murder he describes here is simply game play--not real.

I guess being 175 years old doesn’t do much for your math skills.

Four packs of Marlboro Lights. Seven packs of Marlboro reds. Nine packs of Marlboro Mediums. Three packs of Marlboro Medium 100s.

“I can tell right now this isn’t going to add up,” says Jamie Gxxxx. “I could go through these 80 times and come up with 80 different counts.”

The smoke count is the part of Jamie’s job that he hates the most. He’s so bad at it that’s he’s been written up three times. He’s been at this BP station longer than any of the other employee, even two years longer than his manager, but he knows that if he can’t figure this out, it’ll make two bad smoke counts in the past month—another write-up. I know old people tend to be slow and get confused a lot, but you’d think that someone who’d been around for more than seventeen decades could handle counting to sixty-four (I had counted them--twice--while Jamie struggled through).  Then again, you’d also expect that someone who’s been around this long could score a better gig than the BP QuikMart.

At the end of every shift at the BP, the cashier has to count all the cigarette packs in the store, subtract that number from the previous shift’s smoke count, and then reconcile the balance against the cash register receipts.

“This sucks,” he says, oblivious to the potential irony.

Gas station cashier isn’t a career position; lots of people come and go. As a result, the store’s systems are set up more to monitor the employees than the customers. Theft and till tapping are common, the smoke count is meant as a deterrent. To Jamie, it’s just an irritant.

Generally, he likes his job—low stress, little responsibility, and people generally stay out of each other’s business and don’t ask questions. Questions like why Jamie only works at night, why Jamie has tattoos of two tears running down his cheek, why Jamie doesn’t have any visible hair anywhere on his body, or why Jamie has inch-long incisors.

Perhaps it’s frustration with the smoke count that’s got Jamie tense or perhaps it’s my presence. I’ve been hanging out with him his entire shift. There isn’t a lot of room behind the counter and with the two of us sandwiched back there, Jamie occasionally paces back and forth like a caged animal. He manages his stress by telling stories, often loud enough to shock customers with their lurid details, accentuating them with wild gestures and intense glares.

While Jamie says over and over again how uncomfortable he is sharing his stories with a stranger,  he rarely takes a break between one story and the next, often leaving a customer standing at the counter, money in hand, until Jamie reaches a breaking point in his tale. I’m an easy audience, laughing at things others might find offensive, egging him on to tell more detail. Yet even in the midst of his storytelling, I can tell he’s growing increasingly nervous.

My guess is that Jamie is anxious and tense for another reason: anticipation. He knows that once he finishes his smoke count, he’s free. He knows exactly where he’ll go and exactly what will happen.
In a few hours from now Jamie will sneak into the basement of 2610 Wxxxxxx Avenue here in Cleveland, me close behind. Once inside, he’ll sneak up behind 22-year-old Vanessa Hxxxxx and kill her.

Jamie will run a knife across her throat, ear to ear. Vanessa will try to scream for help, but her vocal cords are slashed and functionless. She’ll slowly bleed to death. Jamie will watch her suffer for a moment, then position himself against her chest and lap the blood draining down from her neck. Hardly any will hit the floor; Jamie will consume almost every drop.

Jamie will look back at me afterwards, acknowledging my look of confusion and shock with a smile.

“Fucking awesome, wasn’t it? Hey, if you’re hungry, I think there’s pizza in the kitchen.”

Whitby and London photos

Draculas Coffin
Originally uploaded by ericnuzum

I just realized this week that I never posted photos from Katherine and my trip to London and Whitby (as described in The Dead Travel Fast), even for friends to see (give me a break, it has only been two years).

Because I'm lazy, I've only included minimal titles with the photos. If you've read the book, then you'll probably be able to connect the pictures with the places described in the book. If you haven't read the book, go read it, then come back and look through the pictures. (And do so now!!)

Here is the link to the full photo set.

Almost like radio

My attempts to make this video look better were failures. It's what I get for putting the camera in a dim room, trying to focus on an unlit stage, etc... The form on the stage waving around is me. Everything else that moves is the audience. Think of this as almost radio. Kinda. You get the point.

It's another excerpt from the Wonderland Ballroom reading last week. The text I read is also available here in written-excerpt-type form.

Enjoy.

On Point

A note I made for myself
Originally uploaded by ericnuzum

You can go here to listen to my hour today on NPR's On Point talking about the book.

It was a fun time.

Another casualty

I originally posted this here in March, but, arguably, it was buried--so I decided to bring it to the top of the pile.

If you check the categories to the right, you'll find there are lots of things squirreled around this site that aren't visible from the front page...

Following is a story that I decided early to pull from the finished book. It's a funny story, but it was even a little too tangential for this book. It happened during my Dracula-themed tour of Transylvania with two-dozen vampire enthusiasts. Specifically, it's during a stop-over in the Romanian city of Sibiu. The guy named "Radu" in this vignette is our tour guide.

We'd spent the night in Sibiu, another of the old Saxon city states. The city was going to receive some cultural designation in 2007, so it was getting a thorough primping: new streets, sidewalks, paint jobs, and so on. As we walked, Radu was telling us easily forgotten stories about the city's history and architecture. Then we rounded the corner and found ourselves standing in front of about twenty human skeletons poking out of the ground.

It turns out that the Evangelical Church in Sibiu was due for new bricks in the courtyard. When they removed the old bricks and dirt, they found a mass grave about a foot underground. The remains were dated from the 17th century, so archeologists we called in to excavate, photograph, catalog, and remove the skeletons, clothing, and other items found at the site. It was an amazing thing to see. After the initial astonishment wore off, we started to get chatty and poke around. I even posed next to some recently unearthed sap.

"Hey Radu, how did these people die?" I asked.

"Oh yes, in 17th century, plague and leprosy hit Sibiu very bad, yes? So because they have so many dead, they must bury them in shallow grave, right? All together with no coffins."

All of a sudden my mind flashed back to us walking among these remains—and dummy me kneeling down to pose with one. Then I noticed that several of the archeologists were wearing masks.

"Um…Radu, do bubonic plague and leprosy stay dormant in soil?"

Radu thought about this for a bit.

"This I do not know. But I will ask for you, yes?"

Radu went over to a woman cataloguing some clay fragments and had an extended conversation. The rest of us moved away from the graves; several of us were noticeably trying not to breathe.

"Everything okay," Radu said, returning to us with a big smile. "Bubonic plague. It becomes inert in the soil. All is fine."

As we began to walk away, Radu made the mistake of sharing some of the other information he'd learned.

"Now leprosy, it can remain in the soil for 1,000 years."

"But didn’t you say there were waves of leprosy in Sibiu, too?" I asked.

Radu went over to the grave and looked around while scrunching up his nose.

"These people, they die of plague, not leprosy."

"Radu, how do you know that?" I asked. "Did you just sniff those graves? Is that how you know?"

The others on the tour, previously getting a little scared about disease, were starting to doubt my rationality, as I had just accused the tour guide of trying to smell graves to determine the cause of death. Radu quickly got everyone out of the courtyard and back towards the hotel, explaining that lepers were taken to special colonies and would never have been buried in the city. We all seemed willing to accept this and moved on.

A Q and A with Eric Nuzum

The book's publicist just put this together to help drum up feature interest for the book's Sept 18th release--I thought it would make sense to include here as well.

A Q&A with Eric Nuzum

What sparked your interest in vampires?

To be honest, I have no idea how/why I became interested in vampires. I should come up with a better answer, but the truth is that one day I’d never given vampires much of a second thought and a few days later it felt like my life would never be complete unless I wrote a book about them.

The easiest way to explain it is this: a few years ago I bought a Honda CR-V. At the time, I’d researched the best car for me, had seen a few here and there, but had never really noticed many around. However, once I bought a Honda CR-V, it seems like every other car I pass is a Honda CR-V. To this day, I’m amazed by the number of CR-Vs I pass on the road every day.

Vampires are the same way. One morning, I noticed a few vampire references in the media while I ate my breakfast. “Huh, that’s interesting,” I thought to myself. “I wonder how many vampire references I’ll come across if I’m actually paying attention to them?”  I was shocked. I encountered them regularly, usually one or more per day. I kept finding myself more and more curious as to how vampires became so ubiquitous, so I just kept digging—trying to figure out the answer. Three years later, we have The Dead Travel Fast.

What is the worst vampire movie you saw?

That’s kinda like asking “what’s the deadliest brand of rat poison?” or “what’s the purplest shade of magenta?” Actually, it is more like asking what brand of beer has the highest alcohol content—because, while there is some degree of distinction, all beer has alcohol in it and all vampire movies…you get the point.

The answer is easy: Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. In this flick, Jesus returns for the Second Coming to find the Earth is controlled by a vampire cult. Jesus utilizes his underappreciated kung-fu fighting skills and enlists the help of masked Mexican wrestler Santo to save the day. The movie is almost entirely out of focus and rarely is the audio in sync with the visuals. Oh, and it’s a musical.

Occasionally I hear people describe kitschy or bad cultural relics as “so bad they circle around and become good.” This is not the case with Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. This movie is just simply unwatchable. I can’t imagine that the filmmakers themselves would be able to sit through the entire thing.

I hear that this film is being used in Saudi prisons to help locate Osama.

Your wife is included numerous times in the book. How did friends and family react to your research?

My family and friends live in constant fear of appearing in my work. More than once, when someone I know does something odd or embarrassing (which seems to happen often), they’ll look at me and say, “Promise me that I won’t read about this.”

Rarely does anyone take issue with my treatment of them. My wife, as well as others who’ve appeared in my work, often point out that my writing reflects my interpretation of events.

What was the scariest thing that happened to you while working on The Dead Travel Fast?

You mean besides trying to learn the proper usage of a semi-colon?

I’d say the best answer to this (in a project filled with so examples of my often misguided decision-making) was the first time I tried to meet a real vampire. I found one person among the handful of D.C. area self-professed vampires who said he’d be willing to meet up. Well, he selected a park near my apartment in D.C. as our location—and I went. As things progressed, it was pretty obvious this was some kind of set-up. A set-up for what? I’m still unclear. Regardless, the end result was me sitting in this park, alone, in the dark, with a well-founded belief that someone was watching me from the bushes. Then, and only then, did it dawn on my how stupid and potentially dangerous a situation I’d led myself into. I ran home and never heard from the “vampire” again.

I’m not sure what’s scarier about this situation, the actual event itself or the fact that, at the time, I actually thought this was a good idea.

What do you think is the least-known detail about vampires?

I’ll give you two answers to this one.

For vampires in general: That no one has any clear idea where the word “vampire” came from. While they are numerous theories about the origin of the word, none of them holds up to scrutiny. The word simply seems to have popped up out of the folk lexicon into several European languages at once. No one can definitively say what it is based on or where it came from originally.

Specific to Dracula: The fact that Bram Stoker knew practically nothing about Transylvania or his novel’s real life namesake, Vlad Dracula.

What was the most surprising thing you learned?

Three things:

1. That self-declared vampires—despite walking around in public in black clothing, with dyed black hair, pale pancake make-up, and prosthetic fangs—are often very shy people.

2. That digging up relatives accused of becoming vampires in order to drive a stake through their dead hearts is still practiced in Romania today.

3. That “nincompoopery” is an actual word. Throughout working on this book, one of my goals was to invent a word. My motivation for doing this was an interest in eventually making it into the Oxford English Dictionary as the first time my word appeared in the English language. I pinned my hopes on “nincompoopery” and for several weeks walked around thinking that I’d invented this word. After finally checking the Oxford Dictionary, I discovered that someone had beaten me to the punch about 200 years ago.

What’s the best way to prevent a vampire attack?

Some Slavic traditions call for rubbing cow dung on yourself, your family members, and your house. While this might protect you from the undead, you’ll probably get a few stares and this solution might prove problematic in the workplace.

I’d suggest duplicating an actual product sold in the early 20th century: vampire attack kits. Each contained a wooden cross, a small vial of holy water, a mirror, some garlic, and a silver bullet (in case you encounter a werewolf, too, I guess). All this was packaged in an attractive leather case. That way, regardless of what flavor of vampire you encounter, you are probably covered.

Further, it probably wouldn’t hurt to dig up all your departed relatives, drive stakes through their hearts, stuff their mouths with garlic, and re-bury them upside down. But in today’s “rush rush” fast-paced world, who has the time?!

What is up next for you?

I'm slowly starting to work on other writing projects, but have spent most of my time concentrating on everything I ignored while writing The Dead Travel Fast (family, friends, petty crime). Beyond that, my current life quest is to read 52 books in a year (and, thanks for asking, I’m doing pretty well so far). In 2008 I plan to meet 1,000 people. That’s only about 3 a day, so it may not be as daunting as it initially seems (unless I decide to spend a month alone on a mountain or something like that). I have no good reason for doing these quests, outside of that someone once told me that it is good to have goals in life, and I believed them.

Oh, and my wife just bought I puppy--so I'm doing a lot of cutting edge research on chew toys and housebreaking.

The most notorious deleted excerpt ever

So, here is an excerpt that was included in the original manuscript almost as a dare--knowing that any editor would insist on its removal. This section also caused considerable consternation and controversy among the original readers of the manuscript. Basically, almost no one could believe (a) that I seriously wanted to include this in my book, and (b) that my wife would consent to having this in the book. They were often shocked to learn it was her idea.

Here's the backstory: In the 5th chapter, I visit London and Whitby for a little Dracula history. My wife accompanied me. In the book, she grows annoyed with being dragged along on one of my "death marches"--long walks (hours long) that I inflict on friends and family. She had been lured on this walk in search of the Whitby "Stoker Seat" with a  promise of a fish and chips dinner in a pub afterwards. As you'll read below, the extended walk wasn't the only thing affecting my lovely wife's mood. This part of the story was removed in the very first round of edits on the book.

Down the stairs, across the road, back up, and down the row. There it was.

In the middle of the bench was a small plaque about the size of a snapshot:

THE VIEW FROM THIS SPOT INSPIRED
BRAM STOKER (1847 – 1912)
TO USE WHITBY AS THE SETTING OF PART OF HIS
WORLD-FAMOUS NOVEL
DRACULA

As we sat there seeing Whitby pretty much the way that Bram did more than 115 years ago, I point out all the features to Katherine. Down below us is the site of an actual shipwreck in 1885 that inspired Stoker to use the scene for Dracula’s arrival in England. Rising out of the bay are the famous steps that Dracula and Lucy dart up toward the cemetery. Directly across is where Mina and Lucy lived. I felt a little silly because I was talking about the novel’s event as if they had actually happened. But being in a location like Whitby makes the book come alive in an unexpected way.

“What do we do now?” Katherine asked.

“I guess we sit here and…reflect…I guess.”

“On what? Fish and chips?”

“Point taken. Five more minutes here and then we can go back down into town for all the fish and chips you can eat.”

This was actually a very bad choice of words. She’d long past that mark and, outside of the hours of walking, it was the reason she wasn’t feeling so well. When she travels, Katherine likes to experience local cuisine as much as possible. As is also often the case when she travels, she got a little…um…bound up. This inability to make boom boom had been going on since we left Washington…four days ago. As we sat on the Stoker Seat, we looked out over the town and started to tally up all the meals she had since we arrived.

“Let’s see, this fish and chips will be the second you’ve had since we arrived, right?” I asked.

“Third, actually.”

“Okay, what else have you eaten since we left? Are we including the lasagna we had on the plane?”

“Oh yes, that’s included. As well as the falafel we had when we arrived. And the bangers and mash from dinner last night.”

“You had bangers and mash the other day for lunch, too.”

“That’s right—so that’s twice for bangers and mash.”

“And the curry…”

“When did I have curry?” she asked.

“The first night we were here.”

“That wasn’t curry, it was Chicken Tikka Masala.”

“Does it really make a difference at this point?”

“I guess not,” she replied.

“And there were breakfasts too. Three of them. The first morning was sticky buns…”

“Yes, I remember,” she replied curtly. “Thanks for reminding me.”

Her tone suggested the conversation was, in fact, now over. There was only so much patience you can expect from a 115-pound woman carrying a complete British culinary experience for 10.

“Maybe I’ve been eating vampire food,” she offered.

“How so?”

“Stealth. Undetected. Uncanny. Creeps in dark. Disappears into the ether…I could go on.”

“That’s okay, I get your point. Let’s go.”

Yet another casualty

Scooped up from the cutting room floor for your enjoyment...

Below is a conversation I had with a guy I met at a Dark Shadows convention in Los Angeles. I cut it because there was just too much happening in the chapter that originally contained it--too many scenes, too many characters. I could still write about the convention without bringing Ralph in, so he's history (sorry guy).

At this point in the convention, I'd been having trouble finding people to interview, seeing that the convention attendees aren't really "people persons." The conventioners are, however, a collection of high geeks. I felt terrible noticing this (and writing it), but in all honesty the attendess were a collection of just about every social and physical malady known to man.

Ralph gave up some info and insight, but mainly he was interested in talking with me so I'd buy him drinks, pay his admission into the nearby Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and so on.

Enjoy.

After striking out on interviews for, seriously, the 20th time, I headed over to a bar called "Twist" near the ballrooms--one of those hotel bars designed to look wacky and crazy so that groups of conventioneers can go inside to pretend that they are, indeed, having wacky and crazy fun. I was sitting at the bar when I heard someone behind me say, "A little too much of the undead for one afternoon?"

I turned to see a guy with long black hair and a red burgundy crushed velvet jacket pulling up a barstool next to me. Pinned to his jacket was a Dark Shadows Hollywood Weekend name tag that read "Henry."

He introduced himself as Ralph. I pointed to his name tag.

"Like anybody here would know the difference," he said. I offered to buy Ralph/Henry a beer if he'd be willing to discuss his interest in Dark Shadows with me. I also told him about my attempts to talk with other attendees.

"Yeah," he replied. "This crowd tends to be the people who don't even have the social skills to be Trekkies."

Ralph lives in Arizona and drove in with a few friends. Outside of the long black hair, he looked a lot like Greg Kihn, the early MTV staple (and creator of 80s compilation classics "Jeopardy" and "The Breakup Song"). Now, his secret twin is driving five hours to hang out with a group of sickly undead. Ralph drinks about half his beer in one long draw, then coyly looks from side to side around the room.

"You know, if you really want to talk, we should probably get out of here. This place is crawling with con people." I assumed he meant "convention people" rather than pickpockets, get-rich-quick scammers, or something, so I agreed, paid for our drinks, and led the way out to the lobby.

On the way Ralph/Henry/Greg Kihn told me about how he'd religiously watched Dark Shadows as a kid but completely forgot about it once the series ended. He'd never had any interest in Dracula or any other vampire stuff at all, until his friend Jamie turned him on to a roleplaying game called Vampire: The Masquerade. Since then, he still isn't very interested in Dracula, just playing Vampire once or twice a month with his friends. Some of his Vampire-playing buddies, including Jamie, are also fans of Dark Shadows and they often get together to watch episodes. Ralph prides himself on owning all the 20-odd DVD sets of the program.

We settled into the Lucky Strike next to the Renaissance to watch people bowl, drink beer, and eat chicken wings and fried macaroni and cheese balls. I look over and notice that Ralph's long hair was gone. It, his "Henry" name tag, and his red velvet jacket were now in a pile on the chair next to us. He ran his fingers through his short brown hair and launched into his answer to the obvious question, which I really hadn't asked yet.

"You know, for a lot of people, vampires are all about sex, but I think it's deeper than that. I think all this stuff is really about power."

"How's so?" I asked.

"You notice all the sick people at the convo?" he said. "They should sell Dark Shadows inhalers, here. they'd make a fortune."

I laughed.

"Serious, man," he continued. "During the whole Dark Shadows series Barnabas is a vampire in search of a cure for his curse...a cure for his curse. It seems pretty obvious that we’re talking about a bunch of people happy to fantasize about someone finding a cure for their curse, eh?

"These are people who don't identify with the human characters--they identify with the freaks. In Dark Shadows, the monsters are always conflicted, always looking for a way out. They struggle. These con folks, they know what its like to live like that."

"So what about you?" I asked.

"Hey, I have my quirks, but I'm not one of them," Ralph responded.

"But you are," I said. "What I mean is, you love this show, too. Are you suggesting you are the only non-freak fan this show has?"

"Listen up, there's no way I'd be here if it wasn't such a quick drive," he said, trying to make a point. I didn't want to tell him that any one of these fans who flew from anywhere west of Pennsylvania had a shorter trip here than his drive from Arizona.

"I just think it's awesome," he said. "I remember watching it on Sci-Fi with a bunch of friends once and this guy is giving this terrible speech, raises his arm to be all dramatic, and knocks over a prop tree. At that moment I knew I’d watch this show for the rest of my life."

"I came to get some autographs and collectibles," he said. "But some of these other people, they'll eat nothing but spaghetti for months to save the money to come here. They get fucking retarded over Dark Shadows."

As Ralph said that, we noticed a group of four people who've just walked in, heads turned towards us in shock, all wearing red name tags.

"What?" Ralph asked. The group walked away.

"Dude, perhaps we should go somewhere else? Why don't you settle our tab and then we can hit somewhere else. Hey, have you ever been to Ripley's Believe It Or Not?"