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Short story long....
I thought it would be good to have something here that's open to the public, so I wanted to answer the following question in a new post. Hope you don't mind, O He Who Asked. (Seriously, if you do mind, I won't use you as a writing prompt again!)
It all started with washing dishes. (Hey, I said short story long, didn't I?) I was standing there, trying to stop beating my head against an imaginary wall, getting into the rhythm of just washing and rinsing when I heard that little voice that ISN'T crazy so long as others identify you as an artist: "A banshee howled when I was born."
I dried my hands, wrote it down, and forgot about it. It had nothing to do with the story I was working on. And bit by bit over time, a character evolved around that. He was going to be just a bit character in someone else's story, but since I semi-permanently had writer's block, I found myself trying to flesh out different characters to make that story go. Quinn seemed to have a story of his own to tell.
Next thing I knew, I was searching the net for pre-Stoker vamp lore and coming up with very little. It just so happened that I had two unread copies of John Michael Greer's Monsters floating around the homestead. To date (and this is years in the making) I still haven't read the whole section on vampires, but it was the opening that mattered. He writes about all the stuff that we know about vampires, and then explains that that's almost all crap.
"Nearly the only point common to modern vampire imagery and traditional vampire lore alike is the idea that garlic and sunlight are effective vampire repellents."
He describes more authentic vampires, and I'll read it eventually, but I'd gotten what I needed. So the rest is my going "Well then, what IS there?"
:-)
Is this take on vampirism all your own or is this in other stories as well? Just curious. :)
It all started with washing dishes. (Hey, I said short story long, didn't I?) I was standing there, trying to stop beating my head against an imaginary wall, getting into the rhythm of just washing and rinsing when I heard that little voice that ISN'T crazy so long as others identify you as an artist: "A banshee howled when I was born."
I dried my hands, wrote it down, and forgot about it. It had nothing to do with the story I was working on. And bit by bit over time, a character evolved around that. He was going to be just a bit character in someone else's story, but since I semi-permanently had writer's block, I found myself trying to flesh out different characters to make that story go. Quinn seemed to have a story of his own to tell.
Next thing I knew, I was searching the net for pre-Stoker vamp lore and coming up with very little. It just so happened that I had two unread copies of John Michael Greer's Monsters floating around the homestead. To date (and this is years in the making) I still haven't read the whole section on vampires, but it was the opening that mattered. He writes about all the stuff that we know about vampires, and then explains that that's almost all crap.
"Nearly the only point common to modern vampire imagery and traditional vampire lore alike is the idea that garlic and sunlight are effective vampire repellents."
He describes more authentic vampires, and I'll read it eventually, but I'd gotten what I needed. So the rest is my going "Well then, what IS there?"
:-)
One or two might be okay, and a few tossed into something you're cooking can add flavor a great deal of aroma. A bouquet is overpowering, and I'd expect a room packed with them to ward off vampires could be classified as a toxic hazard with OSHA regulations prohibiting its use as a work area.
I've never tried it myself, but I've been told that actually sniffing garlic flowers is like cut a clove of garlic in half and shoving the pieces up your nose.
Many of the properties now attributed to garlic bulbs were once considered to also be true of simply having the flowers present in the room, and they were considered to be generally good at warding off disease. Since vampires were considered unclean, these properties (coupled with the sensitive sense of smell many predators share) immediately lent themselves to use as a ward.