Welcome to the April 2026 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.”
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
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For other web links of possible interest, please scroll to the end.
Happy spring holidays!
“Bunny Hunt,” my Easter-themed contemporary fantasy novella, will be included this month in N. N. Light’s Book Heaven’s Spring Into Books Festival. There’s an excerpt from the opening scene below.
This month I’m interviewing multi-genre author SD Porter.
*****
Interview with SD Porter:
What inspired you to become a writer?
I guess I see stories all around me and find myself asking questions, wondering about everyday things that people go through. I’ll never know why people do the things they do or how they got themselves into situations, so It’s fun to imagine and fun to make up my own stories.
Also, I wonder what I’d do in certain situations, like an apocalypse or tragedy, and I imagine how I would get through it, so writing and creating characters who find themselves in those situations helps me work through my questions.
What genres do you work in?
YA, Dystopian, Apocalyptic, Romance, and some Middle Grade sports. I also dabble in poetry when the mood is right.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
Mostly a wing it….but I have learned the benefit of having a bit of an idea of the direction of a story. It’s a learning curve. The longer I write, the more I see the value of making sure my scenes are building to my climax.
In addition to fiction, you write poetry. Do you feel there’s a connection between the two in your work process?
Poetry helps me express emotion, which is the hardest part of writing for me. I tend to hold my feelings inside, so poetry helps me get in touch with those feelings so that I can bring them out. Poetry can also help me get unstuck when my words just don’t come…poetry doesn’t demand the same mechanics, which can free up the imagination.
What have been the major influences on your work (favorite authors or whatever)?
Modern writers: I do love Kyla Stone and really connect with her characters and style. She has strong female characters who want to protect others. I can relate.
Old school, I’m a big Stephen King fan. He has amazingly complex characters that are both villain and hero. I love that duplicity.
My favorite apocalyptic read is The Road. So real and raw.
Concerning “The Haunting of Pinedale High,” what was it like to write in a shared world? How did you ensure the consistency of TWISTED FATES with other stories in the series?
It’s funny…I wrote that story in 3 weeks…I work best under pressure and I only had one chapter written when the publisher said they read the synopsis and wanted the story, if I could have it done in a few days. I fibbed and said, “Sure!” Ten days later I submitted the manuscript. It was a whirlwind but I really like how it turned out.
Having set parameters helped me narrow the scope so that I could focus my ideas.
Just for fun: Do you believe in ghosts?
Yes. I believe in the spiritual world…not exactly like what is in the story but I do believe the veil is thin between the earthly and heavenly realm and seems to be getting thinner!
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
I have my first full length, traditionally published novel, The Nova Chronicles, being released on April 15th. It’s a dystopian survival story. I’m trying to figure out how to market it! I think I’ll have my first Book Release Party but am trying to figure that out too.
What are you working on now?
I am editing my apocalyptic story, Chasing August, which is a story about a fifteen year old girl who survives a worldwide pandemic. I wrote it right before Covid hit and had to shelve it for obvious reasons. Now, I’m pulling it off the shelf and giving it a thorough edit.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Don’t give up. Find a few trusted author friends and form a critique group. That is the most valuable asset as you go through your journey. You will learn from others, get free editing, and have a cheer squad. I have 2 authors I meet with regularly, over Zoom, and I can’t imagine not having them there.
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
Author Website
instagram: @sdporterwrites
Facebook
Linktree
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
WHEN EVERYONE KNOWS THAT EVERYONE KNOWS…, by Steven Pinker. A psychologist specializing in cognition and language explains the concept and functions of “common knowledge.” I’m a big fan of his THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT and HOW THE MIND WORKS, and this is my favorite book of his in a long time. The meaning of “common knowledge” in the sense used here is encapsulated in the title. As an example to introduce the concept, he reminds us of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” When the little boy blurts out his observation of the Emperor’s nudity, he isn’t saying anything everybody else doesn’t already know. But until that fact is spoken aloud in public, they couldn’t be sure everybody shared the knowledge. Now they know others know, and the shocking truth can’t be denied. Shared knowledge can be recursive: She knows her husband is unfaithful, he knows she knows, and she knows he knows she knows, theoretically ad infinitum. Pinker uses “common knowledge” to analyze phenomena such as social media contagion, group psychology, how political discontent coalesces into open protest, runs on banks (depositors rush to close out their accounts because they expect everybody else to withdraw money, thus causing the bank failure they fear), consumer goods shortages (customers stock up on and hoard toilet paper because they expect others to do the same, thus causing the shortages they fear), and many others. Common knowledge fulfills necessary social requirements, e.g., the coordination that results in everyone’s agreeing to drive on the same side of the road or accept pieces of paper as valuable. Yet it also has negative effects such as baseless conspiracy theories, the formation of angry mobs, etc. Unspoken shared knowledge exists in the form of involuntary physiological reactions such as crying, laughing, or blushing. Also, people’s awareness of what “everybody knows” can be deliberately veiled, such as a sexual advance in a new relationship or an attempt to bribe a traffic cop to overlook speeding. The recipient of a euphemistically phrased proposal can reject it while both parties hang onto face-saving plausible deniability. As in many of Pinker’s books, the charts and graphs intended to make things clearer often leave me more confused than not, since they just don’t fit my learning style. On the other hand, by illustrating his points with pop culture references and many cartoons, he keeps the text both lucid and entertaining.
BEASTLY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF SHAPESHIFTING FAIRY TALES, edited by Jennifer Pullen. A scholarly compilation with a solid yet accessible introduction and informative, entertaining, and sometimes snarky footnotes. Beginning with the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche, the stories are presented as translated into English (if not originally published in that language) in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Each tale is preceded by a paragraph of information about its author and followed by suggestions for further reading. I especially like the roughly chronological arrangement, allowing the reader to contemplate the works mostly in publication order. Ranging from classics such as “Beauty and the Beast,” “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” and “The White Cat” to more obscure tales, they originate mainly in Europe and Great Britain with a few from Asia and the Middle East. Many were already familiar to me, but not all. Oscar Wilde’s “The Fisherman and His Soul,” the only selection not exactly a shapeshifting story, is included because it’s a sort of rebuttal to Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” I was surprised that a footnote to “The Little Mermaid” tries to explain the premise of the mermaid’s gaining a soul by marrying the prince with a far-fetched, blame-the-patriarchy hypothesis. Doesn’t Pullen know the motif of elemental spirits – including undines (water spirits) – winning immortal souls through marriage to mortals goes back at least to the Renaissance and is the subject of a classic 1811 novella, “Undine,” by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, well before the 1837 publication of Andersen’s story? That’s my only significant complaint about this book, though. Since “Beauty and the Beast” is my favorite fairy tale, I was delighted to add BEASTLY to my collection and recommend it to any reader interested in the history of the genre, especially the subset of animal bride and bridegroom stories.
THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, by Stephen Graham Jones. I put off reading this unusual vampire novel because it looked daunting in both length and content. True enough, but once I started, it captivated me. It features my favorite narrative structure, the epistolary/documentary format, similar to DRACULA. To add intrigue, it’s a “nested” narrative, the modern frame introducing a long story that, in turn, little by little reveals another complicated tale from still further in the past. Moreover, the book stars a pair of unreliable narrators, each with a secret not uncovered until near the climax. In addition to the complexity of this multi-layered plot, the innermost and oldest speaker, a Blackfeet warrior called Good Stab, uses Native terms for animals and geographic features, leaving the reader to figure out their meanings from context. Etsy, a University of Wyoming instructor seeking promotion to a tenured position, comes into possession of a long-hidden manuscript written by an ancestor of hers a century earlier, in 1912. She hopes to use his memoir as a basis for a career-enhancing project. Her multiple-greats grandfather was a Lutheran minister in a small town at a period when the subjugation of Native tribes and the closing of the frontier still lingered fresh in living memory. Arthur Beaucarne has no real friends, a closeted drinking habit, and little belief that his ministry makes much impression on the members of his congregation. Nevertheless, he’s important enough in the community to accompany the sheriff to the site of a mysterious death, the latest of several. The corpses have been skinned in the same manner as slain bison. Moreover, patterns painted on their faces suggest Native involvement. Soon afterward, Good Stab approaches Arthur, asking the minister to listen to his “confession.” Yet he hints at offering absolution rather than requesting it. The chapters narrated by Arthur are headed “The Absolution of Three-Persons,” the name Good Stab imposes on the minister. The latter labels Good Stab’s orally delivered memoir “The Nachzehrer’s Dark Gospel,” as he has retitled it after hearing a large part of the story. Good Stab, after narrating his early life, including a catastrophic raid and mass slaughter by American soldiers, tells how a horrible man-creature caged by the soldiers turned him into a vampire. He doesn’t use that word, never having heard it or encountered such a monster before. Arthur refers to “vampires” only in passing, instead mentally assigning the German term to the deathless Indian. Gradually, he begins to believe in the supernatural horrors and gets drawn into this decades-old history, as he (and we) slowly come to realize Good Stab has a specific motive for unfolding his past to this particular white man. Both of them hide dark secrets, which come to light little by little with the revelations in each installment of Good Stab’s “confession.” This author assigns the undead a trait unique among the vampire fiction I’ve read. When vampires consume blood from any single kind of person or animal too frequently, they transform into that creature or at least grotesque human-beast hybrids in the case of animal victims. This curse plays a vital role in Good Stab’s climactic act of vengeance. In the culmination of the multi-generational trauma, the 2012 frame concludes with the narrator’s harrowing discovery that her ancestor’s history holds more than academic significance for her own life. One point for which I had to suspend disbelief, not quite hanged by the neck until dead, but still requiring me to ignore a crucial implausibility: The minister records Good Stab’s reminiscences word for word at great length, as if with photographic memory, even though he certainly isn’t taking notes while listening. Still, that’s a common fictional convention – at least as far back as the similarly layered FRANKENSTEIN — which a reader absorbed in the story can accept.
WOLF WORM, by T. Kingfisher. Gothic historical fiction with body horror. A “wolf worm” is the larva of a parasitic insect. Botflies, screwflies – squeamish readers, be warned. The protagonist, Sonia Wilson, resembles many of Kingfisher’s heroines in being cast adrift from familiar surroundings, but rather than going home like the others (for a certain value of “home”) she’s beginning a new job in a strange place. Since the death of her father, a distinguished botanist whose work she illustrated, she has taught at a girls’ school. Now she has been accepted as an illustrator for a reclusive entomologist, a chance to use her artistic gifts for more than teaching. In North Carolina in 1899, a young woman involved in science can’t expect any more prominent role. This novel embodies the classic Gothic tropes of an orphan heroine confronted with a large, half-deserted house, its forbidding master, mysterious deaths, and grim secrets. No JANE EYRE romance plot here, though. The housekeeper, one of only three servants who remain, immediately cautions Sonia that her employer won’t marry her. Not only does she have no interest in snagging a husband, she quickly finds out no sensible woman would choose Dr. Halder for that role. He’s a misanthrope with scorn for his professional peers and little or no tolerance for anything less than perfection in the work of an assistant. Arriving with more knowledge of plants than insects, Sonia nevertheless manages to produce satisfactory illustrations most of the time. The studio of the previous illustrator, whom Halder refuses to discuss, provides her with textbooks plus helpfully labeled illustrations that fill gaps in her professional background. Meanwhile, she has been warned about “the Devil” in the woods and has heard stories of “blood thieves” allegedly identified as a man and woman who’d been executed vigilante style followed by a stake through the heart. Surely, Sonia thinks, the mangled bodies had actually been victims of wild animals or, possibly, the resurgent Ku Klux Klan. Or had they? What really happened to Halder’s missing wife and her lover? What about the padlocked outbuilding she happens to see him visiting by night? Naturally, I was delighted when actual vampirism, although of an unusual type, turns out to be involved. And I figured out, long before Sonia did, who the previous artist was. Like Kingfisher’s other female horror protagonists, she forms bonds of friendship amid the strange surroundings, in this case with a local Native American woman and the mixed-race couple who keep up the house and grounds. Sonia eventually discovers who and what constitute the true evil and defeats it with the support of her new friends. The insect lore in WOLF WORM highlights Kingfisher’s perennial interest in the curiosities of the natural world, as displayed by characters’ in-depth knowledge of fungi, poisons, plants, vultures, roadrunners, etc. in previous books. Also, Sonia’s analysis of her environment in terms of the technical challenges of watercolor painting adds dimension to her character. As in the conclusion of THE TWISTED ONES, at the end of WOLF WORM Sonia hasn’t moved on from the horrors she’s seen but realistically has to struggle with memories and nightmares that will linger past the end of the story.
For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
*****
Excerpt from “Bunny Hunt”:
Melanie scanned the playground, with a parking lot on
one side where the kids impatiently milled around,
corralled by community volunteers. Woods bordered
the other three sides. Her gaze lingered on the
bouncing, chattering children, their brightly colored
plastic or wicker baskets clutched in little fists. Would
she have a toddler of her own among them two years
from now?
She shook off the daydream to focus on the fun
here and now. Blue sky, fluffy clouds, and a light
breeze combined to make the morning perfect for the
hunt, cool but not chilly, the best they could expect
from the fickle weather of early April. The fragrance of
recently mown grass drifted on the wind. A silver SUV
pulled into a parking space, and Melanie’s sister, Linda,
got out with her two little boys in tow. Both were blond
with fair, freckle-sprinkled skin like their father, in
contrast to the chestnut hair and rosy complexions their
mother and aunt shared. Both kids carried baskets for
egg-collecting. In addition, seven-year-old Scott’s right
hand grasped a leash hooked to his new dog, a small,
white terrier mix with eyes hidden under a fringe of
hair.
Waving, Melanie strolled over to meet them. She
bent down to hug Scott and three-year-old Bob in turn,
relishing the aromas of soap and sugary cereal that
clung to both of them. “Kiki’s getting bigger fast, isn’t
she?”
Scott nodded, grinning proudly at the pup, then at
his aunt. “And she already knows lots of words.”
Melanie smiled back. “Ah, but does she obey
them?”
“Well…sometimes. Kiki, sit.”
The dog plopped onto her bottom, then sprang up a
second later.
Melanie laughed, ruffling Scott’s hair. “I guess that
answers my question.”
Linda shrugged. “She’s doing pretty well for her
age. He begged so much to bring her along, I figured it
couldn’t hurt. We’re supposed to be socializing her by
exposure to lots of people anyway. I can hang onto her
while the kids do their thing.”
Bob tugged on her arm. “I want to find eggs.”
She took a firmer clasp on his hand. “You have to
wait until they say to start.” Turning to Melanie, she
asked, “How’s it going?”
Melanie shrugged. “Same old, same old.” Although
aware of Melanie’s futile attempts to conceive, her
sister never hassled her about details.
“I brought you something.” Linda rummaged in her
shoulder purse. “I was sorting through my share of
Grandmom’s jewelry, and I remembered something she
told me about this a few months before she died.” She
pulled out a necklace with a circular pendant and
handed it to Melanie.
Holding it up, Melanie examined the copper disk
dangling from the chain. It was etched with the outline
of three running rabbits in a circle, head to tail.
“It’s an antique—Celtic,” Linda said. “A souvenir
of Grandmom’s wild hippie youth, I think. She claimed
it was supposed to be a good luck charm, especially for
fertility.” She giggled. “It seemed to work for her—five
kids.”
Melanie echoed the laugh. “Thanks. What could it
hurt?” She put on the necklace with only a few seconds
of fumbling at the clasp.
-end of excerpt-
*****
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, visit the Dropbox page below. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
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“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter