Welcome to the November 2025 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
To subscribe to this monthly newsletter, please e-mail me at MLCVamp@aol.com, and I will add you to the list.
For other web links of possible interest, please scroll to the end.
Happy American Thanksgiving!
My werewolf novel SHADOW OF THE BEAST was featured in N. N. Light’s Trick or Treat Bonanza promotion:
There’s a short two-part excerpt from the novel below. The viewpoint character of the second half is Jenny, the heroine. The viewpoint character of the first half is her long-lost father.
This month’s author guest, Dan Rice, writes fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
*****
Interview with Dan Rice:
What inspired you to become a writer?
When I was 11 or 12, I read Dune by Frank Herbert for the first time. My mind was blown by how he could create such an immersive world in such a slender volume. After finishing that, I decided to give writing a try for myself.
Go back in time a bit further to third grade or so, and I attended The Young Writers’ Conference at the behest of my teacher. I wasn’t thrilled. I had to write a book and present it at the conference. I penned a memoir about building a robot with my father at a science conference. It even had detailed schematics. My fellow attendees, many of whom wrote tales about unicorns or fairies, looked at me like I was an alien.
What genres do you work in?
I mostly write YA fantasy, sci-fi, and horror.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I’ve always been a planner.
For Phantom Algebra, I knew upfront that I wanted the manuscript to be about 75,000 words, and I had a deadline. I created my most detailed outline ever and followed it assiduously while writing the rough draft. It worked precisely how I had hoped. I wrote the draft faster than ever, completing it in about three months. It was within 2,000 words of 75,000, and, to my considerable surprise, the story and prose were clean, making for an easier editing job.
What have been the major influences on your work (favorite authors or whatever)?
Two authors who have influenced me quite a bit are Fonda Lee and Rachel Hartman. Books by both authors helped me craft conflicted characters, particularly Allison Lee, the protagonist of the eponymous series, The Allison Lee Chronicles.
In Lee’s EXO duology, the hero is caught between his loyalty to his friends, his fidelity to his alien overseers, and his desire for freedom. Lee does a fantastic job characterizing his conflicted loyalties. I learned a lot reading these books.
Hartman presents a character adrift in a world where no one will accept her in Seraphina. The protagonist is a human dragon hybrid caught between two worlds, with the denizens of both unaccepting of her. Again, fantastic characterization.
Please tell us about your Allison Lee Chronicles series. And what tips would you offer about integrating mythological and fantasy creatures into a contemporary setting?
Allison’s dreams of becoming a photojournalist are dashed when she is blinded in a brutal attack. Her vision is miraculously restored after undergoing an experimental medical procedure. There is a side effect—she can now see incorporeal dragons following some people around. She will discover that her destiny and the fate of humanity are tied to this unseen world.
When integrating fantasy creatures into a contemporary setting, ensure consistency. Unless you keep meticulous notes that are easy to dig through, this can be harder than you think, especially if the overarching story spans several books. You’ll be amazed at the inconsistencies you will discover while editing.
What sparked the plot of PHANTOM ALGEBRA? What is it like to write in a shared world?
Since the story is in a shared world, I wanted to differentiate my tale from others in the series. I gave Zuri, the protagonist, a traumatic past and an obsession with becoming a mixed martial arts champion. I think a past traumatic past is a solid horror trope, and her obsession with mixed martial arts separates her from other characters I’ve encountered in the genre.
I was very concerned that writing in a shared world would be problematic due to the numerous rules and potential continuity issues. That didn’t turn out to be the case. Zuri’s traumatic past and interest in martial arts helped prevent this.
What kinds of topics will readers find on your blog?
On my blog, you’ll mostly find my musings on speculative fiction, updates on my writing, bookish guest posts from authors obscure to well-known, and occasionally, a random topic that piqued my curiosity. Recently, I’ve started sharing my thoughts on the banned books I have read. I was inspired to do so after listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates speak about his book Between the World and Me on NPR. Some of the books that have been banned are truly astounding. I was shocked to learn A Wrinkle in Time—to my mind, an innocent YA adventure—had been banned.
Also, on my website, the curious can find free stories for their reading pleasure.
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
My latest book is Phantom Algebra. Recently, I turned in the fourth and final volume of The Allison Lee Chronicles to my publisher.
My other project is Solarflame, an epic fantasy that is Robert Jordon’s Eye of the World meets Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern. Solarflame is currently in the hands of the editors at Cloaked Press. It is the first entry in either a duology or a trilogy.
What are you working on now?
I’m starting a YA horror/thriller that is a collab with my 10-year-old son. He told me he wanted a book featuring vampire dragons. It’s still early days, but I envision the yarn as a cross between Swarm and The Last Kids on Earth. I plan to sub this book to agents once I have a polished manuscript. To that end, I’m already researching and reading comp titles, and thinking about potential hooks for the query letter.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Edit more than you think you need to. There are always words to cut, typos to correct, and plot holes to fill. If you can’t find any, you’re not looking hard enough.
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
Author Website
Bluesky
Instagram
Amazon
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
THE BEWITCHING, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This horror novel centers on Mexican folklore of “witches who drank the blood of innocents on moonless nights.” Judging from the gradual revelation of their nature herein, the perpetrators of the “bewitching,” while born human, aren’t quite human any longer. This cleverly structured story unfolds in three alternating timelines. The 1998 protagonist, Minerva, has moved from Mexico City to Massachusetts for graduate study at a small liberal arts college, Stonebridge. Fascinated by supernatural horror fiction, she has chosen for her dissertation a relatively obscure author named Beatrice Tremblay, a correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft. (Tremblay’s name, by the way, is only one of several sly allusions to contemporary horror personalities.) A strange incident in Tremblay’s life, the disappearance of her roommate when the two young women attended Stonebridge, intrigues Minerva as much as the author’s work does. Minerva feels certain Tremblay’s one novel, THE VANISHING, is based on that event. Desperate to get access to Tremblay’s private papers, Minerva becomes acquainted with an elderly, wealthy friend of Tremblay through the autocratic old woman’s bad-boy grandson. Minerva’s great-grandmother Alba, who used to tell her, “Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches,” is the protagonist of the 1908 story. Teenage Alba has an almost squicky crush on her twenty-something uncle from Mexico City, whose charming manners and supercilious attitude toward her family’s rural home make him seem irresistibly sophisticated to her. Amid family conflict, mysterious attacks occur, leading to superstitious fear of a witch stalking the ranch. The uncle-niece relationship turns out as bad as you might expect, although probably not in the expected way. The 1934 narrative, the only one told in first person, comprises Beatrice Tremblay’s memoir of the events surrounding her roommate Ginny’s disappearance. In each section, the plot gradually unfolds from the mundane through the increasingly ominous to openly supernatural horror. While I sympathized with Minerva’s introverted personality and her anxiety about her stalled dissertation but often wanted to shake some sense into Alba, I felt deeply invested in all three protagonists. Although “witches” play a role in each timeline, I wondered how the author could possibly weave the separate stories into a coherent whole. She manages that feat in an astonishing conclusion that nevertheless feels inevitable.
DEFANGED, by H. E. Edgmon. A “vampire as naturally evolved species” novel with some unusual twists. Although it’s probably technically a middle-grade book, since it starts on the protagonist’s twelfth birthday, it seems to me more like YA for its writing style and the dark plot elements. Ever since their species came “out of the coffin” in the 1990s, vampires have been regarded with suspicion by the human majority. Promptly upon reaching the age of twelve, their young are eligible for a “Defanging” treatment, administered by an organization called Vampirism Sucks, which obliterates most of their vampiric characteristics. While not legally compulsory, this procedure is strongly encouraged by social pressure. The few families who don’t subject their children to it are viewed as at best eccentric and at worst dangerous rebels – for instance, protagonist Lux Priddy’s best friend, Emma, whose family insists there’s nothing wrong with being a vampire and they don’t need to be “cured.” Moreover, there’s a law under consideration to require all vampire adolescents to undergo the procedure, with a goal of reducing their species to only the middle-aged or older and children under twelve, leading ultimately to extinction. When Lux’s parents take him to the clinic for defanging on his twelfth birthnight, he becomes progressively more conscious that the procedure will violate his essential self. He already feels not quite “normal,” and he’s certain the treatment would make things worse for him, not better. His misgivings erupt into open rejection. He sneaks out of the facility and flees in a desperate search for the rumored secret, underground vampire refuge, Nox Urbus (a misspelled attempt at Latin, by the way, that makes my teeth grind). When he stumbles upon it by a fortunate accident, he finds Nox Urbus not to be the utopia he imagined. It’s reminiscent of the tunnel community in the TV series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, but much less comfortable both materially and socially. While Lux isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms, he soon manages to fit in with the group of tweens and teenagers. To his surprise, he meets a person who may be a shapeshifter, a subspecies whose very existence he doubted. The leader of the colony, a man known as Dog, has an unexpected connection with Lux’s mother. Secrets of both Lux’s family and Emma’s are revealed. Eventually, it becomes clear that Vampirism Sucks is much darker than the public image it projects. A daring rescue mission climaxes the novel (leaving the details vague to avoid spoilers). For me, the hopeful ending wrapped up in the epilogue feels rather abrupt, but on the whole I found the book satisfying anyway. Lux’s adventures are narrated in present tense, which didn’t bug me as much as it usually does. Either I’m getting used to it (shudder), or maybe in this case it feels like an acceptable device to generate suspense in the compressed timeline of the story. The Vampirism Sucks procedure reminded me of the “conversion therapy” forced on some homosexual youths, although the author’s afterword reveals that the primary intended real-world analogy is the treatment often inflicted on people with autism.
WHAT STALKS THE DEEP, by T. Kingfisher. The third installment in the “sworn soldier” series, set in the late nineteenth century, starring and narrated by Alex Easton. From my viewpoint, the only thing wrong with these novels is that they’re too short! As a former sworn soldier in the army of Gallacia, a mountainous Ruritanian country most of its inhabitants eagerly leave given the opportunity (according to Alex’s frequent sardonic remarks), Alex has a nonbinary identity. Gallacians speak a complicated language, featuring multiple third-person pronouns in addition to he, she, and it, including a unique word for rocks and one applied only to God (which I’d think would prevent a lot of theological controversy about the divine gender). Sworn soldiers go by ka/kan. To avoid longwinded explanations, Alex usually allows people to think of kan as a man. This novel begins with Alex’s voyage to the United States – accompanied by Angus, an older man who served as kan batman in the army, now “combination valet, groom, and voice of reason” (as described in a previous book) — in answer to an urgent plea from kan friend Dr. Denton, a fellow survivor of the horrific destruction of the house of Usher in WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Alex is bemused by the American custom of frequent handshaking and astonished by how BIG the country is. Their train trip from Boston to West Virginia takes so long they could have traversed Gallacia several times over in the same number of days. Denton’s cousin has vanished in an abandoned coal mine after a couple of very alarming letters and a final, cryptic telegram. Could some unnatural fate have befallen him? Well, of course, as the reader immediately surmises, but Denton, Alex, and their companions grasp at natural explanations first. Descending into the mine, they cope with darkness, pockets of poisonous and/or explosive gases, precarious spaces where cave-ins seem all too likely, blockages from previous such disasters, and narrow, curvy, low-ceilinged passages (where Alex continually assures kanself ka is NOT claustrophobic). According to the author’s afterword, the story was inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. The search party encounters labyrinthine tunnels, a vast cavern with an iridescent floor like translucent pearl, and Kingfisher’s version of shoggoths. Happily, the human characters manage to communicate with the latter more successfully than Alex did with the titular entities in WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, but still not without potentially lethal dangers. The atmospheric setting and scenes of breathless suspense are artfully balanced with interludes of lively dialogue, believable character interaction, and skillful exposition. Denton’s partner, Ingold, displays endless fascination with the weird phenomena in the mine, brightly expounding his observations and hypotheses to the others regardless of terrifying circumstances. As always in Kingfisher’s fiction, the narrative style is irresistibly engaging. I can’t get enough of Alex’s voice, with its frequent notes of wry humor. Examples from early in the book: On avoiding discussion of the Spanish-American war: “I passed our days at sea having gin and tonics and no opinions about Guam.” Alex’s reaction to Ingold’s heavy Bostonian accent: “I had an involuntary urge to snatch up the teapot and find a harbor to dump it in.” On the overwhelming mauve décor of the hotel, including the staff’s uniforms: “I wondered if the bellhops ever stood up against the walls for camouflage.” Well, I could go on for several pages about Kingfisher’s work. If you enjoy sympathetic, intelligent, three-dimensional characters and innovative twists on traditional horror, folklore, and fantasy plots, do give her a try.
THE SUMMER WAR, by Naomi Novik. A short (127 pages), standalone fantasy by the author of the Scholomance trilogy (a magical school that apparently wants to kill its students) and the Temeraire series (the Napoleonic wars with dragon-riders). The book’s title refers to the perpetual hostility between the protagonist’s homeland and the summerlings, this world’s equivalent of elves. Like most such beings in folklore, they appear to humans incomprehensible, capricious, and often cruel. Their lord blames the lineage of the human king for the death of his sister in the distant past. To his kind, however, who experience time differently from mortals, the tragedy might have happened just yesterday. The summerlings attack only in summer, retreating with the onset of autumn, and they don’t come every year. Twenty years might go by before they remember the war. A tense peace with trade between humans and summerlings currently exists, Celia’s father, Grand Duke Veric, having ended the war before she was born. Even so, only heroes and song-spinners can venture into the Summer Lands and emerge unscathed. “Celia was twelve years old on the day she cursed her brother,” the novel begins. Celia, though descended from a legendary witch-queen, has never shown any signs of sorcerous power before. She and her two brothers are half-siblings, children of the three deceased wives of the Duke. Roric, the middle child, hardly counts for Celia or anyone else. The oldest, Argent, however, has earned a reputation as the best knight in the land, celebrated in story and song. Upon what should be his triumphant return home, though, he announces he isn’t staying. Their father will never accept his homosexual identity. Argent’s attempt to slip away without even pausing to bid farewell to Celia triggers the inadvertent curse. Up to this point, Celia didn’t strike me as very nice, with her disdain for Roric and her overreaction to Argent. But, after all, she’s only twelve, and she soon improves. She’s horrified when her furious outburst condemning Argent to be unloved comes true. Over the next few years, while he rises to the fame of a living legend, he remains alone. Meanwhile, as the estate suffers from their father’s neglect, she and Roric manage it together. Roric’s true ambition, though, is to become a song-spinner. At the age of fifteen, Celia determines to travel into the Summer Lands in search of Argent. Roric plans to go with her in the guise of a wandering song-spinner. But before they can act, Celia finds herself snared in the clutches of the summer lord. The ensuing scenes immerse characters and reader in an atmosphere reminiscent of folklore, ballads, and fairy tales: Life-or-death bargains in which exact words vitally matter. A succession of ritualistic single-combat challenges drawn out over several days. A bard in disguise – Roric, of course – whose clever tales and songs offer his siblings their last, desperate hope. We see all this through Celia’s viewpoint, including a eucatastrophic resolution to both the interminable war and Argent’s plight. I found the blend of naturalistic characterization, political intrigue, and fairy-tale motifs enthralling.
For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
*****
Excerpt from SHADOW OF THE BEAST:
With the taste of blood burning like acid in his mouth, Tim lay curled up on his side next to a dumpster behind a 7-Eleven. The cold of the ice-coated blacktop seeped into his naked flesh. Despite the shivers that racked him, he couldn’t summon the strength to move.
*It’s getting worse!*
He used to have some control over where he woke. Lately, though, he clawed his way to consciousness in strange places, perilously far from home. Damn, how was he supposed to sneak back to his apartment naked in the freezing night?
The attacks were getting worse in other ways, too. His body’s memory of raw flesh and hot blood on his tongue used to sicken him. Now it seemed normal. Indeed, he relished the heaviness of newly devoured life in his belly.
Lightning bolts of memory crashed through his skull. Bones crunching between his teeth. The pleasurable ache in his limbs from hours of running. A distant howl answering his own cry.
If only that part were true! He was alone, so alone.
He couldn’t wait much longer. He had to find an escape from this isolation before he deteriorated so far he would disintegrate at the lightest touch.
* * *
*I want to wake up. I will wake up right now.*
Well aware that she was dreaming, she crouched under the open window, poised to spring. A chilly breeze tickled her nose with smells of damp earth and Mrs. Perlman’s crocuses. An unseasonable shift toward sixty-degree days had melted the snow and beguiled the early bulbs out of dormancy.
Her nostrils twitched at the scent of some small creature, probably a squirrel, in the tree outside. With her legs bunched under her, she whined out loud, resisting the urge to leap through the window. Her whiskers and the hair on the back of her neck bristled at vagrant puffs of wind.
*This is a dream. I know who I am. I am Jennifer Cameron, and I can wake up whenever I want to.* She wrenched herself away from the window. As her body began to dissolve like an ice sculpture in the noonday sun, darkness congealed before her eyes.
When consciousness returned, she was lying naked on the bed.
-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:
All issues are now posted on Dropbox, where you should be able to download them at this link:
All Vampire’s Crypt Issues on Dropbox
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links:
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store:
Barnes and Noble
Here’s the list of my Kindle books on Amazon. (The final page, however, includes some Ellora’s Cave anthologies in which I don’t have stories):
Carter Kindle Books
Here’s a shortcut URL to my author page on Amazon:
Amazon
The Fiction Database displays a comprehensive list of my books (although with a handful of fairy tales by a different Margaret Carter near the end):
My Goodreads page:
Goodreads
Please “Like” my author Facebook page (cited above) to see reminders when each monthly newsletter is uploaded. I’ve also noticed that I’m more likely to be shown posts from liked or friended sources in my Facebook feed when I’ve “Liked” some of their individual posts, so you might want to do that, too. Thanks!
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter