Teaser Tuesday 6/26/2018: “Lost Souls”

So this week I finally got around to reading Lost Souls, the classic 1992 vampire novel by Poppy Z. Brite:

Lost Souls is by no means a standard regular vampire novel, but neither is it a “tortured vampires who hate what they’ve become and only prey on those who prey on others” novel. Well, I mean, maybe one of the vampires hates what he’s become*, but the writing is so good that I’m willing to overlook that.

Steve lay back in the pine needles with his hands behind his head and regarded the smeary glittering stars that were beginning to appear. He looked as if he would like to snuff them out.

Having seen Poppy Z. Brite and listened to him** read at the 1997 World Horror Convention*** in Niagara Falls, I can say that this book is exactly how I imagined it would be; not that it’s predictable, but that I had certain expectations for what a Poppy Z. Brite book would be like, and those expectations are being met in spades. (One of those expectations was that it would make Night Watchman, which is far and away the most horrific of my horror novels, look like “Snow White” — the sanitized Disney version, even, not the nasty original, or the even nastier one with Sigourney Weaver.)

Now normally in these Teaser Tuesdays I include a teaser from the book I’m currently working on, but in this case, since I went and compared Lost Souls to Night Watchman, I figured I would include a teaser from a random page in the latter book.

Andy’s driving a big old Charger today. It fits his mood. He’s full of enthusiasm for their trip to the lake, regaling Ellie with stories about how his parents used to take him there, how he used to ride the kiddie rides and play with the kiddie amusements.

Ellie thinks that this could not have been that long ago.

So, yeah, as it happens, random.org chose a page in Night Watchman where nothing too horrific is occurring. But trust me, things get pretty nasty for Andy and Ellie and everyone else involved in this book.

Just not as nasty as Lost Souls.

* Not that vampires in this novel actually “become” what they are; in this book, vampires are a separate species, not humans who have been bitten and vamped by an existing vampire.

** I am using here the pronoun that he prefers now, not the pronoun that I would have used then.

*** I can’t remember if Poppy Z. Brite was at the 2004 World Horror Convention in Phoenix, which is the only other one I went to. I tried to check the attendee list, but that convention’s web site is now advertising men’s hair restoration products, in Japanese, apparently. Sort of like how the site for the original publisher of A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder, darktales.com, became an interracial porn site at some point after Dark Tales folded. Now the URL appears to forward to Amazon.com. Go figure.