Wouldn't lizard fashion be something like spikes and scales and a frilled lizard collar?

Like so?

(Bonus art under the cut)

Something of a change of pace this week, as we head to the quintessentially American town of Carfax, TX to indulge in some trashy vampire hunting.

Okay I've made enough posts about it I'm gonna actually write up my overall thoughts/recommendation for Ex Wives of Dracula. Real quick, since I haven't actually mentioned it up to this point, the basic premise of the story is that two former best friends reconnect in small town Texas, before one of them is brutally attacked and becomes a vampire.

Firstly, this is a book that plays with genre very effectively. You know how a lot of horror movies have one scene at the beginning of, like, normal high school bullshit before someone gets murdered? Imagine if a movie instead spent the first hour of it's runtime on a typical coming of age/romcom narrative with all the pacing and direction you'd expect from that genre, and then that scene happened. There's a real sense of genuine shock, a "oh my god this can't be happening. This kind of thing doesn't happen, right?" But it does. That first chapter of horror is very solidly written on its own, but it hits like a truck because of how normal everything has been up to that point. The rest of the book continues with that, ibterspacing its horror generously with normal life, and I found it to be pretty effective.

The book also has some very pointed critiques to make about small town culture, about how ugliness is allowed to fester because no one wants to rock the boat, and about how things like high school sports take on an outsized and overwhelming place in the collective consciousness, because what else do you have to be proud of? It's not unique stuff, but it's a take on it that rings very true in a way I haven't often seen.

The plot as a whole is pretty well executed - there are some very effective twists and surprises that never felt cheap or like they hadn't played fair with me. The core that holds it all together is the developing relationship between our main character Mindy and her long estranged, recently reconnected with best friend Lucia. I think the character writing is excellent - there's a lot of rawness and vulnerability and teenage defensiveness that is captured very well, and the way their relationship develops is messy, vulnerable, intense, and compelling. They are the beating heart of the story, and they sell it. That being said, I do think the climax and denouement are the weakest parts of the book, which really isn't ideal. They have some good stuff, but I feel like they're paced wrong and there are a few elements that aren't, like, at odds with what's come before, but that don't naturally follow from it either.

One last central element to this book is it's commitment to it's setting. This book focuses on the culture specific to 2015 conservative American high school, and if you either never knew or have forgotten how nasty that was, this book is going to punch you in the face with it. Expect an enormous amount of casual cruelty and blatant, thoughtless homophobia, transphobia, racism, fatphobia, xenophobia, and misogyny, along with nastiness towards people with eating disorders and basically every stripe of meanness or prejudice you can imagine. Speaking as someone who did go to a conservative high school in 2015, the recreation is spot on - there are even references to some specific rumors about celebrities that I remember hearing from my peers at the time - but it was jarring to hear so much casual cruelty injected into conversation by people who weren't even trying, that's just how people talked. So fair warning. As someone who grew up in that kind of environment, I found that it added extra depth to the central relationship; it was the exact kind of prejudice, internal and external, that I would've had to grapple with of I had pursued a queer relationship in high school. But I don't know how resonant that will be to people who don't share that lived experience.

On the whole, though, this is a book that I enjoyed, and one I would definitely recommend.

published Dracula sequel/retelling writers write a book focused on Lucy or Mina without vilifying the men of the Crew of Light challenge

Started reading Ex Wives of Dracula and while I am disappointed that it's not actually about the vampire wives- it's just a high school romance with vampires- I do like that the girls are called Mindy Murphy and Lucinda West

Adaptations of Dracula that ship Drac/Mina: "We need a Forbidden Romance!"

Me: "Then how about you make Jack/Arthur a couple! A happy queer relationship in the 1890's where they said 'fuck society' and got MARRIED????? I'll take two."

(Yes, the book doesn't say that they got married *to each other*, but it also didn't specify that they *didn't* get hitched to each other)

Don't worry babe, you don't have to include the disclaimer. I am one of the people who are adamant that those two got married to each other because gay marriage HAS ALWAYS EXISTED just hasn't always been recognized by the law (but the law doesn't matter bc the Harkers would recognize Arthur and Jack's partnership and consider it a marriage). Also I just think the idea of adding two nameless trophy wives for the remaining bachelors in the epilogue is just... sour.

ANYWAY. Unfortunately, Forbidden Romance in movies and other shitty shit terms is not a Romance that is Forbidden, it's just a story where two people who hate each other's guts have to shack up because they're opposite genders. Adaptation creators will die on a fucking burning cross before they depict a healthy gay couple. Because, as I have been told before, there's no "chase" to a story where both parties are in love. Because nothing spells "romance" like a person desperately trying to get away from their "love interest" and being foiled by the plot.

(nevermind the fact that every Dracula/Mina adaptation starts with Dracula and "Mina" already together but just has the wife die and become a different person, which doesn't make their romance "forbidden" it literally makes it MANDATED BY SOME DUSTY ASS 13TH CENTURY WEDDING VOWS. It's like saying a woman paired up with her crazy stalker ex is "forbidden love". No, it's just abusive. okay okay backtoit)

If JonMina is not "interesting" enough to these adapters because they don't have to beat each other into submission, and nor do they have a "will they/won't they" conflict then fine, I guess these adapters are content with their stories being shit. BUT YOU GOT ANOTHER COUPLE RIGHT FUCKGIN THERE. A couple that was not together at the beginning of the story (though I'd argue they probably fucked) and who become closer as they power through tragedy and trauma together. There's drama and uncertainty there! They gotta puzzle out their relationship and determine if they truly love each other or if they are just scared of being alone.

Those two fucking nerds got married. They suffered the deaths of Lucy and Quincey together, and they decided to remain bachelors and stay together for the rest of their lives. Arthur has societal pressure to carry on the family tradition, but he does not, he stays with Jack, and they love each other goddammit!

WHY WON'T ADAPTERS TAKE WHAT IS LITERALLY BEING SPOONFED TO THEM?? Because it's gay. They'd rather romanticize abusive hetero dynamics to their young female audience than humanize even one queer person.

hi!! I was wondering if you have any recommendations for wlw vampire stories?

also, you've given me recommendations before and they've all been great! just wanted to say thank you

Aw yay, I'm so glad to hear it! And for your request:

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson - you may be able to find copies of this one, but it was bought by a trad pub and will be rereleased Oct 4

The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl (YA)

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson (out in 2 weeks, I think?)

Love Bites by Ry Herman

The Ex-Wives of Dracula by Georgette Kaplan

everafter by Nell Stark and Trinity Tram

The Coldest Touch by Isabel Sterling (YA)

Better Off Red by Rebekah Weatherspoon + (f/f NA) - this one's like a fun erotica series

And of course you can find them in the anthology Vampires Never Get Old, which has the story by Victoria Schwab that was turned into the show First Kiss

The One That Takes Place on an Adult Film Set

So if Grave Peril was where we really got to know the Red Court and really dig into one type of vampire, this is where we get the rest of the vampires. This book is a weird amalgamation of Harry breaking an entropy curse on a porn set and Harry LARP-ing the fast few chapters of Dracula. There is just so much weird mirroring in this book too, everything from Harry learning about the real nature of his relationship to Thomas, which mirrors Lara and Inari's relationship to Harry's "porn stars are people too" stance that gets really contradicted by the fact that the only non-Ex-Mrs.-Genosa casualty is the single mother of two who keeps a roof over their heads and food on the table by starring in porn films. Like...For all Harry's protestations of open-mindedness, the entire *premise* of the adult film chunks of this book are "we are punishing porn stars for being porn stars." So let's talk Blood Rites.

This is your SPOILER WARNING and also your CONTENT WARNING for discussions of sex, pornography, and mental assault.

There are three main thrusts to this book (pun sort of intended, but I feel bad about it). There's Harry's Family Stuff and the White Court, there is the Black Court, and there is Arturo Genosa and the adult film. Let's take those in reverse order, because that just feels easiest.

The thing that pulls Harry into this book is Thomas Wraith showing up and asking Harry to help a buddy of his who is cursed. Arturo Genosa apparently really likes sticking his dick in crazy, because he has three ex-wives who have banded together after finding out that he's planning to marry again, but the new bride does not have to sign the same prenup they did, which will screw them out of their shares of Genosa's estate when he dies. Unfortunately, because fax machines are not great, the name of the new bride is smudged to hell and back, so rather than trying to decipher it and target just one person, the ex-wife brigade adopts a spray-and-pray method (double entendre also intended, and I feel less bad about this one). So they basically curse the studio and every woman around Genosa is in the firing line, which is what Harry has been hired to stop.

This gets WEIRDLY slapstick at times, since someone tries to take Harry out with a blowgun, and a frozen turkey quite literally falls from the sky. What is decidedly not slapstick is the sheer level of catty woman-on-woman violence, pettiness, and vitriol. Like, yes, this bullying and violence dynamic exists and deserves page time, but the point is WILDLY undercut when you drop the whole conflict into a highly sexually charged environment and trip into classic horror tropes like the final girl, the brides of Dracula (which is absolutely the vibe in the Wraith Deeps), and punishing sex workers for sex work. You've just basically undercut any other point you're trying to make, because you haven't subverted jack shit and you are so buried in tropes and heteronormative sex that any sense beyond "women are literal monsters" gets completely eclipsed. Like, I'm genuinely shocked that Butcher didn't somehow work a vagina dentata or a sarlacc joke into this book.

Now, running in the background of Harry and the Porn Film is Mavra, a Black Court vampire who is full-on coming for Harry and working to rebuild her court. Harry decides that the best course of action here is to go old school: Find the nest and burn it out before the baby vamps can hurt anyone else. Which, frankly? I support. The Black Court can and should get wiped off the face of the earth. And for the most part, this section is just fun to read. Harry, Murphy, and Kincaid--with Ebenezer McCoy as their wheelman--track the scourge of vampires to their lair in a homeless shelter and proceed to wreck shop on them. Harry even manages to get a group of captured kids out of there in one piece. Well, the kids are in one piece. Harry gets his hand dry-roasted because his shields aren't designed for thermal regulation. That's going to be extremely relevant in terms of lore and character building for the next few books, until Butcher basically forgets about it. But in general, it's a kickass quest and is largely successful.

My only real beef with this scene is the five or so minutes where Murphy is traversing a set of lasers wired to claymore mines and Kincaid has to take her pants off to buy her a quarter inch of space. Which like, is fair enough in practical terms, but Kincaid, Harry, and the book itself sexualize this in a way that is just absolutely gross and unnecessary, and I'm pretty sure it was 100% just so that Harry could smirk about Murphy gunfighting in panties with a little bow on them. Which made me want to take his staff and clock him across the jaw. Multiple times. This was not required, and it just keeps adding to the pattern of sexualizing women in deadly situations...holy crap, did we accidentally wander into a Joss Whedon project?

This scene does set up Murphy and Kincaid's relationship though, which will be relevant for like...maybe one other book? So fine. It also highlights that Kincaid and the White Council DO NOT get along, since he and McCoy draw on each other on sight and Harry almost doesn't manage to talk them down. So we do get some interesting insight into who the White Council does and does not approve of.

I suppose I have to stop stalling now, and actually address the White Court and the Family Stuff.

For any of this book to make sense, we need to know a little bit of history. Mostly that Lord Wraith, Thomas, Lara, and Inari's father, had just the biggest boner for Harry's mother, Margaret Le Fay. Margaret spent a lot of time in the White Court, gave birth to Thomas, and then peaced out. On her way out the door though, she cursed Lord Wraith so that his hunger--the demon that makes him a White Court vampire--couldn't feed. So he hasn't been able to feed since before Harry was born, is dangerously weak--but somehow still strong enough to be STRONGLY implied to be grooming and assaulting his children--and is losing power internally. So yes, Daddy Wraith is a piece of utter garbage, and when we start the book, Inari and Lara are both working for Genosa. Thomas is trying to spare Inari from ever becoming a White Court vampire, while Lara is actively yeeting her AT HARRY to try to awaken her hunger. This is just a bad situation all around.

That said though, this is the book where Harry starts to really gather family--blood family--around him, because in addition to leaving a curse for Lord Wraith, Margaret left mental messages for both her sons that they unlock in this book, so they would know who and what they are to each other in case she wasn't there to connect them.

And as much as I hate to admit feels for anything in this book, the messages she left and the emotional rollercoaster of discovering that you HAVE a brother and that you actually LIKE that brother gave me feels. Harry and Thomas desperately need each other, and now they have each other, and they can trust each other. That's huge for both of them. They both have to play that information very close to the chest, but THEY know, and that's kind of the important thing.

That also makes the end of this book, in the Wraith Deeps, even more complicated because family plus politics is never NOT messy. Lara full-on stages a coup to take control of the White Court, thanks to Harry outing Lord Wraith's curse and utter disregard for any of his children to her. The way it shakes out though, is with Lara in charge, Inari free, and Thomas living with Harry because Lara banished his ass.

Again though, we have Murphy being mentally and physically assaulted in the Deeps, and no, Butcher, him being "the lord of the freaking nation of sexual predators" (p. 330) does not go any distance to excusing or defending it. Like...Perhaps we could STAHP assaulting women everywhere? For five minutes?

Overall, I think this is one of the more forgettable early Dresden Files books, and it falls into horror and vampire tropes way too easily, even when Harry himself is trying to insist that he's open-minded or chivalrous. Clearing out the Black Court hideout was fun, and Harry and Thomas knowing about each other was lovely, but honestly the rest of this book is SO WEIRD about sex and consent and lust that it really did out me off.

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT MOUSE!!! Mouse is the goodest boi, and the best thing to come out of the book. He is a Foo Dog who adopts Harry, and that's basically it in this book, but keep an eye out, because Mouse is the BEST.

Going off that last Dracula ask, do you have any reading material suggestions for anyone who might want to find more historically accurate info about Vlad Tepes and even the love affair details b/w Radu and Mehmed II? To get a better idea also of Matthias's role in Vlad's lifetime?

The easiest place for an English-speaking layperson to start is probably with Marcus Tanner's The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library (Yale University Press, 2001). It's part biography, part travelogue, and part history, and it covers the figure of Matthias himself and his legendary lost library pretty well. If you ignore Tanner's weird Male Historian misogyny toward Matthias's wives and failure to transcribe Hungarian names correctly, which I will admit are boggingly obscure nitpicks mostly of concern to me, it will give you a good sense of the time period, major figures, and Matthias overall.

As for Vlad, Dracula: Essays on the Life and Times of Vlad the Impaler, recently reissued (2020) from its Columbia University Press first edition in 1991, is also a great place to start on understanding the context of the historical figure and his actions in his subsequently-vastly-mythologized lifetime. It covers his foreign and domestic policy, his family background, his attacks against the Ottomans and relations with/opposition to Mehmed II, his religious strategies, and analysis of the subsequent folklore, heroic Romanian historical tradition, and other stories that grew up in Dracula's wake.

Sources for Mehmed include John Freely's The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire, which came out in 2009 as the only significant biography of Mehmed since the 1970s. Nota bene that I have not personally read this book and am a little suspicious because it appears to have been written by guy whose academic specialty is physics, not history, even if he does live and teach in Istanbul. So yes, there is that, and more academic-history texts that focus on the broader geographical, cultural, and religious contacts and conflicts in the region during this time include Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World After 1150 and The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey From the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest.

I also have a list of more scholarly sources that focus on Matthias Corvinus, fifteenth-century Eastern Europe, geopolitics and religion, astrology and magic, and the subsequent folkloric tradition that surrounded him (as the Raven King) as well, including:

Darin Hayton, 'Expertise ex Stellis: Comets, Horoscopes, and Politics in Renaissance Hungary', Osiris: Expertise and the Early Modern State 25, No. 1, (2010), pp. 27-46.

Joseph Szövérffy, 'History and Folk Tradition in Eastern Europe: Matthias Corvinus in the Mirror of Hungarian and Slavic Folklore', Journal of the Folklore Institute, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jun., 1968), pp. 68-77

Istvan Lukacs, 'King Matthias Corvinus in the Collective Memory of the Slovenian Nation', Studia Slavica Hung. 55/2 (2010) 371–379.

Pavel Kalina, 'European Diplomacy, Family Strategies, and the Origins of Renaissance Architecture in Central and Eastern Europe', Artibus et Historiae 30, No. 60 (2009), pp. 173-190

Scott E. Hendrix, 'Astrological Forecasting and the Turkish Menace in the Renaissance Balkans', Antropologija 13: 2 (2013)

Suzana Miljan and Hrvoje Kekez, 'The Memory of the Battle of Krbava (1493) and the Collective Identity of the Croats', The Hungarian Historical Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, Cultures of Christian–Islamic Wars in Europe (1450–1800) (2015), pp. 283-313.

Quincy Harker and Dracula's three angry and fabulous ex-wives :)

Highly recommend Dracula, Motherf**ker! It's short, colorful, and extremely fun. And did I mention the protagonist is named Quincy Harker? <3 He knows good and well he's getting himself into Situations but clearly cannot help himself.

Okay so there are discussions if Dracula’s roommates are his wives or relatives, or one is wife, other two are relatives based on rheir similarity to Dracula, or if they are relatives AND lovers to add to horror factor

I think disscussions are forgetting important things

Book is from 19th century

Dracula is even older

Dracula is aristocrat

There is huge probabilty that those are cousins(or descendants of cousins) and lovers/ex-lovers and this wasn’t meant to add to horror factor. 

Now available as Audiobook: Ex-Wives of Dracula by Georgette Kaplan

ylva-publishing.com/product/ex-wives-of-dracula-audiobook-by-georgette-kaplan/

What’s worse than falling in love with a straight girl? Falling in love with a straight girl who drinks blood. And not even in a goth way. This young adult queer romance sucks you in with vampires, paranormal drama, humor, and a quirky lesbian coming-out story.

High school senior Mindy Murphy, has been questioning her small town life forever and, more recently, her sexuality. Maybe it has something to do with her new friend, Lucia West. When they were kids they used to be besties, until Lucia grew a head taller and a cup size bigger. Now she’s captain of the cheer team, winner of the Boyfriend Olympics, and voted least likely to remember Mindy at their high school reunion.

In short, she’s possibly the worst person alive for Mindy to crush on. Especially after Lucia’s bitten by a vampire. Now the only way to keep her alive is to get her blood, and the only way to cure her is to slay the vampire that turned her.

Who knows, maybe after they get this vampire business settled, Lucia can explain to Mindy why she kissed her.

just finished a book that absolutely fits full wizlez criteria: Ex-Wives of Dracula by Georgette Kaplan. I'd be really interested to see what you guys think of it if it interests you - a large part of it almost reads like a book adaptation of Jennifer's Body ahah

Hello and thanks for the rec! This one's already been recommended but we'll bump it up the reading list.

Any dracula daily enthusiasts will be pleased to know that this book does include "climbing like a lizard" as a vampire power. In those words.

Dear Amelia,

I have been asked on occasion if my profession involves writing and it does. Just not creatively or with the purpose to entertain. As an auditor, if anything it's quite the opposite. But really, who even reads for fun anymore?

Anyways… I had an interesting conversation with a stranger a few weekends ago and I guess that's where this all starts. She sweetly complimented me and said I have a way with words and even though I don't professionally write creatively, if I happened to write something, she would most definitely read it. So, Sweet Stranger (who I'll recall fondly now as Amelia), this one's dedicated to you.

Having gone to an open house nestled in the suburbs near California State University of Sacramento (CSUS), not that I'm in any position to buy a house right now, I was on a kind of in-and-out mission. So when Amelia started to tell me about the features of the home, I was a bit standoffish. But she caught my attention when she said something to the effect of, "Can I give you some X advice?". I don't remember the word she used or even the phrasing exactly, but it was mostly her tone that gave me pause. It was, I don't know. Frank. What I intuited was, "You probably don't want to hear this, but if you're open to it, I'll tell you and not for any other reason than to be informative".

Because of this intuition, I later told her in passing conversation the exact reason why I am not in a position to buy a house right now: I was still waiting for the house that I primarily owned (with my ex-husband as the co-signer who is henceforth referred to as "Schad") to close and would be receiving a sum of monies at that time.

Naturally, we bonded through conversation as women may about the audacity of the the modern man. We heartily laughed about the nuanced way they can gaslight and manipulate us into doing pretty much anything under the pretense of "normalcy". Our voices got softer as we talked about how they use our children as leverage without any seeming thought about how it would affect our family dynamic. I sardonically mimicked classic, hysterical court hearing scenes between the ex and I, "But I have spousal rights! Even though I make more than her, she needs to continue to support me living in the house I kicked her out of".

What broke my heart about this conversation is that Amelia told me she observed their child (after their dad left) laughing wholeheartedly for the first time. To the point where the child had stitches in their side. Apparently, she had never seen them laugh like that before… Only after the toxin was removed could a child feel free to laugh so hard that it hurt.

And oddly, I am laughing deliriously - similarly to Amelia's child, but different - at the fact that I could ever imagine this, silver-tongued-Prince-of-the-literal-Family-Court-room to have any modicum of empathy. Schad says, "I am an ISTJ… like 100%, which suits me just fine", and I literally roll on the floor laughing… as if the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator used by the CIA to identify potential suspects would conceal his also 1,000% abusive narcissism and in all probability clinical sociopathy. If Schad were to ever take an honest look in his mirror, he'd break psychotically into a million pieces. He'd realize the litany of abuse he's inflicted not just on the three of his ex-wives (I am the third). Like Dracula, he'd realize the truth - he is a fucking vampire. Thousands of lives lay at his feet ruined, destroyed, forever changed… deranged. Except this one…

Because at this point in time, I don't regret it. Any of it. Ultimately, all of this made me (us) a Van Helsing. I will hunt his kind till the end of my mortal life. I recognize the signs now. I can see it so clearly. Where other people see a charming, charismatic, even desirable man, and bend to his every whim… I know what his kind really fucking is. I don't have stakes and I don't employ the Lord to protect me. But I do have words and independent thought. And those can be just as, if not more deadly. Honestly, the best way to eliminate the Schads of this world is to forget them. To heal from them. To not waste another thought regarding them.

They showed us happiness and rainbows, but they also showed us beauty in darkness. And at the end of that darkness… "a new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why."

Thank you, Samwise. I understand now.

I'm 99.9% sure Dracula has wives, because The Ex Wives of Dracula and Dowry of Blood are both on my tbr and I can't imagine two separate authors would write "Dracula's multiple wives fuck each other instead of him" if he did not in fact have multiple wives in the original text.

And like, they are presumably also vampires and thus also want to drink Jonathan, so where are they? And why aren't they helping with the "yes, this is a totally normal castle that has a staff" ruse?