I ran across a hardcover edition of this book yesterday (no dust jacket) and saw simply The Vampire (with no subtitle) on the spine, thinking it was a horror novel or maybe even a look at vampires in film or literature. Not so.
Rather than an examination of the vampire in film or literature, The Vampire: A Casebook is a scholarly work dedicated to traditional legends and folklore associated (for the most part) with eastern Europe. The book is published by the University of Wisconsin (Now I know what you guys are really doing up there, Trent.) and includes essays by eleven academic scholars. Some of the essay titles are:
The History of the Word Vampire
The Romanian Folkloric Vampire
South Slavic Countermeasures against Vampires
The Killing of a Vampire
Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire
The Vampire as Bloodthirsty Revenant: A Psychoanalytic Post Mordem
Very interesting stuff. This one will soon be at the top of my "To Read/Non-Fiction" list.
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On the story front, this past weekend I was contacted by an editor who expressed an interest in publishing one of my stories and has asked for a revision of the ending, so that's been my recent focus. Keep your fingers crossed.
