Okay. I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but there’s just way too much fuss to ignore. Author Stephenie Meyer is writing a group of books referred to as the Twilight Saga, which follows the story of teenager Isabella Swan and her interactions with various vampires and werewolves, all of whom live in a small town in Washington state. There are four books in the series so far: Twilight (after which the series is named), New Moon, Eclipse and the recently-released Breaking Dawn. There has been a great deal of excitement surrounding the release of Breaking Dawn, on par with the debut of the Harry Potter novels.

I’ve never read them, but they’re apparently a really, really big deal. I’m something of a skeptic when it comes to teen romance/horror novels, especially those with dreamy vampires and conflicted werewolves, but with Breaking Dawn getting reviewed by every other blog, magazine and news web site out there, and a Twilight feature film in the works, I get the feeling it would be unwise to ignore the series because of a few old predjudices.

ArcLight wrote in to mention that July is Werewolf Month at MonsterLibrarian.com. Werewolf Month– I like the sound of that! Featured so far this month:

• an exclusive interview with Steven E. Wedel, whose new Werewolf Saga novel Ulrik was released just last month.
• a new werewolf short story, Seeing Red: A Twisted Fairy Tale by Bob Freeman.
• a list of huge list of werewolf fiction titles, from classics to doggerel.

Read more…

The A.V. Club (The Onion’s more serious brother) has a nice, light interview with Toby Barlow, the author of Sharp Teeth. If you still haven’t read this gritty, beautiful and suprisingly heartfelt epic poem/novel about werewolves in Los Angeles, I suggest you get on down to your local bookseller and check it out.

Blogcritics Magazine has published a lengthy interview with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, the prolific author behind the Saint-Germain series– historical horror fiction about vampires. I’ve never read any of her books, but she has some interesting things to say about the depiction of werewolves in fiction.
Read more…

Quite a few news sites are talking about today’s publication of The Wolfman, a werewolf novel penned by a New York City volunteer police officer who was killed in the line of duty. Tor Books gave author Nicholas Pekearo word in March 2007 that his novel about a detective who dispenses lethal lycanthropic justice had been accepted for publication. Just four days later, Pekearo and his partner Eugene Marshalik were shot and killed by David Garvin, a gunman fleeing the scene of another murder.
Read more…

Mother Jones magazine has an interview with Toby Barlow, author of the fantastic free-verse werewolf novel Sharp Teeth (I’m halfway through my copy, and I strongly recommend it). The interview focuses pretty heavily on the dynamic of human / animal interaction and the potential benefits of a wolf-pack structure in human society.

I think human beings have all these tools for social connection, which should bring us together but instead causes all sorts of confusion and discombobulation. With dogs, they’re either fighting or they’re falling asleep on one another’s necks. It’s a much simpler form of community that they’ve come up with. I agree, people are oftentimes very self-congratulatory about the civilization we’ve built around us, when in fact lying at our feet are much simpler and more satisfied societies.

Read the entire interview here.

Author Toby Barlow is creating quite a stir with his first novel, a werewolf story called Sharp Teeth. Written as a way to pass the time during a year-long stay in a Chicago hotel, Sharp Teeth combines free verse imagery with humour, sorrow and violence in what critics are calling a “gut-wrenching, sexy debut, a horror thriller in verse.” (Publishers Weekly)

Here’s an excerpt to give you an idea of what people are talking about:

Some of us have problems.
They still talk about Bone and what the grease does to him.
He can’t go into fried chicken places
the smell, the scent, turns his blood right away.
They say he took out a Popeye’s once.
It made the news, unsolved.
It took him an hour.
He walked in, just to pick up a bucket.
The smell hit him, the change happened,
and the whole place had to go.
Chicken, customers, biscuits, and gravy.

Needless to say, Sharp Teeth is now at the top of my “books to buy” list. Check out the official web site at sharpteeththebook.com.