For blog followers and monster fans outside the U.S., the long Memorial Day weekend at the end of May is the unofficial start of summer in the States. In New York, it signals the beginning of summer in ways that are both concrete and ephemeral. The city’s beaches open. That means employment for lifeguards and that’s important given the number of non-swimmers, and worse, the number of swimmers who overestimate their strength. It also means the beginning of ‘casual Fridays’ in offices, the weekly mass exodus to the Hamptons and Jersey Shore, and the influx of tourists from all over the country. It’s the beginning of the silly season, when half price sangria takes on a particular appeal and the need to know the location of ‘unpopular rooms’ in the Met Museum reaches the critical stage.

As usual, my head is full of escape plans — London in June, Martha’s Vineyard in July, Berlin in August, Amsterdam in September… But this is a ‘stay-cation’ summer for me. I plan to spend the season working on my MONSTERS and enjoying the tourist destination where I happen to live. I’ll go to the theater, museums, parks and all the places I think about, but always seem too busy to visit. Making my own plans has naturally brought me to the question of MONSTERS and their holiday plans.

Does the Loch Ness Monster yearn for a little ocean swim? Would a werewolf visit London? He could follow the trail in Warren Zevon’s famous song the way I took the ‘Jack the Ripper’ walking tour on one of my trips to London. A lonely immortal being might also want to look up some old friends, or at least their headstones, at the Highgate Cemetery — another place I’ve visited.

A vampire wouldn’t plan a beach holiday, or would he? I’m picturing a lonely, pale and very handsome man who comes out to socialize at the bars and nightclubs at a Caribbean beach resort after the spectacular sunsets. The constantly changing population of resort visitors would make it easy for him to ‘feed’ on strangers and the locals would view him as an eccentric, rich guy with an allergy to the sun. I’m picturing it right now. He lives in a castle-like house on a hill. It’s the only place on the island that doesn’t get swept away during a hurricane.

‘Holidays for Monsters’ — if I don’t have a new calling as a travel agent, at least I have some ideas for stories.

Did you ever see a giant squid? They are amazing, frightening, real life Monsters of the Deep! There’s a giant squid on display at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. It’s been a few years since I’ve been to that museum. I have to remember not to go during the school year when kids and their chaperons swarm like schools of fish all over the museum. Even if the kids are relatively quiet and well behaved as individuals, the sound level of their multitudes undermines the quiet that I need when I check out a monster.

Still, I do plan to see that giant again. She (yes, this squid is a female) is 36 feet long with 22-foot long tentacles. She weighs in at an impressive 330 lbs. That would be an astoundingly large basket of breaded and fried calamari rings! And I don’t want to think about that lake full of hot oil for frying…

This makes me all the more glad that the giant squid was not chopped up for food and her outsized presence is there on display for all of us to see. If you manage to find your way to her exhibit when the kids are not in school, be sure to take a minute and let yourself imagine coming across her when you are snorkeling or scuba diving. You’d be face-to-face with a true-to-life Monster of the Deep.

I used to love the American Museum of Natural History here in New York. It was dark and spooky and filled with the most fantastic, and seemingly fantastical, creatures. When I was a child it was poorly lit and you could look up and discover the skeletal remains of a huge, open jaw hovering above your head.

For a while in the 80s, you could go there on a Friday night and wander the almost empty halls of dinosaurs. It was romantic, in the 19th century use of the word, full of imagination and subjective emotions.

Then came the long overdue renovations and updating of the museum. It came interactive and educational, and out went the creepy feeling that you were in the opening reel of a 1930s horror movie. Everybody seems to love it, but…. It’s lost its monster side.

What do baby carrots have to do with the giant squid?

You know those baby carrots in the plastic bags that they sell pre-washed and ready-to-eat in the supermarkets? They aren’t really baby carrots. They are machine cut big carrots for when you want to eat healthy without the hassle. They are often tasteless and dry. They are not like the real baby carrots that you can sometimes get at the farmer’s market or on the menu of high-end restaurants. Those are super sweet, crooked and surprising. That’s what I liked about the old exhibits at the Museum of Natural History. They were crooked, surprising and often filled with super sweet monsters.

Here’s the secret about writing (drum roll), it’s all about the rewriting and reading and then the re-re-rewriting. TIME is a big ingredient in the creative recipe.

In his book about writing ‘On Writing’ Stephen King describes leaving manuscripts in a drawer for six months before going back to them. I think most writers have a variation on that theme. Maybe it’s not six entire months, but there are natural breaks that enable you to get distance. These breaks are an essential part of writing. A little time in cold storage goes a long way!

I’m in the process of reworking ‘Bram Stoker’s Summer Sublet,’ with the goal of e-publishing it by the end of June. As the story takes place during a typically hot and sticky July in New York, I want it available to readers by July1. The hot and sticky season in New York is a good time to kick back with a cool drink and a distracting story. Getting it done on schedule is a big challenge.

The book started a long time ago in another incarnation and with another title. It’s tighter and, I think, much funnier, with more allusions to the literary inspirations that got me started on this path in the first place. I’ve also learned that taking breaks from the process of rewriting the novella is important. What do I do during these breaks? WRITE.

I’ve been writing short stories. I’ve found that while delving into the next Monster novella is too distracting, short tales take me out of my ‘Bram Stoker’ space and enhance the process. I’ve always written short stories, but this is the first time I’ve craved writing them as a way to travel from my primary project. It’s like taking a trip and returning home, renewed and ready to work. Maybe it can be compared to runners who swim for a few weeks. You’re still exercising your muscles, but in a different way.

I’m curious about the positive distractions of other writers. Any thoughts you’d like to share?

In Oscar Wilde’s classic, Dorian Gray’s portrait grows uglier as his behavior goes from ordinary hedonism toward increasingly evil actions. The ‘monster’ in Dorian chips away at his humanity, but none of it shows on his face because the painting magically reflects what should be the marks of time and depravity.

This connection between ugliness and evil is central to many fairy tales and it persists today. We expect the bad guy to be ugly and even the sexy-beast-monsters (vampires, werewolves, etc.) are never as classically handsome as the heroic figures. In a postmodern incarnation, the anti-hero is the protagonist so he doesn’t have to be a perfect model, but he can’t be unattractive.

We want our sexy monsters to be delicious eye candy. Check out the covers of romantic suspense, paranormal romance and urban fantasy books, if you want a crash course in attractive, if slightly evil, guys.

Internal beauty is another ball game.

The ugly coating obscuring the beautiful soul is also a classic story element. The ugly duckling is, of course, a beautiful swan and the gorgeous prince of a guy is just waiting for true love to peel away the monster-face that was part of a curse. Most of these beautiful, but hidden, souls are male. In the realm of fairy tales, female ugliness is rarely skin deep.

The connection between the external appearance and the internal status is up front and obvious. The witch is always old and ugly; and the evil Queen has a menacing appearance. Even if she is, on the surface, beautiful, her icy soul shines through and destroys her beauty. Princesses in fairy tales don’t have acne scars or big feet or warts on their noses — flaws are reserved for mean step sisters and wicked witches.

This was bad news for old ladies living alone in houses in the woods. If the house happened to be located on a nice plot of land (a plot coveted by a greedy village leader) or if she happened to know something about herbal medicine, have a prominent birthmark and a cat, she was in big trouble!

I’m not going to indulge in a feminist rant, this is territory explored by many a writer before me, but it’s worth noting the rise of the almost pretty protagonist and the not-quite-model perfect heroine. Maybe that need to connect the outside and the inside is finally breaking down?

Let’s toast great looking monsters and regular folks with wonderful hearts!

The last remaining creature of any species is a sad sight. A while back when I was in London, I visited the museum of natural history in Kensington — a wonderful collection housed in a beautiful, ornate building from the early 1880s — where I saw small an exhibit on the Dodo Bird. Dodos may have existed for thousands and thousands of years on the island of Mauritius, but in less than one century they were gone.

They were big (over three feet tall and over 40 lbs), flightless birds with no natural predators on the island. But, about 80 years after the first Dutch sailors landed on the island, in 1598, they were gone. Between hungry sailors, and their equally hungry dogs and cats, the Dodos were done for.

For a long time people thought they were mythological creatures. Just stories told by previous visitors to the island and illustrations in books. But they existed, leaving behind traces in natural history collections. A fossilized Dodo egg here a carefully preserved feather there — bits and pieces adding up to the last of its kind.

Best known as a Lewis Carroll character or as a joke in old cartoons, the Dodo bird eventually became symbolic of irrelevance. It was as if they didn’t matter at all.

What about other lasts? The intolerable loneliness of being the only one, the horror of impending extinction… how must the last of a monster species feel? I’m certain that I could write a story full of pathos for the last monster. Imagine howling at the moon and receiving no reply.

In our time, when our human monsters (serial killers, dictators, etc.) take center stage, has the big, hairy beast become as irrelevant as the Dodo? I don’t think so.

I think that there is always room at the table for a monster.

Tonight the moon will be at perigee — the point in its orbit when it is closest to the earth — so the full moon will be a SUPERMOON. I’m looking forward to a big, beautiful full moon in the sky. I’m also wondering about what such a moon inspires.

Does it really make us crazy?

I’ve read mixed reports on the power of the moon. There are anecdotal stories about upsurges in crime and emergency room visits, but the hard data is difficult to come by.

Or course all of that could be put down to werewolf activity — provided your personal werewolf mythology adheres to the traditional moon cycle theories. There are new interpretations of the wolf/human creatures with less Lon Chaney/gypsy curse and more mystical takes on the tales of sprouting tails.

Still a full moon is romantic and maybe that is enough to make us crazy?

Early this morning the birds were a little crazy in the courtyard outside my window. That, in turn, got the cat going. I started to contemplate a Daphne du Maurier/Hitchock avian collective consciousness, but decided to roll over and put that out of my mind. I want to enjoy the super moon — not hide from it.

One of my blogger buddies, an Australian writer, pointed me toward the ‘Buried Words and Bushwa’ blog because of a post about mermaids. Are mermaids monsters? There’s certainly something monstrous about a creature that is half human and half fish. This second Aussie blogger, Metan, wrote about the historic fear of these almost-human sea creatures and included a clipping from a 1911 Scottish newspaper. It was definitely my kind of history lesson. She also pondered how the Disney concept of mermaids took over our collective consciousness, transferring mermaids from the scary zone to the land of happily ever after.

I’m not sure how it happened, but it certainly did. If you go back to the folk tales collected by the Grimm brothers — the original stories — you’ll find some pretty GRIM tales, filled with the kind of violence that you don’t find in Disney films. It seems like all of our fairy tales have been sanitized — swept clean of real evil, scary choices and bad consequences.

The blog about ‘real’ mermaid sightings sent me to the 1836 Hans Christian Andersen story. For .99 I got an illustrated version for my Kindle and read the kind of bedtime story that gives you nightmares. Yes — The Little Mermaid (the original Little Mermaid) is not a happily ever after kind of story.

The beautiful mermaid princess falls in love with the human prince she rescued from drowning and learns that, unlike humans, mermaids do not have immortal souls. The only way for her to obtain a soul is to share his. He just has to love her more than anyone else.

Of course there is no way for him to love her as she is — with a fish tail — so she must sacrifice everything for the chance of winning his love. When I say everything, I mean everything. She must give up her life under the sea, her beloved family and her beautiful voice. The physically painful transformation that will give her legs requires that she lose her ability to sing or speak.

Mute, human and without an immortal soul of her own, she finds that the prince loves her as he might love a pretty, stray dog. He takes her into his household but he loves another — a human. The little mermaid is doomed. She will die as soon as the prince is married to his human princess. Her sisters sacrifice their beautiful hair, exchanging it for a magical knife that our heroine can use to kill her rival and return to the sea. But she cannot bring herself to hurt the prince.

There’s simply no way to win here. She knows that she will be sea foam (the mermaid version of dust) soon. At the last minute, the creatures of the air adopt her. And in a coda that only a 19th century theologian could love, she will spend hundreds of years gaining and losing points toward an immortal soul on the basis of children being good or bad. (Yes, the children’s behavior drives her score up or down.)

OMG! This is very far from Disney and very far from any version of the story that I heard as a child. I woke up at four. I was having a nightmare about real fairy tales — the ones about real monsters, complete with big ugly teeth, claws and, yes, an occasional fish tail!

Hanging out in the long shadow cast by Mary Shelley and her creations — Dr. Frankenstein and his famous monster — it’s hard to resist the lure of her husband the poet Percy Shelley.

I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be…

I doubt that neither the poet nor the novelist could have imagined the impact that Mary’s story would have on future generations. Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster is an iconic figure and the idea of putting disparate things together to create a monstrous whole is always described as Frankenstein-esque or Frankenstein-like. So many years after the initial publication, Frankenstein is part of our culture. And Percy Shelley’s words ring true, too, and can be read in ways that make perfect sense in the first part of the 21st century.

“I love all waste and solitary places where we taste the pleasure of believing what we see…”

What a wonderful statement. You could live by it or simply visit the suggestion to experience the pleasure of those ‘wasted’ spaces, where you can enjoy believing what you see. To me that brings to mind a solo walk in the woods. I’d allow myself to imagine what the wind is saying and who, or what, is lurking in the shadowy shapes I half see/half imagine.

But here I am in New York City. Even in the emptiest, most ‘wasted’ spaces, you are never very far from other people. Urban life means you have to create the emptiness that can be filled with the pleasure of believing what you see — in spite of any rational thoughts to the contrary.

We don’t live in a time where ‘seeing is believing’ is a sensible guide. Reality is easily manipulated, to the point were no record of fact can be accepted without scrutiny and yet we still want to believe what we see. When we see something odd of off kilter, I think we should enjoy the ride.

I went Tango dancing on the Christopher Street Pier yesterday. It was way too windy and cold, but the sunshine and the river were beautiful. The wind kicked up the waves and it was easy to ‘see’ movements on the surface of the water. When a big Dutch cruise ship sailed by, I looked out beyond the ship and let myself imagine seeing a large head rising above the surface. Could the Hudson be home to a Loch Ness-like monster? With all the traffic in the harbor, it would have to be one clever and agile sea creature, but…

There is pleasure in believing that what we see is boundless.

There’s a new show at the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia. The exhibit includes a variety of original manuscripts, showing the development of Poe’s work and will feature an early version of his poem ‘To Helen.’

I visited the Poe Museum back in February during my Poe Road Trip Weekend. In February, the special exhibit was of James Carling’s wildly hallucinogenic illustrations of ‘The Raven.’ The pictures made me re-think the familiar poem. Carling delved deep into Poe’s imaginary — and dangerous, monster-filled — world.

James Carling 1857-1887 began his art career as a child ‘pavement artist’ drawing with chalk on the streets of Liverpool. Needless to say this was a tough start in life. He was basically a graffiti artist of his day. On Christmas Eve of 1865, when he was all of eight-years old, he wound up in Cheapside Jail. If this strikes you as a Dickensian childhood scene — you are not alone.

His luck changed when the authorities sent him to Saint George’s Industrial School where he learned to read and write. At 14, his older brother took him to the U.S. and in Philadelphia he went from sidewalk artist to ‘Lightening Caricaturist’ in a vaudeville troupe. Then it was on to New York where he was featured in a musical as a chalk/talk performer.

He must have been a talented young man.

From New York it was on to Chicago where he entered a contest to illustrate Poe’s poem held by Harpers Magazine. He didn’t win. Gustave Dore illustrated the volume. You’ve probably seen those illustrations. Missing that key opportunity must have been a terrible blow. But artists have to weather all sorts of rejection. He died at the age of 29, leaving behind an unpublished autobiography and some extraordinary illustrations, including his Raven drawings.

I particularly like the following lines from ‘The Raven.’ Poe’s language is specific and intriguing. He’s also expressing a timeless desire to obliterate a painful memory. (Nepenthe is an ancient potion that induces the user to forget pain or sorrow.)

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,’ I cried, `thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he has sent thee
Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’

So, if you are in or near Richmond, Virginia between now and July 11, be sure to visit the Poe Museum and report to me about the new exhibit.

This week I’ve been pondering the monsters lurking inside. Mr. Hyde was the prototype alter ego monster — unleashing the violence within the good and kind Dr. Jekyll. To one degree or another, we all have alter ego monsters, pieces of ourselves that we keep hidden away from our friends, or colleagues, or loved ones, or from everyone.

Some of these alter egos are romantic. There are secret poets, scribbling when no one is around. Some are sad, a little shameful and perfectly ordinary. I’m thinking about the huge numbers of secret eaters, consuming gallons of ice cream in private.

There’s nothing unusual or wrong about having an extra self. My cat and I wrote a book together under his name. His persona is a harmless alter ego. He doesn’t mind if I use his name — provided his bowl is full, I tickle his ears and he can sleep on the sofa next to me while I write on my laptop.

I’ve started to follow a large group of alter egos on Twitter. People posting as Dracula, Poe, Sherlock Holmes, etc. some of these post tweets drawn from the original source material others go off on their own, simply inspired by the real writers or famous fictional characters.

The problems arise when that secret self, that extra persona, that alter ego takes control…. I doubt that the person behind the Nessie tweets is contemplating a Loch Ness family reunion, but what about the Bigfoot tweeter? Is he really a big, hairy guy in the woods? And what if he is? I sort of like that. If nothing else, it’s good story material.

Now, more nefarious internal monsters are another question entirely. They make for great fiction, but I don’t want to meet them face-to-face. I’ve had my share of close encounters of the suspect, if not third, kind. People with short fuses or the ones that turn on a dime from placid to violent rage make me nervous. More nervous than the prospect of a vampire next door? Honestly, yes!