Somehow I've been waiting for this week to end even though there's really no reason it matters, since I'm still working from home at this point. Cultural conditioning? You tell me.

I scrapped my entire NaNo project (all 1200 or so words of it) and began anew with character sketches shared with friends late Tuesday, and actual writing last night. I'm about 5,000 words into the project, and still interested, and happy with the groove I'm in at least, and I know that somehow, I'll finish on time. I always do.

My ear hurts. I don't like that at all.

Phone interview today generated an in-face interview on Wednesday. I'm a little nervous, but since I have a holiday-cash-generating job lined up for December (which I can do from home as well), I'm not really stressed.

I finished The Historian and posted about it, and am now reading Julie and Julia, which is delightful, but is all bout cooking, and so I'm hungry while reading it, which is never a wonderful thing.

I've got more to say, but I'm feeling sluggish and sleepy, so, I promise to be interesting later.

Permalink at MissMeliss.com

Elizabeth Kostova

Elizabeth Kostova is obviously a fan of both European history, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and both of these interests are thoroughly intertwined in her first novel The Historian.

Written from the point of view of the unnamed female narrator, who is sixteen during the bulk of the events in the novel, it is a tale of three parallel chases, one in 1972, in which she is involved, one just before her birth, and one before her father was even in school himself, and led by the man who would eventually become his mentor. Along the way, paths cross and deviate, love affairs end mostly tragically, and the reader is guided on an historical tour of Eastern Europe, that leaves one craving goulash and wishing for a pocket full of garlic.

The object of the chase, is, of course, Dracula, who is depicted as a blend of Stoker's undead Count, and the real Vlad Tepes.

The author, like Stoker (though I suspect in his case it was unintentional) even leaves the way open for a sequel.

If you liked the original Victorian novel, this book will appeal. I warn, however, that while the story is compelling, the language is a bit stilted – it reads very much as if the author was a contemporary of Stoker's, and not a 21st century Yale graduate, though, the somewhat stylized language does fit the tale rather well.

Consider The Historian a must-read for any real vampire fan.

Permalink at Zenitopia.com