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Literature

Do Female Vampires Menstruate?

November 18, 2024

genre, Gothic, literature, philosophy, reality

“Of course not, you idiot”, I hear the pedant telling me, “female vampires don’t menstruate because vampires don’t exist”. Well, not so fast. Remember my post on whether narrative worlds are real. Yes, vampires are fictional. But reality is another point altogether.

Nonetheless, let’s not get caught in semantics. Most of us agree that vampires aren’t “real” in the sense that we might bump into one in the supermarket – buying tampons?

And yet, as a Gothic scholar and overall someone interested in vampires, the question has intrigued me: Would female vampires menstruate? What would it mean in terms of their ontology? After all, blood is directly connected with a vampire’s existence. The absence of any reference in literature and art in general is deafening. So, since there are no answers that I have found, I decided to write this post and give them myself.

Do Female Vampires Menstruate? Image of goth woman. — A vampire’s existence is directly connected with blood: They consume it and must be careful not to have theirs spilled carelessly. So, in this context, whether female vampires menstruate or not seems to be a crucial question with important repercussions about their ontology; what they really are…

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Literary Translation: Secrets, Revelations, Reflection

October 14, 2024

Fiction, Literature, Writing

book, creativity, fiction, literature, writing

I’ve talked before about literary translation, in a sense: In my post about translating poetry. But today there’s something more unique to talk about, having to do with what translating a novel can teach you about yourself and your writing craft.

You might remember that some time ago I wrote a novel called The Storytelling Cat. Indeed, I started writing it about a month after saying “I won’t write another novel”. Never trust a writer, huh? What you might have noticed is that there’s also a Greek version available for download on Home for Fiction.

The vast majority of my readers don’t speak Greek. Still, I decided to translate The Storytelling Cat into Greek – on a whim, almost – for two reasons: i) it completes the third part of my quasi-Greek-trilogyIf you suspect I might translate the other two novels too at some point, you might be right! (supplemented by Apognosis and The Other Side of Dreams); ii) it’s set on the island of Lemnos, and I wanted to experiment with the local idiom in literary form.

What I didn’t expect was that this literary translation – written in less than two weeks – would reveal a ton of things about my creativity, my writing, and who I am as a writer.

literary translation. Greek version book cover — This is the Greek version of the cover. The art is self-evidently the same…

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Selfish Artists: Dynamics of A Peculiar Concept

April 15, 2024

Experiencing, Literature

art, creativity, literature, society

All people are selfish, artists or not. This might sound like a hot take, but it’s actually trite: When all are something, nobody is. In other words, all people are selfish because that’s human nature – we are the center of the universe because that’s how we perceive everything – but the fact that there are degrees is what allows us to call someone selfish and someone else not.

Linguistic and metaphysical trickery aside, selfish artists are a peculiar concept because the nature of art itself (especially in connection with authorship) is as peculiar. By its nature, art isn’t quantifiable, whereas artists are humans with intense desire to quantify everything.

Do artists have social responsibilities? That’s a question we’ve wondered about. Selfish artists, as a concept, is somewhat relevant to that question, but not entirely. The topic boils down to the degree an artist respects the art, their work, and ultimately themselves.

selfish artists. image of a person with colorful paint — Here’s a little *meta-* take on selfish artists: The original image (public domain) was much more colorful, with high saturation. I assume the photographer became a bit too enamored with the vivid colors and cranked up the saturation. Before posting it, I slightly lowered the saturation to let the image “breathe”. Who’s selfish? The photographer for going all out and “disrespecting” the art, or I for essentially imposing my artistic will on someone else’s work?

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