Blast from the paranormal past
I'm not going to lie, you guys. I'm not feeling so peppy these days. 37 weeks of pregnancy (there are 40, by the way) are starting to take their toll. I have a manuscript due right around my baby's due date, so life is all about sleeping, eating, and making word count.
And because I'm kind of missing the days when I wore much smaller clothes, I was digging through some old pictures recently. My sleuthing unearthed something that needed to be dusted off and shared from a trip I took to Ireland a few years ago.
Yes, that's right. Welcome to the Bram Stoker Dracula Experience. What kind of vampire author would I be if I didn't go to this? The Experience is a museum that's in a pool hall that's in an arcade that's in a bar/nightclub that's in a health club on the outskirts of Dublin. I am not making that up. After you buy your ticket from a bartender, a very, very short and sinister man lets you into the wonders that await...
The Experience had all sorts of info about Bram Stoker's life, a lot of which I found kind of depressing as a fellow writer. Like so many great authors and artists in history, Bram went relatively unrecognized in his own lifetime, unknowing of what his book would eventually spawn in vampire culture.
The rest of the Experience had stuff like this:
Most were exhibits of highly embellished scenes from the book, a la Halloween haunted house style, complete with mechanical monsters that occasionally lept out at you. There was also helpful how-to info posted about, like this:
Let's zoom in and take a closer look...
Huh. Looks like I hit a few of Stoker's rules right on for my books.
Aside from his lack of success in life, I was also a little disturbed by just how much people read into Stoker's life now because of what he wrote in Dracula. We watched this video about him, and it was just crazy listening to modern experts analyze him and make assumptions about his repressed anger and sexuality, based on the book. Man, can't a guy get a break? Does a book have to have subconscious meaning from the author? Makes me nervous to know what people are reading into my books.
All of that for a mere 7 euros! Of course, maybe I shouldn't say mere. With the state of the economy these days, that's a small fortune. But can you really put a price on paranormal camp?
And because I'm kind of missing the days when I wore much smaller clothes, I was digging through some old pictures recently. My sleuthing unearthed something that needed to be dusted off and shared from a trip I took to Ireland a few years ago.
Yes, that's right. Welcome to the Bram Stoker Dracula Experience. What kind of vampire author would I be if I didn't go to this? The Experience is a museum that's in a pool hall that's in an arcade that's in a bar/nightclub that's in a health club on the outskirts of Dublin. I am not making that up. After you buy your ticket from a bartender, a very, very short and sinister man lets you into the wonders that await...
The Experience had all sorts of info about Bram Stoker's life, a lot of which I found kind of depressing as a fellow writer. Like so many great authors and artists in history, Bram went relatively unrecognized in his own lifetime, unknowing of what his book would eventually spawn in vampire culture.
The rest of the Experience had stuff like this:
Most were exhibits of highly embellished scenes from the book, a la Halloween haunted house style, complete with mechanical monsters that occasionally lept out at you. There was also helpful how-to info posted about, like this:
Let's zoom in and take a closer look...
Huh. Looks like I hit a few of Stoker's rules right on for my books.
Aside from his lack of success in life, I was also a little disturbed by just how much people read into Stoker's life now because of what he wrote in Dracula. We watched this video about him, and it was just crazy listening to modern experts analyze him and make assumptions about his repressed anger and sexuality, based on the book. Man, can't a guy get a break? Does a book have to have subconscious meaning from the author? Makes me nervous to know what people are reading into my books.
All of that for a mere 7 euros! Of course, maybe I shouldn't say mere. With the state of the economy these days, that's a small fortune. But can you really put a price on paranormal camp?
Comments
Very cool on the Dracula/Bram Stoker tour. Ireland is one of the few countries I'd like to visit if I were to decide to ever put myself in an airplane again.