I have just finished listening to a radio show on Red Shift Radio entitled Werewolves with Hannah Kate on the Tim Previtt Show. The title caught my attention, so I decided to listen to the show when I had sufficient time. Hannah Kate is an academic from Manchester, UK, who has a particular fascination with werewolves in popular culture. She sounds like a very interesting lady, and one I will have to become acquainted with in the course of my professional career.
What is it about werewolves that we love so much? I have always been a self-confessed vampire lover, but more recently I am falling more in love with my werewolf characters in the Redcliffe novels. It was never intended. They just have this way of charming me, with their rugged appeal, raw sexual overtones, and playful behaviour. Werewolves in fiction are becoming much more popular, although I don’t think they ever really went away from the social conscience.
When I think back over the horror films I have watched and the books I have read over the years, werewolves were always horrific creatures with snarling jaws and sharp claws. They would transform from mild-mannered human beings into crazed beasts that literally ripped through anything in their path, and we were supposed to be terrified of them. Werewolves are a blatant representation of the human condition. How many of us bottle up our feelings, pretend everything is normal and happy, when really it isn’t? I think we all have a wolf lurking within us, the same as we all have a shadowy vampire hiding in the dark recesses of our human psyche…
I would also like to share details about a new anthology seeking submissions, for all writers of ghost stories. Check out the link for submission requirements.
*Image courtesy of FairieGoodMother at Deviant Art
