The Vampire Armand -- A thought piece: Introduction

A post inspired by a book isn't unusual for me. The book this time is Anne Rice's The Vampire Armand. This is a different post for me.... maybe a different series of posts. It's the content of the post that's different. I'm not sure if it will ever see the light of day... or, since it's inspired by one of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, the dark of night. I don't know how much meat is on this bone... that metaphor will be decidedly tasteless if you choose to read on. I'd advise against it and yet, as a writer, I'll hope you do read it.

One of the things about the Internet, one of the things Facebook and Google+ and just blogs in general grapple with is privacy. Once it's out there, it's generally good sense to assume it is out there for everybody. Privacy settings and such aside, there's nothing stopping someone within the enabled group from copying and sharing things put on the Internet with others. Flickr is an area where that happens. You can lock down photos and then as your friends & family group grows you suddenly find your pictures on other sites, on their Facebook page with no privacy settings at all... Once it's online it's out of your/my control. This post is one I wish I could keep from some people. Which is funny kind of... because I know the way to do it is to not hit publish. The idea for the post (or series if it runs overly long) has been worming its way through my head for days now. Not because it's particularly new or earth-shattering I'm sure... I haven't done any real research on the subjects I'll go over so if you see things you've seen before I'd love links.

• Fairy Tales & Exaggeration

• Hansel & Gretel
• Red Riding Hood
• Exaggeration & Suffering

• Loaded words

• Food Allergies

• Anne Rice's Vampires (briefly for people who don't know)
• Marius & Armand

• Rice's choice of descriptors
• Hyperbole as story telling tool RE: Fairy Tales
• Seduction & invitation
• Fun vs Baggage

• Vampires & Lessons for today

• Undiscovered country -- all that's left that scares us
• Fear like Stephen King does, the monster of the ordinary

That's my back of an envelope outline that I sketched out at work as I was doing something that was repetitive and mindless. 

Some of those, 2 & 3 are short but they don't combine well together so I'll probably combine 2 with 1 and 3 with 4... but 4 will tend towards long so maybe I'll leave 3 short and solitary. I'm looking at the points as individual posts but can't see it working out that way if they're going to be similar in length... I'll work on it as they happen. Or maybe I'll ignore length constraints and wind up with two long ones... I'd rather see it as 3 though. We'll see.

In concluding this introduction I'd like to say this is a thinking out loud piece. It's not a position paper or a well researched topic. It's me thinking about a topic out loud and pulling different things together in my head, organizing them here where you can see it happen. Don't let the outline fool you. Those note are more aide-mémoire than a rigid outline. It's me reminding myself of things I don't want to forget to include... at points I'm intentionally vague to not spoil the upcoming chapter... perhaps in a wave at cheap theatrics, to build some degree of anticipation among my three readers.

One of the things I am going to do is talk as if I know what I'm talking about. I may say, "Fairy tales are stories we tell our children to teach them lessons about big ideas using little words and putting it in a framework they will understand now as well as later. They're artful lies that convey a Truth." That may or may not be true. But it's something I believe to be true. Writing that way is faster and more clear than me prefacing every line with "I believe..." or "It seems to me..." I'm the author of this thought piece so unless I say otherwise the thoughts herein are mine. I'll footnote ideas that I think belong to someone else. If I give an idea as my own that you believe belongs to someone else feel free to leave me a note in the comments. I'm not intentionally plagiarizing anybody and it's possible for people to come up with the same ideas from different directions at different times... I'd be interested in seeing the links.

The Vampire Armand -- A thought piece: Introduction
The Vampire Armand -- A thought piece: Part 1
The Vampire Armand -- A thought piece: Part 2
The Vampire Armand -- A thought piece: Part 3
The Vampire Armand -- A thought piece: Conclusion