// NEWS
* Underwood & Flinch Indiegogo successful!
- Raised almost 3x his $4000 goal! This means that not only will Underwood & Flinch be funded into print, but so will One Among the Sleepless.

* VAMPIRES: New Orleans Season 2 is looking for funding support on Indiegogo.com

* Gail Carriger's SOULLESS has been optioned for TV!
- Parallel Films (from Ireland, the folks behind "Neverland" and the upcoming vampire film "Byzantium" by Neil Jordan!) now has the task of getting folks interested in producing it. Personally, I'd rather see a miniseries, because that would be more likely to be truer to the source, and the following books could follow. A true TV series would bend to the will of writers, ala True Blood or Vampire Diaries, so while awesome, would not be the most awesome, IMHO. In any case, let's send some love and positive mojo to Parallel Films!

* Blade: The Animated Series is on G4TV.
- Only watched the first episode so far and I like what I saw, though I almost gave up a couple times.

* SyFy to air a vampire movie marathon on Labor Day, Monday Sept. 3.

// PROMOS
* Horror Addicts' Wicked Women Writers Short Audio Fiction Contest!
- Listen to tales of terror by eight talented writers, and don't forget to vote for your favorite. Voting ends Sept. 13, 2012!

// DEFINING VAMPIRES
* Fan of the show, PythonDen asked an excellent question about succubi vs vampires:
"About Lost Girl. If vampires feed on blood, or psychic energy, or emotions, etc., depending on the type of vampire. Then why is NOT Bo the Succubus who feeds on sexual energy a vampire too?
Basically modern thought is that any creature that feeds on humans, other than flesh, is a vampire it seems, so why not sexual energy?
If being undead is required that eliminates many who claim to be vampires so presumably you DO NOT need to be undead.
If it requires being turned by another, then how can so many people claim to be vampires and not been bitten or otherwise changed?
So, it would seem to me that following modern belief Bo qualifies as a vampire! :) On the other hand to be consistent, if she is NOT a vampire than anyone who doesn't feed on blood is NOT also."

My answer is as follows: anything that feeds off of the energy or blood of a creature is considered vampiric. Traditionally feeding off of blood is the qualification. Of course energy vampires exist and qualify to be called vampires also. However, in mythology, a succubus is a female demon who feeds off of sexual energy. Vampires don't have to be undead, either.

So why isn't Bo a vampire? Well, because really Bo is Fae. As I said before my one gripe about LOST GIRL is that every preternatural creature on the show is some form of fairy. Yes, even the one vampire that they encountered early in the first season. So, since she is Fae and they have their classifications of light, dark, and underfae, along with individual species, they have determined that blood drinking equals vampire and sexual energy equals succubus.

This branches me to talking about Marc Vale's Strigoaie: The Romanian Witch. In his podiobook, there are creatures that he refuses to call "vampires" and yet they exhibit some standard traits. They are immortal. They create progeny by blood transfusion and then dying violently. They can fly, some even have wings. There are also "artificials", who were created by an ill fated gov't experiment. I'm not aware of any weaknesses yet, though. They don't drink blood (that I recall, though some eat human flesh stew).

We also discussed whether or not Stephanie Meyer's Cold Ones are really vampires. I still have to agree that they are. They drink blood, even if not always human, they turn into this creature after being bitten and die, and then are immortal and eternally young/stop aging. Anne Rice described her vampires as appearing like they were carved from marble (white and veined) and Akasha was even so old she appeared as frozen and still as a statue.