Erica Jurus's Blog

I love the scents of winter! For me, it’s all about the feeling you get when you smell pumpkin spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, gingerbread and spruce. Taylor Swift

Sometimes Taylor speaks for all of us.

When the weather in the northern hemisphere turn harsh and the nights grow longer, comfort foods and wonderful aromas replace the solace of nature we can’t get outside.

As I worked on baking my featured dessert for this post, our skies here filled with dark clouds and rain began to plaster the remaining gold-bronze leaves to the ground. It had turned into the perfect day to write of foods that give us a feeling of well-being, especially for the holiday season approaching.

The December holidays give us an excuse to indulge, and our tastes still spring from Victorian times, from the Christmas that Dickens wrote about so eloquently in A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas meal in Victorian-era Toronto looked very much like its British version: a game bird like goose/turkey/duck, or a ham, sourced from surrounding farms, and for dessert plenty of sugar, which was becoming increasingly popular in North American diets – a plum pudding, along with mincemeat tarts, a fruitcake and sugar cookies. The delightful Christmas episode of Murdoch Mysteries, A Merry Murdoch Christmas, immerses you in that world, from Constable Jackson’s well-sauced Christmas goose to the oranges gifted by George Crabtree to William and Julia for Christmas morning.

Oranges were a special treat that could be afforded by the wealthy and were imported largely from Spain. Dried fruit like prunes, and nuts, were also being imported from the Balkans. George’s gift was a special one indeed, bringing the scent of sunny orchards to the chilly December day.

According to the Culinaria Research Centre at U of T Scarborough, tea with a teaspoon of sugar from the Islands was very in 19th century Toronto, and it seems that “Virtually everyone in the city at the time would likely have had a cup of tea at some point over Christmas”. My hubby and I would have fit in perfectly, since we begin Christmas day (and every day) with an aromatic cup of our favourite tea, steaming gently in a festive mug.

Our holiday breakfast varies depending on what strikes me as I sift through hundreds of collected recipes. After hosting Christmas Eve dinner, this year I want to wake up to some baked cinnamon French toast with orange caramel sauce that I can prep the day before, and a platter of quickly crisped sausage patties – with tea, of course. Even the tea itself is exotic, imported from lands on the other side of the earth.

Exotic foods have been luxurious treats for millennia. They embody the next level of pampering, the culinary version of a spa day.

By 2000 BCE a trade in spices had already swept Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East: cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, herbs. Not only did they grace the tables of wealthy rulers, they were important ingredients in numerous medicinal concoctions. The Ebers Papyrus from 1550 BCE in early Egypt describes around eight hundred different herbal medications and procedural applications. The Egyptian port city of Alexandria became the main trading center for spices as Arab and Indonesian merchants followed spice routes across the known world.

The treatment for asthma suggested in the Ebers papyrus is a mixture of herbs heated on a brick so that the patient could inhale their fumes; Source: By Unknown scribe – https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/breath/breath_exhibit/MindBodySpirit/IIBa18.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1606171

The spices that make our holiday foods so enticing are considered “warm” spices, not just for the warmer climes they come from but also how they affect us as we consume them.

Cinnamon is probably the most iconic such spice, warming our tummies and our spirits in everything from buns to coffee to a hot bowl of oatmeal. As most people know by now, cinnamon comes from the inner bark of trees from the genus Cinnamomum. It can have different flavour notes depending on where it’s grown – China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka. It’s a rich source of polyphenols, which boosts our immune systems, reduces blood pressure, even relieves aching muscles.

Cloves are the unopened flower buds of the Syzygium aromaticum tree. They’re native to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Both decorative and tasty, they also have antiseptic and analgesic properties. In traditional Chinese medicine, they’re used to treat fungal infections, indigestion and diarrhea. Here in North America their oil has long been used to soothe toothache, before the days of regular dental visits – we sold quite a few little vials of it when I first began working as a pharmacy assistant.

Nutmeg is the classic holiday addition to eggnog and mulled wine. It’s a sweet, subtle spice that slips in and enhances the flavour of creamy sauces, roasted meats and vegetables, and all kinds of baked goods. Nutmeg and mace (which comes from the reddish casing around the nutmeg seed) arrive on our shores from the same Southeast Asian tree.

Ginger and cardamom are related. Ginger is ubiquitous now, flavouring anything from baking (fabulous in sauteed apples to top French toast or pancakes), stir-fries and curry dishes to herbal tisanes to candies for indigestion. It is a genuine remedy with anti-nausea properties. It may also help stabilize cholesterol levels and relieve osteoarthritis pain. However, it has a powerful flavour that doesn’t appeal to everyone, and generally should be used with a careful touch.

Cardamom is its more floral cousin. Strong, sweet and pungent, it works in both sweet and savoury dishes and evokes ancient times in distant lands. It’s my personal favourite of all the spices, and seems particularly appropriate during a holiday season with Biblical roots (for Christians, at least). 

It comes from the seeds of several plants in the family Zingiberaceae. There are two types: black, with a paradoxically both smokier and cooler, almost minty, flavour, and green, which we tend to see the most of in whole form. Cardamom production began millennia ago, as early as the third millennium BCE.

If you’ve never tried cardamom, I’m including a recipe for the light but aromatic upside-down cake I made today. The original recipe is for pears, but I was lucky enough to come across cases of beautiful orange persimmons, another especially exotic fruit we don’t generally see the rest of the year (around where I live anyway), and I had to buy them. I no longer know the source of this recipe, but it’s fairly classic in the upside-down cake genre, and easy to make if you’re new to scratch baking. Enjoy! (Photo in the featured image for this post.)

Upside-down Persimmon and Cardamom Cake

Makes one 9-inch diameter round cake

1.5 cups all-purpose flour (sifted lightly)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1.25 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature, divided
1/2 cup packed golden brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
2 firm-ripe Fuyu persimmons (the shorter ones that look a bit like a squashed tomato)
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Generously butter a 9-by-1 1/2-inch round cake pan.

2. Combine flour, salt and baking powder together in a small bowl. Stir in the cardamom and set aside.

3. Melt one-quarter stick butter in the microwave. Add the brown sugar and stir for 2 to 3 minutes, until the sugar has combined with the butter. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan, spreading it to reach the sides.

4. Peel the persimmons, remove the small, stiff core, and slice lengthwise into one-quarter-inch-thick slices. Arrange the slices in a slightly overlapping circle around the cake pan, starting at the outer rim. Finish with several slices in the center.

5. Beat the remaining stick of butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until soft and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the vanilla, scraping down the sides of the bowl when needed. Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk, beating after each addition just until combined.

6. Gently spoon the cake batter on top of the persimmons, smoothing out to the edge of the pan and making sure the cake batter fills in around the fruit.

7. Bake until the topis a deep golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Place the cake on a rack to cool for 5 minutes in the pan.

8. Run a small spatula or knife around the edge of the pan and invert onto a cake plate. Carefully remove the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.

A spooky theme in November? What the heck?

Well, today is Occult Day, a day for us to indulge curiosity about what lies beyond.

A lot of people believe that there’s more to our world than meets the everyday eye. We want to believe that there’s something beyond being born, paying bills and passing away. Most of the people I know have also had experiences that can’t be explained. And there are places in the world that are odd, in appearance, in feel. The ancient Celts deemed them liminal places – those that straddle the real world and the otherworld.

The term “occult” doesn’t necessarily refer to strange and dangerous things, like Satanism – it essentially translates from the Latin word occultus, i.e. clandestine, hidden or secret. It originally meant “knowledge of the hidden”. Many ancient societies, such as the Cults of Isis and Serapis in Egypt, the Greek Mystery Cults, and later on groups like the Masons, and university organizations like the Skull and Bones Society at Yale University, kept much of their knowledge secret, hidden behind membership and ritual.

If you weren’t part of the club, you simply weren’t ‘in the know’. Membership conferred belonging, and often power – not necessarily supernatural power, but real-world power in business and politics.

Perhaps it was the terror of witchcraft in previous centuries that started the transformation of “occult” into something more spooky. The Victorian vogue for spiritualism upped the ante, drawing thousands of people who desired to contact their loved ones in the afterlife. Their primary access, just as in ancient times, was through the services of a gifted seer or medium – those who could speak to the spirits.

Numerous esotericists began to pop up, studying the arcane – even Queen Elizabeth I had her own personal astrologer, John Dee, who was said to also dabble in alchemy, divination and Enochian magic, which was a system of rituals he developed with Edward Kelley to communicate with angels.

In the 1800s, a French esotericist named Éliphas Lévi was one of the first to use the word “occultism”, in his book on ritual magic, Dogme et rituel de la haute magie. He set out nine tenets of magic, including that “There is a potent and real Magic, popular exaggerations of which are actually below the truth” and “It confers on many powers apparently super-human” (as translated by A. E. Waite, the British occult scholar, author, and mystic). So there you go.

” “The History of Magic” by Éliphas Lévi is a historical account written in the late 19th century. This work explores the origins, developments, and key figures associated with magical practices throughout history, delving into ancient beliefs to modern interpretations.” on Project Gutenberg

Fortune-telling using cards became known as occult science because people believed that it was possible to unveiling the future by using a repeatable system that could reveal the workings of the universe. Tarot cards had been around since the 15th century, but French occultists in the 18th century began to claim that they could be used for divination, and now I don’t think they’re used for anything else. I have a couple of decks myself (yes, I used to do Tarot card readings when I was a teenager, but stopped when it began to creep me out; I still have the pack).

Instead, I eventually turned my own fascination with occultism to writing. There’s just so much material to play around with! Witches, ghouls, vampires, ghosts, demons, Fae, hauntings… And people love to read such stories in droves – look at the phenomenal popularity of the Harry Potter books.

There have been some very famous and respected people interested in occultism – three ancient Greek philosophers (Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle), Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, magician Harry Houdini – so if the subject fascinates you as well, you’re in very good company. In the face of both the sometimes inanity of day-to-day life and the stress of world news, we search for more meaning, and entertainment/escapism as well.

Since I grew up on movies like The Wizard of Oz and TV shows like The Twilight Zone, I’ve always included the paranormal in my own stories. I also read The Exorcist when it first came out, and couldn’t sleep for a week. The things we read, to give ourselves the shivers. But they also explore possibilities, and therein lies the eternal appeal.

The field of the Occult is massive and deeply-layered. We can explore more of it in future posts, as it weaves throughout my Chaos Roads trilogy. In the meantime, have fun watching and reading!

Some of the occult elements in my novels, © Erica Jurus, Author

“She finds out that a lot of our Earth history isn’t necessarily what we have been led to believe.” Author

How do you talk about yourself?

When I was invited to be on a podcast featuring indie authors recently, the first thing I did was research into how not to be a dud.

I’m fine with speaking – when I was part of Toastmasters, the organization that teaches you how to be a public speaker, I did a lot of it. But being interviewed for 45 minutes, on air, is a different beast.

Recommendation 1: get a stand-alone microphone and headphones. I had a set of headphones, but they recently bit the dust, so I bought a nice pro-looking new set, and a chic black mic – not top of the line (there may be an upgrade if I start doing a lot of these), but well-rated and easy to set up. Perfect for a beginner.

2. Find a room with good acoustics to set up in. Some people do it in a closet to muffle external noise, but I don’t have one I could comfortably fit into without looking like someone in a creepy movie, or having to be removed with the jaws-of-life afterward. Our dining room has a variety of textures and surfaces, so I figured that was a good alternative.

3. Research the host and listen to a few of their podcasts to get a feel for their style and the kinds of questions they ask. Check.

4. Be well rested and in good shape. I had to reschedule the first date due to a brief bug with uncontrolled coughing, which I didn’t think would come across very well. My host agreed.

5. Have some notes ready for potential discussion points. Done.

I was a little nervous, generally about being an interesting guest. But, as ‘they’ say, no guts no glory. At the appointed time, I logged into Jason’s Zoom link. I’d requested having our cameras on, which I thought would make me feel more natural than responding to a disembodied voice, and Jason obliged. And then we embarked on our conversation.

My cool new equipment. Photo by E. Jurus, all rights reserved.

After Jason’s kind introduction, he asked me to provide an overview of my three novels, of course. We discussed marketing novels that cross different genres. Mine, for example, are a blend of urban fantasy (set in the real world with strange things happening), science fiction and some Lovecraftian horror. He asked how I found reactions to mixing genres instead of presenting pure horror or fantasy, for example.

I believe people are becoming quite used to these blends. “Romantasy”, the portmanteau word that describes the intertwining of fantasy novels with a pronounced dose of romance, has exploded onto the publishing scene after the popularity of Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses debut (affectionately known by fans as ACOTAR). Urban fantasy, or versions thereof, is prevalent on television, from shows like Stranger Things to Locke and Key to Supernatural.

Sometimes these fusion genres require a bit of explanation. Jason characterizes his own novels as ‘steampunk’, although there are subgenres within that. After several live appearances, I began to designate my novels as supernatural thrillers. Thrillers are described as featuring ‘heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, and anxiety in the audience’, and mine certainly fit that bill. They’re filled with plenty of suspense and globe-trotting adventure – it’s just that the participants are not exactly human.

“The way that I write, or the cross-genre that I have, the mix, makes it accessible to a lot of people who perhaps don’t like straight science fiction or straight urban fantasy, or even straight horror. I’ve had a number of readers who, fantasy isn’t their preferred genre, but they get into the books because they recognize Toronto, and they recognize the planet as we know it, and that there might just be some stranger things in it.” Author

Jason called me a powerhouse for writing three approximately 600-page novels. How did I manage it?

Well, that wasn’t my original intention, believe me. I had the beginning and end points of each book set, and a few plot points. My job was to try to fill in the between-stuff, and once I got going, the story kinda took care of itself. Six hundred-odd pages later, book 1 reached its foregone conclusion within the larger story. Jason and I discussed some of the ins-and-outs of putting a book together – give the podcast a listen to find out our approaches, and much more that I don’t want to spoil with this blog post.

“The story began to live in my head, like a movie that I was watching play out.” Author

I think the WIP, a horror-dark romance fusion, will work as a stand-alone. I’m taking time to insert enough brief backstory to explain what new readers will need to know. Certainly reading the trilogy first would fill in all the gaps, but it won’t be necessary.

Jason mentioned that he’d be curious to see if my new novel will draw more people into the original trilogy. I replied that of course I certainly hope it does, but here are my expanded thoughts:

With many traditionally-published novels that I’ve come across, it’s often the case that a subsequent book interests a new reader enough to want to learn the full backstory. It’s happened to me more than once.

I wrote the Chaos Roads trilogy as Romy’s  origin story. For fifty-one years she’s been going along as an ‘ordinary’ person, and then in the elapsed time of a charity ball finds out that she’s anything but. I really love origin stories – how does a character get embroiled in a strange new life, how do they handle it, why do they make the choices they do? I’ve enjoyed a few series that start midstream, catapulted into a world where something’s already changed in the past, like vampires having coming out of the closet and are now already mainstream in society, but I prefer discovering the ‘big bang’, as it were. One of the best things about the Twilight series, for me, was following Bella’s slow realization that she’s gotten hooked on someone not only gorgeous but dangerously supernatural as well.

By my second book, Into the Forbidden Fire, fans were asking me to keep writing more novels set in the Chaos Roads world. I hadn’t considered that, but I had many more ideas that had sprung out of bits of the story, like leaks in a garden hose, and I’d already been wondering what I was going to do after the trilogy was completed. I adore writing, you see, and by then I already couldn’t envision a time without it in my life.

Perhaps fans of ‘horroromance’ (another new portmanteau genre title) will read my next novel and be curious or passionate enough to dive into the trilogy. My novels will be cohesive – tying threads of each other together to weave a fascinating tapestry.

The landscape of self-publishing allows authors to write stories that move them, that transcend trends or traditionally-boxed plotlines, that colour outside the lines. But there’s a lot that goes into it, including promoting your own books. Jason wants to create a podcast on all the steps required to self-publish a book, which I think is a fantastic idea. Many people have memoirs or family stories they’d like to tell, for example, or their own ideas for novels, so I look forward to that subsequent podcast with lots of good information in it, and will keep you posted.

If you’re interested in learning more in the meantime, Indie Author Day is coming up this week, on November 14th.  There are several virtual events going on, and you’ll find the schedule and sign-ups on the website. Local organizations can also find out how to host their own Indie Author event; perhaps I and the many other authors in my area might join forces next year to do exactly that. There was a brief burst of initiative by our local libraries last year, but it seems to have fizzled.

You’ll find my interview on Jason Shannon’s site on Spotify; you don’t have to sign up to listen to it. It runs for about 53 minutes, with an intro and some host-info segments interspersed. I think I did well enough for my first foray into the media form, although there a few ways I could improve in the future. I’d certainly love to hear your opinion (polite comments only, please).

Many thanks to Jason for inviting me onto his podcast – it was great fun! He’s interviewed many indie authors, and has published his own imaginative novels featuring an actual LGBT+ historical figure, the swashbuckling Olive Yang, who spurned traditional female roles in early to mid-20th century Burma to become a powerful opium warlord. Do check out his website!

Finally, I have to admit that I felt really cool sitting at my table with an official mic and very sharp-looking new headphones. For anyone who might like to feature me in a podcast, please contact me directly at roads@ericajurus.ca. I’d be happy to provide a media kit with more information and additional discussion topics.

Here I am, once more sitting with my laptop, a mug of one of my favourite teas, Milk Oolong, ready to hand, as I commit words of horror to ‘page’.

Twenty-six years ago, a freelance writer named Chris Baty started NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with just 21 participants. Originally set during July, in 2000 the event was moved to November “to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather”. An official website, designed by a friend of Baty’s, was launched, and people began signing up from other countries.

NaNoWriMo kept growing as each year passed. Baty had created a phenomenon.

The idea was to buckle down and try to write 50,000 words of whatever story had previously been percolating in your head. That was pretty much it. You could track your progress on the website, and earn badges for reaching certain milestones. There were all kinds of subgroups featuring a different theme, such as ‘Sci-fi Writers’ or ‘Women Writing Romance’, that you could join and interact with through a specific Discord group, cheering each other on and providing moral support.

It was a community, formed with thousands of people around the world who were going to dedicate November to writing a book, or at least giving it their best shot. There was enormous camaraderie.

We were all responsible for our own progress – nobody cracking the whip, just our own determination to finally put pen to paper (or, more often, fingers to keyboard).

Some people began completely from scratch, without even the bare bones of a plot; I’m not sure they got very far. I had the general plot for all three of my novels in my head – where each one would begin and end. I had a few major plot points for the first book. I had ‘mood boards’ for each main character. And I had maps, in considerable detail, for the fictional town that my heroine moved to after the inciting incident, and the rather unusual college campus that had offered her a new job.

By the time November 2020 wrapped up, I had a smidge over 50,000 words, and almost every badge on my profile. And it seemed I had the makings of a full novel. (Fantasy novels typically have anywhere from 90,000 to 200,000 words.) I plugged on, and on July 2021 I typed “The End”. It was momentous. My hubby and I cracked open a bottle of champagne.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo twice more and wrote the beginnings of books two and three. I looked forward to the excitement of each year’s push to succeed. There were also spring and summer camps in between, but I felt that November was a good month, at least here in Canada: Thanksgiving and Halloween had wrapped up, and the Christmas season hadn’t reached full swing.

And I was very sad to learn of NaNoWriMo’s closing this past spring. As a lot of people were, apparently, because quite a few organizations have taken up the mantle and created their own version of a November writing sprint. Whatever the politics that eventually sunk the original NaNo, a beloved tradition had been born, and I’m happy to see the results. I’ve signed up for two ‘sprints’ to see how they go. One is run by Reedsy, who I’ve used as a fantastic resource since I first researched how to write a novel; the other is a newer NaNo, called NaNo2.0, by the original creator, Chris Baty. Each have their own style, and Reedsy has its own writing software, which I’m trying out to see if I like it better than MS Word.

And so the excitement and drive are back. Most things are accomplished better with a deadline, and belonging to a group of like-minded seekers is a nice thing also.

Personal circumstances have changed somewhat since my first foray into the November sprints, as they tend to do, but I’ll do my best. The Summer Door will be a horror novel, blended with a rather twisted dark romance, delving into the deepest shadows that underlie the world of Llithfaen and surrounding dimensions.

So far I’m having a spine-tingling good time.

The story begins with this quote:

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill

***

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

H.P. Lovecraft

The Horror genre is having a moment – or several, if you consider its split personality. Some of it is old, a lot new, but all of it wildly inventive.

And apparently quite a few subgenres of horror have to do with female empowerment – if you consider killing, and sometimes eating, your persecutors, a twisted version of empowerment. And it surely is, after all of the violence committed against women in literature, movies and the real world. Much of this type of horror falls under what’s being called “femgore”. Such novels push the boundaries in ways not seen before, and reader warnings are always included.

There’s also “weird girl lit”, wherein women, typically outsiders in some way, channel their angst into violence or strange supernatural behaviour.

“Splatterpunk” has been around since the 1980s. It features explicit violence and gore set amid the growing counterculture of the time. Clive Barker is one of its prominent authors.

Not being a fan of overt gore, I don’t think I’ll be getting into any of those horror subgenres any time soon.

However, I love the idea behind “sporror” – weird fungi rampaging around to destroy people. That one has its roots in 1950s science fiction – I’m thinking books like Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, and all kinds of creepy scifi ‘B’ movies I’ve watched over the years, which I can’t recall the names of but which entertained me for an evening. Maybe it’s the strange appearance of fungi, maybe the idea that plants will some day revolt and swallow us up, but there’s something quite compelling about the horror therein.

“Eldritch horror” was invented by H. P. Lovecraft in the early 1900s. The word “eldritch” means of foreign, strange, other, of uncertain origin. Lovecraft was a rather strange fellow plagued by nightmares that haunted his waking hours. He imagined a world in which all of us little people were unaware of cosmic terrors: alien monster-gods whose mere awareness of existence would lead to insanity. Lovecraft’s horror was slow and full of dread. Some of his protagonists would run afoul of twisted cults that worshiped these monsters, some succumbed to the madness of their experiences. Perhaps his most famous concoction was a book of forbidden knowledge called the Necronomicon. There’s even a biennial convention in Rhode Island by that very name; I’d love to attend one day.

His eerie tales were a strong influence on my own writing.

“Horroromance” is a subgenre I’m going to be diving into in my next book, The Summer Door. It combines horror and romance (obviously) in dark ways, although in lighter versions it’s made an appearance in the past – I’m thinking movies like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), which added a female love interest for Dr. Henry Jekyll who gradually discovers the horrid truth about her boyfriend’s researches. It’s a burgeoning subgenre that I’m looking forward to exploring as we see the much darker side of the world introduced in The Chaos Roads. Can Llithfaen and area get even darker? Yes indeed. The original trilogy only scratched the surface. But you’ll have to wait until 2026 to find out more.

In the meantime, enjoy whatever gives you the creeps this week as we approach the eeriest night of the year, Halloween! I wish you a fun and delightfully shivery one.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear. Michel de Montaigne

It’s 1891. Mists creep between the grave markers in the cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island. Men, grimly determined, dig up the resting place of Mercy Brown. Her coffin is lifted and set onto the ground beside the open wound in the earth. The lid is slowly pried open, and people clutch each other as their worst fears are confirmed: the girl hasn’t decomposed. When her heart is pierced, blood seeps out. She is a vampire!

As the light wanes, her telltale heart and liver are cut out and burned. The ashes are mixed with water and given to her ill brother, Edwin, to drink so that he may avoid falling victim to his sister’s undead appetites.

This bizarre ritual actually took place. The entire story made news around the world. It’s believed to have been an inspiration for Bram Stoker, and that he based the character of Lucy Westenra in his novel Dracula on Mercy.

The late 1800s in New England appeared to spread a plague of vampirism through the villages. Whole families were sickening and dying from a mysterious illness that seemed to suck the life out of them. Unearthly pallor. Wracking, bloody coughs. A feverish glow. Wasting away while lying helpless in bed. These were the signs.

Painting The Sick Child by Edvard Munch, 1885–1886, depicts the illness of his sister Sophie, who died of tuberculosis when Edvard was 14; his mother also died of the disease.   By Edvard Munch – http://samling.nasjonalmuseet.no/no/object/NG.M.00839 Nasjonalmuseet / Høstland, Børre, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37692571

Among many others, George and Mary Brown’s family suffered a series of attacks. Mary Eliza, the mother, passed away first, in 1883, followed by the eldest daughter, Mary Olive, six months later. Several years passed, then son Edwin became ill next, and was sent away to Colorado Springs to get better. While he was in absentia, one of his sisters, Mercy Lena, began to show symptoms, and passed away. Edwin returned home for the service.

He began to sicken again. In the midst of his burning fever, he had strange dreams during which he would cry out things like “she was here”, “she haunts me”, and “she wants me to come with her”. When the townspeople heard that, they began to pressure George to exhume the bodies of all of his deceased female family members and find out which one was stealing Edwin’s life. Eventually he gave in.

In those times, after life-sucking perpetrators were identified, there were a number of methods to stop the attacks.

Sometimes the body was simply turned over in its grave. I suppose the theory was that it could then no longer find its way out of the earth.Families might decide to burn the undecomposed organs and then rebury the body.Going further, afflicted living family members might also inhale smoke from the burned organs or possibly consume the ashes. In extreme cases, the body would be decapitated – imagine that scene.

With a little research, I found that it is quite possible for some bodies to decay at a significantly slower rate. In oxygen-poor environments, a rather creepy substance called corpse wax can form, from the decomposition of body fat. Anaerobic bacteria, found in soil with a high moisture content, break down the fatty tissue into a waxy substance that will actually protect the body in a form called a ‘soap mummy’. People with higher amounts of body fat, including women and children, are more prone to this strange kind of preservation, which is believed to have fed the old vampire legends.

According to a newspaper report at the time, the examining physician, Dr. Metcalf of Wickford, stated that all of the bodies of the Brown family were in a perfectly natural state of decomposition. When he removed Mercy’s organs, some blood seeped out of her heart, which he also said was quite normal.

However, George wrote in a letter:

this morning [July 21] opened the grave of my daughter [Martha]… who had died—the last of my three daughters—almost six years ago … On opening the body, the lungs were not dissolved, but had blood in them, though not fresh, but clotted. The lungs did not appear as we would suppose they would in a body just dead, but far nearer a state of soundness than could be expected. The liver, I am told, was as sound as the lungs. We put the lungs and liver in a separate box, and buried it in the same grave, ten inches or a foot, above the coffin.

None of it worked. Edwin and all of George’s remaining children also succumbed.

New Englanders had no idea what they were dealing with, unfortunately.

The threat of the “White Death” was a dark cloud that hung over every family in the 1700-1800s, and long before. Consumption, now known as tuberculosis, has been around since ancient times, and is highly contagious, passed easily between those in close proximity. By the 1800s, it had certainly had lived up to its name, consuming one in seven of all people who’d ever lived, and was such a pervasive terror that parents would train their children on how to live in someone else’s home should they some day become orphaned.

People who contracted the mysterious condition would become extremely pale, with prominent cheekbones, large eyes and a feverish glow, which in Europe weirdly became a fashion statement. The illness was thought to enhance a woman’s beauty, making her seem more tragic and alluring, while for men it provided a gaunt, intellectual, ‘poetic’ image.

So many famous creators died of it, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that consumption became desirable as a way to enhance their artistic skills. It was a dicey game to play.

In America, towns ravaged by the disease weren’t so amenable to contracting it. Numerous vampire-prevention cases were recorded. For example, in 1817, Frederick Ransom of Vermont, was exhumed by his father and had his heart burned in a blacksmith’s forge so that he wouldn’t attack his family.  In Ohio in the winter of 1816-17, there was a newspaper report with the headline “A STRANGE SUPERSTITION”. It stated that the family of Philip Salladay dug up one of their family members, removed his entrails and had them burned in a fire in front of the surviving members and a large number of other spectators.

Mercy Brown’s exhumation was covered by international newspapers. Scholars have suggested that Bram Stoker knew about the Mercy Brown case through newspaper articles and based the character Lucy Westenra upon her in his novel Dracula. It is also referred to in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House”.

Section of one of the books in my library, Romancing the Vampire, that refers specifically to the ‘case’ of the New England Vampires. photo by E. Jurus, all rights reserved.

Ironically, George Brown was one of very few people never to contract tuberculosis – he lived long enough to see the discovery of the bacterium that causes the disease in 1882, and then the vaccine for it.

The legend of vampirism is a powerful one, based on how much it continues to hold all of us in thrall even in the age of our ‘enlightenment’. Vampires continue to be popular in novels, and producers make countless movies and television shows about them. On a visit to New Orleans several years ago, we went on a Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire walk.

My introduction to vampires came through the original Dark Shadows supernatural soap opera. Since then, I’ve been delighted by the phenomenon in various media. So, I was very excited to recently learned that one of my favourite movies, The Lost Boys (1987), is being turned into a Broadway musical. And before you think that’s ridiculous, watch this promo clip of one of the new songs written for it, featuring the actual vampire performers. Personally, I’m impressed already and am hoping it will hop the border and come up to Canada. Here’s the description in the email I received from New York Comic Con, in case you’re not familiar with the story:

“We’re Inviting You In. 

Welcome to Santa Carla. Perfect weather. Beautiful beaches. And a charming boardwalk…as long as you ignore all the “Missing” posters. 

When a mother and her two teenage sons move to town in desperate need of a fresh start, they soon uncover the darker side of this sunny coastal community. While Lucy tries to piece her family’s life back together, Michael keeps pulling away in search of belonging. As he finds connection with a local rock band and its charismatic leader, his younger brother Sam comes face-to-face with a terrifying reality: When night falls, Michael’s new friends are even more dangerous than they first appeared. 

Based on the cult-classic Warner Bros. film, The Lost Boys: A New Musical arrives on Broadway this spring, directed by Tony Award® winner Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending, Parade) and featuring music and lyrics by The Rescues, a book by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, choreography by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant (The Queen of Versailles), and music supervision by Tony nominee Ethan Popp (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical). The Lost Boys is produced by James Carpinello, Marcus Chait, and Patrick Wilson. 

GET A LITTLE TASTE…”

Why do we, over hundreds of years, continually want to believe that there’s a certain kind of life after death? Perhaps it’s just that simple: the possibility.

“Charles M. Schulz was an innovative genius, creating a fantasy world that connected to kids as well as adults and all based on powerful iconic characters who express deep feelings of loneliness and resentment and despair. The feeling that everything is against us. The craving for love. An enormous earnestness for doing the right thing. There is not much in Peanuts that is shallow or heedless.”
Garrison Keillor

Charles Schulz was nicknamed Sparky by an uncle when he was only two days old, after a horse named Spark Plug in the wildly popular Barney Google comic strip. It was a name he chose to keep using, and became prophetic when he began submitting his own comics professionally.

As a child, he read the comics every Sunday morning with his father – Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Skippy – and from early on knew that he wanted to be a cartoonist. When he reached his teens, his drawing of his family dog, Spike was published in the nationally-syndicated Ripley’s Believe it or Not newspaper, and as a senior in high school he enhanced his skills through a correspondence cartoon course with the Federal School of Applied Cartooning.

First appearance of a “Charlie Brown” from a May 30, 1948 strip of Li’l Folks; By Charles Schulz – Peanuts wikia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=165487808

“Peanuts was originally sold under the title of Li’l Folks, but that had been used before, so they said we have to think of another title. I couldn’t think of one and somebody at United Features came up with the miserable title Peanuts, which I hate and have always hated. It has no dignity and it’s not descriptive. […] What could I do? Here I was, an unknown kid from St. Paul. I couldn’t think of anything else. I said, why don’t we call it Charlie Brown and the president said “Well, we can’t copyright a name like that.” I didn’t ask them about Nancy or Steve Canyon. I was in no position to argue.” Charles Schulz, in a 1987 interview with Frank Pauer in Dayton Daily News and Journal Herald Magazine

Throughout his life, Schulz remained intensely irritated by the title foisted on his creation. Whenever he was asked what he did for a living, he’d only say that “I draw that comic strip with Snoopy in it, Charlie Brown and his dog”. He looked into changing the title to Charlie Brown many times but eventually understood that it would cause a domino effect of problems with all of the licensees.

Of course, all of his devoted fans have known and loved the strip and the books as Peanuts ever since. However, the animated specials invariably used the name of one of the characters, usually the hapless hero of Schulz’s world, Charlie Brown.

The first strip, in 1950, was four panels long and showed Charlie Brown walking by two other kids, Shermy and Patty. Snoopy appeared in the third strip, but most of the other characters that eventually became regulars were introduced later: supercilious Violet and the piano-playing Schroeder in 1951, irritable Lucy and charmingly laid-back Linus in 1952, the dust-shrouded Pig-Pen in 1954, and so on. My favourite character, Snoopy’s little sidekick bird named Woodstock, showed up in 1966.

All of the Peanuts world was seen through the eyes of the children and the critters. They weren’t idealized. Lucy was often mean to Charlie Brown, and he spent most of his time trying to gain the respect of those around him, with little success. Schulz said that Charlie Brown had to be “the one who suffers, because he is a caricature of the average person. Most of us are much more acquainted with losing than we are with winning.” But, as in real life, Charlie had his happy moments as well.

The formula appealed with its gentle, amusing look at the trials and tribulations of children unfettered by adult issues. Schulz said that grown-ups just didn’t interest him, and indeed, any adults that appeared were only expressed through unarticulated sounds.

By the 1960s, Peanuts comic strip was reaching 355 million readers around the world. In 1965, the Coca-Cola Company approached Lee Mendelson, the producer, about sponsoring a Peanuts Christmas television special showing “the true meaning of Christmas”. Mendelson called Schulz, and the rest is animation history.

A Charlie Brown Christmas was first broadcast by CBS on December 9, 1965. Despite its unorthodox, jazzy soundtrack, and its overtly religious message, which worried some of the execs, it was a massive success – an estimated 15,490,000 homes watched the special, and it ended up receiving both an Emmy and Peabody Award. It’s become an iconic Christmas special for the past sixty years, and the soundtrack is instantly recognizable.

That success led to the creation of a second CBS television special, Charlie Brown’s All-Stars in 1966, followed by probably the second-most popular special, the Halloween-themed It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

In those days, Halloween and Christmas were both eagerly anticipated holidays in a child’s world, so a Halloween special was a natural.

I’m not sure modern viewers understand what time capsules both the Christmas and Halloween specials are. In the 1960s, it was safe for children to walk around after dark by themselves. My aunt, even though she was fairly traditional-European, had a silver Christmas tree, which she decorated with glossy blue balls and which I thought was quite beautiful.

Halloween was equally important, as our chance to run around in costume, on our own, gathering as much candy as we could fit in pillowcases, which held quite a haul. The streets were dark, lit only by a few streetlights and the jack o-lanterns on porches. Sometimes we couldn’t tell if a house was handing out candy, so we’d approach carefully and knock with trepidation, ready to run if an ogreish owner appeared. When we got home, my brother and I would dump out all of our treasures onto the living room carpet and sort through them, trading any we didn’t like.

The party games that the kids play in the Halloween special were classic, although most of the parties I went to also included a séance, usually to summon Harry Houdini (it never worked, although an errant bit of wind blowing through a pop bottle once scared the crap out of us).

But the specials perfectly captured the vibe of the times, much simpler despite Charlie Brown’s feelings about holiday commercialization, and with an innocence that’s been lost. I don’t know about you, but I watch them every year, and lately have been enjoying the clips posted by the Schulz Museum online. I love Snoopy’s attempts to write a book, and his “It was a dark and stormy night” has become immortal in writing circles.

By the time Charles Schulz passed away in 2000, Peanuts had run in more than 2,600 newspapers, had a readership of around 355 million in 75 countries, and had been translated into 21 languages. Together with its merchandise, the strip and its offshoots earned Schulz more than $1 billion. Not bad for someone who just wanted to “draw funny pictures”.

“I suppose there are some people out there who will think I’m a foolish old romantic, possibly even a little nuts, to have such an association with, even to the point of talking to, an inanimate object [like Snoopy]. Peanuts fans know better. [They] know that the greatest of Charles Schulz’s magic tricks was bringing life to all those wonderful folks with which he peopled our world and brightened our days.”
Walter Cronkite  

I remember watching reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show on television when I was younger and thinking how silly it was to show Rob and Laura Petrie sleeping in twin beds. Clearly they’d had sex in order to have their son Ritchie, but the show was produced while the Hays Code was still in effect, which meant pretending that somehow the boy had been magically conceived without getting down and dirty.

The Hays Code, named after Will H. Hays, who was the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America from 1922 to 1945, was a knee-jerk reaction to several notorious scandals in Hollywood in the 1920s. The biggest of these was the alleged rape of starlet Virginia Rappe by the enormously popular movie star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle at a party he hosted.

Virginia had become ill at the party and died four days later. One of her friends accused Arbuckle of raping and accidentally killing her. After three trials, Arbuckle was acquitted and the third jury even gave Arbuckle a written apology. Despite that, Arbuckle’s films were banned by Hays, who’d become the motion picture industry’s censor, and the actor became a symbol of what various groups perceived as the growing debauchery in Hollywood and its effect on the ‘morals of the general public’. The scandal destroyed Arbuckle’s career.

Under Hays’s leadership, Hollywood was compelled to adopt the Production Code in 1930, and it was rigidly enforced from 1934 to 1968, even covering television production.

So, back to the on-screen illusion that couples, married or otherwise, didn’t actually sleep together and that kids were produced by some kind of spontaneous genesis. Apparently, by denying in the media that sex existed, people would then not engage in any. A strange concept of cause and effect.

The same principle today is being brought forth in book banning form – that what we can’t read about will just cease to exist.

This is Banned Books Week in the U.S., similar to our Canadian Freedom to Read Week in February, and there’s a lot of media coverage globally. I’m far from an expert on the subject, but here are my thoughts.

What is a book ban, exactly? Although technically it’s the removal of a book from a library’s collection, up to and including actual destruction, many people also point out that there may be books which are purposely never ordered.

Logistically, libraries simply can’t house every single book ever written. But the idea that small groups can force a library to remove a book over the wishes of thousands of other people is disturbing.

Here’s how a book ban comes about:

A specific title is challenged on the basis of its content. It doesn’t just have to be at a library – challenges take place within entire school districts, at institutions, retailers, publishers, etc.The book in question is pulled from access for a review period, which could take months.Sometimes the book is banned, other times put back into the collection.

Why are books challenged? According to the American Library Association, by 2020 the top ten reasons were:

sexual content (92.5% percent of books on the list)offensive language (61.5%)unsuited to age group (49%)religious viewpoint (26%)LGBTQIA+ content (23.5%)violence (19%)racism (16.5%)use of illegal substances (12.5%)“anti-family” content (7%)political viewpoint (6.5%)

As you can see, there’s a lot of attempted censorship around things that we know actually take place, but are seemingly afraid to acknowledge.

I haven’t read most of the books in the top banning lists to be able to comment on their contents (books like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale). But surely ignoring parts of our collective history or potential future is unhealthy, and ultimately dangerous.

I don’t have children, but I understand that parents want to keep an eye on what their children are consuming. I list my own novels as suitable for 18+ based on some violence/horror and sexual content. However, when parents ask me at live events, I always recommend that they make their own decision based on what they know of their own kids.

My novels also include ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’. What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that the way life should be?

What does it matter that someone has a different religious viewpoint than us? Or a different sexual orientation?

I can’t even begin to understand how it must be to feel that you’re in the wrong body gender, but plenty of people don’t know what it’s like to have fibromyalgia, as I do, so who are we to invalidate another’s experience? And aren’t books that illuminate our differences to others beneficial, to spread understanding?

There’s a place in this world for all of us. But there’s no place for oppression or intolerance, both of which keep rearing their ugly heads no matter how much we think we’ve progressed. Can we ever get past them?

Banning books is a way of exterminating ideas.

To learn more about book banning in Canada, I recommend this article in The Walrus.

“At first cock-crow the ghosts must go
 Back to their quiet graves below”  Theodosia Garrison

Ghost-hunting, aka paranormal investigation, is big business these days. There have been a variety of these engagements filmed for television – I’ll even admit to watching a handful myself.

I’m not sure what it is that I find so fascinating. The sense of mystery, the hope that there’s a larger world than the prosaic one we live in day to day. The potential confirmation of an afterlife, for anyone who’s lost a loved one.

Whatever it is, I find myself with the lights off and glued to my flat-screen, waiting to see what makes an appearance.

The first recorded claim of a sighting of the ghost was by Lucia C. Stone took place at a Christmas party at Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England in 1835. Among the invited guests was a Colonel Loftus, who said he and another guest had seen a ghost they called the “Brown Lady”, in a vintage brown brocade dress, glowing but with empty sockets, as they were walking down the hall to their bedrooms. This prompted a number of staff decamping the estate permanently.

In 1936, a Captain Hubert C. Provand and Indre Shira, two photographers who were assigned to photograph Raynham Hall for Country Life magazine, took a photo of the Brown Lady, which was published in Country Life magazine. The figure in the image is thought to be the ghost of Lady Dorothy Townshend, wife of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount of Raynham in the early 1700s. Charles suspected his wife of infidelity, and, although she apparently died in 1726, some suspected that the funeral had been faked and that Charles had actually locked his wife away in a remote corner of the house for the remainder of her life.

As ghosts are said to occur when there’s been a wrongful death in some way, if I were Lady Dorothy I would certainly have haunted the ass off Lord Charles. Whatever the truth may be, it makes a good story. The photo is a remarkable image, and has gained considerable credence.

Claimed photograph of the ghost, taken by Captain Hubert C. Provand. First published in Country Life , 1936
By Historical image, Brown Lady Ghost photo. Originally taken in 1936 by Captain Hubert C. Provand (Indre Shire Inc.), and published in the magazine ‘Countrylife’ in the same year. This version downloaded from about.com, 2/22/2010. No information available about original image size, though this version is unlikely to be a high-quality reproduction. The image has been replicated freely in numerous locations (on the internet, in paper media, and on recorded media such as tv shows), but its copyright status (despite being over 70 years old) cannot currently be determined., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26302476

I can’t say I’ve ever been interested in doing the hunting myself, although we did actually participate in a kind of ghost hunt in the town of Gettysburg, PA, site of the biggest bloodbath of the American Civil War. It’s reputed to be one of the most haunted places in the US, given how many people died in terrible agony. We accompanied a couple of ladies out to several locations, where we were given various instruments that would indicate the presence of ghosts. On a bridge called The Hanging Bridge (the name speaks for itself), I sat on the wooden bridge slats next to one of the hosts, as she called up a program on her laptop that would serve as a voice ‘bridge’ with the afterlife. The laptop quickly began chattering away, as if there was a grand party amongst the departed all around us. However, the needle on the meter in my hand didn’t budge even a smidge. I restrained myself from saying, “Shouldn’t this thing be doing something?”

At the next location, where a reputed witch had been lynched, nothing ethereal happened, but several of us spotted tiny pricks of light from bioluminescent fungi on the forest floor, so that was pretty cool.

By the time I began getting nighttime chills in the third location, where everyone else was convinced they were discerning messages from the laptop software and oohing enthusiastically, my hubby and I decided we’d had enough for the evening.

In no way am I saying that I don’t believe in ghosts, just that often when we expect or really desire something to happen, it will, at least in our own perception.

Several years ago, I read a good article on what good ghost-hunting involves, and traps to look out for. I no longer have the provenance of the article, but here are some insights from it:

Ghost manifestations have certain common elements: a) ghosts seem to have a limited lifespan and fade with time, although I’ve never seen anyone specify an expiry date; b) disturbances such as renovation or demolition will often piss of ghosts, who then become very active; c) ghosts are frequently reported in places where there’s water in the area, such as a stream or river – or, even more ominously, buried water.

Our minds can be easily fooled, or influenced, by the circumstances of an investigation, so ghost hunters should be trained to take into account certain variables, such as:

Sensory Deprivation: when the investigators are sitting in low light levels and no sound. Whatever ambient noises and bits of light occur, our brains will try to make sense of them, not always reliably.

A “Sense of Presence”: the feeling that there’s someone or something in the room that can’t be seen, is common. An investigator’s expectations of coming across a ghost, together with awareness of the haunted reputation of the building, causes a heightened state of suggestibility. Experiments have shown that things I the environment, like exposure to extremely low frequency sound waves from electrical equipment, or wind blowing through a window, cause shivering, breathlessness, anxiety and a feeling of an unseen presence.

Pareidolia: I’ve read a lot about this phenomenon, and we’ve probably all experienced it – when our brain sees human faces and shapes in random things like clouds, or the grain on a piece of wood, or even potatoes a pieces of toast.  

The eye fools us: two visual phenomena – ideoretinal light, where flashes of light or colour appear in the field of vision in the absence of sensory stimulation, as in a darkened room, and entoptic phenomena, also known as “floaters” (debris within the fluid in our eyes).

Auditory Illusions: because ourspeech consists of a variety of sounds, frequencies and rhythms, it’s possible to misperceive sounds as a human voice, especially if the investigator is expecting to hear a ghostly voice.

The famous British psychic researcher and author Harry Price, who investigated psychical phenomena and exposed fraudulent spiritualist mediums in the early half of the 20th century, offered some protocol to follow, many of which most ghost hunters follow to this day:

Frequently examine the grounds of a building, and, occasionally, watch windows or building from outside. If there are several observers, they can be divided between building and grounds.

Each observer should provide himself with the following articles, in addition to night clothes, etc .(in the case of spending multiple nights on site),: Note book, pencils, good watch with second hand, candle and matches, pocket electric torch, brandy flask, sandwiches, etc. If he possesses a camera, this can be used. Rubber or felt soled shoes should be worn.

Search the building thoroughly, close and fasten all doors and windows. If necessary, seal them.

Visit all rooms at intervals of about one hour.

Note the exact times of all sounds or occurrences, as well as your own movements, and weather conditions at the time.

Occasionally extinguish all the lights and wait in complete darkness, remaining perfectly quiet.

Price himself became an expert amateur magician, joining the Magic Circle, a British organization, founded in 1905, that dedicates itself to promoting and advancing the art of magic, in 1922. He used his knowledge to  investigate paranormal phenomena and suspicious mediums.

There’s so much material on Price’s investigations that it would need a complete additional post, which I may do at some point. In the meantime, here are my favourite television shows over the past few years, some of which can still be found on streaming platforms”

Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files – a  team of experts in various fields try to disprove or replicate a well-known phenomenon. I loved their approach of skepticism first. But, they couldn’t always succeed at either.

Ghost Mine: a fascinating investigation into a series of strange occurrences at a gold mine in Oregon, along with an intimate look at the business of mining.

Ghosts of Shepherdstown: an entire town in Virginia is overwhelmed by paranormal phenomena, prompting the police department to bring in a team of expert investigators. There were two subsequent companion shows to this that are equally interesting:

Ghosts of Morgan City, where a similar investigation takes place in a town in Louisiana with quite a different history, and

Ghosts of Devil’s Perch, in a mining town in Utah with a violent past.

Enjoy your ghost viewing, and do share if you’ve been on any ghost hunts yourself, as we head into Spooky Season!

Writers and other artists are not happy with the advent of AI. Not because we’re seriously worried about losing our jobs, but because we feel that nothing can or should replace the inspiration and heart of a human touch.

So you can imagine the reaction when the organizers of the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, which took place from September 4th to 7th this year, planned to run a panel entitled “We Are the Ghosts in the Machine” on the final day, including an AI ethicist, and “Aiden Cinnamon Tea”, a ChatGPT entity that’s ‘co-authored’ a book called Burnout from Humans: A Little Book About AI That Is Not Really About AI with Dorothy Ladybugboss. That odd name is a pseudonym of the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, also known as Vanessa Andreotti.

There was also to be a workshop earlier in the festival with Aiden Cinnamon Tea billed as “Dear AI, Am I Talking to Myself?” I hadn’t read the lineup myself, but apparently the festival had promoted “Aiden Cinnamon Tea” as an “artificial intelligence author whose work invites readers to relate to AI not as a tool, but as a partner in the act of meaning-making”. (CBC News)

I get that AI is here and in common use. But “meaning-making”?

I looked up the Burnout from Humans website. It describes itself as “a playful reflection on complexity, connection, and the future of human-AI relationships”. It lists a new course at the University of Victoria called “A Meta-Relational Approach to AI”.

What is “meta-relational”, you may wonder, as I did? Well, meta means ‘referring to itself’. I found a further description of the hyphenated term in a listing for a workshop by Professor Andreotti, on the University of Waterloo website, where the concept of “Meta-Relational AI” promotes “a perspective that views artificial intelligence not merely as a tool but as a participant in the web of life”. Really? AI in the web of life?

I wasn’t interested in downloading the Tea-and-Ladybugboss book, and can’t comment on its contents. The website to a large extent speaks for itself. While the festival intended the panel and workshop to open some form of discussion about AI and the realm of human creators, it misread the temperature of the humans.

The AI ‘author’ was withdrawn, along with the proposed workshop, a couple of weeks before the festival took place. Otherwise, from the vantage point of my booth on Publisher’s Way, the street lined with authors and publishers as part of the Sunday Street Festival, we might have seen unintended fireworks above the workshop’s location I only found out about this scheduling kerfuffle after the fact, but the comments on Reddit have been acerbic.

How was the festival from our perspective? The volunteer organizers and helpers were very nice. It was a beautiful early fall day. The food trucks were excellent. We vendors saw a stream of attendees rushing up and down the street past all of us to get between workshops. I took photos of my tent from different angles. But I did spend a lot of time chatting with kids from the village, who were very engaging and loved to read – an upcoming generation really into actual books. There’s hope.