Tag Archives: Werewolf Wednesdays

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Werewolf Ecology

A Review of Douglas Smith’s Spirit Dance (from Impossibilia, PS Publishing, 2008)
By Derek Newman-Stille

As the final installment in Werewolf Wednesdays for October (and on Halloween of

Author and Cover Photo of Impossibilia Courtesy of Douglas Smith.

course), I thought I would do a review of Douglas Smith’s short story Spirit Dance. Not only does this story feature werewolves, but also several other types of shapeshifters. Spirit Dance represents a blending of mythologies, combining European myths of the werewolf with myths from Canada’s indigenous peoples. When a non-indigenous person uses aboriginal myths, there is always a danger of misuse or cultural appropriation, and although Douglas Smith refers to elements of indigenous culture, he does this in a respectful way. For him, aboriginal myths appear to be part of the overall cultural mythos of Canada and his work shows a respect for Canada’s First Peoples as formative for the Canadian experience – he does not relegate aboriginal people to the background.  Unlike many authors, Smith does not put aboriginal people in the position of the cultural Other, nor does he try to put aboriginal people into the position of the “noble savage” archetype, trying to make them the holders of ancient wisdom.

As this was a short story, there was not room for him to explore the condition aboriginal people have been put in as a result of Canadian treaty violations, but hopefully he can expand on this in a later story. He does illustrate the uncomfortable relationship between the government and aboriginal people by showing indigenous people being mistreated by legal officers – in this case CSIS, who begins hunting shape-shifters to use their powers for undisclosed scientific ends. The parallels to the government use of aboriginal lands and properties for their own ends can be seen here with the exploitation of this group.

Smith’s story focusses on a small group of people living alongside human kind who predated the human population – a group of shape-shifters who the Cree people named Herok’a. This population is able to shift into specific animals – either deer, wolves, bears, or predatory cats. They are only able to take the form of one animal. Each of these beings only becomes a shape-shifter after being exposed to the body fluids of another shape-shifter (even if he or she shifts into a different type of animal). Only those with The Mark from birth are able to become shape-shifters, and although their powers are brought out by contact with another shape-shifter, they don’t necessarily shift into the same type of animal.

Similar to most modern werewolf stories, the shape-shifting contact behaves like an STD or blood-based pathogen, transferring through bodily fluids like blood, saliva, seminal or vaginal fluids. However, it is not treated as an infectious and dangerous disease as many werewolf narratives treat the werewolf bite. Instead, it is only shared through ritual and only if the person already has The Mark and requests to be changed into a shape-shifter. However, like many modern werewolf narratives, the shape-shifter is then free from contamination from any other disease (AIDS is specifically mentioned, likely due to the continuing fear over HIV infection in our society).

The shape-shifters have a close kinship with the animal kingdom, being able to take the form of animals and having an ability to communicate with them. This leads to a desire among several of the shape-shifting community to become environmental advocates. Smith uses this connection with the animal kingdom as a method of discourse about environmental mistreatment and the legal inclination to ignore issues of ecology and brand environmentalists as dangerous threats. In Spirit Dance several environmental protestors are killed when a logging company tycoon orders one of his drivers to drive over them while they are in a protest chain protecting an old-growth forest. The law does not charge them with murder and only fines them for poor machinery maintenance that causes this “accident”. The werewolf and other shape-shifters serve as perfect figures for examining the conflict between the human and the ecological, standing on the barrier between human existence and the animal, and part of the inescapable awareness that we are connected to all other parts of the environmental web. Smith, as many writers are beginning to do, wields the werewolf as a symbol for ecological issues, representing the fusion of the natural and the human in one form and representing an animal that is traditionally stigmatised as dangerous while also representing the deep woods and the image of untouched nature.

Smith presents a strong ecological mystery story where characters attempt to understand the root of this incident and his characters are forced into a space of moral question where values conflict with one another.

You can explore more about Spirit Dance and the rest of Impossibilia at http://smithwriter.com/impossibilia . You can get a copy on Kobo at http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Impossibilia/book-920BLiV38U2erq3geBWO7A/page1.html

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Medical Myths and Werewolf What-ifs

A Review of Sparkle Hayter’s Naked Brunch (No Exit Press, 2002)
By Derek Newman-Stille

Cover Photo of Naked Brunch Courtesy of the Author

The real monster in Sparkle Hayter’s Naked Brunch is the medical world that portrays certain bodies as unacceptable and in need of being fixed. Hayter’s werewolf begins as a regular woman, Annie Engel, who is tightly controlled and subjugated – bullied by a boss who uses her, used by a partner who took advantage of her to fund his way through law school before leaving her for another woman. Annie is the figure of oppressed femininity. She soon discovers that she is part of a further oppressed group, a person with a chronic medical illness called LMD (Lycanthropic Metamorphic Disorder). She finds out that even her body is vulnerable and feels that she cannot even control her own body or its actions.

She is a werewolf, struggling with the idea that she can’t control her body and that the disease has power over her. She loses conscious awareness and control when she takes her werewolf form. She seeks medical intervention and comes across Dr. Marco Potenza, who is a werewolf himself and whose family has taken the role of controlling werewolves so that they can adapt to the rest of the world. His treatment for Annie and other werewolves consists of highly damaging chemicals and addictive substances that are used to control her body. His werewolves generally end up either dead or with severe addiction and psychological damage as a result of his ‘help’.  He sees werewolves as medical oddities rather than supernatural fiction turning the mythical into the medical – something he can control.

He tries to encourage werewolves to hide their differences rather than believe that they have a role to play in society, but, when Annie meets a rogue werewolf who opposes Potenza’s “treatment plan”, she begins to explore the possible social purposes that could exist.

Hayter explores the role of social ostracism and the myth that the medical world can solve

Alternative Cover Photo of Naked Brunch Courtesy of the author

all problems. She uses the symbol of the werewolf to suggest the idea that other body types have a social purpose and contribute to our world in a meaningful way. Hayter calls on her readers to question their notions of normalcy and the standards of the ‘ordinary’ that are applied to bodies. She looks at the role of difference as a form of empowerment and the power of outsider communities to nourish their members.

You can find out more about Sparkle Hayter at http://www.sparklehayter.com/

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Interview with Kelley Armstrong

An Interview with Kelley Armstrong by Derek Newman-Stille

Photo of Kelley Armstrong (centre) with Ellen Bentzen (left) and Derek Newman-Stille (right) at a lecture at Peter Gzowski College, Trent University.

Kelley Armstrong was the first Canadian author of the fantastic that I found and enjoyed. A few years ago, I was able to have Ms. Armstrong visit Trent University to be an author in residence for Trent’s Champlain College and Gzowski College. It was an incredible experience for our students and an amazing experience for myself. I want to thank her for this opportunity to do an interview.

Kelley Armstrong is the author of the Otherworld series and the Nadia Stafford Series.

Spec Can: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself to begin the interview?

Kelley Armstrong: I’m the author of the “Women of the Otherworld” paranormal suspense series and “Darkest Powers/Darkness Rising” young adult urban fantasy series, as well as the Nadia Stafford crime series.  I grew up in Southwestern Ontario and I still live there with my family.

Spec Can: One of the things that really impresses me about your work is your ability to get into the psychology of the monster and really understand what feelings and hopes they have. Do you feel that your background in psychology helps you to explore the minds of your characters?

Kelley Armstrong: I like to think it helps me with character development.  If I want a character to turn out a certain way, I can come up with a back-story to explain her personality.  Likewise I can start with a life experience and decide how it could affect a character.

Spec Can: What aspects of your Canadian identity have influenced your authorship?

Kelley Armstrong: It makes it easier to do Canadian characters and settings [smiles] On the other hand, it makes it harder to do American ones, and that’s where a lot of my stories are set, for the simple fact that I can have a larger cast of supernaturals that way—it’s easier to speculate that so many supernatural beings go unnoticed if the population is much larger. Beyond that, I don’t feel it’s had much impact on my opportunities as an author or how I’m treated.

Spec Can: What is different about Canadian stories of the supernatural from those of other nations?

Kelley Armstrong: There are differences in the markets. What is a bestseller in the US will not necessarily be a bestseller in Britain. That’s the same for all geographic areas—Canada also has differences from both. The literature produced in our country reflects the differences in regional taste. I’m not sure it affects the supernatural aspects of the story as much as the general ones—the tone, the themes etc.

Spec Can: What teaching role can speculative fiction have?

Kelley Armstrong: Speculative fiction helps expand the world of possibilities. Readers—and students—see new possibilities for new ways of thinking and living. The fact that it takes place in a fantastical world often makes it easier to consider those challenges and issues, divorced from the emotional baggage of a reader’s own world or experience. For example, science fiction novels often include elements of racism—how does one alien race treat another—and that allows readers to consider the issues in an abstract way and then transfer those ideas over to the realm of their own world and experience.

Spec Can:  What challenges and opportunities did you have when beginning to expand your writing interests into YA / Teen Fiction?

Kelley Armstrong: I’d had an idea for a YA novel for a while (arising from the plot of Stolen) But I didn’t feel ready to tackle a teen narrator until my own daughter was old enough to help me with establishing the voice. Few things are uglier in YA than getting the point of view of a “teen” from an author who obviously hasn’t been a teen in a very long time! That was the biggest challenge. The biggest opportunity was the chance to write for a whole different market, which included my own children.

Spec Can: What were the key differences in writing characters for YA than for adult fiction?

Kelley Armstrong: While I cover a lot of narrator ages in my adult series, teens are much different.  There’s the dialogue of course—making the characters sound like teens.  But when I’m writing adults, whether they’re 25 or 45, they’re dealing with a similar set of issues (jobs, finances, marriage & children). Teens are at a different place in their lives, and the characters need to reflect that.  They also have a limited set of tools for dealing with problems.  If I have an adult character on the run, they can empty their bank accounts, get fake ID, hop on a plane and rent a hiding place.  Fifteen-year-olds can’t.

Spec Can:  What drew you to write about the supernatural?

Kelley Armstrong: I’ve been fascinated by the paranormal since I was a child.  I blame it on too many Saturday mornings watching Scooby-Doo.  By now, I have no idea why I’m so attracted to it—I just know that I love writing in this genre.

Spec Can:  What myths of the monstrous and magical do you draw on when you write?

Kelley Armstrong: I cherry-pick from as much existing folklore as I can find, to create creatures that best suits my vision, always looking at which traits would make the most logical sense if such creatures really did exist undetected in contemporary society.

Spec Can: What is distinct or different about the supernatural characters you create?

Kelley Armstrong: Nothing is uniquely my own.  Where I deviate from the more common myth (like needing silver bullets to kill werewolves) I make those decisions based on what I consider most plausible.  If werewolves needed silver bullets to die, what happens when they’re involved in what should be life-ending situations, like being run over by a transport truck?  Do they just get up and walk away?  Wouldn’t someone notice?  For me, in the world I created, it made more sense if they could be killed by any means a human can be killed. But there’s plenty of folklore where werewolves can be killed by any means, so I’m not distinct there. I’m just selecting a less common trait.

Spec Can: What werewolf myths do you create and how are they different than the werewolves of other authors?

Kelley Armstrong: The most common werewolf in the twentieth century was the “man-killing beast,” some guy who changes into an ape-like or bear-like creature every full moon and ravages the countryside killing everything in sight.  That’s scary, as monsters go, but it doesn’t really explain why such a creature is a werewolf.  Wolves avoid humans.  Wolf attacks on humans are extremely rare. I chose the portrayal that re-asserted the “wolf” in “werewolf.”  Variations on it have been done many times, so it’s nothing new.

Spec Can: Where do you think Canadian supernatural fiction is heading from here?

Kelley Armstrong: I don’t think it’s heading anywhere different than supernatural fiction in general, which is beginning a downswing. It will never go away completely, but the market will be smaller.

Spec Can: What is the role of “Otherness” and the figure of the outsider in your work?

Kelley Armstrong: Well, the series is called “The Otherworld.” [Smiles] That’s a common term for a supernatural subculture within a contemporary society. It emphasizes the otherness of the people there. They form their own culture, based on that which makes them different from others.

Spec Can: What is the role of gender in your Otherworld series?

Kelley Armstrong: My goal is to let it play as small a role as possible. Of course characters are male or female, and shaped by that, but otherwise, as characters, they are equal—just as likely to be strong or weak, good or bad, intelligent and capable… or not.

Spec Can: Your character Elena is the only female werewolf in the world of the Otherworld. What significance was there in creating a single female werewolf? What issues did you want to explore by focusing on her femininity?

Kelley Armstrong: In a lot of the folklore, werewolves are male. This seems to arise from the use of werewolves to explain brutal behavior by people—they did it because they’re really part beast. Women represent a small percentage of serial killers and mass murderers (and, if they are responsible for multiple deaths, they usually use less bloody methods, like poisoning). So most werewolves in folklore are male. That made it easy for me to postulate a male-line genetic basis for it, and therefore have a single female, then explore what it would be like to be a woman in that very male-dominated world.

Spec Can: What is the role of characters hiding themselves and ‘passing’ as human?

Kelley Armstrong: My characters struggle with the same problems as everyone else–family, romance, career, friends.  While it’s fun to create a vampire rock star, it takes a fantastical being and puts him in a “fantasy” lifestyle.  Readers can relate better to supernaturals who are programmers, lawyers, journalists, professors etc.  It’s also possible to create a world where everyone knows about the supernaturals, but that opened up problems and scenarios that didn’t really interest me. I was more interested in the identity issue of hiding one’s true self rather than the issues of fitting into society when you are openly different.

Spec Can: Even though your characters are supernatural, they reveal a lot about the natural and the human experience. What is the role of the supernatural for revealing things about human beings and society?

Kelley Armstrong: The supernatural can be a way of showing people dealing with issues in a larger-than-life fashion. I often have issues of identity in mine—finding one’s true self, accepting the self, finding one’s place in society. Having a character deal with being, for example, a werewolf lets me do that in a fun and entertaining way.

Spec Can: Do your characters ever take you to places that you didn’t intend to go? Do they take on personalities of their own?

Kelley Armstrong: I’ve had several characters that didn’t turn out the way I envisioned them in the plotting stage, usually minor characters.  One was Zoe, the vampire thief in Broken.  I’d originally pictured her as a possible romantic interest for my bachelor werewolf, Nick.  Their personalities would have gone well together.  Except that once she came alive on the page, she was a lesbian…which was a bit of an obstacle to my matchmaking plans [Smiles]

Spec Can: What is the role of race and ethnicity in your work?

Kelley Armstrong: My work is more concerned with supernatural race—how does being a witch or a sorcerer impact your life, how do you deal with those prejudices and expectations. Otherwise, it’s like sexuality. The characters are what they are, as they appear to me when I create them. They aren’t homogenously white and heterosexual, but I’m not checking off boxes either, to make sure I’m accurately representing modern society. In these books, it’s the supernatural type representation that’s more important for the stories I’m telling.

Spec Can: What is the virtue of creating characters outside of the mainstream?

Kelley Armstrong: They’re more interesting! [Smiles] You can explore different types of situations and explore them in unique ways. Of course, it’s also interesting to take a mainstream character and put them into those “outside of mainstream” situations, but I’ve found that my readership responds better to the outsiders.

Spec Can: What do you hope your readers will take away from reading your novels?

Kelley Armstrong: I hope they enjoyed it. That’s really all any writer can hope for—that a book did what it was supposed to and entertained them.

Spec Can: Several of your characters express a desire to learn about themselves and the feeling of not belonging. What makes characters who feel that they don’t belong so interesting?

Kelley Armstrong: I think it’s an issue that many readers deal with themselves. Most people feel that they are different from the mainstream in some way, which I think just means that mainstream is a far more narrow category than mass media would have us believe. Even the simple act of fiction reading isn’t often depicted in mainstream media—how often do characters seem to sit down with a book. Even if they do, it’s usually literary or “book club” not genre.

Spec Can: Your book Bitten has been picked up as a television series. How involved will you be in the writing process?

Kelley Armstrong: They’ve been keeping me informed and asking my opinion on various matters, but I’m well aware that this is their version of my story rather than a televised copy of it.

Spec Can: What makes supernatural characters so interesting to today’s audience?

Kelley Armstrong: They allow us to stretch our imaginations and ask “what if” beyond our normal reality–what if we could change into wolves, what if we could speak to the dead?  With supernatural fiction, it’s less of a stretch than traditional fantasy because we’re dealing with concepts most of us already understand (werewolves, vampires, ghosts)

Spec Can: What is the most challenging thing about writing the supernatural?

Kelley Armstrong: I used to say the world-building, because that’s a huge part of the work. It’s fun, but it is a challenge. Now, though, I’d say that an equally big challenge is standing out in a crowded market. In a way, that’s tougher. With world-building, I’m in control. I just need to do the work. I can’t control the market, though.

Spec Can: What was it like to be an author in residence at Trent University? Is there anything that you want to share about the experience with other authors?

Kelley Armstrong: I loved it! I always enjoy the chance to speak to young writers, and this was the

Photo of Kelley Armstrong with Jess Grover at Trent University’s Alumni House.

perfect opportunity. Everyone was wonderful and eager to learn, and that made it a very positive experience that I won’t forget.

Spec Can: What new projects are you currently working on? What new and exiting things should we be looking for from you over the next few years?

Kelley Armstrong: I’ve sold a new adult trilogy that has some supernatural elements, but is more mystery. The first book, Omens, comes out in October 2013. I’m also trying my hand at middle grade, having just sold a Norse-myth-based trilogy that’ll be co-written with Melissa Marr. Both will start in 2013.

You can find out more about Kelley Armstrong at her website http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/ . You can read some of her free online fiction at http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/free-online-fiction/

 I want to thank Kelley Armstrong for taking the time to do this interview and for letting readers know about her current projects. It has been a pleasure to talk to her again.

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Upcoming Interview with Kelley Armstrong Wednesday October 17, 2012.

As part of Werewolf Wednesdays, this coming Wednesday October 17, 2012, I will be interviewing Kelley Armstrong, author of several werewolf novels including Bitten, and Stolen. Kelley Armstrong gave a guest lecture in one of the courses I taught at Trent University: Werewolves As Symbols of the Human Experience, and it has been amazing to get back in touch with her and talk about her experiences as a writer as well as share her insights on werewolves and the supernatural, Teen Fiction, myth-building, and character creation with readers.

Here are a few highlights from the interview:

Kelley Armstrong: Speculative fiction helps expand the world of possibilities.

Kelley Armstrong: Readers—and students—see new possibilities for new ways of thinking and living. The fact that it takes place in a fantastical world often makes it easier to consider those challenges and issues, divorced from the emotional baggage of a reader’s own world or experience.

Kelley Armstrong: While I cover a lot of narrator ages in my adult series, teens are much different.  There’s the dialogue of course—making the characters sound like teens.  But when I’m writing adults, whether they’re 25 or 45, they’re dealing with a similar set of issues (jobs, finances, marriage & children). Teens are at a different place in their lives, and the characters need to reflect that.  They also have a limited set of tools for dealing with problems.

Kelley Armstrong: I’ve been fascinated by the paranormal since I was a child.  I blame it on too many Saturday mornings watching Scooby-Doo.

Kelley Armstrong: Where I deviate from the more common myth (like needing silver bullets to kill werewolves) I make those decisions based on what I consider most plausible.  If werewolves needed silver bullets to die, what happens when they’re involved in what should be life-ending situations, like being run over by a transport truck?

Kelley Armstrong: Wolves avoid humans.  Wolf attacks on humans are extremely rare. I chose the portrayal that re-asserted the “wolf” in “werewolf.”

Kelley Armstrong: The series is called “The Otherworld.” That’s a common term for a supernatural subculture within a contemporary society. It emphasizes the otherness of the people there. They form their own culture, based on that which makes them different from others.

Kelley Armstrong: In a lot of the folklore, werewolves are male. This seems to arise from the use of werewolves to explain brutal behaviour by people—they did it because they’re really part beast. Women represent a small percentage of serial killers and mass murderers (and, if they are responsible for multiple deaths, they usually use less bloody methods, like poisoning).

Kelley Armstrong: While it’s fun to create a vampire rock star, it takes a fantastical being and puts him in a “fantasy” lifestyle.  Readers can relate better to supernaturals who are programmers, lawyers, journalists, professors etc. I was more interested in the identity issue of hiding one’s true self rather than the issues of fitting into society when you are openly different.

Check out the interview with Kelley Armstrong on Speculating Canada this Wednesday  October 17th and find out about her new projects. Kelley is the author of the Women of the Otherworld series, the Darkest Powers/Darkness Rising young adult series, and the Nadia Staffordcrime series. 

Photo of Kelley Armstrong at Sadleir House, Peterborough, Ontario.

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Animal Cruelty and the Animal in the Human

A review of Stephanie Snow’s “Dog Fight” (In Unearthed: The Speculative Elements Series Volume 3, Third Person Press, Cape Breton, N.S., 2012).
By Derek Newman-Stille

Cover Photo for UnEarthed Courtesy of Third Person Press

Werewolves are traditionally figures of excessive masculinity – excessively hairy, excessively aggressive, and excessively woodsy. They often embody characteristics associated with masculine stereotypes. It is therefore exciting that Stephanie Snow presents queer werewolves in her short story “Dog Fight”. Unlike a lot of authors who write about queer subject matter, she does not make the queerness the defining feature of these werewolves, but rather an aspect of their wider identity. Also, unlike many authors, she does not feel the need to feminise gay men, but rather presents them as highly masculine figures – a werewolf who engages in the sport of dog fighting and his partner who negotiates with others involved in the dog fights.

Snow uses the werewolf narrative and the context of the dog fight as a method of critically engaging with the idea of animal cruelty and the human disregard for animals. By using the figure of the werewolf, a figure in the body of an animal, but with a human viewpoint and subjectivity, she allows the reader to engage with the animal perspective as it and other animals are pushed to engage in competition for human enjoyment. Although focused on animal cruelty in dog fights, Snow encourages her readers to think about the way we submit animals to our needs and desires overall, making them incidental casualties to human greed and the oppression of nature. She illustrates that animalistic figures are not the monsters of our society, but are rather oppressed victims of human control.

Like many werewolf narratives, Snow uses the werewolf to explore notions of human civility and the thin veneer of human civilisation that allows us to ignore all of the monstrous subcurrents of human nature. She illustrates that it is not the animalistic, instinctual part of human nature that should be feared, but the repression of that nature, the systems of chains and controls that we place on our perceived animalistic side that actually only provide a mechanism for justifying our cruelties.

To read more about the Speculative Elements Series, visit Third Person Press at http://www.thirdpersonpress.com/

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Canadian Werewolves

By Derek Newman-Stille

Canada is fundamentally a hybridised place, embodying multiple differences in the same country and torn/strengthened by contrasting pulls of culture. This hybridity, and ability to alternate between different forms is best expressed in the werewolf and this is why the werewolf has become such an interesting medium for Canadian duality or multiplicity. We are multiple and ever changing, shifting between diverse forms and expressions. Canada’s bilingual and bicultural policy embeds in it a binary, a duality that echoes the transformation of the werewolf. It’s multicultural policy shows the fluctuations of identity and the multiplicity of identity that the werewolf can also express. We are not set and unchanging, but, rather, Canada defines itself by its changeability, by its multiplicity just as the werewolf is defined by its ability to shift and take new forms. The werewolf represents the challenge of balancing a multiplicity and shifting of existence and the idea that shifts of form are not easy, but require constant vigilance and self awareness.

Here are a few werewolf stories that have really spoken to me and helped me to question existence and be comfortable with the changeability of identity and the ability to live in the question and not try to force anything into my ideas of stability.

Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten

A great book that uses the werewolf as a symbol of feminine empowerment. It positions the heroine as the only female werewolf in the world, dealing with the conflicts between her own desire for the ‘normal life’ and the call of a new form of heritage. She challenges the masculinity inherent in a lot of werewolf horror.

Tanya Huff’s Blood Trail

Deals with issues of intolerance and religious persecution. Set in a small town, this novel is about the secrecy of identity, and the need to hide aspects of the self that are different from the mainstream culture around oneself.

Sparkle Hayter’s Naked Brunch

Treats the werewolf as a point between the medical and the mystical. Hayter’s werewolves are subject to medical treatment, control, and suppression.

Charles de Lint’s Wolf Moon

Positions the struggle between assumption about identity and the truth of identity. This is a novel that reveals that the surface aspects of identity are often the least important.

Claude Lalumiere’s Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey in Objects of Worship

Werewolf meets alien in apocalyptic future. This werewolf, already hybridised, encounters an alien that is based on assimilation, bringing new and unique biological forms into its own body and incorporating diversity into itself.

Margaret Atwood’s Wereman in Journals of Susana Moodie

Positions the man as fundamentally werewolfish, embodying a changeable identity and shifting from when he is inside the house, to when he is outside the home in a space that he defines as one in which he can express his masculinity.

Douglas Smith’s Out of the Light in Chimerascope.

Creates a distinctly urban were creatures and causes the reader and characters to question the image of the natural were, out in the scary woods and reminds us that the city itself is a frightening environment of changeability and shifts. Not every creature of darkness lurks in the shadows and shadows need light to take form.

John Fawcett (director)Ginger Snaps (2000)

This film  plays with ideas of gender and the coming-of-age theme through the werewolf medium. It deals with ideas of sisterhood, family, and the straining bonds of family that come with radical change.

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Werewolf Wednesdays Throughout October 2012

Werewolf Wednesdays Throughout October

For the month of October, in celebration of the upcoming Halloween celebrations, I thought I would create an appropriate theme: Werewolf Wednesdays. For those of you who know me well, you will have heard (probably frequently) about my love of the werewolf. For a few years, my love of lycanthropy (werewolfism) even led me to teach a course at Trent University – Werewolves As Symbols of the Human Experience. The class was an incredible opportunity to work with some really interesting and unique students and it increased my love of the werewolf subject. I was even able to work some Canadian content into the course – the Canadian movie Ginger Snaps and a novel by Canadian author Kelley Armstrong, Bitten.

This month of Werewolf Wednesdays, look forward to discourses on the werewolf in Canada, and reviews of several werewolf stories. Enjoy this month of Lycanthropic Love.