Facade, Stichomancy, Hazard, and Failed Novellas on Oriential Vampirism

As was kindly pointed out to me this evening, there is a real outlet for those of you craving poetic divination over at Facade.

I don’t know how it measures up against my daily random poem from PoemHunter so you’ll have to decide for yourselves.

For what it’s worth, Dictionary.com defines stichomancy as Divination by lines, or passages of books, taken at hazard.

I rather like that, the “taken at hazard” part . . . it connects with all kinds of interesting ideas that have been floating around in my mind for the past nine or ten years.

Hmm. It’s October. Halloween is just a few weeks off. Since The Red Boy proved to be somewhat unworkable as a screenplay, maybe I should dust off the aforementioned undertaker story and see if I can get it into shape by the end of the month.

I don’t know who I’m trying to kid. It’s way too long. I’ll never have the time to clean it up by Halloween. It’s practically a novella, full of gothic overdescription and Lovecraftian hyperbole.

It all started with a dream I had one night, about ten years ago. I was in a strange country, walking at dusk over low hills covered with tall pale grasses that hissed slightly in the chill wind. And as I walked, I realized that something was following me.

I woke up with a question in my mind, almost like a vaudeville joke: How do you kill a Chinese vampire?

It took me about six months to find out the answer.

Well, maybe I’ll give it a shot…