Elijah David

I've been listening to the Audible full cast production of Dracula  (each narrator in the novel has a different reader, with Tim Curry as Van Helsing and Alan Cumming as Dr. Seward)   on my commute lately, and I'm noticing things I haven't caught in previous readings. Why do modern versions never keep the mustaches? For instance, there's a bench in Jonathan Harker's early entries that the locals call "word bearer." I assume that's where visitors would stop to share the news. But the loftiness of that phrase started my wheels turning. I know Stoker isn't always the most careful with his details in this book (for example, Lucy's hair changing color after she dies) but this seems like an odd bit of trivia to be throwing in with all of Jonathan's other exotic travel experiences. The very phrase "word bearer" conjures up something grand, important, and even imposing in its own way. If you move out from the obvious meaning I ment...

Before we dive into this month's Top 10, I want to share a couple pieces of fan art created one of my betas for the Albion books. I'm very excited to share them with you because who doesn't love seeing characters they've written inspire others to create something? Robin from Albion Academy ( Source ) Merlin and Robin in Albion Apparent ( Source ) You can check out more of Meltintalle's art on her Tumblr . Okay, back to the subject at hand. I know that "scary" is a subjective word, so let me clarify: these are characters that have, at one time or another, frightened me. Most of them were just frightening when I was a child (in some cases, specific incidents when I was a child), but all of them still have something unsettling about them even now. The Headless Horseman Source I'm thinking in particular of the version from Disney's animated adaptation of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (which was first released as...

September brings autumn with it, and though that may not be official for another three weeks, I want to jump-start the season with a run down of some favorite books to read in the fall. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Aside from the fact that this book begins in the fall, it just has such an autumnal feel to me throughout. It has forests and traveling and longing for both home and adventure, which encapsulates the spirit of the season for me. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury I'll try not to overload this list with Halloween-ish stories, but Something Wicked is such an autumn-infused story. Will's father even calls the carnival's denizens "The Autumn People". Bradbury and this book may be partly responsible for my own love of autumn. The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis Really, Narnia in general can feel autumnal, but The Horse and His Boy  is the most autumnal, with its arid atmosphere and the Hermit of the South...