Before the story of A Song Heard in the Future began to gel, I thought I might want to have something undead involved. I’m making an effort to stay true to the mythology. This isn’t simple because one myth will contradict the next with regard to some critical “facts”. Assuming one is true often means another cannot be. Where two disagree, I feel free to make a choice, either supporting one over another – or in taking a completely new angle. When none of the accounts offer evidence for desired component of the story – like the undead – I don’t feel as though I have much latitude to include it. (I’m such a conformist.) 😉

The Ancient Greeks do not seem to have had vampires, per se. There is the vrykolakas but this creature seems to have been important from the Romanian night (vârcolac). Furthermore, the ‘lakas would have been more of a werewolf than anything nosferatu (nesuferitu).

The spirit of anyone properly buried was transported to the Underworld, where they promptly forgot much of their mortal lives – if not all. I can’t remember if I wanted to have Teiresias do battle with some sort of strigoi (also, btw, Romanian). What I might have had a vampire do in Song I now cannot recall. I’m not certain whether that is fitting or ironic.

Over this past weekend, however, my co-author (Leanna Renee Hieber) and I discussed the concepts of a culture and the statements collectively made by it – in its folklore – about its own philosophical assumptions. What does it mean if you (as a society) have to outsource certain folkloric descriptions over the river at the border? The musing on this theme likely won’t have emphasis in Song – but Leanna and I probably will present it as a panel at an upcoming convention.