Vampires! Vampires everywhere!

Not too long ago I was talking with Lady Ru'etha about her upcoming vampire-themed mp3, "The Merchant's Daughter." She's given me a preview copy, and I've mentioned it on my blog before; but I told her I wanted to wait and do a proper review when she made it available to the public. However, she encouraged me to go ahead and post it whenever I liked.

Now I know why. This morning I got an e-mail update from the Realm of Bliss Yahoo Group (Not a member yet? Well, get on it!) in which Lady Ru'etha announced her newest podcast. Wouldn't you know, it's all about vampires? Just the thing to put you in the holiday spirit! Of course, as she notes, December does include the longest night of the year...which leads me quite naturally to think of the great recent vamp flick 30 Days of Night, but I digress.
 
In the podcast Lady Ru'etha recommends several classic short stories that are available online, and she reads some of the best passages from them - without spoiling too much, I hasten to add. Then she goes on to give you the links in her show notes so you can read the full text for yourselves. She also recommends the Penguin Vampire Anthology, which I actually used to own (I traded it in at a used bookstore during a fit of temporary insanity; so if you bought yours there and it had star ratings beside the stories in the table of contents, you might well have gotten my old copy), and would love to own again. Nice to know it's still in print. Maybe I'll check Amazon and buy it again. Heh, maybe I'll even find my own book still floating around out there. ;-)

But back to "The Merchant's Daughter." This is the first in a series of vampire-themed hypnosis sessions that Lady Ru'etha has in the works. It's f/f, but I wouldn't be surprised if she makes other combinations available when she puts it online. Anyway, the session begins in the usual "Safe Space" and "Room of Doors," then leads you through a portcullis into a nonspecific past-time and past-place where you stop overnight in an unfamiliar village and run across a beautiful young lady...who does some decidedly unladylike things to you before it's all over with. She can be very convincing, you see. But don't worry; all the compulsions evaporate once you're back in the Room of Doors, so you can relax and just enjoy surrendering your will. Completely, if you like.

One of the coolest things I've discovered about Lady Ru'etha's mp3's is that every one you listen to feeds into every other one. Obviously, "Safe Space" prepares you for the adventures beyond the Room of Doors; but "Voice" prepares you to experience those adventures on an even deeper level; and I have a hunch that, if you let yourself really be bound to the Merchant's Daughter, you'll find it even easier to submit in other hypnotic circumstances. We'll see about that one. ;-) When I listened to the session again a little while ago in preparation for writing this post, I went very, very deep. It was lovely.

Lady Ru'etha has crafted a story here that's both brimming with traditional vampire tropes and completely original. I can't wait to see the response when she shares it with all of you. Be on the lookout for it.

[Edited to add a screencap from The Vampire Lovers, a movie based on the short story "Carmilla" that Lady Ru'etha talks about in her podcast. I'm currently trying to download the movie from YouTube, where it's broken into nine chunks; but, dammit, parts 4 and 5 are nowhere to be found! I hope the scene above didn't come from one of those two parts; I just found it via Google Images.]