Chicago's Most Wanted

That Toddlin' Town

How can you not love this City?

Chicago's Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Murderous Mobsters, Midway Monsters, and Windy City Oddities was the first of my books that was published. I'd never done a nonfiction book of this sort before, so the project was quite an eye-opener. But it was also a lot of fun. This is one of the most interesting and enjoyable cities out there and has a past full of fun and fascinating stories. The hardest part was not being able to put all the stuff I wanted in it. I would love to write a volume II one day. We'll see.

The Introduction from Chicago's Most Wanted:

Chicago is a town that when told it couldn't do something, went ahead and did it anyway. One of the most beautiful and powerful cities in the world was built on a swamp but never succumbed to it. In its early years, it was the fastest-growing city in the world, the prodigy of the Midwest outdoing its sibling cities, some of them even older than Chicago. Far from a toddling town, it was, and is, a charging town, meeting challenges head-on, losing big, and winning bigger. It drew to it and eventually began to breed inspired thinkers whose inventions, innovations, and philosophies helped it plow forward against all odds. What one comes away with when reading about Chicago is its sense of duality: State Street finesse bleeding into Stockyard brutality. It's remarkable elegance always seems overshadowed by a raw unpredictability. Chicago's a stout being, strong and determined with a touch of stubbornness but just as much charm, humor, and honesty. Chicago approaches challenges like grand adventures, either winning the day or, as in the case of her sports teams, shrugging and saying, "Well, there's always next year."

Vampires' Most Wanted

Drink It All In

Vampires' Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Bloodthirsty Biters, Stake-wielding Slayers, and Other Undead Oddities came about when Potomac Publishing asked if I wanted to do another book in their Most Wanted series. I enjoyed writing Chicago's Most Wanted so much that I agreed. It was perfect timing as well. I had just written To Touch the Sun and Ujaali in what would become the Chicago Vampire Series and was looking around for a publisher for those two. I had vampires on my mind, I guess. The subject turned out to be quite interesting due to the variety of vampires to be found in cultures around the world. How they're made, how they look, how they're conquered or accepted depends on the culture or person telling the story which helps keep the creature popular through the ages.

The Introduction from Vampires' Most Wanted:

What is a vampire? It’s a more complex question than one might think. Now considered sexy, the vampire was at one time often regarded as vermin or a metaphor for the plague. Ghouls with nothing more on their minds than obtaining sustenance, they rose, sucked blood, then returned to the grave until hunger sent them forth again. They were a necrophiliac’s dream, perhaps, but little more than that.

Journeying back through time, however, the answer to the question is subjective. The nature of the beast depended upon its time and place. The vampire’s role in society, for it has always had a role to play, was inherent upon the culture in which it appeared. Vampires could be seen as mischievous spirits, relatives returning from the grave and searching for comfort, mindless creatures hungry for blood, or other bodily secretions, sensual beings whose only drive was to sexually torture the living, or powerful deities that demanded blood to prove the believer’s faith. All this and more can be found in the notion of the vampire, a legendary creature that has remained vibrant after the legends of other creatures have sputtered out.

To be fair, the vampire has had its “champions” throughout the centuries who have helped keep it alive. Superstitious peasants, the church, and Bran Stoker have fed society’s own need for fantasy and romance. These patrons have consistently given the notion of the vampire new life at just the right time to spur it on.

Yet, it is the vampire’s malleability that has best helped it survive. The vampire has the ability to become what we need when we need it.

Throughout time, the vampire has been the sum of all our fears and the perfect scapegoat, yet it has retained an allure that has carried it across centuries and evolved, as we have, to fit our fantasies today. An ancient bogeyman, by turns, has become a romantic figure, superhero, and teen dream.