What is Sanity?

In the forward to Staked! my WriteOn Joliet co-leader wrote that the original BryonySeries vampire trilogy was a greet series not because of a vampire's need for blood but due to the very human need for love.

It is a theme that runs through all three books, starting with eighteen-year-old Melissa Marchellis' infatuation with a Victorian vampire and her romanticized view of his life and ending the heroic actions of others, which, perhaps, is the most of selfless of loves.

The Gothic prequel Before the Blood, all five volumes of it, addresses the very subtle ways people lose their soul, not necessarily in a religious dogmatic way, but "soul" in those qualities that elevate humanity.

So if the "drop of blood" trilogy (Bryony, Visage and Staked!) explores what it means to give and receive love, and Before the Blood explores the essence of what it means to be human, Lycanthropic Summer, at its core, explores what it means to be sane.

Although Lycanthropic Summer has the progression of a novel and is told in first person, well, that's where the resemblance to traditional novels end.

On the surface, the story is about a teen in 1961, who's set herself a goal to write the world's greatest werewolf love story by the time she's eighteen. And she has just three months to go.

So in the book, the reader follows Caryn's journey in a very personal way, through reading her diary (which sometimes contains some very strong language), her short stories, and her attempts at writing the novel.

These clippings have some structure because Caryn is a writer; she's been writing most of her life. But sometimes they also feel disjointed, and sometimes they may drag because it is, ultimately, her diary - and the book size and font were carefully chosen to reflect that.

But without asking the questions overtly, the story may leave the reader pondering a few concepts:

* Where is the line drawn between creativity and madness?

* Where does "helping" leave off and "abetting" begin?

* Can a physical illness be mistaken for a mental illness - and the other way around?

* Is insanity always that obvious? Meaning, can the appearance of "very sane" be, in fact, the opposite?

* Is it always obvious who is manipulating and betraying whom.

These are all questions the reader gets to decide as he/she works through the book.

Now Lycanthropic Summer is, possibly, a faster read than the above mentioned books.

But it's not necessarily an easier one.