Are you new here, and this is your first time crossing over the threshold into a place that celebrates literature with a metaphysical dimension?

Links of Interest for Fledgling Members:
–Lestat Book Coven Meeting Room (this virtual space needs to be cleaned up a bit)-
–Lestat Book Coven Facebook Group Page–

Hi Coven Members!!

Hiatus Notice:

Unfortunately, I am very, very busy this week, writing up schedules for the upcoming BookExpoAmerica, finalizing interview details, making sure to diligently research backgrounds of authors to-be-interviewed, and read enough of their material to finally come up with skillful, probing interview questions. So, I am a tad bit busy (kind of an understatement). So, please, bear with having no live chat this Wednesday. So, any details below about our reading assignment and questions will correspond instead with the

   Our next live chat will be Wednesday, May 28th at 9pm. Eastern via Google Hangout on Air. More details will appear closer to that date (Click on this hyperlink text to be taken directly to the event page, where you can RSVP for next week’s event!!)

Lestat Book Coven Contest #1-Lestat Comic Contest Details

****************Remember, the contest ends May 25th at midnight?********************************

If you have been keeping yourself up to date with everything happening on our coven’s page, you are probably more than well aware of our ongoing contest. Below, you will find all the pertinent details about what the prize itself consists of, and just how exactly to gain multiple entries to possibly become the very lucky winner of this prize.

For one of our entries, one of our coven page’s more dedicated members Jo V. has diligently been working on multiple Lestat portraits, which each illustration itself is worth “10 points,” and these 10 points (or 10 entries, in Rafflecopter language) can be redeemed only once a day. And, Jo has been working industriously on these lavish, aesthetically-pleasing portraits every day for the last week.

Here is an example of a portrait she drew with oil pastels of Lestat and yours truly-the Coven Leader. Remember she has been drawing these now for 7 consecutive days; seven different drawings, each worth 10 entries apiece? So, you better start getting busy with working on your own entries to win this contest!

**Many of Jo V.’s other pieces of artwork, all entries for the coven’s comic contest, can be found on the Lestat Book Coven Facebook Group page!!!**

More Contest Details!!

 

**Are you interested in owning copies of the Vampire Lestat Comics? It is an incomplete collection, comprised of only 10 nicely packaged volumes of The Vampire Lestat comics.

 

** Along with the comics, you will get a copy of Joy Dickinson’s Haunted City:An Unauthorized Guide to the Magical, Magnificent New Orleans of Anne Rice.

**Included with all of this, you will get a handwritten poem that I will write-inspired by the character of Lestat-that will be included as part of the prize package to show how grateful I am for everyone’s excitement about the Lestat Book Coven.

** Special Artwork of Lestat, drawn by my exceptionally talented, artistically-inclined mother!!

**Effusive Note, Showering you with Praise- Perfect Stress Relief for end of the work week!

**

Contest Details: How to earn entries? (The individual with the most number of entries by May 25, 2014  at 11:59pm. will win the above prize package!)

 

Use the Rafflecopter app below to enable you to potentially win the contest!! There are four different options tied to four different ways to attain entries for this contest.

The Rafflecopter Widget can be either accessed by  either clicking  the image of a dreary, broody Louis, or the picture of the seemingly sweet, though slightly bratty Claudia! Either picture will take you to a widget, which is pretty self-explanatory!  It’s the same widget, nonetheless; they’re just inelegantly hosted on a page separate from this one.

 

 

 

 

If you have any questions or concerns related to this contest (such as potential technical issues with the Rafflecopter Widget), please contact me by using the form below! All comments sent through this form are sent privately to my email inbox. Thanks! 😀

Reading Assignment for Week#8

Below, I have details for this coming week’s reading assignment (week # 8 to be exact). As always, I also have two discussions questions and details about where and when our next live chat will take place, and the link for that will always, for now, be embedded into a clever Interview with the Vampire related GIF image!!

Live Chats:

Every Wednesday (resuming this coming Wednesday, May 14, 2014), we will be having our second consecutrive live chat via Google Hangouts on Air (and simultaneously on Youtube live broadcasts). We still do not have a shadowy, mysterious guest, as of yet, but things will change progressively over time, in terms of piquing the interest of the many diverse vampire personalities out there.

Here is our slightly campy trailer (using clips from Tales from the Crypt) to help promote our weekly live chats!

 

Click the below Interview with the Vampire related GIF image to RSVP for our upcoming live chat, related to our upcoming reading assignment and corresponding discussion questions for this coming week!!

Reading Assignment (Posted on the Google Plus Event page for our next chat, as well!)

We are going to another pivotal area of the novel, where Louis and Claudia almost seem to segregate each other, unconsciously, from one another. In my cheap mass paperback edition of the novel, this week’s section starts immediately after where we left off last week, when Claudia and Louis (after watching a bewildering, visceral spectacle of Theater of the Vampires) are led into the catacombs. This section begins at 228 in my novel, after Louis gazes horrified at the various hell paintings along the corridor walls of Armand’s catacombs.

This section begins with the line “Where we stood finally in the center of the room, the candle seemed to pull the images to life everywhere around us,” and ends on p. 259 (of my edition of the novel) with the lines “Entering the rooms of the hotel St. Gabrielle, I set the picture on the mantel above the fire, and looked at it a long time.”

This is the sections, immediately after Louis kills an artist, who has been doing a rather intimate sketch of the vampire, and Louis returns home, after summarily slashing the throat of the artist in a most non-vampire fashion. We are ending immediately at the part, where the film accurately depicts the climatic scene where Claudia beseeches Louis to create a doll-maker, named Madeleine” into a vampire.

It is good we are taking much longer with this section. I kinda gave all of you a longer time to read, as this section is so imperative to really grasping the deeper meaning of the novel. We are plunging into the subterranean heart of this novel’s meaning. We are quite literally venturing into hell or the catacombs below the stage, which resembles the mortal perspective of vampires, and below stage is where vampire civilization or the “conscious” dead thrive. Read carefully, and really pay attention to certain words, questions and themes brought up again, from earlier in the novel!

Discussion Questions: (These are loaded questions, because this particular section is very, very complex in its realm of underlying meaning)

   1.Read over Armand’s philosophical,intimate conversation with Louis carefully, where Louis is finally able to divulge his most vexing existential and metaphysical questions to someone, whom he believes may listen? How does this conversation foil that of Louis and Lestat’s own conversations? What are your own feelings about this scene? Does this conversation entirely satisfy the insatiably inquisitive Louis?

2. Now, read the juxtaposed part of this book, which was unfortunately eliminated from the film adaptation of the movie (that chronologically precedes the scene where Claudia begs Louis to make Madeleine into a vampire). It details Louis’s last, futile relationship with an artist, who seems vaguely to tragically foil Babette. Why is this scene excluded in film versions, why is it overlooked by scholars and readers, alike? What is the point of displaying this scene of the artist, with a deep intent to draw a picture of Louis? How does this scene cement Louis’ demented, guilt-ridden notion of himself in his mind? How does this scene reflect again Louis’ earlier theory of “the pursuit of aesthetic beauty is driven by moral impulses?” 

All those subscribed to my newsletter (via email) for the coven will always be told instantly where and when the Coven Live chats are first! So, if you haven’t signed up yet, fill out the form on the Lestat Book Coven Meeting Room Page 

 

*By clicking the photo below of the Prince Lestat cover, you’ll find details on the Barnes and Nobles online website about pre-ordering your own signed edition of this  much-anticipated novel!*

Here are some other exciting tidbits from the page:

**Watch Sumiko’s lovely video, about #PrinceLestat!!**

Check out this rather exciting novel, from one of our own members of the coven:

William Massa’s Fear the Light: Who Murdered Dracula?
Also, we have this #PrinceLestat contest from editor and regular contributor on Anne Rice’s Facebook Fan Page: Todd Barselow (freelance editor for many self-published writer’s novels). He is also a venerated member of the Talmasca!! (unofficially)

**Click the banner below to access details about this giveaway of copies of Prince Lestat!!**