After a lengthy break from blogging, I’m back to begin sharing some of the relevant things that I’ve been doing for the past year. Moving to Texas (just for the winters) doesn’t have much to do with vampires (I haven’t found any here . . .  yet), but it has devoured more time and attention than I had hoped.

More to the point, I have just completed writing a preface for a new edition of Food for the Dead, which is being published by Wesleyan University Press and will be available before Halloween this year. In the preface, I’ve updated some of the vampire incidents that, in the first edition, were either dead ends or just too incomplete to be satisfying, including the case mentioned by “the eminent Dr. Dyer of Chicago” and that of the elusive William Rose of Rhode Island.

I’ve also discussed a few of the new vampire cases that I discovered after the first edition was published. These include some notable or unique examples: the earliest documented American exhumation (1784); the first—and, as I know, the only—American gravestone inscription that connects the words “vampire” and “consumption;” and, as yet, the only example of a vampire of color.

In the new preface, I have also addressed some of the questions I’ve been asked about the book over the past ten years. At the top of the list, of course, is: Are (were) there really vampires? In response to other comments I received, especially from educators who have used Food for the Dead as a required or recommended text in their classes, I have provided an overview of how, as a folklorist, I approached the research and interpretation of these events.

I’m posting the cover of the new edition. I would be interested in your thoughts about that—and any other issues you might want to raise. I think a blog should be interactive, which means that this blog isn’t only about what I’m doing or what I’m thinking. I want to know what your thoughts are, too. Don’t be afraid to post a message. As my favorite teacher used to say, “The only dumb question is the one that you don’t ask.”