Book Review: "My Memoirs of the Dark Shadows Conventions" by Anthony Taylor

My Memoirs of the Dark Shadows Conventions by Anthony Taylor (AuthorHouse, 2021)

This very brief ebook (29 pages) focuses on Dark Shadows conventions on the east coast between 1993 and 2016. A presumably Black fan who grew up watching the television show in the 1960s and 1970s—enamored by Lara Parker, “​​a sexy, beautiful … white woman”—discovered fandom several decades later by way of a video tape advertisement for a convention. Taylor attended Dark Shadows conventions in 1993, 1995, 2001, 2004, 2006-2007, 2009, 2012, and 2016.

In a sequence of brief chapters, the author shares personal recollections of the cultural importance of the program, the impact of the show’s supernatural elements, and the many actors he was able to meet and obtain autographs from. Taylor also comments on various aspects of attending cons through the eyes of a newcomer: the speakers and screenings, the openness of the featured cast members, the dealers rooms, con literature such as the 50th anniversary album, and other attendees: “Most were rich, and from the Caucasian race.”

He details his favorite actors, recognizes the deaths of Dan Curtis and Jonathan Frid, and credits his involvement in the Dark Shadows Fan Club in part for his success as a trustee at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Brooklyn. The ebook ends with several personal photographs of what might be Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York.

I was surprised to find this multi-year con report available on Amazon, and I’m glad that Taylor wrote it. I’m also glad he found lifelong enjoyment and involvement through Dark Shadows fandom. His memoir ably communicates its personal importance and meaning.

Book Review: "Dark Sojourns" by Beth H. Adams

Dark Sojourns by Beth H. Adams (Secret Pleasures, 2002)

This 2002 Dark Shadows gen novella published by Secret Pleasures Press “is intended for entertainment of the fans of Dark Shadows, and is not intended to infringe on copyrights and trademarks held by others.” I believe I ordered it from Agent with Style about a decade ago. Agent with Style—once a wonderful source for hard copies of fan fiction—seems to have stopped operating in 2015 (their domain name expired in 2020). Regardless, I finally got around to reading Adams’s 138-page novella, which is well written, well printed, and spiral bound with a couple of pieces of photo collage artwork. As fan fiction goes, it’s relatively clean reading—well edited—and I only remember a couple typographical errors.

Barnabas Collins and Willie Loomis have left Collinsport, Maine, moving down the east coast eventually to Augusta, Georgia, where they meet their neighbor, a friendly single mother who works as a plastic surgeon. The novella is largely a love story, perhaps presaging that of Twilight, with Collins and Loomis becoming fond of the mother and her 5-year-old daughter. (Collins finally expresses his appreciation for Loomis’s caretaking and service.) Collins and the mother eventually fall in love. But Collins is torn: between his need for human blood and love for a woman, and between Anjelique’s witch curse and the hope that if he commits “an act of selfless love,” Josette will be returned to him.

On one level, the premise of the novella seems to be that the only bad thing about Dark Shadows is that Collins is a vampire. What if he weren’t? I’m not sure he’d even be interesting were that the case. Moreso, however, it’s the story of a love reclaimed and reunited. The idea of a reincarnated Josette, of Collins finally being able to find love after 400 years are very human desires and tensions worth exploring, even if their resolution effectively ends what turned out to be the best part of the television program. After all, Dan Curtis’s creation admittedly plagues the writer still.

Adams populates the story with several other interesting characters, including a coworker named Ty and his grandmother, Mignon, who practices “a bit of voodoo.” There are also several notable scenes. In one, Collins saves his new love from an attacker in a parking lot. In another, she confronts him about slaking his thirst on young prostitutes even though he’d promised not to do so. Most husbands aren’t guilty of such a severe betrayal, but its parallel to spousal infidelity resonated. And the surgeon channels her inner Victor Frankenstein as she tries to save Collins from himself and his dark desires, too.

A fun read—and better than most fan fiction I’ve encountered online.