RH Greene, Dracula memoirist ("Incarnadine"), pays tribute to his brother

R.H. Greene and his book. (Credit: John Rabe)
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Nov. 7, 2009

RH Greene, who wrote "Incarnadine, the True Memoirs Count Dracula," tells us his own true memoir -- that his book is privately dedicated to his twin brother Tom, who RH says was the other half of his heartbeat. Greene will be at Book Soup on Sunday, November 15 at 4 PM. (8818 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90069-2125, (310) 659-3110.)

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More on "Incarnadine," from Greene's news release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

LOS ANGELES, CA - Roll over Edward Cullen, and tell Sookie Stackhouse the news. INCARNADINE: The True Memoirs of Count Dracula is coming to U.S. bookstores and to Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. And despite the boom in vampire sagas, author R. H. Greene thinks he has something unique to offer.

"It's for grown-ups, for one thing," Greene says of the first installment in his two-part Dracula "memoir." "I've never read a Twilight novel or seen an episode of True Blood, but I stand in supermarket checkout lines, like everybody. It does seem like we're going through the Hannah Montana era of gothic fiction, doesn't it? I mean, there's an Edward Cullen Barbie doll coming out, you know?"

The conceit of Greene's novel is that it'sa "newly discovered Victorian artifact" once owned by Mina Murray Harker, the heroine of Bram Stoker's 1897 classic Dracula. In Greene's premise, the handwritten manuscript languished for over a century in the cornerstone of a remote Bulgarian farmhouse before being excavated by looters. Their "minor literary payload" turned out to be a first-person chronicle written by Dracula himself, covering more than three centuries of both his human and "un-dead" existence.

In the memoir, Dracula tells the story of his life before he became a vampire, and then leads the reader through his own unholy transformation and that of his three "wives." The action begins in the late Middle Ages during the last great battles of the Ottoman invasion of Eastern Europe, and ends with the first meeting between Dracula and Bram Stoker's protagonist Jonathan Harker.

The encounter with Harker sets the stage for a "very free" approach to Stoker's characters and event structure in Memoirs, Volume Two, which Greene has just completed writing. "Book two is called The Charnel House, and it's a very different piece of work, though in the same spirit as INCARNADINE."

According to Greene, the first-person voice lets the reader experience the Dracula mythos with an unusual amount of intimacy, and also allowed him to write a book in which "Dracula is the hero and God is the villain, which is the way I think a 'Prince of Darkness' would see things. We've kind of gotten away from the spiritual in vampire fiction, but it's clearly one of the core concerns in Stoker's original.

"There's also a whole wealth of detail in Slavic folklore that was unavailable to the author of Dracula, and it's been great fun researching those older traditions and trying to incorporate them into INCARNADINE in a way that feels authentic."

Interestingly, just a month after Greene's Dracula origin story goes to press, the Bram Stoker estate is coming out with Dracula The Un-Dead, an "official sequel" by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt that Greene says "sounds like a detective novel based on the new Amazon extract."

While Greene says he was unaware of the sequel's existence while working on INCARNADINE, "I wish them a lot of success. Nobody deserves to benefit from the ongoing interest in Dracula more than a writer with the last name of Stoker.

"Between their sequel and my story of how Dracula came to be, I think there's a unique opportunity for readers to re-evaluate their relationship to one of literature's most lasting works. And who knows? Maybe it's Dracula's turn to reign supreme again over the genre Bram Stoker virtually invented for him. I'm pretty sure audiences are still going to care about him long after True Blood is just a pile of discount DVDs at Costco, and Edward Cullen has crumbled into dust."

Eileen
2 weeks ago

Love you, Ray. Love you, Tommy. Miss you so much... great to hear you... great to hear your guitar.

Danielle
1 week, 6 days ago

I listened to your story while lazing around on Saturday. I loved hearing about your brother - who he was, his candid guitar playing, his support and enthusiasm for your ideas. It was such a nice coincidence that your recorder got stuck recording so many of the everyday moments between you and Tommy. I was touched. It also made me think of my own younger brother, also named Tommy who I lost a fews years backl I agree, you never get over the loss, you just maybe live with it. And you dream about him almost every night.....still in your life in many ways.
-Danielle McKee, LA/Toronto

David Murphy
1 week, 6 days ago

I heard this story while driving on Saturday and nearly had to pull over. It paralleled my life with my big brother Tommy so closely. We were not twins, but Irish twins (being the same age for 2 weeks every summer!) In my story, I was a little bit of the black sheep, but also a writer, illustrator and I was the one to move out to CA while big brother Tommy stayed in Kansas City to become head of media relations for Sprint and where he was popular and very much loved by anyone who ever met him including many top NFL, NASCAR and political figures even President Obama mentioned him in a speech to NASCAR on August. Me and Tommy talked a lot about him bringing my 3 nephews out to CA for a visit to Lego Land or Disney, or the beach. Tommy Murphy was killed in a freak accident in August while on vacation with his family when a boulder smashed through the windshield of the car he was driving. His death leaves such a giant hole in me and anyone else who knew my big brother and has also left me angry at God, fate, whoever... And I also have those dreams where it seems it was all a mistake, that someone got it all wrong.
Thank you for your touching heartfelt story-It made me feel that there are people out there that are going through the same things. Yeah how about that God. He really is a piece of work.

Matthew Smith
1 week, 5 days ago

Fantastic piece.

Jean
1 week, 5 days ago

Just heard the last 2-3 minutes of this piece. Beautiful, real, moving. I'm buying Incarnadine despite my lack of Draculian knowledge.

I've always felt that being a twin must be the ultimate rip-off because it deprives you of the fall-back position of "at least there's only one of me in all of time." I was wrong, and am now filled with longing for not having that experience.

It really doesn't get better. You just get used to it.

Beautiful, beautiful piece of radio.

Ray (R. H.) Greene
1 week, 4 days ago

Thanks to all of you for your very heartfelt comments. A hard thing to live with, and a hard piece of radio work to collaborate on, but it's something I wanted to do from the moment I realized I had preserved the sound of a small piece of Tommy and my life together. To John and KPCC, my own and my family's deepest thanks.

Jay
5 days, 5 hours ago

Well Ray, I finally had the chance to listen to your recording. This is such a touching tribute. Just getting the chance to hear Tommy's pleasant voice bought him right back to us, if for just a few moments. He was very special...so are you.

Thanks for this and all the other stories you've told, and will tell.
Jay

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