Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #31: "Wolf Moon," Writing About Werewolves

If you write paranormal fiction, you will eventually deal with werewolves. Some really high-up people wrote about them. Rudyard Kipling had a story called "The Mark of the Beast," where a British guy defiles a Hindu temple and turns into a werewolf; but the other British guys torture the priest and he turns the guy back to a human. Great colonial story! Frank Norris, a socialist writer from the turn of the century wrote a story called Vandover and the Brute, about a businessman who periodically turns into a werewolf. So some major players in the world of literature took the genre on.

For me, it was movies starring Lon Chaney:  The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Abbot and Costello Meet the Monsters. Later came The Howling and, of course, that classic, An American Werewolf in London. Maybe the best one of them all was the 1957 film, I Was a Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon. I had never tried to write anything but then the idea for a mixed genre story came to mind and I started composing "Wolf Moon."

Michael Landon as a teenage werewolf

Werewolves, like vampires, are tormented by what has happened to them. They don’t' want to be caught up in a life that turns them into a monster, but they don't know how to get out of the situation. So they are lost, tormented souls who are very nice guys sometimes, but when the full moon emerges, watch out. There's a scene in Abbot and Costello Meet the Monsters where Bud is tied up by Dracula. Lawrence Tabot shows up to rescue him, but just then the full moon comes out from behind a cloud and he transforms scene. Bud is okay and at the end of the film Talbot the wolfman plunges into a lake after getting his vengeful hands on Dracula, who has just transformed to a bat.

"Wolf Moon" is the story of a group of alien slavers who capture some Terrans living on a remote planet. The captain of the ship is a little puzzled over them. They are the only humanoid inhabitants of the planet. They live in small houses and have modern accommodations but no communication equipment and supplies that look like they have been dropped off by a government or other agency. There are many more men than women.

The crew of the ship wants a woman and he gives them one. They plan to take her to a house on the planet they have landed on to refuel. The full moon on the wintry world makes the night bright, but the minute the crew of three drags the woman outside, she rips them apart and disappears into the frigid landscape.

The planet is part of the Italian League. In my sci-fi universe, there are still nation states on Earth and some of them maintain colonies. Italy is one of these. The Italians tell the slavers they need to leave at once, threaten to kill them if they won't and tell them the Terrans are werewolves. The captain doesn't understand the word, though he recognizes the word "wolf" in the compound. When he comes back on board, the other Terrans have escaped. They send him out to find the woman, saying they can't go out in the moonlight themselves. When he asks if this is a religious restriction they laugh at him. He finds the woman in a cave. She attacks him and tackles and scratches him before he is able to stun her with a blaster.

He wraps the naked woman in his coat and carries her back to the ship, wondering how she has survived the cold and wondering why, when he first saw her, she looked like a bear or some other upright-standing animal. The other Terrans care for her. Their leader tells him he will be required to take them back to their home planet. They also notice a scratch on his neck.

The captain is a Housali, a race with blue skin. The physician among them wondered if he will transform, but their leader reminds her that some of their numbers are not Terrans but come from other planets. She wonders if he'll have blue fur and starts to clean his wound. The ship is sealed up so no moonlight can get inside, but the Housali feels a wild stirring in his blood—something savage he had never felt before. He knows it lies outside, waiting for him, something frightening but also oddly appealing.

The journal in which this story was published is defunct. It does not have an archive. I've been marketing it to other journals, but with no success so far. 

A scary non-werewolf tale, Le Cafe de la Mort, 

is available from Amazon. 

 See more titles on my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments!

What's your favorite werewolf movie?

Where did the legend originate?

Werewolf is from Anglo-Saxon, but the legend goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. 

Revision note!  A journal called Grey Matter will be printing "Wolf Moon" in the near future.