WMOM: Postscript 🦇 (+THE END)
Ite missa est.
What Manner of Man is a queer gothic romance novel about a priest and a vampire, written in epistolary form, served a bite at a time. What you’re reading is a draft of the novel, which was originally published for free online throughout 2023. If you’re reading for the first time, I recommend you start from the beginning.
At the conclusion of this narrative, I have little to add to the facts which were laid out at the beginning.
From the perspective of his immediate family, Victor Ardelian vanished forever in 1950, and there are none now living who remember having known him personally.
It is all but certain that Vera Ardelian passed away without any knowledge of the many letters which he addressed to her. They — along with all the other documents which have been used to make up this volume — were delivered anonymously to her eldest daughter some time after Vera’s death. From her daughter’s hands they passed to my friend, at whose behest this has all been prepared for publication.
Despite my best efforts, I have been able to discover no satisfactory account giving any hint of the subsequent life of Victor Ardelian; neither have I found anything pertaining to the island of Swallow’s Rest which might corroborate the contents of this volume.
Likewise, as to the subsequent history of the documents themselves, I can only speculate. How they came to survive despite Victor Ardelian’s expressed intention to destroy his letters and journals is a great mystery, and has been a subject of much speculation between my friend and myself. Certainly they are not forgeries — the handwriting is a clear match, and the journal itself has every appearance of authenticity. It is clear that some person took it upon themselves to deliberately preserve the documents, and, after many years, decided to have them sent to the person to whom the letters which make up so much of the material were originally addressed.
As I’ve said, I have nothing verifiable to add to the account of his experiences which Victor Ardelian gives in these foregoing pages. The reader may or may not choose to connect with them one anecdote known to my friend pertaining to his grandmother, Vera Ardelian.
This came to him via his aunt, Vera’s eldest daughter, who had a recollection of being taken, rather reluctantly, on some trips as a child to a remote and obscure seaside destination. Her chief recollections were of being in damp, fishy-smelling surroundings, and of how queer and secretive the people were. There was also cat with whom she spent most of the time. Besides these memories, she had only a dim idea of a strange man who lived outside the town, in whom her mother was keenly interested for some reason that was obscure to her.
Your humble servant,
St John Starling
We’ve arrived at the end of What Manner of Man! Thank you ever so much — I’m simply indescribably grateful to you for giving me the time it took to read this novel. I hope you’ll continue to give me your time so that I can share more stories like this one with you in the future. 💜
Additional thank you to everyone who was kind enough to vote for What Manner of Man in the 2024 Indie Ink Awards! 🙏 (If you’d like to vote, links + instructions are here.)
I will, as I mentioned, be taking a small break from the e-mails business for the holidays, after which I’ll be in touch with updates about what’s happening next with my next, Frankenstein-inspired novel (which I intend to publish serially, in the same manner as What Manner of Man.)
A COMPANION IN VICE
The assistant knows his beloved doctor isn’t dead, because he brought him back with his own hands — although that’s more than he can say to the police. When people connected to his doctor start dying under mysterious circumstances, the assistant must find a way to preserve his own darkest secrets, as well as the life of the man who may be trying to kill him. Can love survive the frightening transformation the doctor has undergone? What lies at the heart of this labyrinth of institutional corruption, professional ambition, jealousy, sex, and death? A Companion in Vice is a subversive tale of obsessive love and mad science.
If you’d like to help me with funding this mad science project, please consider signing up for my Patreon! 🧪 Just today, I’ve made a post going into some detail about the choice of title for this novel. My evil henchman artist has, additionally, just been showing me some more concept art of the lead characters that only my patrons will have access to for the time being.
A FINAL WORD FOR THE PUBLISHED EDITION
I would be remiss not to state one final time, for the record, that the published edition is the fullest and most complete expression of What Manner of Man: over 16 000 words longer than what you’ve just read, it has been comprehensively edited, expanded, rewritten, and overall revamped from that initial draft into the best version of this story of which I am capable. (Not to mention the numerous scenes that have been added for the particular benefit of my fellow perverts.)
You can get the complete, edited and expanded novel DRM-free on Itch.io or at the retailer of your choice.