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The Penguin Press Publishes Highly Anticipated Wolf Totem (to top)

Last November, retired Beijing professor Jiang Rong's extraordinary debut novel won the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize - an award sponsored by The Man Group, which aims to recognize the best of new Asian literature and to bring it to the attention of the world literary community. The Penguin Press shares the Man Group's eagerness to introduce this remarkable novel to the world, and is proud to publish Jiang's Wolf Totem. Already a bestseller in its native China, Wolf Totem has broken all sales records there, selling at least one million copies in the first year alone - along with 6 million black market copies - and earning the distinction of being the 2nd most read book in China after Mao's little red book. There is much international excitement, too - to date, rights have been sold in 14 countries. The publication of Wolf Totem is an international event across Penguin Group, with Penguin UK and Penguin Australia publishing simultaneously with The Penguin Press, and Penguin Group also publishing Wolf Totem in South Africa and India.

Set in 1960s China, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Wolf Totem tells the story of Chen Zen, a Beijing intellectual who volunteers to live in a remote settlement on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, where he lives among the Mongols, a proud and ancient race of people whose lives are built around their religion - a kind of cult of the wolf. At the core of their belief is the notion of a triangular balance between the earth, wolf, and man, whose fates are all intricately linked. Chen Zhen becomes fascinated with Mongol life, and when he kidnaps a wolf pup to raise it himself secretly, his scholarly interest in the wolf blossoms into full-fledged obsession. After many years living in solitude with the nomads and the wolves, the peace is shattered with the arrival of the Han Chinese, who launch a campaign to exterminate the wolves. Once the age-old balance is disrupted, it sends the Mongols' way of life into a spiral that leads inevitably to extinction: the extinction of a species, and the extinction of a culture that was built around tending to it.

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I'm often asked by aspiring fiction writers how to craft a believable fantasy involving creatures that go bump in the night. And at the top of almost everyone's wish list is the perpetual bloodsucking favorite: vampires. A while ago, I put together a tongue in cheek response to those queries, which nonetheless does represent some of the things I try to keep in mind when writing. This is, by the way, a list that works pretty well for fantasies and/or paranormal romances. Some of the rules might also apply to horror books, although to a lesser degree.

Why Some Vampires Rock and Others Just . . . Suck

The popularity of vamps in everything from TV and movies to bestselling novels proves that there is a large market only too willing to join the dark side (or at least to read about it) if it is done well. A common trend in recent years has been to take traditional bad guys, especially vampires, and transform them into the heroes of the story. But just how does an author write a believable vampire and also make him a compelling protagonist? Below is my take on how to avoid having your hero suck (other than literally).

First, vampires are not simply humans with extra long teeth. You cannot take the average romantic lead, slap a pair of fangs on him and call him a vampire. Or, rather, you can, but readers will understandably feel cheated. Just how different your hero is depends on how many of the vampire legends you want to use. There are a boatload (or maybe a coffin-full) of choices. Among other things, vampires are said to be able to shapeshift into bats, wolves or columns of mist, to defy gravity, to heal unnaturally fast, to be almost impossible to kill, to have extra sharp senses, and, of course, to never age. Even if only a few of these characteristics are used in a story, they are going to make for an extremely unconventional hero.