You’ve heard the rumours and searched online for further clues but all you’ve found, so far, is a single line entry on the publisher’s website and an announcement of dubious progeny.
Is Transition Vamps a book or merely a slow-burn Internet stunt propagated by a former writer now living in the third person? Why isn’t it called Transvision Vamp or Transmission Vampires instead? And what’s a vamp, anyway?
While I’m not able to answer most of these questions, or put to bed any lingering doubts ye netizens may have about my existence, I can now reveal that Transition Vamps has a cover, a testimonial (more on that soon), a spine, and a page extant.
Which means, in non-industry parlance, that the two PDF files that together constitute the digital assemblage that is Transition Vamps have now been fired in the general direction of a printer somewhere in Oz, and will shortly be combined to form a physical book.
And here’s what it’ll look like:
My latest Substack missive, which explores the progeny of a poem entitled ‘On the Tomb of) Ephrem Tamiru’, contains, right at the end, a sneak peek at the official cover for Transition Vamps, which has been rendered and lovingly crafted by illustrator and designer Zoë Sadokierski.
Eagle-eyed readers (or, at least, those who managed to make it to the end of that post) will have made a connection between the post’s real subject and the object adorning the book’s cover: namely, the saxophone.
And while I originally thought that blue saxophone might have once belonged to Ephrem Tamiru, or else one of his smoking-jacket-wearing bandmates, knowing that it’s more likely to be a simulacrum of Tilaye Gebre’s tenor sax means I can eventually rest in peace in the arms of my lover—as physically improbable as that sounds—while she plays the melody from ‘Track 6’ on that sax of her’s she keeps in the cupboard, the one she’s never played for me before, which might as well be in Asmara.
Moi on Substack: (On the tomb of) Ephrem Tamiru’s ‘Track 6’
When Cordite Books honcho Kent MacCarter asked me to send him a list of five objects or organisms whose spirit aligned with the content of Transition Vamps, the saxophone was naturally at the top of that list:
- A saxophone: because music is something I return to a lot in my writing, and there are at least two saxes in the book (in ‘Imjingang Sax Scene’ and ‘(On the Tomb of) Ephrem Tamiru’). Also fits nicely with the jazz hat tip in the vamps of the book’s title.
- A bird (specifically an eagle but also any kind of gull): see ‘Longing for the South’ for the most obvious example, but some kind of bird would be a nice object/image to play with.
- A signpost: like the one I took in Karlskrona, Sweden (see my Substack book announcement) pointing to international destinations: for the obvious conection between travel, identity and movement.
- An aeroplane: as in, a passenger airliner as opposed to a warplane, or a small aircraft. Failing that an ejector seat (only joking).
- A passport: maybe not really possible or desirable and aso perhaps a bit cliched but could be a choice if none of the above work?
While I would have been happy with any of these objects making the grade as a cover image/illustration, I’m not-so-secretly glad that the sax won out in the end.
Because the sax always wins out.
See also: Guru Josh’s acid-house anthem “Infinity”; Sexy Sax Man’s guerilla rendition of ‘Careless Whisper’; George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ in its entirety; Dire Straits’ sultry dad-bod epic ‘Your Latest Trick’; Morphine’s ‘Honey White’; the monstrous sax-fuelled outro to Swervdriver’s ‘Never Lose That Feeling/Never Learn’; and on and on and on.
That’s the vibe I’m going for in this book.
And I am super-pumped to be able to put an image to that vibe.
Thank you to Zoë Sadokierski for working her magic, to Kent MacCarter for his sax-sensitive nous, and to sax lovers everywhere.
You know who you are, and I can hear you all, loud and clear.