Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?: And Other True Adventures from a Life Online

What a fun and interesting ride! I highly recommend this book for any Buffy or Joss Whedon fan - but I think it also has a broader appeal to any true fan of any television show that is not considered "popular" or "mainstream" enough. As any true fan knows, sometimes the best shows rarely make it past a season or two. They can be our secret pleasure, and not everyone gets its. Allyson does.

Allyson Beatrice is a writer gifted for using humorous, laugh out loud phrases while viewing the world through an honest pair of glasses. Her comments about the generosity and wonderfulness of the online community is smack-on and is universal not only to the Buffy boards, but to places like Bookcrossing.com as well. The book is a quick read and made me want to somehow hang out with her. Yup, she created a Beatrice Fan-gurl in me!

This book is very, very funny. Allyson Beatrice's voice is incredibly honest and also hilarious, and you very much learn as much about her as you do the internet communities and friendships she describes. The book points out that these days, this is how many of us meet people- through online communities, whether it be blogs or news sites or the other zillion opportunities there are out there to connect. We don't have the social traditions of the past so much anymore; the only places it seems you can meet people to make friends are work, or, like at bars or something, or if you're lucky enough that you live somewhere where neighbors talk to each other. Regardless, the concept of internet communities has been looked down on, feared, and shunned. Beatrice does a wonderful job of bringing this phenomenon into the light and removing the stigma attached. Other essays deal with adventures in Mutant Enemy-verse fandom and there's a conspiring tone to them, as if One Of Us has infiltrated the ranks (well, the rank's assistants) of television culture and is reporting back live from the scene. We're able to live vicariously through her, in a way. And laugh like hell doing it.

The title is clever and the cover is cute, but how relevant or entertaining could stories about "cult fandom" really be to the average reader? Turns out, very. Although the book is centered on Beatrice's life online as influenced by the cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is not a fan book. In fact, you will find few references to the show itself beyond Beatrice's loving acknowledgment of how fun it was to watch and her gentle puzzlement about the level of fanaticism some people still have for it. The first chapter explores the author's relationship with the Jossverse, but -- far more importantly -- explains how Buffy and other Jossverse shows brought a group of people together online that became a close-knit community capable of enormous generosity and random acts of kindness. Some chapters explore nuances of life online (such as how communities deal with 'trolls' or with imposters posting about fictional personal tragedy in order to garner attention), and other chapters focus squarely on the specific people who have become Beatrice's family. Especially touching are the chapters about a wedding between two of Beatrice's friends when gay marriage was briefly legal in California and the chapter about how one online community along with writer Tim Minear fully funded a cross-country visit to America for a beloved Israeli member. Other chapters explore the oddities of Beatrice's involvement in this particular fandom, including how she was tasked with finding a home for Joss Whedon's cat and how she ended up running a campaign to save a Jossverse show that she didn't particularly like. Also notable is the incisive chapter "The Internet Wants Your Daughters" about the myth that everyone online is an axe-murderer or a pedophile. Without dismissing the fact that real dangers can lurk on the Internet, Beatrice explodes these myths and offers real, practical advice about how parents can protect their children without overreacting. It is one of the most honest essays about kids and the Internet out there. Vampire People is bitingly funny and unexpectedly touching. I blew through the book in three hours and wanted more. Pick up a copy this summer -- I promise you'll find something to laugh at and something to relate to even if you would never dream of talking vampires with strangers.