Barba Yianni ~Uncle Blood Sucker

By Wynn Parks

Andy Alytis is an American ex-patriot living in Athens. He notes, ruefully, that all the foreign, study-abroad girlfriends he has hooked up with in Athens, have started out seeming like the girl next door, but gradually reveal themselves to be wing-nuts, and drama-queens, full of hidden phobias and twisted feelings. He's hoping to meet a good, down to earth Greek girl, who will take him as he is. So, he's over the Moon about Chrysoula. Though he describes her as having a face like a porcelain doll, with a nimbus of black hair, he notes that her name is based on the Greek word for "Gold". When he meets her in Syntagma (Constitution) Square that morning, to Andy, it is like finally reaching a "city of gold"!
But before their rendezvous is finished, Chrysoula knocks all Andy's expectations into a cocked hat with the weirdest, most unsettling story he can imagine. There,at a sidewalk cafenion, in the midst of Athens' crowds and traffic, Chrysoula recounts the story of her life on Hypatia, her obscure home island. It is the story of her uncle Barba Yiannis becoming a vrycolakos; her narrow escape from him and the fire that was supposed to cleanse the family of his curse forever... But does it?
Barba Yiannis offers a preview of the author's soon to be available "Rambulations of Andreas the Bum".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wynn Parks
• Release date: Mar 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301678266

Wynn Parks

Wynn Parks was born in the southern U.S., and raised on Air Force Bases scattered from the Philippines to Turkey. Growing up as a "military brat" bred into him the love of travel that has motivated so many of his life choices, and piqued his fascination with with such famous travelers as Odysseus, Ibn Battuta, and Burton.The author put himself through college at South Dakota's Black Hills State University, and later the Iowas Writers' Workshop by working summers as Driller's Helper in the eastern Wyoming coal fields.After six months as a Dobey-Paisano Fellow at the University of Texas, he spent a winter in an Alaskan bush camp as an exploration geologist. There he managed to save enough for traveling expenses to get him to the Greek island of Paros, where he contracted to teach Creative Writing at The Aegean School of Fine Arts. Having lived in the Aegean as a boy, going to Paros felt like a homecoming. Though he forayed off-island to Europe, North Africa,and Iran,it was Paros that was his haven from the middle Seventies through the mid-Eighties.In 2010, Parks was awarded a fellowship at the Hawthornden International Writers' Retreat, south of Edinburgh, Scotland. Two of the offerings published on Smashwords, originated at the Hawthornden Castle.Several of the stories featured on Smashwords are excerpted from the author's "arabesque" novel, "Songs from Dinosaki's Jukebox". "Jukebox" grew out of the author's years in Greece and, earlier, Turkey, and his life-long sense of connection with the Aegean.The author currently lives in the United States in Blue Mountain Beach, Florida.

Book preview

Barba Yianni~ Uncle Blood-Sucker

By

Wynn Parks

Copyright Wynn Parks 2010

This book is a work of fiction: names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination, or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living dead or undead; to business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form, or by any means without the prior, written permission of Wynn Parks.

Cover art Brett Taylor <bretttayloraegean.com>

An Archilochus Press book at Smashwords

Table of Contents

The Story

About the Author

Acknowledgement

Other works by the Author

Connect with the Author

Athens in Spring can make you believe that all the rest of your life will be that way. Gone is the intimate, winter scent of charcoal braziers and petrol exhaust. Early morning rains have swept the air clean and cool. The foliage of everything growing pops against the blue of a sky where a few diaphanous remains of cloud still meander…. Greek chicks are awesome! I’ve met one at the University; a girl with a nimbus of curly, black hair around the face of a porcelain doll. I have big hopes that Greek women’s expectations are nearer to what I need than the foreign girls I’ve met so far. No matter how straight the westerners seem at first, after a while they begin to reveal all sort of neurotic junk: weird fears; twisted hearts; poisoned feelings; and what you think is a girl-next-door turns out to be an