The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten [Paperback]

Ritch Duncan (Author), Bob Powers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2009

Have you been attacked by a wolf-like creature in the last 30 days? Was it after the sun had set and under a full moon? If you answered, “yes” to both these questions, there’s a very good chance that you were bitten by a werewolf. You now have less than a month before the full moon returns and with it your first transformation into a savage, bloodthirsty beast.
Survival is an option, but first, know this:
* Werewolves are real.
* The majority of lycanthropes who do not have access to this book die during or shortly after their first transformations, generally due to heart failure, gunshot wounds, exposure, drowning or suicide.
* Hollywood horror movies are NOT to be used as guides to living as a werewolf. Their goal is not to educate, but to entertain. As a result, they are largely ignorant of the realities of the condition.
* Ignorance creates monsters; lycanthropy does not.
* You are not a monster.
The Werewolf's Guide to Life cuts through the fiction and guides you through your first transformation and beyond, offering indispensable advice on how to tell if you’re really a werewolf, post-attack etiquette, breaking the news to your spouse, avoiding government abduction, and how to not just survive, but thrive. You cannot afford to not read this book. Your very life depends on it.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

RITCH DUNCAN and BOB POWERS have devoted their lives to aiding and serving the lycanthrope community. They live in New York City.

Illustrator EMILY FLAKE is a New York based cartoonist and illustrator who is grateful to have gotten close enough to study her subjects for this book without being torn limb from limb.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (September 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767931939
• ISBN-13: 978-0767931939
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #200,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hysterical! A fun read!, September 19, 2009

By 

fancy femme (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten (Paperback)

This book is really fun! A great book to gift to a friend. It's well written, clever and surprisingly chock full of fact.

It's also a good one to read on the bus, when you want the seat next to you to stay open and untaken. Especially if you read it at night, looking shifty and sweaty, with some claw marks put in the cover.

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Furthering your situation, October 13, 2009

By 

R. Howell "boriskhan" (Medford, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten (Paperback)

Similar in fashion to The Zen of Zombie and The Vampire Survival Guide, this handbook for the newly bitten werewolf shows you how to handle your transformations, new life, and cravings without hurting anyone. While the book on the whole was mildly entertaining and easy to read, all it really presents is a repetitive reminder on chaining yourself up in a saferoom for three nights a month (your moons). It covers concepts like your different stages you will encounter, longevity, how to feed, who to tell your secret, where to live, and avoiding doctors but always comes back around to securing yourself for those nights. You quickly grow tired of it. There's even mini-sidebars on real people that were purportedly werewolves, at least in the authors' presentation. I will say my teenage son read it after me and he laughed constantly. He's not a bookreader but he finished this in two days so it really interested him. The books not bad but it is far from great. Don't get me wrong, if you like these types of humor, tongue-in-cheek guidebooks, it is certainly worth adding to your collection.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You've Just Been Bitten, You Need to Get a Copy of This Before Your First Moons, May 25, 2010

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten (Paperback)

Many people who suddenly are infected by the medical condition known as lycanthropy according to this book die before during their first transformation into a werewolf. The Werewolf's Guide to Life is just what the title suggests, a handy guide that tells you, the recently bitten one, what is about to happen to your body, how when you do transform into a werewolf you won't be able to control yourself from ripping apart any human in your vicinity, and the guide will stress over and over again how important it is that you restrain yourself properly when the next "moon set" occurs. Also importantly that you restrain yourself in a way that will enable you to get yourself out when your full human intelligence returns after you returned to your normal human form. Handily at the back of the book is a nice appendix that tells you every date those three moons will occur until December 2011. Not sure if the publishers will release an updated version for the years after but if not that appendix info will be a bit dated if your reading this review after 2011.

This book dispels the myths and wrongful assumptions that are out there about werewolves. If you've just been bitten you need to read this book. I had never even thought about how still wearing a wedding ring would mean the loss of a finger as the hand expanded cutting off circulation to the finger. Likewise don't make the restraints you are using to secure yourself so as not to wipe out innocent humans to tight for similar reasons. There's tons of information in this manual that you just probably have won't have thought of before it's too late.

There's also information on how to deal with fur chasers (those who want to be bitten by you), werewolf hunters (those who wish to kill you simply because you are a werewolf), where to buy your restraint system materials, where to build it, places you can secure yourself in an emergency, what to do if you got loose during your transformation and killed, the four types of werewolf bodies out there and basically how to live as normal a life as possible with the lycanthropy condition.

This is no boring book of rules or a you won't want to finish how to manual. It is quite entertaining and even if you haven't been bitten yourself quite informative on just learning about lycanthropy and the burdens your friends who may well be transforming into werewolves during every full moon have to deal with. Like learning first aid, this book is worth reading before you're bitten so on the off chance you are, you'll know what to do. Hopefully I'll never need this advice but it's good to know if I am I will know what to do.