Janet Mullany - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Janet Mullany!

#

IMMORTAL JANE

He released her hands and stood. “Consider, Jane. You’ll marry some bore of a country gentleman who’ll kill you in childbed and who won’t want a bookish wife anyway. Perhaps you’ll stay a spinster and lose your bloom and die young of some disease they’ll find an easy cure for in a hundred years or so. Or you’ll see your sister die first.”

“Now you’re cruel.”

“No, it is the truth. But let us paint a happier picture for Miss Jane Austen. You write a few books that entertain your family and you win a little fame, perhaps even some money, while you live. And after, what then? Your books languish forgotten on dusty bookshelves and you are but a name on a binding that disappears with decay and time. You think your books offer you a chance at immortality?”

--Jane and the Damned

*

Jane and the Damned isn’t a romance so it doesn’t have a traditional happy ending. It’s a historical urban fantasy with romance elements, part alternative historical with a bit of this, that, and the other, and some “spot the Austen novel” moments. But I think a characteristic of the HEA is that hero and heroine exist in a bubble of passion, which is why vampire romances are so hot (and, oh yeah, the physical perfection and great sex and all that stuff)—the eternal is now. Never mind that she’ll be looking at hip replacements while he is still a gorgeous 28-year-old sex god. Or, they’ll both be forever young and gorgeous vampires, the HEA distilled into eternity, the passage of time halted.

It’s a great fantasy.

But Jane Austen as a vampire? Neither of these endings would work and I had to create a scenario where her immortality would come with her books, even if at the age of 21 (the book is set in 1797) she was not at all sure she would ever be published. But I was following a trend, even though I hadn’t read a lot of vampire books, and I certainly hadn’t read any of the vampire classics, but I had watched hours of True Blood on HBO before getting tired of all those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood.

All those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood are what I define as Vampires Type A in popular culture. Vampires Type O are the evil ones. The ones mortals must fight to save the world, yadda yadda. And then there’s all this stuff about garlic and holy water and crosses (anyone remember that Roman Polanski movie with the Jewish vampire?—“Oy, lady, did you ever get the wrong vampire…”), not being able to cross running water, go out in daylight, use public transport (I’m making that up), and so on.

I had to come up with a vampire scenario that fit into my depiction of Georgian England, the age of reason and of both social and industrial revolution; the world that produced Jane Austen. I chose very selectively from vampire lore, although essentially the Damned are Type A—hot, desirable, and very fashionable. They’re the ton. Everyone wants to have sex with them or provide them with a dining experience. (These vampires do not feed—that is so vulgar. They dine.) The Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent) loves to hang out with them and the newspapers are full of their scandalous behavior.

To tie the vampire elements to what we know of Austen’s life, I used another established literary trope, that Austen became what she was because of some lifechanging event: frequently a passionate love affair, a secret destroyed in the letters her sister Cassandra burned after her death. The family secret as I interpreted it was that Jane Austen was once a vampire and it influenced everything she wrote.

Do you agree with my vampire-HEA assessment? And what do you think of the current Austen-paranormal trend?

#

Thanks, Janet! It was great to have you visit!

"On the Female Vampire," Evie Byrne Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Evie Byrne!

#

On the Female Vampire

A monster is monstrous because it violates accepted boundaries. Often these boundaries are physical. Creatures of the twilight world like minotaurs, werewolves, insectoid aliens, selkies, sirens and mermaids cause fascination and discomfort because they are cross the reassuring threshold that separates human from animal. Vampires are generally human-formed, but still they manage to be more transgressive than any other monster. They violate boundaries right and left. They’re neither dead nor alive. They occasionally shift form. They live on blood--which makes them cannibals, which, needless to say, is a big boundary--or perhaps it makes them parasites, which aligns them with the insect world--or maybe it makes them demons, which aligns them with the spirit world. And when they’re not invading your body, they’re invading your mind. When you submit to them, you submit body, mind and soul. They own you. They’re slavers. They break all of our laws, conventions and beliefs--and tempt us to break them too.

For a vampire, feeding is sex. It’s a penetrative act of possession. One so powerful that used to eclipse intercourse. Dracula ruins Lucy far more completely than any determined rake. Anne Rice’s vampires, as I recall, don’t have sex. Having experienced the ultimate act of penetration and surrender, they loll around in sensual, bisexual languor. But those are old school vampires. Something has shifted in the perception of vampires of late. Vampires in popular literature and entertainment have become more sexual, more heterosexual and almost exclusively male.

The vampires of today’s romances are masculine, desirable heroes, relieved of both sexual ambiguity and the stench of the grave. This new breed of male vampire is generally isolated and sympathetic in his misery: Mr. Rochester with fangs. He’s an alpha male of an extreme sort, coldly handsome, immortal, preternaturally strong, supernaturally persuasive, and fitted with penetrative equipment both upstairs and downstairs, all the better to claim you--if you’re the one and only woman for him. This makeover strips much of the shivery terror from the mythos, but the trade off is that it makes room for hot fantasy.

But what of the vampire heroine? Female vampires are scarce on the ground, any sort of female vampire, much less a romantic heroine. They occasionally appear as slutty minions in vampire gangs, or as a minor antagonist. And of course, in some romantic vampire tales the hero vampire will elevate his love to immortality by turning her, but that is the end of the tale, not the beginning.

My take on this--and please do feel free to argue otherwise--is that while we’ve normalized male vampires enough to make them romantic heroes, female vampires remain too trangressive to be heroines.

Let’s take a step back. In the 19th century, when all vampires were monsters, female vampires were perhaps even more vile than their male counterparts. Being the weaker sex, they could not hunt fairly. They fed either through sexual guile or by preying on children--making them lower than low. Painters and poets of that age were enraptured with idea of the female vampire as a seductress. Victoria posted a Baudelaire poem about a female vampire on this blog just a couple of weeks ago, and if you didn’t see it, it’s well worth a read. [http://victoriajanssen.blogspot.com/2010/05/metamorphoses-of-vampire-charles.html]

For these sensitive 19th century poet types, the female vampire was the embodiment of feminine devourer who, if left unchecked, sucked dry the masculine life force. She was definitely an erotic figure, but that eroticism was laced with repugnance and the fear of emasculation. One minute she’s slinking up to you, cleavage bared, and next thing you know, you’re not hanging around the Montmartre cafes with your friends anymore. You’re working as a clerk and helping out with the housework.

But I digress.

The sexual power of the female vampire threatens social norms. Earlier I spoke of the penetrative aspect of feeding. It’s inherently a sexual act. Yet while the male vampire may feed on men, he seduces women. (That is, unless you’re reading specialized erotic fiction.) The female vampire tends to be more openly bisexual, so voracious in her appetites that she cannot be constrained by gender. This perception is strong, and continues from the earliest female vampires to today. Miriam Blaylock, as portrayed by Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983), is a sleek, glamorous, ruthless bisexual hunter. She takes both Susan Sarandon and David Bowie as lovers--and eats a child in the bargain as well. To me, she has always been the modern archetype of the female vampire.

Stepping back to the present again, to this time when the male vampire has become a sympathetic hero, the gulf between the female vampire and the male vampire has widened even further. He has special needs. She’s a monster.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I’m just saying the terrain has changed. I can’t address all vampires in all genres, only the vampire tales written today by (mostly) female authors for a (mostly) female audience under the banner of romance. In this genre, the prospect of being devoured by your lover is eroticized, as it was for those 19th century gentlemen, but now it is not framed as repugnant. Instead, it is the ultimate form of acceptance and bonding.

That sexual dynamic only works one way, however. It’s hot when an alpha vamp claims his mate through blood and sex, but that power relationship cannot be flipped. When a female vampire penetrates her human lover, it somehow makes him less of a man. Her claiming of him might make for good horror, but it doesn’t add up to satisfying romantic fiction.

The double standard goes on. The intense predatory drive that makes a male vampire sexy doesn’t translate in the same way for a female vampire. That same drive makes her a dangerous, unbalanced stalker. Similarly, a male vampire is usually portrayed as handsome and aware of his magnetic attraction, but he’s not vilified for it--in fact, it’s part of his appeal. Whereas when a female vampire uses her seductive powers, its trickery. Doing so breaks the unwritten commandment that a romantic heroine be modest: either she doesn’t know she’s ravishing, or doesn’t care. Only wicked women use their looks like a blade.

It’s all about reader identification. The best part of reading a romantic fantasy is imagining what it would be like if you--ordinary, human you--found yourself face to face with a creature of the otherworld. How would you react? Could you love such a being? We enjoy experiencing a romance through the eyes of a woman whom we can relate to--an ordinary woman who finds herself in extraordinary circumstances. It is much harder to relate to a heroine who is a powerful, ruthless, bloodthirsty, and possibly immortal.

And that’s not because we don’t appreciate a powerful female, but rather because being unable to identify with her takes some of the fun out of this particular kind of reading experience. One of the oldest and most compelling storylines is the one in which an ordinary person tests herself against powers and mysteries beyond her imagination--and earns love along the way. That kind of story always hits the spot. There’s good reason for its enduring popularity.

So as much as I like a lady vampire, I don’t expect to see them crowding romances as heroines any time soon. And having thought about this for a while, I’ll admit I’m okay with that. I like the idea that they can’t be domesticated into do-gooder heroines who settle down into a happily-ever-after. Like their progenitor, Lilith, they embody the darker side of female power, and that stuff is too powerful to be bottled.

Love and Pain by Edvard Munch, 1894

Evie Byrne is the author of three hot vampire romances: Called by Blood, Bound by Blood and Damned by Blood. Link. In the spirit of full disclosure, she admits that while two of her heroines are down-to-earth, regular humans, her third heroine is a vampire who is as wicked as the day is long.


#

Thanks so much for the great post, Evie!

Anyone have any comments on female vampire characters?

May-Ten-Centuries-Back Vampire Romance

The May/December romance is one thing. The May/Ten Centuries Back romance is quite another.

It's always disturbed me a little that vampire heroes in romance are so often much older than their heroines. When the heroine is not only not immortal but young for a human, it's even harder to convince me that they could have anything in common. Perhaps that's why writers sometimes rely on strong sexual attraction between the two (sometimes natural, sometimes superntural or "fated"), or on plot reasons that require the two characters to be together, such as only she has the necessary scientific/psychic/genetic abilities to save the world and is thus forced to tie herself to an ancient vampire who thinks swing music is "dynamite."

There are advantages to the forced relationship; for one thing, it automatically introduces tension into both the relationship and the plot.

It's the innocent heroine/jaded vampire who instantly fall in love, no questions asked, who, to me, fail the possibilities. They're not doomed to fail; but to me they do fail because it's very, very rare that the writer actually shows me why they like each other and why they belong together. Isn’t the whole point of a romance to see the romance developing? To watch the hero and heroine overcome their differences?

True, it's very difficult to imagine what centuries or millennia of experience can do to a person, but it's our job as writers to do that imagining. At the least, we can look at relationships in real life where one partner is much older than the other, and see what we can learn from that and apply to our writing.

Or just once, I'd like to see a vampire romance hero fall for a woman who's at least in her fifties or sixties. Or how about a futuristic human who's two hundred years old?

Roll Your Own - Anna Katherine Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Anna Katherine!

#

Roll Your Own

One of the biggest issues with writing any paranormal beastie is the need to bring something new to the table. With everybody writing about vampires these days, why should someone want to read about yours? Let's say you want to make your vampires stand out from the pack by being different from your everyday Count Dracula stereotype. Where do you start?

Well, there are lots of cultures out there with their own versions of vampires (one of my favorites is the Bulgarian vamp, which has only one nostril). You can add a lot of originality to your work by just exploring new (to you) folklore.

But what if you don't want to go the Western vamp route or the "borrowing from elsewhere" route? What if you want to make something all your own?

So let's say you want to make up something new and shiny. Problem number one with that is: If you make up something that has nothing in common with a vampire, what makes it a vampire? Why isn't it called a Thubmert?

(The secret answer to this is, there is no reason why you can't call something a vampire. "Vampire" is just a word we made up. Maybe in other universes, "vampires" are what people call post-it notes. You're an author; you can use whatever words you like. But authors don't write in a vacuum, and eventually you're going to have to do a major bit of hand-waving to get your reading audience to follow along with those sorts of shenanigans.)

Let's say that if you want to call something a vampire, you need some recognizable vampiric traits to build off on. Right off the top of my head, I can think of: Dead, drinks blood, pointy teeth, drive to create more vampires, can't go in sunlight, a stake through the heart kills them.

The next step is to twist these traits around -- make them mean different things, or take them a step further than tradition normally does. Some examples:

• This Dinosaur Comic makes an excellent example of the "taking extremes" method by categorizing most vampiric traits as just OCD, thereby letting people easily "deduce NEW vampire facts and weaknesses!"
  
  
• Stephanie Meyer's took the idea of "vampires can't go out in sunlight" and changed it from "because they burn!" to "because they sparkle and will reveal their true nature" -- while the sparkling thing is dopey, that's a pretty neat turn on the folklore. The basic fact stays the same, but the reason for it changes.
  
  
• Doctor Who's "Vampires in Venice" episode has vampires that don't really have pointy teeth, even though they appear to -- they're an illusion supplied by the human brain, to attempt to give some kind of warning of their being predators.
  
  
• Scott Westerfeld talks about the process of boiling down vampiric traits for his excellent vampire novel Peeps, taking on the sexual aspects as well as the unnerving reasons why vamps might want to create more vamps.
  
  
• And in my own book, Salt and Silver, vampires can suck blood... through their butterfly-like proboscis. When I first created these vamps, all the other demons in my world were insect-like, so I wanted to continue the theme. It wasn't until later that I discovered that Filipino folklore had butterfly-vampires. So I ran with it, and now, as I write the sequel (starring the vampires front-and-center), I'm trying to bring a little more juice to the creative processes. One of the driving principles of my worldbuilding is that to have a part of someone is to know them utterly. In the first book, true names were things to keep out of bad guys' hands -- but blood is just as much a part of someone as their name. So what does drinking blood do, if even a tiny sip can give you a world of knowledge?
  
  Ladies and gents: My vampires are academics.

Keeping vampires (or other mythological creatures) fresh -- but familiar -- is a tough row to hoe, but you'll be amazed by what you can come up with using a twist of thought and a little reductio ad absurdum logic. Have fun!

Note: I can't recommend enough the use of motif indexes for writing research (mine's the Stith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, but others include Aarne's The Types of the Folktale and Uther's recent The Types of International Folktales). Vampires are tale type E251: "Vampire: Corpse which comes from grave at night and sucks blood", but there are a ton of little details and stories to follow up on in there.

#

Thanks so much!

Vulnerable Vampires

I would love to see vampire heroes and heroines who are more vulnerable, even, than ordinary humans. I know most readers don't want to see that, but I do. Vulnerability is what draws me to a character. I want them to be in trouble so I can become involved as they struggle to get out of trouble.

The vampire novels I enjoy aren't any different. If the vampire is all-powerful, I can't get interested in him or her as a protagonist. A protagonist without flaw is...not a protagonist, not the way I think about it.

It's easy enough to include vampire vulnerabilities such as sunlight burning them, deathlike sleep during the day, or susceptibility to yummy buttered garlic bread. Being able to subsist only on blood is an exceptionally good one--all the best vampire books have the vampire in danger of starving unless fed willingly by his or her unwilling best friend or random stranger. (Like that scene in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode in which Buffy has to offer her blood to Angel so he won't die from poison.)

I don't think it's enough to just mention those vulnerabilities. I think, as a writer, you have to show them, and their effects. As a reader, knowing the vulnerability exists is one thing; experiencing it through the character is much more vivid.

And I think that, whatever magical physical weaknesses the vampire character has, they should be matched by emotional weaknesses. Emotional weaknesses are what we, as humans, can really understand. The vampire who hates what he is, or can't resist drinking from his beloved even though it leads to future doom, or merely gets depressed because he's outlived all his friends--that's the vampire I want to read about.

A Little History With Those Vampires, Ma'am?

I absolutely adore historical fantasy, and that carries over to vampire novels that happen to be historical fantasy.

Moonshine by Alaya Johnson just came out this month; I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy in April, due to running into the author at a convention and, umm, begging. Moonshine is set in 1920s New York City, and is one of the most original vampire books I've ever read. Vampires and various other "Others" are common and known in the novel's world; Others are part of a growing social problem, as some vampires feed on humans indiscriminately, usually turning them against their will. Another group of vampires restrict themselves to blood banks and try to fit in with humans, becoming yet another underclass, mirroring and emphasizing experiences of the various immigrants, non-white people, and working class inhabitants of New York City.

Johnson ties these themes in with the first-person narrator, Zephyr, a young woman who teaches night school to Others and immigrants on the Lower East Side, participates in demonstrations, and works with various social activist organizations, resulting in a lot of realistic social diversity that's inextricable from the plot. There's also an excellent romance element between Zephyr and (literal!) hottie Other, Amir. I am really hoping this becomes a series, as there are numerous interesting secondary characters and more than enough scope for many, many books.

My favorite long-running vampire series is P.N. Elrod's Vampire Files. In this case, mystery and fantasy blend with a 1930s Chicago setting and a great first-person voice, leaving me willing to settle in with volume after volume. If you like Jim Butcher's (more recent) Dresden Files books, you'd probably like these.

Despite the setting, I wouldn't call the series noir, except for numbers ten and eleven, Cold Streets and Song in the Dark. They're detective novels on the lighter side. Jack Fleming, the protagonist, is at heart a moral and good-hearted person, with a hyperintelligent sidekick named Escott and a sweet girlfriend named Bobbi. Unlike in vampire romance novels, whether Jack will turn Bobbi is not a major issue between them; it's just another part of their relationship, which they talk over now and then. (This might also be because they're series characters.)

The Vampire Files, Volume One and The Vampire Files, Volume Two collect the first six novels in the series.

Barbara Hambly is one of my favorite fantasy writers ever, and her vampire novels set in the early twentieth century are no exception. Those Who Hunt the Night and its sequel, Traveling with the Dead, portray a world in which vampires are not-so-nice; the heroes of the first book are James Asher, an Oxford professor (and former spy) and his wife Lydia, a physician with a powerful intellect. An intriguing and ambiguous vampire character, Simon Ysidro, approaches them to find out who is murdering vampires all over London. The second novel focuses more on Lydia, who has to seek Simon's help to aid her husband, which leads to even more moral/ethical exploration of vampires in that world.

What are your favorites?

Related Posts:
Historical and Paranormal.

Science Fiction Vampire Books I Like.

The photos are from the 2002 silent film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, featuring the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

"The Metamorphoses of a Vampire," Charles Baudelaire

The Metamorphoses of a Vampire

Meanwhile, from her red mouth the woman, in husky tones,
Twisting her body like a serpent upon hot stones
And straining her white breasts from their imprisonment,
Let fall these words, as potent as a heavy scent:
"My lips are moist and yielding, and I know the way
To keep the antique demon of remorse at bay.
All sorrows die upon my bosom. I can make
Old men laugh happily as children for my sake.
For him who sees me naked in my tresses, I
Replace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!
Believe me, learned sir, I am so deeply skilled
That when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yield
My breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring-both
Shy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath-
Upon his bed that groans and sighs luxuriously
Even the impotent angels would be damned for me!"

When she drained me of my very marrow, and cold
And weak, I turned to give her one more kiss-behold,
There at my side was nothing but a hideous
Putrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.
I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:
Who seemed to have replenished her arteries from my own,
The wan, disjointed fragments of a skeleton
Wagged up and down in a new posture where she had lain;
Rattling with each convulsion like a weathervane
Or an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, right
Mournfully in the wind upon a winter's night.

--Charles Baudelaire; translation by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Non-European Vampire Linkgasm

In keeping with my run of guest posts on vampires, this is a special edition of Linkgasm focusing on our bloodsucking (and lifesucking) friends outside of Europe.

Vikram and the Vampire, translated by Richard R. Burton (1870). More about the Baital Pachisi. A more academic essay on the Baital Pachisi.

Article about Chinese vampire movies, "Horror, Humor and Hopping in Hong Kong," by Ian Whitney.

Vampire Anime Wiki.

The pontianak and the langsuir, from Malaysian and Indonesian folklore.

From the Carribean, the soucouyant.

Bonus vampire movie links!
Vampire Movie Database, with brief summary information. Searchable. Everything from Vampire Vixens to Sodium Babies.

The Top 70 Vampire Movies of All Time at Snarkerati.

Bonus vampire book review link!

Dead Sexy by Kimberly Raye at Read React Review.

Related Post:
Werewolves All Over The World.

Suzy McKee Charnas - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, one of my favorite writers ever, Suzy McKee Charnas!

#

Delighted to be invited here -- since I'm just fresh off a new vampire story, and, er, "sparkling" with stuff to say! I'll be be on a panel at the local SF convention this August, Bubonicon, called "Bite Me: when did vampires get sparkly and romantic, and why?"

Here's a warm-up:

For me as a reader, the vampire has always been not just old (and therefore wise and sophisticated as well as, probably, decadent) but grown up (and male -- but that's another story). If he wasn't going to be just a well-barbered werewolf in a tux (or some other popular monster, prettied up), then he needed at least some of the qualities of his great popular prototype, Count Dracula. And there was always a strong sexual allure-- but it was edgy, not all warm and cuddly, because death -- and "worse than death" -- was always a strong possibility.

And that's the way I wrote my own first vampire, Dr. Edward (yes, Edward -- I got there first!) Lewis Weyland, in a "cult classic" (whatever that means): The Vampire Tapestry. He's brilliant, attractive, an occasional (and remorseless) killer, and NOT looking for a soulmate to come live with him forever (like that's something anybody sane would want -- ETERNITY, with someone who'll eventually be about as sexy to you as your college roommate).

But -- the possibility of the romantic angle was always there, too, as it is with all sexy monsters, for very good cultural and psychological reasons (some of you may know this essay). And lately, as sexual activity has become the norm earlier and earlier for modern kids, youth's romantic idealism ("my one and only true, perfect love") and sentimentalism ("my lovely puppy that bites, but only to protect his beloved me") has over-whelmed dangerous old vampire and coated him with fairy-dust. Presto: the sparkly vampires of what sometimes looks to me like our very own cultural Twilight. He's broody, handsome, not interested in anything or anyone but Me, and he's in High School.

So, there came along a challenge -- to write a vampire story for a collection to be called Teeth (YES, I hope they change the title!) aimed at the Young Adult market and due out next year. The idea is to catch the attention of young readers stuck on Twilight and show them that the greater world of written vampires is wider than Sparkleworld.

I bit. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but it was definitely going to minus the fairy dust.

So I'm visiting a local antiques mall that a friend runs in her "retirement", and all of a sudden I get it -- my story's setting: my vampires were going to show up at the mall, avid seekers of collectibles among the "trash and treasures" typical of these places; and my late-adolescent hero, Josh, working there for the summer, will have to deal with them, up close and oh-so-personal.

And -- well, you'll have to read the story ("Late Bloomer") to find out, but I can tell you this much: I loved writing modern vamps who are obsessed not with "Ooohh, oh, me so lonely and angsty" but with a vigorous, fiercely competitive kind of Antiques Roadshow life (well, without the "life" part). The research for this story was wonderful to do -- hanging out at the antiques mall people-watching (plus the behind-the-scenes goodies). I also had a great excuse to interview my grandkids (both finishing high school) about music, so that I'd know who this boy would be listening to, and who he'd be desperate to be.

Which, thanks to my stepson giving me an iPod for my last (70th) birthday, has brought me into a whole new world of great music, to listen to while on the treadmill at the gym!

I love vamps; I never come away from writing about them with empty hands. Takers they are by nature, but they also keep on giving -- they can't seem to help themselves.

#

Thanks, Suzy! I can't wait to read "Late Bloomer."

"Cold, Brooding and Dead" - Cate Hart - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Cate Hart, blogging on some of her favorite vampires in movies and books.

#

Cold, Brooding and Dead: Vampires and Why We Love 'Em

I think I can pinpoint when my love of vampire stories began. I'd have to blame it on the movie Lost Boys. After that, I was obsessed. I think what made Lost Boys so popular was that the vampires were edgy, young and looked like rock n roll stars with motorcycles. And Jason Patrick and Kiefer Sutherland.

The first vampire novel I read, ironically, was Dracula by Bram Stoker. There's a reason the novel has become a classic. The love story is timeless, and Dracula is the original, misunderstood bad boy. Dracula wants what he cannot have, Mina and to live in London among society, craving for normalcy.

When I venture into a bookstore, I gravitate toward the paranormal stories, and generally, I walk out with one that has a vampire in it. I find myself comparing the author’s world or creature against the original, Dracula. He set the par – a member of the nobility, a remote castle, extremely rich, handsome, powerful...well, you get the picture. I love reading new twists on this, and sometimes, it’s just a modern update. For instance, Carlisle Cullen is handsome, rich, and member of an elite profession – doctor.

The Historian is one of my favorite books. It’s wonderful tale that reintroduces readers to Dracula but with the current trend, even on the History Channel, to take a well known story or event and bring scientific truth or historical accuracy to it. Though, The Historian isn’t a romance, it’s a great vampire read that solidifies Dracula as the reigning monster.

I never had a chance to read Anne Rice’s vampire series--I was in college at the time. But I did see the movies Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned. Anne Rice introduced us to the brooding vampire with a conflicted conscious. Before Louis, readers accepted that the vampire was the monster. Anne showed us that the monster might have a heart.

These days, a blog post about vampires cannot not mention the phenomenon known as Twilight.

Two years ago, I was sucked into reading the book. I didn't think I would like it, and it took several weeks after a friend recommended it for me to finally buy it. But once I started, I couldn’t read the series fast enough. Then of course Robert Pattinson happened, and the rest is history. But I still wonder what it was about Twilight that made the story so compelling. Many people, including myself, don’t like the way the heroine was written--appearing weak, infatuated, and easily controlled. But I think it’s the actual love story that has moved so many people. That and perhaps the unique spin on the actual vampires.

I just started reading PC and Kristen Cast's House of Night series. This YA series has such a unique take on the vampires. I really like the world they have created. Yet another spin on the traditional vampire lore. In the House of Night, the teenage vampires are fledgling and more human than vampire. But each student has some special ability, and the heroine has been chosen to be the next leader.

I also love the Vampire Diaries, written by LJ Smith about a decade before Twilight. I love the two brothers, Stefan who wants to be normal and doesn't feed on humans, and Damon who is deviant and does drink human blood. I also like that Smith used most of the traditional lore about vampires, like sunlight burning them, a stake through the heart, and compelling people to do their bidding. But Smith put a spin on the Salvatore brothers. They both have a ring that allows them to walk around in the daylight. I’m a Team Damon fan more than Stefan, perhaps, because Damon is the bad guy. But underneath that, Damon is proving to be just as good as Stefan when it comes to helping the heroine Elena. Both brothers are brooding, but Damon is certainly the bad boy.

Someone, an agent perhaps, mentioned what happened to the good ol' days when vampires were evil and must be destroyed? When did we start to want the bad guy to really be the good guy? I think the switch must have come somewhere around the time of Buffy and Angel, Stephan and Elena, and Louis's brooding. Before then, literature and film portrayed vampires as the monster, those horror story creatures out to upset the balance in humanity. But with Interview there was a different vampire, one with remorse for he was doing. So if vampires could have remorse, then maybe they had other feelings? And why not be able to want to love. Isn't that what we all want, to fall in love and be loved in return? Loved no matter what we are, or have become. For me that is the draw to vampires to see that inner struggle against “their true nature.” And to see the heroine grapple with what their hero truly is and still love them in return, vowing to be able to change their ways.

#

Thanks, Cate!

Anyone have any favorites she didn't mention?

Gemma Files, "Everything Old is New Again" - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Gemma Files!

#

Everything Old is New Again
By Gemma Files

Back when I was a kid, in much the same way that I would have been utterly startled to be told that even an incredibly mainstreamed version of Rap music would eventually occupy most slots on a computer-file equivalent of the Billboard Top 100, the idea that vampires would have become the go-to monster of the Milennium's turn would have amazed me beyond measure. And yet: Everywhere you look, these days, it’s a cornucopia of fangs--though usually coming firmly attached to a very specific type of vamp, ie the pale, sexy, mournful, conflicted kind so stringently popularized by books, movies and TV series like Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood.

Oh, every once in a while you get a throwback to the pre-Anne Rice tropes—-Steve Niles' 30 Days of Night graphic novel springs to mind, along with the movie it inspired. But in my chosen genre, the vampire--once a Horror mainstay--has become so much of a joke that when guidelines routinely warn against submitting anything featuring the "classic" monsters, vampires are assumed to go right up the very top of that list. Vampires, like werewolves (and, increasingly, fairies), have been relegated to the ever-expanding Paranormal Romance sub-genre, with categorical emphasis falling extra-heavy on the latter part of that compound, rather than the former.

So the question becomes not "Can one still write vampires and succeed?", because obviously, one can...but rather "Can one still write vampires which startle, discomfit, surprise, let alone scare?" Can one possibly keep the vampire fresh as both a monster and as a character, even now it's become so amazingly ubiquitous?

My thesis is that the best way to break free from the Bram Stoker/Anne Rice/Stephanie Meyer paradigm is by re-examining the roots of the legend--a creature neither dead nor alive, which subsists on something stolen from human beings, possibly conjured to explain the effects of various natural occurences and diseases--and simultaneously opening yourself up to alternate visions of "the vampire" from around the world: The Gaki of Japan, the Strix of Ancient Rome and the Bruxsa of Portugal, the Lamia of Ancient Greece, the Jiang Shih of China, the Baital of India, the Ekimmu of Ancient Mesopotamia, the Langsoir, Pontiannak, Polong, Pelesit and Penanggalen of Malaysia, the Civatateo of Mexico, the Obayifo of Africa and the Loogaroo of the Caribbean, etc.

What is it they take from us, and how do they take it? Maybe blood is too easy a substance, too intimate, to actually scare us anymore. In the Philippines, for example, the Aswang is a shapeshifter that delights in sucking unborn children straight out of their mothers' wombs using a long proboscis; ironically, an Aswang is often the result of a botched attack by another Aswang, which only succeeds in robbing the foetus of its humanity. But what if the vampire in question robs you instead of memory, or time, or ability--like the Leannan-Sidhe of Ireland, which inspires poets to do their best work while simultaneously sucking their life-force from them? And how are their table manners? The Ekimmu tears its prey apart, arriving and leaving through solid walls, while the work of the Lamia, Jiang Shih, and even the Strix or Obayifo can easily be mistaken for that of simple wasting diseases, tropical or otherwise—the same impulse which once conflated tuberculosis, or "consumption," with vampirism.

One way or the other, there's no mistaking any one of these alternate forms of vampirism for the pseudo-civilized, almost "expected" tropes of Sookie Stackhouse’s universe. Even something as apparently simple as the Bruxsa, a vampire-witch hybrid which seals its transition from human to monster by killing its own children, then becomes a type of night-flying bird like an owl or raven--think about the horrific impact of a woman sitting at her kitchen table whose head suddenly swerves ninety degrees, so she can confront the person sneaking up on her. Or the Langsoir, who also often travels in an owl's shape, whose beautiful black hair parts to reveal a "feeding mouth" on the back of her neck; in order to defeat her, her nails must be cut and stuffed into this same orifice. Sort of beats a stake all to hell for originality, doesn't it?

Each of these "new" types of vampire is actually A) not new at all and B) fairly easy to research, especially in the age of Google. So look around, and go to town; no one ever lost points for originality, that I know of. And the norm was made to deviate from...as all good vampires certainly know.

#

Thanks, Gemma!

Gemma Files is an award-winning horror author who’s published two collections of short fiction and two chapbooks of poetry. Her first novel, A Book of Tongues: Volume One in the Hexslinger Series, is available from ChiZine Publications.

"Not Your Grandma’s Vampires" - M.K. Mancos - Guest Blog

Please welcome my guest, M.K. Mancos!

#

Not Your Grandma’s Vampires
By MK Mancos

Since childhood, I’ve loved the idea of vampires. I sat in front of the television in glazed-eyed wonder as the Universal Monsters wreaked havoc on mankind. Bela Lugosi brought such class and panache to the undead that for a long time he was a hard act to follow.

Over the years, there have been many who have portrayed the Count in all his fiendish glory; Frank Langella and Gary Oldman to name just two. Or how about the hot and sexy star of the short-lived series Moonlight, Alex O'Loughlin, as he played Mick St. John? But no matter who has played a vamp on screen, they have all brought something unique to the role.

Should it be any different with written characters?

When I sat down to write a vampire novel, I knew I wanted to step out of the box--or coffin as the case may be. No matter my love for the classic, the tried and true tropes just didn’t tempt me enough to want to go there with my own characters. I wanted something fresh and different.

Enter the hosts.

To me, sci-fi is the perfect vehicle to place a vampire. Not sci-fi as in "the world is a product of technology run amuck" or "people go around in Jeston-mobiles courtesy of Spacely Sprockets," but rather the mechanics of turning vamps is not that of damnation, rather experiments gone afoul.

Well, I guess it’s more fantasy since my scientists are alchemists and the journey started during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Anyhow, I digress. What I wanted was something totally different than anyone else out there had written to date. Really, my vamps are pseudo-vampires and not your garden variety blood sucker, though they do suck down quite a bit of the old O positive.

The Hosts are the vehicles for entities who were pulled across a dimensional gateway during an alchemical rite. Not even they know or understand the nature of the symbiotes who have adhered to their souls. Not all of the entities are the same, save for the power to make the host immortal and the need to consume blood. They are a mysterious species whose true nature I may or may not ever reveal.

Here’s a blurb to the first book, The Host: Shadows:

Sometimes the things that go bump in the night are there to protect the innocent.
Four hundred years ago, Tristain St. Blaise worked as an apprentice for alchemist Benito Achilles. An experiment went terribly wrong, fusing an entity to Tristain's soul, turning him from an enlightened man of reason to one of dark passions. Now, to find some measure of redemption, he wears the mantle of a hired killer, protecting innocents and ridding the world of men like Achilles.

Angelia Lightheart has worked hard to purge her life of unhealthy relationships. One night in a dark Manhattan alley, she is saved from a would-be rapist by a man who seems able to look through her very soul into the weary heart she hides from the world. As Angelia and Tristain fall in love, his work as a contract killer brings him face to face with the one responsible for his immortal state, endangering not only their love, but Angelia's life.

(Available from Samhain Publishing, Nov. 2008)

As I write the second book, The Host: Bloodlust, I find my hosts’ powers are expanding and growing, which is good. There is nothing worse than a stagnant vampire. Tends to make the blood congeal.

Like I said in the title: these aren’t your grandma’s vampires. But they are sexy and lots of fun.

#

Thanks, Kat!

Lydia Parks - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Lydia Parks!

#

Thank you, Vickie, for inviting me to be your guest. I'm thrilled to be here, even if only virtually.

I know readers and aspiring authors like to hear how published authors got started. (I know this because I've been both! Yes, and I'm still a reader.) I'm happy to tell you my (semi-goofy) story.

I didn't start out to be a writer. Actually, I'm an engineer. One fateful night, I sat down to watch television--it was a cold winter night in Alaska, so it seemed like the thing to do--and I caught the first episode of "Forever Knight." Yow! Talk about a show before its time! I was a fan of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, and this show was created just for me. It had all the sexual conflict and darkness with a cast of wonderful Canadian actors. I was hooked. Big time.

This happened in 1992 when the Internet was a new thing. My DH was one of the first people I knew who managed to hook in. As the Net grew, I discovered a group writing fanfiction for Forever Knight (stories that use the show's characters--the "episodes that were never filmed" concept). I jumped in and started writing. We all shared our stories with others online we'd never meet (or so we thought, but that comes later). When the show was cancelled after three seasons and most of the characters killed off, we all went into mourning. Then a couple dozen of us got together and wrote "Season 4." It was a blast, and I was picked to write an episode. I can't remember the name of it at the moment…maybe it'll come to me. Anyway, each "author" was assigned an editor, and mine turned out to be a real editor from New York. Once we'd finished the episode, she suggested I write a romance novel, so I did. I wish I knew who that editor was. I'd like to thank her.

There's more to the story--hours of heartache, a hundred or so "dear author" rejection letters, the long, hard road of learning to write a novel, the excitement of selling, etc.--but I won't go into all the details. I managed to sell some romance novels and a couple of mysteries, and then was asked to try my hand at erotica. "Erotica?" I thought. Hmm. Hot sex, dark alpha characters…vampires! Of course! So I started with the Nathan Cotton series (published by eXtasy Books), then sold some hot, juicy vampires to Aphrodisia (Addicted and Devour Me). I also have a vampire in a Nocturne Bite ("Shadow Lover") from Silhouette.

Maybe because of where I started, I'm a semi-purist when it comes to vampires. I'm not into the Nosferatu kind of vampires, all warty and pointy-eared, but definitely the Nick Knight version. My vampires can't go out in the sun and they aren't part-anything-else. A stake through the heart definitely does them in. And most of them can't stand garlic. They exist in the normal world, not a fantasy place filled with other super-naturals. One thing they all want is human blood, and it's always a very sexual experience for both vamps and humans when they take it. I just love the angst-ridden vampire image, even if he isn't always full of angst. It's all about the Hunger.

My latest story out from Nocturne Bites, "Marked" – which is available right now on eHarlequin.com – isn't about a vampire, but a shape-shifter. It's set in New Mexico and has a Native American flavor (thanks to a good friend who agreed to be my advisor). I really like the story. Maybe because it, too, has the hunger factor. He doesn't want to drink her blood…he just WANTS HER!

What I've realized about vampire (or shape-shifter) erotica is that it's no different than any other writing. If there's no conflict, it isn't interesting for me as either an author or a reader. I'm not saying that reading hot sex isn't fun, it's just that I can't read 200 pages of hot sex without a good story in there, too. Vampires present an automatic element of conflict; he wants her but he might kill her if he gives in to his desires. That's pretty strong conflict. However, if you can give the conflict a twist, you'll have a much stronger story. He's a vampire…if he takes her, he loses his only chance to see the sunlight again…she's actually a vampire hunter…she thinks he killed her father…get creative! What's the worst thing that could happen to him? The answer should be "her." Romance is a great basis for erotica, with or without vampires.

Oh, and I promised you the rest of the story. For my 39th birthday (I'm not telling you how long ago it was, but the photos are fading), I got to meet my favorite vampire: Geraint Wyn Davies who played Nick Knight. What a hunk, and an absolutely fabulous person! A good friend and I went to a crazy weekend event with 80 women and Ger. I must admit, I had a blast, but it was kind of a strange thing to do. Several of us got together to swap stories about what we'd told our friends and family we were spending the weekend doing: business meeting, friend's wedding, therapy. Too funny. Anyway, I met a bunch of the people I'd been sharing fanfiction with. I even got to sign a few stories--my first autographs! I'll always remember that weekend more than just a little fondly.

One thing I got from that event was an important lesson: know that the people reading what you're writing are real, they're out there somewhere, and you just might meet them! [toothy grin with fangs]

If you want to find out about any of my vamps or other creatures, please visit my website. I love to hear from readers!

Thank you again, Vickie! [hugs]

"He was brought across in 1228...preyed on humans for their blood..."

#

Thanks, Lydia!

Any other fans of television vampires out there? And do they inspire you to write?

This is the first post in a little Vampire Blogging Festival I'm hosting. My upcoming guests include:

5/18 - M.K. Mancos
5/19 - Gemma Files
5/20 - Cate Hart
5/21 - Suzy McKee Charnas
6/2 - Anna Katherine
6/4 - Evie Byrne

Vampire Books I Like - Science Fiction

I am not a huge fan of vampire romance, so my favorite vampire books are mostly from the science fiction and fantasy genres. Here are my top three science fiction choices.

My all-time favorite vampire book is The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas. Not only is it a wonderful work in itself - it consists of four separate stories of the same vampire, each from a different point of view - but it gives science-fictional touches to the vampire myth that for me add to its realism. The vampire isn't sure how old he is; periodically, he hibernates and while asleep forgets his previous life, as a method of protecting himself from becoming too close to humans, who are his prey. So far as he knows, he is the only one of his kind, a species of one. And instead of fangs, he feeds on blood as a mosquito does, via an organ beneath his tongue, so his human victims rarely notice. As the story begins, the vampire is hiding himself in plain sight as a respected university professor, Dr. Weyland.

More about The Vampire Tapestry on the author's website and her essay about the book, Scarlet Ribbons (link is to part one of four - note that there are a lot of spoilers in the essay).

My second favorite vampire novel is a long, emotionally intense novel by C.S. Friedman, The Madness Season. It's set in a future where alien invaders have destroyed human society. The vampire protagonist, Daetrin, is also in hiding as a university professor, at one of the few schools the aliens allow; but soon they discover that he's not human, and capture him. He must confront his own nature and his own skills as a shapechanger in order to save both himself and the rest of humanity. There is more than one type of vampire in the novel, and it's interesting to see how Friedman plays the different species and their views off of each other.

The last book on my list is Fledgling by Octavia Butler. The book was published shortly before Butler's death. I love it because of her original science fictional take on the vampire myth. Here are a couple of detailed reviews, in Strange Horizons and The Washington Post. Butler's much earlier novel Wild Seed featured a character that, to me, was also vampiric, but not in the traditional sense; he lived by stealing bodies and inhabiting them, one after another.

Please share your favorite sf vampires!

Why I Don't Like Vampires

I have never loved vampires.

Rather, I don't like the idea of vampires. This does not stop me from reading vampire novels, of course. I just don't prefer them.

The heart of my dislike is vampires killing humans for their own eternal life; secondarily, the way certain types of vampires treat humans as food only. Most contemporary vampire fiction elides this or, better, creates their own lore so that their hero/heroine is not a murderer. I like that type much better; for instance, it doesn't seem so awful to me if a vampire feeds on their lover in small amounts, giving pleasure or psychic strength or something in return. All of the vampire books I've enjoyed have either mutuality (P.N. Elrod), vampires as a separate species who don't need human blood (J.R. Ward, except I get annoyed that their blood-partner must be of the opposite sex, which isn't logical to me in a biological sense), or vampires who are considered evil because they kill, and the consequences of that (Barbara Hambly). I've also enjoyed vampire stories about humans who fight evil vampires, as in Colleen Gleason's work.

The other thing I dislike about vampires is that, in romance at least, the vampire hero (nearly always a hero, not a heroine) is almost exclusively given an "alpha male" personality. It makes sense for this to be so; instead of the Duke of Manlypants sweeping in and whisking the heroine away to a new, luxurious lifestyle, the Vampire Studly swoops in and whisks the heroine into immortality, or at the least through a whirlwind of supernatural sex. The only difference is in scale. At base, both are the same fantasy: powerful male chooses heroine out of all others and places her above all others, and she is safe and loved forevermore. If one's feminist ideals are bothered by the idea, it's easier to believe in if Mr. Alpha really is more powerful than you because he's eight centuries old, or can fly, or can mesmerize a city with his glowing gaze.

It was interesting to read Joey Hill's The Vampire Queen's Servant, which features a female vampire. I had hopes that I would enjoy it more, but it only reinforced my opinion that what bothered me about vampire books was the power differential. The vampire's gender didn't matter to me. Even in a book like that one, with its complex and subtle issues of dominance and submission, it was the vampire ultimately having the power of life and death over his or her romantic partner that kept me from buying into the fantasy.

If you're looking for an inventive atypical vampire romance, I recommend Marta Acosta's Happy Hour at Casa Dracula. It's really fun, with some interesting variations on both vampire romances and chick lit.

Related Posts:
Normative Heterosexuality and the Alpha Male Fantasy.
Romancing the Beast.