Seriously.
Why is this genre so popular on the market? Why is vampirism such a key fixture in the dark fantasy/horror/science fiction genre? We see a genetic vampire in Peter Watts’ Blindsight. There are three different types of vampires in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Stephanie Myers is making big news with her teen girl focused vampire novels. During this rise of fiction, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on television for seven seasons. Laurell K. Hamilton has been writing book after book featuring Vampires. Her work (among others) has penetrated almost every facet of the geek mainstream, even making an appearance in the popular web comic Penny Arcade. What gives?
Even I’m not immune to it. I recently finished Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, which is an excellent, suspenseful thriller about three generations of historians and their quest to uncover the truth of (you guessed it) the Dracula legend. Despite myself, I found myself drawn into the moody atmosphere of the book. It was written in a very literary fashion (reminiscent of British Literature at the turn of the twentieth century) and packaged in such a way that I didn’t mind that it was a(nother) story about Vampires. (Yes, yes, “OMG! You read lit fic!” Get over it, already.)
What makes us so fascinated with the act of sucking blood? Why do we want to believe both the best and the worst of the walking undead?
Personally, I think that the whole idea of vampirism lends the dark side in all of us to desire two things–immortality and sin without consequence. (I use the term “sin” loosely here, not necessarily in a religious sense, but in the sense that the possession of living, breathing humans through the act of vampirism can be classified as the basest sort of evil. I’m sure many of you can give me fictional examples of “good” vampires who must “convert” their victims to “save” them, but the end result is the same.) Who wouldn’t want to live forever? Who wouldn’t want to indulge in the sort of rampant sensuality that seems to be the vampiric inheritance? For some, even the admission price of eternal undeath isn’t enough of a barrier.
And that’s where we’ve been headed in the fictional world.
Unless I somehow can re-imagine the whole concept (not likely), this is territory that I am unlikely to tread. No one wants to pay me stupid amounts of money (if you do, email me) to write such a story, and I can’t imagine crawling around in the head of the undead (haha) long enough to make a coherent novel.
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Obama stinks!
My wife reads “Vampire” books,however she claims none have out done Ann Rice’s books.I have not read them but I have read “The servant of the bones” by Ann and I can understand why the others were so good, she does an amazing amount of research on the history of the time each story it set in, via art and culture as well.
Well, I’d say don’t knock it until you write it. I challenge you to write a short story (when you have the time) that is compelling and unique about this glutted genre. Research and write something out of your comfort zone and see what happens. Then I’ll take heed to your rants about how much vampires ‘suck’ with a little more credence.
For the record, I am NOT a fan of Vampire stories. I find the genre overwhelmed and very ‘commercial’. But I realize others find delving into it a thrill/chill experience, much like horror films and roller coasters.
Fine. I will. I’ll even had Kate podcast it.
It was a dark and stormy night when Rupert the grave digger’s apprentice was last seen sober. You see vampires can only get drunk when drinking the blood of an alcoholic, and rupert was a walking brewery of mythic proportions….
…but Rupert was a Pandora’s box to Vlad’s misbegotten brood. True, the alcoholic haze made Rupert irresistibly vulnerable and gave the feeding an extra kick. However, this grave digger’s apprentice had sickle cell anemia, dropped acid, and was a test subject for drug trials, particularly diet pills and anti-depressants. If this wasn’t bad enough, his flat-mate was slowly poisoning him with heavy metals.
He was not particularly religious or blessed with social graces. More than a few times he had been scolded by Father O’Reilly for quenching his thirst by drinking the holy water or washing his hands in the baptismal. The oppressive heat of the summer prompted the priest to forgive this wayward lamb. Surely he was just trying to keep cool… but he muddied the sacramental water and the basin smelled of sweat and newly turned earth.
Oblivious to attack as he stumbled home along his usual route, Rupert had unknowingly dispatched three denizens of the undead to their eternal damnation this month alone. Had it not been for the holy water, they would likely have only suffered severely bad trips and hangovers. Buffy, move aside! Clothed in muddy overalls, and armed with a shovel, liquid courage and a belch that could knock a buzzard off of a shit wagon, Rupert was judgment incarnate. He reigned supreme.
Vampires! Who believed in that shit! That was just something that mothers used to scare kids into behaving. I remember all the times I was threatened with being made undead because of my behavior (or lack of.) She warned me that the bat changlings were going to scoop me up and drain my blood, leaving me to face eternity as a lost soul or worse if I didn’t clean up my act.
I used to bite the inside of my lip to get blood to flow out the corners of my mouth. I loved pretending to be one of the dreaded undead and Mother would slap hell out of me (I think she was literally trying) to get me to stop tempting fate. Alas, had I only known what fate had in store for me, I would have been the best altar boy in our whole Jewish community. (The Catholics always seemed to know what to do with the exorcism bit, I never saw a movie with a Rabi performing one.)
I thought the old boy was just some rummy down on his luck, pan-handling for another bottle of mad-dog or something equally distasteful. He looked like an out of work thespian from an earlier era, dressed in a swallow tail coat, ruffled shirt, bow tie and a vibrant red cumberbund. The shirt had some rusty stains marring the upper chest area and he had a rosary made entirely of cloves of garlic hanging around his neck. That and the red syrupy liquid dripping from his near empty bottle of Mad-dog 2020 should have made me turn and run. But no! I had to get my kicks tormenting the poor old bastard.
As I passed him by, I stumbled into him causing him to fall into the street directly in the path of a runaway garbage truck. As he stared beseechingly at me from the path of the behemoth, I reached out my hand and yelled Quick! Throw me the bottle! There might be something left in it!
As incredible as it may seem, he did just that. I caught the bottle in mid-flight, immediately up ended it and drank the remaining liquid.
Just as the runaway garbage truck plowed into him, he cursed me. That was the blood of a vampire that I was taking to the abbey for analysis! You are forever doomed to eternity as one of the undead!
And that’s how I came to my bad end…