First Posting: My Top Five List of Vampire Fiction.

First off, if you haven't already, buy the anthology Once Bitten, Never Die from Wicked East Press and read my story "Survivor's Guilt." 


Now that you've done that (and thank you), you can read my first post. 


Hello, and welcome. I write about the manqué-filled adventures of life-sized vampires. I started doing this about a year and a half ago, and since then I've had two stories published. One has already been adequately pushed for today, and you can always read "Love is a Battlefield" at Spinetinglers.co.uk. Two more stories have been accepted for publication, and will be released in early 2012.


The Sanguine Diary will feature book reviews, movie/TV reviews and other discussions of vampire, supernatural, and writing-related topics.  

For my maiden blog entry, I’ve decided to talk about five works of vampire fiction that have had a signifcant impact on my work. This is not a ‘canon’ list. I give mad props to Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, but they don’t represent the direction I want to take with the genre. The works I list here inspired me to write, and I hope I can one day hold a candle to them.

5. Mario Acevedo, X-Rated Bloodsuckers: When I decided I wanted to write about vampires, I went to a bookstore and this novel leaped off the shelf. Admittedly, I was no expert to the genre but the very existence of his book opened doors for my imagination. Acevedo’s vampire noir detective novels are funnier than they are scary, but they’re still plenty twisted. The protagonist, Felix Gomez, is a vampire, Iraq War veteran, gritty private eye, and reluctant servant of a sinister vampire syndicate.  In X-Rated Bloodsuckers, Gomez is hired to investigate a series of murders in the porn industry. Fun.  

4. Kim Newman, Anno Dracula: In 1888, Dracula has married Queen Victoria, Van Helsing’s head’s impaled on a stake outside Buckingham Palace, and Jack the Ripper is murdering vampire prostitutes. Alternate history doesn't get more fascinating than this. As someone who writes in historical settings— Vietnam, Nixon-era Washington, DC, Nazi-occupied Poland— I am inspired by Newman’s depth of imagination and attention to detail. Anno Dracula is also an inventive gore-fest. One scene in particular, where a nearly decapitated vampire tries to change into a wolf and teeth accidentally grow out of the wound in her throat, had me gushing to my strong-stomached friends.

3. Jonathan Langan, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky”: It’s been more than a year since I’ve read this short story and I still think about it at least once a week. Part of an anthology titled By Blood We Live, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky” recounts a group of veterans’ efforts to rebuild their lives after they encounter a vampire during a firefight with Iraqi insurgents. It spoils nothing to say the vampire is an alien that feeds almost exclusively amid humanity’s least humane behavior, and in hindsight this story is probably one of the reasons why I have written four stories set during chaotic periods of modern history.

2. John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In: Lindqvist’s prose, which tells the story of a bullied young boy’s friendship with an old vampire in a child’s body, is as bleak and beautiful as the novel’s setting of Cold-War era Sweden. Two movies have been made from this book, one Swedish and one American. Both of them are quite good, but they are not as dark, twisted, or layered as the novel. Parts of this book are disturbing almost to the point of sickening, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to read on. If you liked either of the movies, then you definitely need to read this book.  

1. Christopher Moore, Bloodsucking Fiends: On my most confident days, I pretend my writing is a darker version of Moore’s unique, funny take on vampire lore. I yearn to tell a story with the deft point-of-view shifts with which Moore spins the tale of Jody, a neurotic, painfully ‘modern’ vampire gal, and her clueless paramour and manservant, Tommy Flood. Set among San Francisco’s down, out, and outright weird, Bloodsucking Fiends is a decidedly  un-gothic vampire novel. And as much as it appeals to my love of humor and the macabre, I still feel bad about what happened to those turtles. To know what the hell I’m talking about, you’ll just have to read it.