Hello and welcome to the newest entry in The Sanguine Diary. Good news! My story “Restless” is now available in the newest issue of “Dark Eclipse.” Not as good news: I am still writer’s blocked. So instead of reviewing a movie,TV show, or written work, this week I am going to chip at the block by talking about why I chose to write about vampires in the first place.
I’ve always like the genre. In addition to my aforementioned adolescent love of Fright Night and Near Dark, I was also an avid fan of the Bunnicula Books as a kid. So looking back, I’ve always had at least some affinity for blood-drinking things that go bump in the night. But I never really got into Anne Rice, and my interest in vampires was never an ongoing, singular obsession.
I’ve been taken with a lot of things in my life: guitar, movies, science fiction, history, and plenty more. For a long time, I believed my lack of a ‘singular obsession’, was a liability— as if I could never produce something worthwhile if I did not have an overwhelming ‘calling’ since my earliest days. An irrational part of me still believes that, but an equal part recognizes that such an idea is absurd. There is no teleological narrative of how I came to write about vampires, and that’s okay, though a few clear markers pop up in the rear view mirror.
Like many things, one source of inspiration came from that wonderful fount of culture, The Simpsons. In the episode where the school bus driver, Otto, moves into the Simpsons’ garage, he asks Marge if she has any books “from the vampire’s point of view.” This became a favorite quote of mine, and in hindsight, it resonated with me more than I realized.
It’s true, I do like things from the vampire’s point of view. In Near Dark, I wanted Caleb just to give in and start drinking people’s blood. It’s the same reason I was willing to sit through all three (and soon a fourth) wowzerly bad Underworld movies. But all that time, something still was missing and I couldn’t figure it out, until the summer of 2007, when I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I’d always thought vampires were cool. They’re outsiders with superior strength and piercing, yet detached, insight into the human condition.. Millions of kids who never felt like they fit into the boring social scene of their school have entertained similar fantasies. But before watching Buffy, vampires had never been relatable to me on a level deeper than wish-fulfillment.
And when it comes to carrying a good story, wish-fulfillment is a stubby pair of legs. There needs to be something more, and the Buffy episode “Lovers’ Walk” is a perfect example. Spike, a gleefully mean vampire who sports a leather jacket and wicked cockney drawl, goes on a bender after his lover of over one hundred years has left him. He passes out drunk, and is jolted awake because the rising sun has set his hand on fire. In that moment, I actually felt sorry for him, knowing full well that he was a literal monster. It was the most I had ever felt about a vampire, until later in the series, when Spike had a chip implanted in his head that prevented him from harming humans (long story).
I had no life-changing epiphany when I first saw “Lovers’ Walk,” but the scene comes to mind because it encapsulates what I want to do with vampire fiction. I have often waxed and wanked about how vampires are a metaphor for what we repress. While I believe this is true, and can cite many examples, it isn’t really what I want to do with the genre.
One one hand, I’ve never began a story by saying, “I want to say ‘X’ about the human condition.” But there are some common themes, mostly restlessness and disconnection (note the title of my newly-publsihed story). My characters tend to long to fit in somewhere, and are frustrated that they can’t. Even my more ‘herioc’, proverbially bad-ass characters are kind of bumbling or awkward somehow. There are a couple exceptions, but I think that’s just because these characters haven’t been fully explored.
Is this because I am restless? Unfulfilled? Unable to fit in? The answers are: sometimes, in some ways, and mostly not. But these are feelings I can easily connect to. I was socially impaired into my early thirties. As I get older, I am more aware of closed doors and the consequences of decisions. Like a lot of people, I sometimes wonder how things could be different. So I like to write about vampires who wrestle with these kinds of feelings.
Monsters are also a metaphor for the uglier things that lurk just under the surface of our civilized façades. I believe this one, too. But I want to delve the more common, less extreme gremlins that drive our behavior. So, yes, I write about blood-sucking monsters that can only reproduce through violent, generally forceful, acts but they still carry the baggage of their erstwhile humanity.
That’s really the best I can explain why I choose to write what I write. That said, I won’t claim that I ever hit this goal on the bull’s eye, but when I actually reach into my self and do honest writing, this is the place I come from.
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