The Thing About Vampires...

If there's one monster I'll never get tired of reading or writing about, it's vampires. I'm not talking about the whiny, sparkly fairies from Twilight. I'm talking about the blood-drinking, red-eyed, fierce-clawed, ferocious, dangerous, seductive vampires. To me, there is no more perfect monster.

Every culture has their own take on vampires, even though the basic, blood-sucking monster background is the same. From Slovenian kudlaks to Romanian strigoii and African asanbosam, all types of vampires fascinate me. Their powers can range from anything to astral projection to hypnotism to shape-shifting to nightmare control. It's impossible not to draw inspiration from them.

What I love about vampirism as far as writing goes is that the genre is bendable. Once you have the basic elements, you can make up rules or societies and heroes to match. For example, in Agents of Limbo, my vampires don't have a reflection but they also don't need to be invited into a house. They can't go out in the day, but they don't need to sleep in a coffin, etc.

I might come back to vampires frequently, but I always try to change the mythology so they're never the same vampires. The monsters in my short story Eternity Blood aren't the same as the ones in Needfire (both stories which are progressing nicely, in case you were wondering).

One of my favorite reference books is The Vampire Encyclopedia by Matthew Bunson. It's great for initial ideas when it comes to lore, and has a list of classic vampire books or movies. Personally, my favorite vampire movie is Daybreakers, my favorite vampire TV show is True Blood, and I have too many favorite vampire books to list.

 
Don't worry– my vamps will never sparkle and won't complain too much about their emotional problems. I like the havoc wrecking vampires. The more violent they are, the better the monster they are, and the more fun they are to write/read. Vampires are creatures of blood, not fairytale whiners. And for anyone wondering, yes, I read the Twilight books. The Volturi were my favorite because they acted like vampires.

That's just one of the reasons why Agents of Limbo is my favorite series. I put a lot of work into my vampires and of course, my two dhampirs. Now that I've reworked the series, I'm really excited to get back to it in the next few months after the last of the details have been ironed out. I'll probably write another short story with Leon and Jace in the next little while, but I haven't decided what theme to go with. If you have any ideas of what sort of trouble Leon and Jace should get into next, leave a message in the comments! If I chose your story, I'll be sure to give concept credit to you! ;)

Amy