Wicked Wenches

I used to write vampires. A lot. I got deep into it all, did research, read everything I could get my hands on.

Which Vampire stuck out for me?

None of them. All of them.
Even Vamps have the good, the bad and the downright horrible. There’s Sebastian, in Michelle Hauf’s Dark Rapture. The musician… and, oh, he’s SUCH a fiend! He’s not nice. Not really. I love him to bits.
There are the vampires in J.C. Wilder’s series. Damn, I loved them. I really did.
There’s Nosferatu. Now, that fiend couldn’t be called romantic or nice, or sexy by any stretch of the imagination — but I still like him.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Jean-Claude… I will never forget that bathroom scene. But alas, here is a writer who has gone too far for my tastes. I used to read everything she put out — then I read Narcissus in Chains (I was already apprehensive after the previous one) and that was the end of it for me. I just couldn’t get into it anymore. Where earlier there had been sexual tension, we now had the other extremes which looked too much like orgies. It turned me off an otherwise very well written series.
Silhoutte Nocturne has a series within the series — Bewitching the Dark — which puts a great slant on what hurts a vampire.
Kreseley Cole’s Vamps are kinda cool too, but her books span so much more than just vampires.

There are a lot of facets to Vampires, I haven’t really found one I didn’t like and I can’t wait what others will develop. I don’t really have a favorite, other than I like them dark and a bit nasty. Vampires shouldn’t be nice. They should have an agenda. They are predators after all. It’s a bit like taming a wild beast, with a bloodsucking evil minion from Hell being possibly the most dangerous of all the beasts you could try to tame. It might just end deadly.

But if I absolutely have to pick one… At the moment it would be Michelle Hauf’s Nikolaus Drake, who got suckered when he drinks from a witch who got drenched in a love potion. The whole concept made me giggle, and watching a lovesick vampire try to romance a witch who’d rather kill him… oh my. LOL.

I definitely love vampires–love their strength and the fact that they aren’t good. There is always some bad in a vampire–something that probably comes from their need to feed.
I think you could probably extend this out to encompass all creatures of the dark–demons, werewolves, the whole lot of them. They all harbor their secrets and their sense of self hatred that makes them the flawed and brooding heroes we have come to know and love.
Throw into that mix a vampire hunter or a woman who doesn’t know what she’s in for and you’ve got a great story on your hands.

Since the ladies so nicely elaborated, I’ll do the same.
Why do I write paranormals… hmm. I blame Anne Stuart. It’s all her fault.
Way back when, I got my hands on “Night of the Phantom” and I practically devoured it. (Which reminds me that I have to re-read that one.)
That got me started on paranormals. Then I read Tanya Huff’s Blood series and that got me started on vampires. I love em to bits, blood and death and all. I wrote vampires in a time when everyone went “Vampires don’t sell”. Friends of mine wrote them too, told the same thing. It never stopped us.
As a result I know way too much about death and dying.
Today, a vampire romance is nothing out of the ordinary. Take Christine Feehan for instance. Her Carpathians are essentially vampires, dressed up a little differently. Still vampires though.
You have Sherri Kenyon and her Dark Hunters – they’re also vampires. In a sense. Again, dressed up differently, with a different slant and a different history but alas… a rose by any other name – is still a rose.
Today, I’ve moved on from the vamps. My critters are different, they don’t fit with the monsters, yet in a sense that is what they are. Still big bad and not domesticated though. You wouldn’t want one of them living in your basement.
Or maybe you do.
As for why… You think I know the answer to that? The bad guys turn me on, that’s all there is to it. I guess the paras are badder than your average biker dude, or maybe not.
I’ve read some pretty hefty bad guys before that didn’t come equipped with a set of very sharp teeth.
I write because I have to write. I can’t not write, I’d go insane. Certifiably so.
So I do what keeps me sane and put pen to paper… hopefully someone will like it and then maybe you get to read it too.

No, I’m not talking about loving or hating the books written about vampires. I’m talking about how the vampires are perceived and which way do you prefer it. As long as there have been vampire stories, they have been depicted as dark, deadly, and seductive. Many authors have taken these two different ways. Vampires are either the heroes or the antagonists. So are you with Buffy who says she likes her men evil? Or would you prefer the hunter of vampires? I can go either way. After all sucking blood and killing people really isn’t that sexy however you dress it up. But that thrill of the bad boy or the lost soul. In popular culture, Angel springs to mind as the soulful vampire remorseful of his past deeds. Here’s where it gets tricky, the bad guys on Buffy… The Master, yeah, he’s not hot and there is definitely no question that he is evil. But if you take Spike, hmmm. He’s sexy and the British accent is always a plus. He’s evil but he’s willing to change. And even when he’s evil, he’s a vamp in love. Whether you believe vampires are another evolution from the beginning of time or created by a person betraying or renouncing God or created by a God or Goddess, they will continue to entrall us.

What role do you prefer for the blood-suckers, hero or antagonist or both?