Enjoy!
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ARE VAMPIRES REALLY DEAD?
It never fails. After a flurry of high-profile vampire activity, i.e., best-selling books and/or movies, there will be the pronouncements from people-who-claim-to-know that . . . wait for it . . . vampires are dead! Not dead as in bury that sucker already! But dead as in, the genre is tapped out. Readers are looking for something different. This year, it’s the very high profile Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and HBO’s True Blood based on Charlaine Harris’ wonderful Southern Vampire books.
So, are vampires finally stick-a-fork-in-‘em dead? No, of course not. People have been hungry for vampire stories since 1819, when John Polidori sat around a warm fire telling ghost stories with Lord Byron and Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The people who say vampires are dead only know about the famous ones – Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Anne Rice’s Lestat, Buffy and the gang, Meyer’s perpetual teenager Edward Cullen, True Blood’s Bill Compton, and my personal favorite the delicious Eric Northman. (How could anyone not want to read more about Eric??)
But true readers of the paranormal know the field is much larger than that. Most film and TV critics and/or those cultural commentators who make these pronouncements have probably never heard of J.R.Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood or Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunters or Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark. For that matter, they’d probably never heard of Charlaine Harris either, until Alan Ball made an HBO series out of Sookie Stackhouse and company.
But as long as there are books, whether e or print, there will always be stories about bad boys. Because readers love ‘em. Those testosterone-laden, alpha male bad boys who can handle everything life throws at them and look great doing it, until the perfect woman comes along and knocks their socks off. We all dream about being that perfect woman, the one who brings all that muscle and attitude to heel and living happily ever after.
Not that all vampire lit is romance lit. There are plenty of vampire books out there in the horror genre, as well, and plenty that walk a line between the two, like Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt series or even Laurell K. Hamilton’s early Anita Blake books which were shelved with horror books for years in stores.
But in all of them vampires are the ultimate bad boys. There might be werewolves and witches and demons, but the vampires are always at the top of the food chain. They might share that top spot on occasion, but they never lose it.
I love reading these books and I love writing them. And there are plenty of readers out there who feel the same way I do, so I can’t see that dying any time soon.
My own vampires are strong, fast and immortal. Some of them are evil and we boo and hiss when they take the stage. But some of them, my favorites, are charismatic, powerful and sexy as all get out, with an immortal cherry on top. They’re protective of their mates and deadly to their enemies. They can charm the pants off a lovely woman, or stop a bad guy with a simple word. And isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that why we read paranormal romance?
I’d love to hear what you think about this. Are vampires dead and gone for you? Or are you as anxious as I am for the next great book on my ever-growing TBR pile?
And speaking of TBR piles, I’ll be giving away a signed copy of one of my books this week. Anyone who comments on this post between now and Friday has a chance to win your choice of RAPHAEL or JABRIL. So, post a comment and say hello, and don’t forget to visit me at http://dbreynolds.wordpress.com for more information about my books and where to buy them.
DBR
D. B. Reynolds is the author of the VAMPIRES IN AMERICA series from ImaJinn Books (ImaJinnBooks.com). The first two books in the series, RAPHAEL and JABRIL are now available from Amazon and BN.com, as well as e-versions from Fictionwise.com. Book Three, RAJMUND, will be released in early 2010. D.B. lives with her husband in a coastal canyon near Los Angeles.
BOOK BLURB
Houston, Texas—Cowboy boots, baseball and journeys to the stars . . . right?
Wrong. Because Houston is also home to Jabril Karim, one of the eight powerful Vampire Lords who control all of North America. And as Private Investigator Cynthia Leighton will soon discover, not all Vampire Lords are created equal. For Jabril is the face of evil in the new world, a vampire who values no life but his own, who enslaves those he desires, steals whatever he covets and destroys anyone who stands in his way.
Running from L.A. and its seductive Vampire Lord, Raphael, Cyn sees the Houston job as a welcome refuge, a place to get away and heal her broken heart. But Texas will be no vacation. For in Jabril Karim, Cyn will confront a true enemy, one who will go to any lengths to satisfy his lusts, enrich his coffers and expand his power.
Fighting for the lives of two young sisters, Cyn’s journey will take her through the streets of Houston and back to L.A., where the human police are determined to bring Raphael down for the murder of one of their own. But the danger doesn’t end there. For Jabril has set his sights on Cyn, and he will stop at nothing to have her.
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