by Mari Miniatt:
Some of you, okay very few of you, will recognize my name. I wrote a couple of vampire books, that are not even blipping on the radar, but when people find them, they love them. So that is good.
There are so many reason I wrote them. But the one I would like to talk about here is how I went about making my vampire’s fit into our world.
The first decision I made was: They do not carry forth any human hang ups when they change. Why? The physical change the vampires go through makes them behave differently. The go from being an omnivore, evolved from hunter gathers to a predator. Becoming a predator to humans mean that they will have no hang ups about killing humans, if the need arises. They have skills that make it easy for them to find and take their prey. Having any hang ups about what they are doing, will kill them.
I also added a “punishment” for any vampire that will not drink human blood. They become a ghoul. Tradionally a ghoul is an undead that lives in cemeteries and eat dead bodies. In my world, that is the worse fate a vampire could have happen to them. Most would rather burn in the sun, than become a ghoul. Think of them as smart zombies, but that like flesh that has decayed for a while.
The second idea: If they are predators, what type? I used cats. Not just because I am a cat person, but a lot of the social structure of feline society fit. Hunting territories that overlap, the social status of the animals, and how they can interact with humans. I am not talking house cats, but feral cats. The kind that have grown out of their kitten stage. Why them? Because in the cities, they are often the only wild predator you find.
I went back to the basics of vampires for the other ideas.
1. Most of the vampires will look “normal”. I am personally sick of the
heroin-chic looking vampires. In the past it was your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, or your child that would come back to feed on you. Not a euro-trash looking runway reject. Sorry, but I have a hard time believing someone is a blood thirsty killer when it doesn’t look like they even know what food is.
2. Bring back some of the powers that current writers ignore. What happened to turning into mist, controlling the weather, controlling animals, mind control, or shape shifting? These are amazing ablities that most writers, that want to make the vampires more human, ignore. I didn’t. And it’s been a blast.
3. Werewolves and Vampires are not mortal enemies. Look in the folklore, pre-Hollywood, and you see that werewolves and vampires worked together. Often the vampire and werewolf were the same person! Because I considered vampires the “urban” hunter and the werewolf the “rural” one. There should be no conflict between them.
4. No “pyramid scheme” for making vampires. Think about it. Does it make sense that every time a vampire feeds another vampire is made? I say no. If that really happened, then they would run out of people to feed on. My solution; if the bite is unfinished. There is a chance the person can become a vampire (I have a reason in my series, but right now, it’s a secret). If they finish a bite, the person has no side effects, except for lost of blood.
5. They don’t have to kill, but then they have to feed more. Draining someone fully, will fill my vampires up for a long time. But that leaves a dead body they have to dispose of. So they do not have to kill to feed. But that has its own set of problems. Do the people willingly give them the blood? If they take it from a victim, do they cover up the “crime”? Interesting things to think about.
So those are the “rules” for my vampries in my current series of books. They are not the same rules I use for every vampire I write about. These are the ones that fit the world I am writing about now. Who knows in a few years, I might get over my aversion to herion-chic vampires and write something about them. The field is open, and so much fun to explore.
Mari can be found at her website: www.mariminiatt.com.
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