Babel Clash

I’ve been an avid vampire fan from as far back as I can remember. Even as a child, I used to dismay my parents with my repeated rooting for Dracula instead of VanHelsing. Therefore, it surprised no one in my family when the first book I wrote was based on today’s world, with a little twist - vampires existed alongside humans, even though most humans were unaware of that.  

When I started my novel, I knew exactly three things: my heroine was half-vampire, my hero was a full vampire, and the two of them were having, um, issues ;-). I already knew everything about the human aspect of my world because I based it on the same one all of us live in. What I had to build from the ground up was my supernatural society. This is where the fun started. As the architect of this world, I could take everything that had ever annoyed me about vampire lore and simply not include it. Oh, the power! I was drunk with it! *wink* 

The first thing I knew my vampires wouldn’t have is a lethal reaction to sunlight. Some think I borrowed that from Bram Stoker, as his Dracula could walk in the daylight, but no. I did that because of all the times I’d watch a vampire kick ass throughout a movie, only to be beaten at the end by some previously-inept hero throwing up the blinds. Snort. Not in my world, baby! The other thing I never liked in vampire lore was their lack of reflection. One of the fictional reasons I’d heard for that was because vampires lacked a soul, ergo, no reflection. My thought was that a toaster lacked a soul, too (to the best of my knowledge, and with apologies to any soul-containing toasters ;)) yet it cast a reflection. So why not vampires? Boom, no vampire in my books needed to worry about something stuck in their fangs that they couldn’t look in a mirror to see.  

Crosses. Ah, how many times have we seen in book or film a creature of the night cringing away from a cross? Yet I always wondered, why only crosses? Christianity hasn’t been around forever, and if a vampire pre-dated it – which would be possible considering vampires didn’t die of natural causes – then what did people do before a crucifix was considered holy? Plus, I never liked the idea that a vampire was inherently evil and thus always at odds with God. If a vampire automatically equaled evil, that took a lot of the fascination out of their myth for me. The choice to do right or wrong, the struggle of deciding to respect mortality even if you were no longer mortal…that appealed to my sense of complexity. Why should human beings have a monopoly on moral ambiguity? I asked myself, and in creating my fictional world, the answer was: they didn’t. Thus, my vampires have the choice you and I have to be good or bad or something in between, with no automatic aversion to religious material. 

What about the good old wooden stake? Practically a staple of vampire lore, right? Well, depends on which mythology you consult. Stories of supernatural creatures consuming blood, flesh, or energy from the living can be found in almost every culture around the world. In my books, I decided to go with silver through the heart to dispatch vampires. Silver has been used in vampire mythology before, though it’s more commonly known as werewolf kryptonite, but I chose it for a few reasons. One, it isn’t as frequently found as wood, so my vampires wouldn’t have to worry about their skin burning every time they got a splinter. Two, a percentage of people already have an allergic reaction to silver resulting in rash, welts, or hives, so the idea of amplifying that to a lethal means for vampires wasn’t too hard of a stretch. Three, as a weapon, it was more versatile than wood. My books could have silver knives, silver bullets, silver throwing stars, silver-tipped arrows…I had more room to play, and did I mention creating your own supernatural world was fun?  

So, while my vampires do contain many traditional aspects of mythology (enhanced speed, mind control, dependency on blood, fangs) they also don’t have several of the things that I didn’t care for. Do I think I’m “right” with how I portrayed my vampires versus others? Of course not. I believe one of the reasons for the enduring appeal of vampire mythology is its flexibility. Vampires can be monsters, charmers, predators; blood drinkers, soul stealers, energy drainers; ugly, beautiful, or average. Writers and readers of vampire fiction have the option of choosing which lore fits their personal preference, and no one is wrong - at least, until a real vampire stands up and sets the record straight.  

And if that happens, well, I for one intend to offer a most sincere apology for whatever I’ve gotten incorrect ;-).

-Jeaniene Frost

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