Ryadian wrote:Shawna wrote:Someone mentioned a Christian writers' conference. I went to one of those quite a while ago. It was somewhat interesting, though rather irritating when pretty much every conversation went like this:
"What are you writing?"
"Well, it's about a Christian vampire--"
*laughter*
"I'm serious."
Now see, I'm just curious about the rules of vampires in your world when I hear something like that. (I imagine it's still similar to the Ditto Story rules, but assuming I didn't know you and heard that...)
Actually, for this story, it's totally different. Every time I write vampires (when I'm making them up myself and not writing with established vampire rules), I reinvent them. The ones in this story ... well, there are 4 different kinds. There's one type that's basically an animal, and they're kind of like much scarier, more viscous versions of the Ditto Town vampires (kind of). The other three are all formerly humans.
Basically, I disregard all "supernatural" elements, all that "undead" or "demon" stuff in vampire lore. The vampires in my stories are just people who've undergone a physical transformation. They don't lose their souls when they become vampires. They're just people. Although, given various circumstances, most vampires are evil people. It's just that they don't have to be. More that vampirism draws a certain type of person to seek it out. So part of what I explore in the story is, "What if the urge to hurt other people was not just a desire but a biological imperative?" It's a lot harder to be a good vampire than a good human. Another way to look at it is that I use vampirism as a metaphor for human nature--in a sense, it's human nature cranked up a few notches.
I'm working on the second book now, in which a perfectly normal, modern, Christian young woman is becoming a vampire (she was changed against her will) and has to figure out how to survive as a vampire, basically, without sinning. (Meaning sinning any more than she did as a human.) (I don't put it in those terms, though, because it's meant to be mainstream, not Christian fiction.)