So, how did I come to write a straight-up vampire story like The Risen if I’m not actually much of a vampire fan? I don’t like the Dracula flicks, don’t like Interview With a Vampire or Twilight. I am, however, a huge Buffy fan, and when vampires became all the rage about fifteen years ago following the success of Buffy and Twilight, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon as well.
As usual, my timing was less than spectacular. By the time I finished The Risen the vampire phenomenon had come and gone. All that was left was paranormal romance, and The Risen is definitely not paranormal romance. More the exact opposite, actually.
I’m a huge Buffy fan – you can talk all you want about today being the golden age of American TV, but I think none of these more recent shows hold a candle to Buffy either as great TV or sheer fun. (K-dramas are another matter.) Twilight, on the other hand, has never done much for me. For one thing, as a fifty year old guy (back then), I was hardly the target audience. But secondly, and more important for me personally, was the fact that I’ve never liked the whole idea of pretty, sparkly vampires. I like my vampires to be evil, really evil. I mean, come on folks. Vampires feed on humans. Making them broody and misunderstood is pretty much a total reach in my opinion. Buffy only pulled it off because something was done to Angel and Spike to change their fundamental vampire natures, a gypsy curse for Angel, and a mad scientist for Spike. Still, I knew that if I ever wrote a vampire story I had to include a few sparkly vampire types to help push sales and at least come halfway to the popular idea that vampires should be love interests. But how to do that without making a travesty of my firmly held belief that vampires should be monsters?
Easy answer – make them both! And so the idea of the Risen was born. Vampires that didn’t die when you staked them (which is part of Stoker’s original story), but needed to be burned or have their heads sliced off. If you didn’t do that they’d be reborn, only not as vampires. This time they’d come back as saints. Because what could be more opposite to a vampire than a saint? Vampires prey on humans, but saints pray for them.
Of course, to make it even more complicated, I decided that just as a staked vampire could be reborn as a saint, so could a staked saint return as a vampire. And so on, back and forth through the centuries, until someone finally kills them.
Or maybe they eventually turn into something else.
Buy The Risen here.