And You Thought I’d Abandoned You? No Fear!

Carletta

…And here she is! Flirting with someone, as usual… I originally planned to give her essentially the same background as Hugh’s picture (posted with his interview), as seated in the same restaurant booth with him (hence the pencil lines). However, those colors don’t go well with the background I made for the book cover, so I may paint the background plain gray. Or do it gray, scan it, and then go over it with the blue and leafy booth backgound, so I can have both to work with. This is but one example of one of the many things I have been doing since my last post in October. I have not meant to ignore you all. I have been working a lot on my novel, as well as doing other things in my life. I wrote four chapters, the novel’s premise, and most of the emotional character arcs to go with that premise. I’m still working on those of the last two main characters, Melanie and Alex. I haven’t mentioned them on this site. Setting up steps to obtain a long-range goal (in this case, finishing the first book in my AVS novel) and then scheduling deadlines to do each step and days to work on them, really help. One cost has been neglect of my two blogs (this one and my Goodreads one). Just wanted to let you know I haven’t abandoned you, friends. I am thinking of you and of this blog. Luke and Carletta haven’t yet revealed what they will say and do in the continuation of the interview I recorded in October–but then, I haven’t looked over the rest of the questions and thought about it, so I can’t put all the blame on them. Rest assured that Luke is cooking up more dastardly plans than we have yet seen. I haven’t had a lot of chance to look into those plans, partly because he doesn’t actually appear until the second book in the series, and I have been concentrating on the first. Bug me, and I will be more likely to get out the interview sooner.

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The Genesis of the AVS

 

Twenty years ago I never would have guessed I would be writing about vampires. I have never considered myself a vampire lover as such (never wanted to be a vampire, never thought vampires were creatures to look up to or envy, never thought drinking blood was cool, etc.). And I didn’t pick up the subject because it was popular. In fact, vampires were not much the rage when I was first inspired to write about the AVS. I don’t write anything because it is popular. (I tried that once after meeting an agent who told me fantasy was out and “sweet romance” was the rage. I set aside my fantasies and tried writing a Harlequin Romance. I fell flat on my face with that one; it was the biggest waste of time and effort I ever made, and it was crap. I decided to write what I really wanted to write, popularity be damned, and if people liked it, that would be great.)

What got me on the vampire kick was a dream I had one night. I take my dreams seriously. I often have dreams deep in symbolism, or even dreams that come true. I see many of my dreams as messages from God. I’ve had several that have been ideas for stories, but none so obviously so as the one about the girl vampire with short red hair.

I didn’t record when I had the dream—somewhere around 2000, maybe. I dreamed I was a jilted teenage girl seeing an event that amazed and terrified her. The dream continued with one scene after another, laying out key inciting incidents of a story with me as the main character, acting on the terrible reality of suddenly facing a vampire in her life and experiencing all the girl’s emotions. A confrontation led to a different approach to the subject than I had ever heard of, and ended with a question that demanded an answer.

Next, I was myself, in a wooden locker room, telling a teenage friend that I had had this dream and it was a good idea for a story.

When I woke up and thought over the question the girl in the dream asked, I decided it was a story that needed to be told.

This was back before the publication of Twilight and the craze that made vampires so appealing that readers and viewers practically filed the fangs off the monsters without any expectation of retaliation. I hadn’t even watched “Interview with a Vampire” yet. When I did, I was so spooked I could barely get myself to watch it again. Maybe it’s a bad thing I got used to the movie. But yeah. Vampires, for me, are not the kinds of creatures I want to meet in a dark alley (or anywhere else), and they certainly wouldn’t light up that alley by sparkling. I’m writing about people (whether they be considered human or not) that you love to hate . . . or hate to love.