In my dark fantasy series, Vampires and the Life of Erin Rose, some characters question the nature of vampires. The potentially immortal creatures rise from their coffins only at night. They have superhuman strength and speed, and they’ll heal from almost any physical injury. They’re also beautiful and had once been human, before being turned—before craving, and needing to drink blood to live.
So what are they?
Villains? Those who oppress humanity, perhaps.
Heroes? The ones who oppose the villains, sword in hand (because the surest way to kill a vampire is to take their head off with a blade), maybe.
Or are they all demons, inhuman things best cast back into whatever pit their kind emerged from in the first place?
The answer, of course, is up to the reader. And whatever position one takes on those points of view, I’ll argue for a fourth: in many ways, vampires are even more human than everyday people.
A person might live eighty years or a hundred. Choices and their consequences will brighten or weigh on their lifetime. But that lifetime ends in relatively short order. And while that limited lifetime heightens the importance of a human’s decisions, a vampire’s unlimited lifetime raises the importance of their decisions in a different way. A vampire might live hundreds of years, thousands, or forever. Their choices and whatever outcomes, good or bad, stay with them the entire time. Vampires generally face the same dilemmas as humans, but with forever before them, can have more at stake in their choices.
Most people seek companionship—a husband, wife, partner, or close friends. Human connection in some form is important to them. For vampires who feed off mortals’ blood, human connection is vital. Put another way, people might yearn for connection, while vampires would die without it.
My vampires do have superhuman strength and speed. Yet those are human abilities, simply taken to an extreme. Likewise, that my vampires will heal from almost any injury is an extreme. People heal, just not like vampires. A dying person finds finality to whatever joy greeted them each waking morning, along with an end to their sorrows. But vampires? Whatever the world throws at them, as long as vampires find blood to drink, they’ll bounce back, ready to take on the world anew, whatever happiness or sadness their nights are full of.
So vampires are not exactly the same as humans, but in some of the most fundamental ways, they’re even more human than humans.
Vampires live longer, they need human connection, and their yearning for it can far outlast a single human lifetime. Whatever choices vampires make, for better or worse, can echo for an eternity, with the vampire around to hear it.
Those deeply human vampires are the ones I write about, because those are the vampires I love reading, watching on screen, and imagining. My new novel, Choosing a Master, is set in a world with those vampires. I hope you enjoy reading it.
Choosing a Master
Vampires and the Life of Erin Rose
Book 1
S.M. Perlow
“Like the blood of God…”
In New Orleans, a passage from a Renaissance-era book is Ethan’s only hope to save the woman he loves. He’s a vampire, so he can live forever. Ellie, however, is mortal, ill, and running out of time.
“If Sanguan vampires drank synthetic blood, like Spectavi vampires, the world would be so much safer for humans.”
In the Spectavi laboratory where synthetic blood was created, Vera is making no progress with her current projects. But for her devotion to the Spectavi cause—and their leader—she will go to any lengths.
“She would hold me when she bites, and at least while she sips my blood, I wouldn’t be alone.”
In a nightclub in France, John has an unusual encounter with a gorgeous vampire, but his love for a mortal woman forces him into a devastating choice.
Reason or passion, good or evil, duty, love, or pure pleasure—in a world with two vampire factions at war, choosing the right master is everything.
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1 comment:
On the strength of this article, I hauled over to Amazon and bought the first book of the series. So far, VERY well written. The continuing shift between Character 1, Character 2, Character 3, all written in first person style, makes it a bit "jumpy" but the chapter headings give each character's name so it is not difficult to tell which is which. Sort of like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which leapt from plotline to plotline.
So far it is definitely a FASCINATING book! It's quite good, and I was engaged on the first page. I like it. Haven't finished it yet. but if it's as good as it seems, I'll be buying the rest of the series! Well written!
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