2011-09-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

I am as surprised as anyone to find myself writing a series about a vampire. So just for fun, I will toss in a blog I did recently for VampChix, a site dedicated to readers and fans.

My First Vampire Encounter

When I was VERY small, maybe eight years old, and completely under the domination of my ten year old sister, we spent a summer with our grandmother. My sister, who was a good prevaricator, learned in self-defense because we had a couple of older sisters, told my grandmother there was a nice children's movie at the theater four blocks from my grandmother's house. As it was warm midsummer in a small Minnesota town where no one worried about children being out after dark, plus my grandmother really did not like movies, she gave us the money and sent us off with instructions to come directly home afterwards. Four blocks. We'd be home in ten minutes, easy.

The prevarication was about the movie. Like my grandmother, I trusted my sister. I presumed we were going to see a Disney movie.

Huh uh. It was an old black and white film about a vampire, probably Dracula. As we watched wide-eyed, the coffin lid creaked open, the person opening it leaned over to peer at the ghastly white corpse and aaaaagh! A hand shot up and grabbed the man and then the corpse sat up and I spent the rest of the film squished down on the floor between the seats.
That was my introduction to vampires, not glamourous at all. And I think it took at least a day and a night to walk the four blocks back to Grandmother's house, me shaking all the way and my sister saying, "Oh stop being a baby." There were also a few death threats in case I was considering tattling.

If anyone had told me then that I would not only grow up to enjoy vampire stories, but would also write them, I would have run off to join a nunnery. Oh wait. I was only eight.
My outlook changed with Dark Shadows. I was older and the vampires were interesting. And then along came Buffy and crew. Slippery slope. Thin edge of the wedge.

For years I wrote romances for Avon, Dell, Putnam, Silhouette and others. And then I switched to writing what I like best to read, urban fantasy. My Mudflat series for BookStrand is about weak magic in Seattle. My new Sunspinner series is filled with demons, not the sexy hot kind, just the icky annoying deadly kind.

Last year a trip to the Olympic peninsula included a visit to Forks and the glittery vampire gift shop. This inspired an idea for a short story about a girl who needs to either become a vampire or die, only somehow that story expanded into a novel which expanded into a series which I love writing.

So I guess, these many years later, I will forgive my sister for that horrendous walk home through the dark and haunted streets. Actually, I don't think we walked. I think we ran all the way. Screaming.

Short Stories