THE UNDEPARTED SEQUELHey everybody, since I am soon to release my 3rd book in
The Undeparted vampire series called
The Banished One, and it's so close to Halloween, I'd talk about, now ready for this?? Vampires!
I dedicated a page on my website,
www.deborahpalumbo.com entitled Very Vampire since so many people have the vampire bug and truly are fascinated with these fanged immortals. Here's a tidbit of what's on my website.
We all know that Bram Stoker was the wizard behind Dracula, the most famous horror story ever written. He created the story in 1897 and because of him and his awesome tale, we've got vampires on our brains; our culture is thoroughly hooked.
But did you know that vampires are folkloric creatures that go back to the ancient times in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, and even prehistoric times? Can you believe that? Yep, belief in vampires has existed for a millennia.
Of course, it wasn't until the early 18th century in southeastern Europe that the word vampire became popularized; so popular in fact, mass hysteria regarding the belief in blood sucking immortals caused people to accuse others of vampirism and those accused were actually executed!
During this time and thereafter there was a wide range of thoughts regarding their appearance from nearly human to rotting corpses, but it was actually the Christian church and the 1819 novella Vampyre by John Polidon that helped formed the vampire concept as we know it.
But as I said earlier, Bram Stoker's Dracula is the novel that provides the basis of modern vampire fiction.
The original folklore and I'm sure the hysteria and crossover from horror tales to more than superstition had sparked Bram's imagination and viola! Dracula was born.
Dracula created our universal obsession, if you will, and became a big part of our culture. So big in fact, Wall Street says vampires are worth $10 billion to our economy.
Now that's a lot of bread...or should I say, a lot of blood!
So you can see vampire literature has been around for a long time; even longer than Dracula. In fact, the first vampire appeared in literature in a seventeen hundred's poem which by the way already had erotic undertones; this was the predecessor to gothic vampire literature.
Novels from the 1800's have run the spectrum from Sheridan Le Fanu's tale of a lesbian vampire, Carmilla, to the best in the genre, Dracula. But in our day vampire stories are thoroughly diverse, expanding into crime, sci-fi, fantasy, and Chick-Lit. And besides our typical fanged vampires, new portrayals include aliens and plants with vampiric abilities; some do not consume blood believe it or not; they live on energy.
All of this totally makes my point that we are hooked on anything vampire, and we are completely willing to embrace new versions, gain new insights into their behaviors, welcome any vampire into our obsession.
Obsession huh? Well, what if we're not obsessed, only intuitive?
Now we've all been taught that vampires are nothing more than fictitious creatures and nothing else, spawned from Stoker's imagination. But don't you think it's pretty interesting that vampires have been around since prehistoric times and then on the minds of the ancient cultures?
I'm of the belief where there's smoke, there's fire.
Yeah, I'm trying to tell you that maybe Bram didn't have as good of an imagination as we thought. Maybe he knew something that we refuse to believe. Maybe when people executed the vampires during the mass hysteria of the eighteenth century they didn't do a very good job and they're still around.
It's just a thought.
But while we digest this new idea of the existence of vampires, I will say that Bram's imagination strayed when it came to crosses and coffins and sun. His vampires are completely contrary to the ones in my novels....Quentin, Christian, Lucius and Cassandra.
You didn't think I'd write this page without mention of my paranormal romance/mystery series, did you? So aren't you just a tad bit curious, don't you just have to find out for yourself about Quentin, Christian, Lucius and Cassandra and
THE UNDEPARTED?
I will tell you this one thing: Vampires CAN come out during the day; day or night, it doesn't matter. They're just like us in that regard, so no one is safe because the sun has risen. No one!