Bela Lugosi may be dead, but the literary vampire is alive and well and stronger than ever. Or, should we say, undead and well?

Vampire fiction refuses to die, thanks to writers like Nancy Kilpatrick, who keep pumping fresh blood into the old legends. In such a popular genre for writers and readers alike, it's a challenge to rise above the masses. Her unique vision of the vampire incorporates a higher consciousness from their immortal perch over humanity.
 

"I want my vampires to be outside humanity. They are Other. While they were mortal at one time, involved in a life, they are now outside it in kind of a Zen way and have the ability to see humanity with an overview. That perspective does not erase things like love, jealousy, fear, revenge, etc., but it does give them room to pause and try to view the big picture and how what is happening fits into the larger scheme."

Mix that Zen consciousness with the need to kill and feed on humans, and you get plenty of conflict and tension to explore. One would think these vampiric desires and needs are experiences humans can't relate to too closely, yet despite the other-worldliness of the vampire, many humans identify with the undead to the point of cult status.

"Many readers who have felt apart from humanity—or who experience more consciousness of the fact that they were born, live, and will soon die--identify with these beings who live the same paradox as we do. The paradox of knowing what is going on and, while doing your best to alter events, at the same time having to accept fate."

Kilpatrick has weathered the wax and wane of vampires' popularity over the years, but overall, the genre is stronger in the last twenty five years than at any other time in the last century. The current trend is toward the serial novel, popularized in part by series such as Buffy
the Vampire Slayer. (The fourth installment of Kilpatrick's own series, THE POWER OF THE BLOOD, is due to hit bookstores in October, the same month she is a guest of honor at the Twilight Terrors Convention in Chicago.) Even though the current trend is serial books, she hopes the stand-alone novel will make a comeback.

"Stand-alone novels have a special edginess because, frankly, we don't know what will happen, and who will die and who will live.  In a series, that's not the case.  For instance, you know that Buffy will not die."

So how did a nice Canadian girl end up writing about creatures of the night? Kilpatrick's early exposures to vampires, like most people,  included the literary classic DRACULA and old black and white movies. HORROR OF DRACULA with Christopher Lee is among the stand-outs that attracted her to the legend, and the old Hammer films.
 
 
 

"Christopher Lee, for me, is the classic western vampire. Followed closely behind by Bela Lugosi. Lee embodies all of the traits of Stoker's Dracula because he is both sinister and attractively compelling. Lugosi does the same thing in a more low-key way—the times, I guess."

Yet many people have the same exposure to horror film and fiction at a young age without developing an obsession with undead. What drew her to this particular legend?

"I'm intrigued by the mythology surrounding what makes a vampire.  How does this species—which is superior to humans even though it was usually once human itself—cope with living for more than one lifetime? And how does it cope with living incognito amongst its food, and the alienation from mortals and immortals, alike?"

Vampires aren't Kilpatrick's only claim to fame—she's also developed quite a reputation for adding erotic and fetish elements to her vampire fiction, as well as her Darker Passions series under the nom de plume, Amarantha Knight. She became involved in the series when a friend suggested she submit a proposal to Masquerade Books, a publisher of
erotic fiction. The first of the series, DRACULA, gave her an opportunity to combine two elements she saw as a natural
combination-vampires and SM.

"I'd always felt it was a shame Stoker (the author of DRACULA) was restrained by the inhibitions of the day and wouldn't it be great to see a story with what went on between the lines, as it were.  Add onto that the BDSM element and what goes on between the lines becomes modern and edgy and, hopefully, hot. I'd always envisioned vampires as sexual beings, predators to some extent, and I thought the marriage of the two realms quite natural. Call me kinky!"

The Darker Passions series—updated classics with sadomasochistic eroticism—certainly confirms that. Incorporating more explicit sexuality into her fiction posed no difficulties for Kilpatrick.

"I've never had any inhibitions in terms of  writing erotica.  It came naturally and easily to me, and from the response I've gotten to the Darker Passions series, I guess I've done an adequate job of it."

Apparently more than adequate, as Circlet Press is reprinting the series from the defunct Masquerade Books. She also has an unreleased novel in the series, THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY: PHAROS THE EGYPTIAN, which wasn't released due to Masquerade's demise.

Kilpatrick has no intentions of putting her vampire fiction to rest. But those who missed her early stories of the undead have a chance to redeem themselves when her retrospective, THE VAMPIRE STORIES OF NANCY KILPATRICK, comes out in June.

Perhaps her and her readers' fascination with vampires lies in the simplest of common bonds.

"They are stuck somewhere between the womb and the grave. Just like all of us."

Nancy Kilpatrick has also edited several best-selling anthologies, and teaches online writing classes. For more information and updates, visit her site at Nancy Kilpatrick.
 
 

Bibliography

GRAVEN IMAGES, editor (with Thomas S. Roche)
IN THE SHADOW OF THE GARGOYLE. editor (with Thomas S. Roche)

The Power of the Blood Series:
CHILD OF THE NIGHT
NEAR DEATH
REBORN

Other vampire novels and collections:
AS ONE DEAD
ENDORPHINS
SEX AND THE SINGLE VAMPIRE

Comic books:
VAMPEROTICA #5, #6 and #13

As Amarantha Knight
LOVE BITES, editor
FLESH FANTASTIC, editor
SEX MACABRE, editor
SEDUCTIVE SPECTRES, editor
DEMON SEX, editor

The Darker Passions Series:
THE DARKER PASSIONS READER
DRACULA
FRANKENSTEIN
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
DORIAN GRAY
THE HOUSE OF USHER
CARMILLA
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

About the Authoress:

Diana Price is a photographer and a writer of horror and dark eroticism.  A former journalist and public relations whore, she is new to the world of fiction and poetry.

Diana is working on her erotic horror novel The Rape of Angels, and a photographic  series on religious/Catholic fetishes called Whores for Christ.  The excerpt from The Rape of Angels in this issue is her first published fiction.