Are vampires real?
When I was six I saw the Easter Bunny. Two of them actually, across the street, then one transformed into a rabbit, came into my room and left a chocolate under my pillow.
Years later, I started hearing demonic voices; after that it was alien abduction. I remember trying to scream and move as they lifted me through the wall to their ship.
It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I figured out my lifetime of supernatural experiences was due to Sleep Paralysis: a sleep disorder in which you wake up while your body is completely immobile. You basically hallucinate dreams: and since you can’t move or even control your breathing, it always feels like some malevolent force is sitting on your chest or hovering over you, trying to kills you.
It’s terrifying. Once I realized what it was, however, I stopped projecting my fears and learned to deal with it. I got fascinated by historical myth and folklore, especially about night-mares and other visitors that displayed symptoms associated with sleep paralysis… like vampires.
So you could say I’ve been writing this vampire novel my whole life. It’s exciting, and even though it’s a dystopian/royalty setting, I’m trying to keep a lot of the classic vampire lore in the novel.
The good news is, I’m within the final few chapters and hope to finish the rough draft this week: then I’ll put it up for preorder and start editing. In a few weeks I’ll have some ARC copies to give out so if you like vampires, make sure you’re in my VIP group to get an early copy.
I covered my mouth and nose with my mother’s shawl and cut through the poisonous ash, ignoring the battered warnings signs. Going past the wall is death. Inhale too much ash and it will kill you. But this wasn’t my first time skirting the laws. I headed further away from the purification engines, whose motors filled our town with a constant hum, and climbed the oak tree that had grown too close to the perimeter fence ringing our compound.
Other Vampire Books for Twilight Fans…
Say what you want about Twilight, it was one of the first major shifts in vampire literature, which turned them from blood thirsty monsters to intense alpha romance heroes. Most vampire literature in a post-Twilight word has been influenced in some way by Stephanie Meyers’ sparkly vampires.
New vampire books for 2018 (that you probably missed!)
For more vampires, check out this post!
