Farewell Dracula: Death of an Immortal

If you’d read any of my blog tour guest posts, you’d know how I feel about the current state of the vampire in popular culture. The vampire is now a simpering, glittering emo turd who spends his days mooning after adolescent girls and not ravaging their necks and drinking from their shredded jugulars. He is instead applauded for hanging onto his bloody virtue and abstaining from indulging in his base nature. What a boring load of stinking shit, right? Or at least I think it is. I was brought up on demonic, decadent vampires with little if any regard for human life. Vampires aimed at an adult audience like Lestat de Lioncourt and The Lost Boys’s David. This was the sort of vampire I wanted to create and was what I had in mind when I wrote Dunraven Road and Jinn Nation.

Therefore, it upsets me somewhat when readers expect my novels to read like yet another Twilight rip-off. Fictional vampires do not live and die with Stephanie Meyer, people!! (Well, they may well have died…) I’ve now received at least three reader reviews slating me for not providing troubled, sensitive vampires who gnash their blunted teeth over their unrequited, practically pre-pubescent loves. I didn’t and would never set out to write this kind of simple, first-person narrated slush disguised as a loving tribute to self-denial. Real vampires don’t do self-denial.

I know that not everyone will love every novel ever written. Some people will downright hate my work and that’s okay with me; having different tastes and different opinions is all part of being human. What really pisses me off though are those readers who hate me precisely because my books aren’t Twilight clones. The sentiment I especially love is that my vampires should be glittery and tame (and boring!) because that’s just what vampires are, right? WRONG! Did Count Dracula sparkle? Did he weep and wail because it was so hard to abstain from drinking blood? No, he tore through virgins like Edward Cullen tears through a nutritious nut loaf on Christmas day. Yet, I still get comments like this: “I would presume the author has aimed this book at the YA audience but I would have problems passing this on to my fourteen year old daughter to read.” Why would you presume this? Because all vampire novels are Twilight?! My novels are NOT suitable for fourteen year olds; they’re full of swearing, drug use, violent death and nasty sex. They are written for adults, because grown-ups are allowed to read about creatures of the night too. To be fair to this reviewer, her review was honest with well thought out opinions (if inaccurate presumptions). It could be worse. I recently enjoyed being reviewed by a teenager who hated my book so much because it was “nit what I thought” (sic), she wished she had the paper version so she had something physical to throw against a wall. Or burn.

Well you can all congratulate yourselves, Twilight freaks, I give up. My hands are in the air, I’m backing away. I had entertained the idea of writing a sequel to Jinn Nation, of breaking Dylan out of his coffin at some point in the future and sending him out to tear his way through the world again, but at the moment I just don’t think I’ll ever have the energy to write it. Fighting against what Stephanie Meyer has done to one of my favourite literary characters is exhausting and ultimately soul destroying. People expect glitter, they expect tortured souls and joyless teenagers with all the rebellious spirit of a dried out slug and when they don’t get it, they leave you rancid reviews all over the internet.

Farewell dear Count Dracula, your reign is over.

"So is Bella a zombie? She's always just like standing there with her mouth open and she acts like she's dead." ~ Beavis & Butthead

Independent Hell

Everyone is always telling readers and authors to support their local bookshops. ‘They’re run by people who are truly passionate about the written word!’, they cry. ‘The large chains are evil, corporate monsters who only care about screwing profit from writers and publishers’. Well, I’ve tried to support my independents, I really have, but apart from a few notable exceptions, I seem to be hitting a brick wall.

Eager to get my book into more brick and mortar shops, I pitched up at a local independent this week, my bag full of pristine copies of Dunraven Road. Now, I don’t expect every bookshop to kneel before me and beg to stock my novel. Besides the fact that would be both disturbing and inappropriate, I am fully aware that I’m an unknown, first time author trying to distinguish myself in a world crammed to the rafters with unknown authors. Give me a cheery thanks, but no thanks, and I’ll be on my way. Simple. But what happened at this particular shop has left me reeling.

After asking what my book was about, the owner took the copy I offered her (practically between forefinger and thumb), before announcing, “It contains the words ‘bitch’ and ‘fucking’”. (After flipping through some more pages) “We don’t stock this sort of thing”.

At this point, I would have been happy to leave. Ignoring the belittling fact that she called my work “this sort of thing”, I can appreciate that Dunraven Road isn’t for everyone. There’s gore. There’s sex. Swear words are sprinkled about with wild abandon. My uncle told me he needed a stroll in his garden after reading some particularly distressing passages (which I took as solid proof that I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do!) I was therefore not offended by the shop owner’s rejection. That was, until she continued…

“What genre is it?”

“Well, it’s categorised as dark fantasy.”

“Hmmm (still peering at my book and riffling through the pages), we don’t stock dark fantasy. I would only stock what I’m comfortable with and I can’t even watch horror films. My customers like the fact that any book in here can be read by anyone of any age.”

“So you don’t stock vampire fiction?” I asked, rather incredulously.

“Oh no, no, nothing like that,” she retorted with the sort of superior smile I assume she reserves for customers asking to order The Big Book of Breasts or Blowjobs For Dummies (okay, I made those up )

She then launched into a lengthy spiel about the sort of book they do stock – mysteries (“They have to be well written. Style is important to me because I was an English teacher for thirty years”) and children’s books that can also be enjoyed by adults (i.e. Sir Harry of sodding Potter). While she was talking, I was still finding it hard to reign in my shock over her disregard for vampire fiction. She obviously didn’t know about the current Twilight madness gripping the entire planet, or the fact that two major US TV shows have debuted this year, both based on bestselling vampire fiction (L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries and Charlaine Harris’s The Southern Vampire Mysteries). But she knew about Harry Potter. Sheesh, nothing gets past her! I wonder what she would make of these novels seeing as the Twilight series and The Vampire Diaries are both written for young adults. There may be no ‘fucking’ or ‘bitch’ involved, but the frankly disturbing birth of Bella’s child in Breaking Dawn would probably give her nightmares for weeks – yet these books were written by a mormon and are hailed as a shining literary example of how to hang onto your virtue. Would the shop owner have told Stephanie Meyer they “don’t stock this sort of thing”?!

Just as I was about to ask for my book back, turn on my heel and run like the wind, the shop owner noticed the £11.99 retail price. Cue another lengthy spiel about how people don’t like paying that sort of money for a book. All this while looking as if I’d just hopped up on her counter and dumped a load next to the till. That sort of multi-tasking is a genuine talent.

Seeing as she was shocked to hear that I’d found the address of her shop on the internet, I should have told her: If you’re worried about staying competitive against the major bookshop chains, I’d be less concerned about price and more concerned about not having a web presence (let alone an online ordering system), or not keeping up to date with current trends in fiction. If you don’t stock “this sort of thing”, I suppose that also vetoes Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Anne Rice… I could go on and on… All extremely successful, bestselling authors. How is this shop making money?!

Just as I was losing the will to live – the shop owner pulled one more gem out of her sleeve: “Would you consider writing something more suitable for the shop?”

What?!

Yes, certainly. I’ll go home right now and whip up 100, 000 words of nice, fluffy mystery story starring annoying middleclass children with ridiculous names, convince someone to publish it, wait for it to be printed; and run it up to your shop just as fast as I can.

Idiot.