So your book is about vampires… (highlighting 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer')

A friend of mine is getting married next month and had her bachelorette party this past weekend. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of drinking, but it was also a great time to catch up with people I haven't seen in (some cases) years.

And I made a very awesome discovery. Catching up on each other's lives, loves, and current fascinations, I was able to tell them that aside from working part time as a local IT guru I was also working on a book. "Oh, what about?" "Vampires."

The next moment after that is always the telltale moment, be they friend, family, or person in line with you at the supermarket. If someone's expression falls, or turns into that plastic-tightness, you know that they think you're another victim of today's vampire obsession or that they're just not into vampires themselves for one reason or another. Either way, they won't be interested in the rest of the book's description. There's two other possibilities – the skeptically interested, or the eagerly interested. For the skeptical ones, you've got a chance to pitch the rest of the synopsis. And the eager ones just need a book pressed into their hands.

As it turns out, the two gals I had a chance to get to the book mention part of catching upwere the eagerly interested. They're the type that still prefers reading physical books and thought it was cool that paperback version would be released sometime in October after the wedding, so we've all got added incentive not to let ourselves lose touch this time around. (These are High School friends, which was *cough* ten *cough* years ago.)

*NEWS FLASH* Line edits are done up through chapter 24/32, so we're pretty on track for getting the new paperback out in late October. (Saying 'new' because the version that can currently be found on Lulu is essentially our ARC copy. It's not nearly as polished, and is missing a couple scenes that got added into the newest version.) We'll keep you posted!

The entire experience, both of telling them about the book and their level of interest in reading it, brought about this realization – there are vampire fans out there eagerly looking for their next fix and there's every reason they should pick up Eyes of the Seer.

I first read Eyes of the Seer in 2009, as a PDF version of the book that Jules (aka, Peter Dawes) had put out back in 2006. It was no longer available for sale at the time because she'd chosen to pull it down for various reasons, and didn't want to rush putting it back out until it had been revised to the best of her ability.

As it turned out, I ended up loving the book. Loving it. The story was gritty and felt real. The plot is smart without being complicated, and twists around itself while leaving plenty of breadcrumbs so you know the author intended to get where they ended up. It wasn't a revolutionary piece of literature, but even Jules will be up front and tell you that wasn't her goal. What Eyes of the Seer does is bring you along the journey Peter takes after he's turned into a vampire. He finds the darkest parts of himself to wrestle with, and there's a while that he loses himself to overindulgence and violence. The bigger picture includes being sweet-talked by his maker so he becomes everything she wants him to be while there's hints about secrets being kept from Peter. And in the end, because you've seen the best and worst parts of him, you don't know what side Peter will choose – his maker, his witch, or himself.

Jules and I have both read Interview with a Vampire, but nothing else of Anne Rice's. I've read Stoker, and consider it more of a confirmation of influence regarding vampires being detached from humans more than anything else. Both Jules and I are familiar with Sookie Stackhouse and the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris (which many of you may know better as True Blood from HBO), but those are recent acquisitions. No, it wasn't vampire literature that played a huge part into the development of Jules's vampires.

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Enter the key point of connect between Jules's approach and my approach to vampires.

If there are vampires, there has to be vampire hunters. Van Hellsing, Buffy, Blade, you name it, I think that if the supernatural powers that be really did put vampires in the world, there would be supernatural forces at work to keep them looking over their shoulder at least a little – otherwise they'd just be demi-gods, and wouldn't even have half a point of connect with humans, which is the element that makes all these vampire stories so interesting.

*WARNING Small EotS spoiler that is hinted at in the book description* The absolutely brilliant thing about Jules's stories is this – there are vampires, and vampire hunters. What happens when a person fated to be a vampire hunter, before he gets his powers, is turned into a vampire instead?

The other influences from Buffy into Eyes of the Seer amount to personality of the vampires. We're not a fan of dry, stuck in the mud vampires any more than the overly angsty, emotionally immature kind.  The vamps you meet in Jules's books are lively, exciting, and sometimes plotting to take over the world. There's magic in the world too, among other things that will be revealed in later books. But if you want a good read of how Flynn is (the name Peter goes by as a vampire) think Spike from BtVS, minus being "love's bitch".

As an aside, the most exciting moment in our EotS promotional efforts thus far was being able to hand a copy of the book to James Marsters at the Wizard World Comic Con last year. The sad thing is that we don't have a picture of it, because Jules had to do it by herself while I manned our table. She even got to tell him that it was his portrayal of Spike that influenced her vampire writing.

I considered Buffy brilliant for its introduction of the idea that a vampire hunter can fall in love with a vampire, albeit one with his soul. That was the foundation all of us were introduced to in the first seasons and affected how Buffy herself ended up viewing vampires, and her calling, by the end of the series. It might sound noble, but there's a lot of sacrifice involved with being a vampire hunter. The major difference between EotS and BtVS is this – in Jules's world there are more than one "slayer". That, and they don't get their powers when another slayer dies, although there is a quirk to how, and more specifically when, they get them.

But I think that's a topic for another post.

This week's recommended blog post is to craft an exceptional elevator pitch. I read it a few weeks ago and was completely stumped on how to put EotS into such a short pitch until this blog post – see above: "what happens when a vampire hunter becomes a vampire first"

As always, thanks for reading,

Jesi

aka Victor Mason