Do Your Vampires Sparkle?
Stephanie Meyer really set herself up for ridicule when she made her vampires sparkle when they got out in the sun. I've heard so many people make fun of her, especially fellow authors. And I'm sure she's crying laughing all the way to the bank. Yes, I do think sparkling vampires are a little silly. But she wanted to do something different, and she did.
Vampire lore has been around for a REALLY long time, and most of the older stories stuck to the same general ideas. Vampires couldn't go out in the daytime, and they slept in a coffin at night. They could be killed by a stake in the heart, sunlight, or fire. Oh, and beheading. They hated garlic, and could be burned by crosses and holy water. They couldn't eat food. How dare anyone deviate from that when writing about vampires???
The book I'm reading right now deviates from the old stories in several ways. Like Meyer's vamps, they never sleep. They can go out in sunlight without burning up, but it hurts. They can't be killed by a stake in the heart, only by fire. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had vampires that could eat real food. Kim Harrison has vampires that are dead and vampires that are not dead. We are seeing so many deviations from the old vampire lore.
I've written two stand alone vampire novellas, and two (working on third) in a series. One thing is common in all of them…my vampires can eat food! This is important because I'm a real foodie and life (or unlife) without being able to eat food is not worth living, in my opinion. I actually had a reader give me a low rating because I didn't stick to the no eating mythology. She complained because my vampires ate food, and that wasn't true. Hello? Vampires aren't real! The vampire in one of my novellas only took blood at a certain time interval. The rest of the time he ate like everyone else. The vampires in my current series can't go out in sunlight, and they lie dormant during the day and are cold and lifeless (but on a bed, not a coffin). When they feed upon rising, they are warm and they breathe. They can eat real food, INCLUDING garlic. So I use parts of the original stories, but I add my own twist, too. My vampires never sparkle. LOL
What about you? Do you like to see writers stick to the original stories that we've heard for years, or do you like to see a deviation? Do you actually get offended if an author's vampires do things differently? What do you think?
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I think you did a great job with your vamps. Your book is a little darker than mine, especially in the way your main character has to fight for control.
Thank you. My favorite scene to write was when he chokes someone with a chain. It's a little dark, but I was giggling like an idiot when I wrote it.I'm going to have to check yours out here in the near future.
I didn't really dwell on it in my book, but my vampires have basically lost their appetite for real food. It's sort of sad, because I didn't really say that they couldn't eat, mechanically... it's just unappetizing to them the same way as eating grass doesn't seem very appetizing to us (but cows love it). The downside is that they remember enjoying food, it's something concrete that they lost.
I definitely stayed away from sparkling. It was unique, but just seemed like a very weak "flaw" to being a vampire. I think vampires have to prefer the darkness and nighttime for some reason. That's sort of a key concept. In Meyer's books, it's not really because they dislike sunlight... it's all due to the vampire elite killing people that reveal themselves. I suppose that bothered me a bit because it didn't really make them prefer the night.
I didn't want my vampires to spontaneously burst in the flames, but neither did I want to rely on some vampire council to dictate all the "rules." A middle ground seemed to be to make sunlight really, really unpleasant for them... so I tied it into the typically pale visage. Sun burns suck for everyone. Imagine that, but ten times worse. Heck, a bad sun burn is enough to make me prefer the night for a while. Seemed a good way to stay true to the effect without using the same cause.