30 Days of Vampires–Vampires: Why do we love them?

Welcome to 30 Days of Vampires 2011. Stop by every day in December for a new post on vampires and a chance to win a $100 gift card from the bookstore of your choice. (gift card must be available for Lori to purchase/send with reasonable shipping) Also watch for numerous daily prizes offered by the individual authors. (some restrictions may apply) To enter all you have to do is comment! One comment per post will be counted. So stop by every day! Comments must be posted by January 3, 2012

Caridad Piñeiro® is a multi-published and award-winning author whose love of the written word developed when her fifth grade teacher assigned a project – to write a book that would be placed in a class lending library. She has been hooked on writing ever since.

Visit her web site: http://www.caridad.com/

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First of all, thank you so much for letting me visit today, Lori! I appreciate being here to talk about one of my favorite topics: Vampires and why I love them!

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly seven years since the first book in THE CALLING series came out and it's even more exciting that the series will be continuing in 2012 and also be REBORN in 2013 with Entangled Publishing. It's been a blast exploring the lives of so many different vampires over the years and I guess that's one of the reasons why I love vampires so much – the variety that is possible in the story lines due to the past lives of the many immortals in the stories.

You see, I'm a history buff and I get all excited about developing the backstory for the characters and giving them both human and immortal lives in other times. I love digging into history and finding something unusual to weave into the histories of my characters so that each has a different flavor. For that reason, my vampires have come from

small Welsh mining towns, suffered during the Spanish Inquisition, served in the Civil War or survived violence in ancient Rome, just to name a few of the histories I've explored.

In my latest vampire release, WHEN HERALD ANGELS SING in the A VAMPIRE FOR CHRISTMAS anthology, I paid homage to my beloved Jersey Shore by setting the story during Prohibition. It was quite an exciting time and I was fascinated to learn about how rum and whiskey were run along the waters of New Jersey before being sold to speakeasies throughout the country. Mix that up with Christmas, one of my favorite holidays, and it made for a very emotional and uplifting story.

I also love playing around with the different kinds of vampires themselves, like mixing in a chupacabra and a Chiang-shi (Chinese vampire) in some of THE CALLING novels. It's fascinating to me that virtually every culture has some kind of vampire-like demon which makes you wonder why that is? Could there truly be some basis to the legends of the undead or is it that no matter the culture, we all have such a fear of death that we create a way for someone to best the Grim Reaper and live forever?

What about vampires that live be stealing something other than blood? In THE LOST I decided to take the vampire concept a step farther by creating a "vampire" that is able to steal life forces from animals, humans and other Hunters,(the race of energy gatherers I created who can steal or give energy).

So now that you know what it is that makes me love vampires, what do you love about them? What would you like to see more of in today's vampire novels?

Web Site: http://www.caridad.com/

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