30 Days of Vampires: My Favorite Vampire(s)
Lori H
andeland is a New York Times, USA Today, Waldenbooks and Bookscan Bestselling Author and the recipient of many industry awards, including two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America for Best Paranormal (BLUE MOON) and Best Long Contemporary Romance (THE MOMMY QUEST), a Romantic Times Award for Best Harlequin Superromance (A SOLDIER'S QUEST), the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, the Write Touch Readers Award, the National Readers Choice Award and the Prism Award.Â
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I've always been more of a werewolf girl, as evidenced by the majority of my books. However, there are a few vampires I just can't get enough of.
For instance, every Halloween I watch my very own copy (VHS) of "Bram Stoker's Dracula." Gary Oldman as Dracula is both creepy and sexy. When his very old and ugly shadow crawls across the wall, reaching out for Jonathan Harker's (Keanau's) back I always shudder. When he tells Mina (Winona) that he has crossed oceans of time for her, I can't help but sigh. Eternal love just gets me right there.
Then there's Edward Cullen. I'm embarrassed to admit I've got a thing for him. I even have a "Team Edward" shirt, although someone gave it to me as a joke because the only vampire hero I've ever written (Jimmy Sanducci in The Phoenix Chronicles) wears the same shirt as an inside joke.
But I like Edward. That brooding angst just calls out to my instinct to make it all better. Once again, his eternal love for Bella (even when she's WAY too whiny) gives me an ache in my still beating heart. I totally fell in love with Edward right along with Bella. Edward is a bad boy, an impossible suitor, and a sweet, lovable young man Bella can't live without. The dichotomy is her undoing–and mine.
And then there's Angel. Another brooder. (I sense a theme.) Sure, Spike was funny, but Angel was my guy. Even when he was Angelus, there was just something about him that made me yearn.
I'm also on the Jean-Claude side of the vampire/shifter debate for Anita Blake. Hamilton's vampire is smooth, gorgeous and irresistible. In my opinion, he's the only character in the books who loves Anita the way she needs to be loved. Always. Forever. No matter what.
In my urban fantasy series, Jimmy Sanducci has loved the heroine, Liz Phoenix, all his life. He will always love her, no matter what she's done, no matter what he has. Maybe that's the key to my favorite vampires–the eternal, unconditional love.
Below, in Liz's own words from CHAOS BITES the third book in the series, is a description of a kind of love I think we are all looking for and one that is often found in paranormal fiction.
No matter what he did, no matter what I did, no matter how many others we might love too, I'd feel the same way about Jimmy Sanducci until the day that I died as I'd felt about him when I was seventeen. I couldn't help myself.
Jimmy and I had shared similar childhoods, even before I'd come to Ruthie's at twelve, straight from another foster home that didn't want me. I'd also spent time on the streets, preferred it in fact to the parade of homes I'd been through. The streets might be rough, but they were honest.
Jimmy was the boss at Ruthie's, and he didn't much like having to move in with some of the other boys so I could have his bedroom. To welcome me, he'd left a grass snake between the sheets. I'd put the snake in a cage, named him James, then loosened a few of Sanducci's teeth.
What followed was five years of living in the same house, pretending to loathe each other, while what we felt in truth was developing into something much different. Not long after the lust erupted we fell in love. Jimmy would have done anything for me. It wasn't until years later that I'd found out he had.
Who are you favorite fictional vampires? What is it about them that makes you yearn?
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