Guest Blog! Selah Janel talks vampires!

As a reader, I’m always impressed with the variety of vampire fiction out there: Romantic, sensual, folkloric, urban fantasy, classic horror, gritty, and so much more. There really is a bloodsucker type for everyone. As a writer, though, I find I like playing up the “bad” in my vampires, but I also like using them as metaphors. They’re a great contrast or mirror to show what’s going on with the human characters in a story. In some ways, they’re what we all want to be: the highest on the proverbial food chain, the untouchable thing that can do whatever they want. However, I also like using vampires to emphasize human qualities, so I try to never forget who they were before they were turned and what that might lead to. 
Admittedly, I also like putting them in unusual settings. If I write modern vampires, then there’d better be a good story in my head or a point that I’m trying to make. Otherwise, I find it interesting to think that vampires are a creature that could have been kicking around for a long, long time. Sure, we think of Louis and Lestat, but what about other, less glamorous settings? Part of the reason I adore the comic series American Vampire is because its characters show up in parts of American history you wouldn’t necessarily expect. Skinner Sweet starts out as an army recruit and then becomes an outlaw, Pearl is a wannabe starlet in the twenties, various vampires and slayers show up at Boulder Dam in the thirties, there’s vampires everywhere during the WWII-era, and volume four introduces the 1950’s greaser/slayer Travis Kidd. What’s awesome is that these characters work really well because they all have big things driving them and they also fit very well in their respective eras (or drift from era to era and still manage to fit in. If anything, it goes to prove that a vile outlaw like Skinner Sweet is also forever adaptable).
I’ve kind of gone the obscure history route with my own vampire release, Mooner. It combines a lot of what I feel is important about a vampire story in unusual ways: you have your unsuspecting protagonist, shadowy forces working in the background (that aren’t what you’d expect), an obvious antagonist of sorts, and the vampire, itself. Pairing the vampirism with lumberjack culture was important to me, not only because they already had legends of things that haunted their woods, but also because when the vampire is finally revealed, he’s frightening enough to outdo the violent Saturday night culture of the lumber camp. These were young guys who had to work off a lot of aggression, so introducing a paranormal element couldn’t be half-done. The vampire (or mooner) of my title couldn’t be an angsty type or a romantic who questioned things or hesitated. He had to be hardcore by 1800’s standards, and I think he succeeds in that, while also displaying bits of tragedy. After all, this is a human man who hasn’t had an easy time and has devolved into this creature. He’s predator, but he’s also been yanked around in his own way and is dependent on others to get food in the winter. Pretty much every character in the story reacts against someone else or is moved into action by someone else, so it’s a fascinating web of activity.
Plus, when you factor in the violent lumber camp culture and the hellacious winters in the northern climate, you can only imagine how close these characters are to losing it. It doesn’t take a lot to push them into doing something extreme, and it takes a lot for the protagonist to not fall over the edge into temptation. So is it worth going against the grain on a vampire story? Is it worth shaking things up and doing something a little different? Is it worth upping the violence during a time when romantic vampires are “the thing,” is it worth putting the characters in an unfamiliar time and place to most readers? I’d like to think it is, because that way the reader is fumbling around as much as the characters are—they’re right there with all the personalities, be it barkeep, waitress, newbie lumberjack, experienced camp golden boy with a grudge, or mysterious creature in the corner. They’re right there with all of them, dependent on the next word, the next action, just like every character in the story is leaning on everyone else.*** [image error] Excerpt: For a moment, Bill thought he was imagining things or was having a particularly bad reaction to the rot gut. Blinking a few times refocused his tired gaze and proved there was, indeed, a moving pile of…something at a table close to the other end of the bar.
Nancy shuffled back towards the bar, casting a wary look over her shoulder. “Red, he’s back,” she breathed as she scooped up another tray and fled to the other side of the room. Upon closer inspection, the youth realized it wasn’t a pile of something, but a figure draped in a patchwork of skins then cloaked with half-torn, moldy furs. Most who passed his way quickly avoided him, though whether it was because of his odd looks or his smell, it was hard to say.
Red hissed through his teeth and ran a sweating hand through his thick mane. “Tom Haskins,” he mumbled under his breath for the benefit of those crowded round him.
“I thought he lived on the edge of town,” Jack replied as he glared down the length of the bar.
“He tried to start a dry goods store, and it didn’t go over too well. He had it in his mind he could make up his loss with fur, though he ain’t no trapper. He moved out to the woods weeks ago and comes into town every so often to hang round and get his fix. Just when I think he’s finally died out there, he comes round again.” Not once did the saloon proprietor take his eyes off the body hunched over a table. Every breath made Tom’s ragtag cloak shudder, and every moldy hair on him quivered.
“You want me to kick him out?” Jack offered, already shifting his weight across the room.
“Nah, let him warm up at least. He doesn’t do much; just pesters everyone for drink now that he can’t afford it for himself. Give him time, and he’ll be up to his tricks.”
Bill couldn’t stop looking away. The pile of sloughed animals slumped as the man’s head rose. His skin was a cold grey and stretched taught across his face and hands. His hair had all but fallen out, but what was still left of it hung in clumps of long, ragtag strands that were paler than dried straw. His thin-lipped mouth was open and he sucked in air in painful, erratic pants.
“Look at ‘im! Actin’ like a piglet pulled away from its ma’s teat!” Big John sneered. “I bet his clothes are fulla maggots!”
“It’s too cold for maggots,” Ben snorted. “His clothes are thin. Wonder how the hell he stands bein’ out in the woods in weather like this.” “We do it,” Bill muttered. The recluse’s head jerked at the sound of his voice; the young man immediately snapped his mouth shut.
“Yeah, but we’re used to it! And younger’n he ever was!” John’s voice was purposefully loud and carried the haughty tone that won him admiration from the other loggers. “He’s durn crazy, that’s why he don’t notice.” He cocked his head Tom’s way with a sneer. “All that time on your own turn you yaps, man?”
Tom’s head very slowly shifted towards them, and Bill shuddered. There were days he’d survived the logging camp and the extreme conditions by will power and prayer alone, all the while wondering in the back of his head what it would be like if he didn’t have even that. Looking at the vagrant, he knew.
Ben was cursing behind them. “I saw him not more than a month ago and he didn’t look like that. Solitary life don’t turn a man in that short a’ time! Maybe he’s got rabies or fever n’ ague.”
Tom’s eyes sat so far back in his skull, it was impossible to tell what color they were, though they harbored a steady, unsettling gleam. They roved over the huddled group, searching hungrily for an easy mark. Bill’s heart plummeted to his boots when the hollow glitter locked onto him. He was suddenly as cold as he was when a seventh-year blizzard hit. All the frustrations and hell he’d endured since joining the logging team, all his good intentions and reasons, all he was trying to move forward to, swelled and jumbled together in a brief, howling wind of thought. The two distant stars in Tom’s eyes were the only thing that pegged him as a stable man in his otherwise rotting and dozy appearance.
All around the little group, the saloon’s weekend life went on. The distant sound of swearing and dice clattering across the floor mixed with discordant harmonies and a half-hearted mouth organ. But in the area by the bar, all was muffled and still. It was like the snows had come without warning over the forest, smothering everything in their path with chilled silence. Bill shuddered, and out of the corner of his eye, noticed Red do the same.
“You want I should knock his ears down, Red?” John’s bravado was the sudden yell that knocked the snow from the treetops, for better or ill. He had the relaxed look of a man who’d been in his cup just enough to throw caution to the wind. “I’ll toss him out and give ‘im a pat on the lip he won’t forget!”
“Leave be, John,” the barkeep muttered. His hand never stopped wiping down the bar. Though his head was tilted down towards his task, his eyes were set on their target across the room.
“What…what you want me to do for a drink?” At first it didn’t register that that thing, that man, had actually spoken. His voice was high and reedy, and cracked the way the thinnest ice along the river did.
“Pardon?”
“What you want me to do for a drink?” His lips cracked when his mouth moved. A thin trail of spittle dripped off his lower lip and was quickly caught up by the tip of the derelict’s seeking tongue. The distant gleam in Tom’s eyes burned as his mouth formed the last word. Otherwise, it was hard to even say how he’d made it into the saloon; he looked more than a little dim.
Buy Mooner at: NBP Store: http://noboundariespressstore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=19&products_id=16
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Mooner-ebook/dp/B007144ZZO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1351133907&sr=8-2&keywords=selah+janel
B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mooner-selah-janel/1108368128?ean=2940014015738
Are  HTTPS://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-mooner-673945-241.HTML
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/247049
Catch up with Selah and all her ongoing projects at the following places: Blog – www.selahjanel.wordpress.comFacebook – www.facebook.com/authorSJTwitter – www.twitter.com/SelahJanelGoodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5622096.Selah_JanelAmazon Author Page - http://www.amazon.com/Selah-Janel/e/B0074DKC9K/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1346815995&sr=1-2-ent