peeps
"Both
medical thriller and science fiction, this fast-paced,
captivating modern vampire story is enriched with biology and history.
. .
Entrancing throughout—but squeamish readers beware."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Some days
you wake up, and you just have to write a vampire novel.
I know, I know, there is no shortage of vampire novels already out there.
If you search Amazon for "vampire" you get 2,616 books to choose
from. There are opera-loving
vampires, horny
vampires, southern
vampires, emotional
vampires, bondage-loving
vampires, and (of course) Canadian
vampires who solve crimes.
Maybe there are too many vampire novels, I thought. But that was part
of the challenge, to see if I could do something that felt new and interesting,
while still being full of bitey goodness. (Unsurprising confession: I
am a Buffy fan.) So the book had to be original, but also icky,
scary, funny, tragic, and (ahem) not sucky.
Besides getting a new take on the sunlight-impaired, my other big concern
was that my vampires should actually make some sense as far as science
goes. So I started doing some vampire research, reading a bunch of books
about rats,
parasites,
bites
and stings, and biology.
After consuming all there was to know on these subjects, I came up with
the four important features that any vampire novel (of mine) had to include:
natural selection,
sexual attraction,
parasitic infection,
and Elvis memorabilia.
Okay, I can't tell you much more without giving the whole thing away.
But I'm very happy with the results. And the cover is certainly cool.