(I wrote this post a while ago, and WordPress noticed that I hadn’t actually published it. I am beginning to like WordPress.)

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There is a strange obsession with vampires and zombies in the spec-fic community lately. I feel that since there is no such thing as a real zombie or vampire, that these are just fantasy elements out of some other writer’s creation. It would be stupid to write vampire stories the same as it would be stupid to write about hobbits, dark elves, schools for magicians, or unicorns. All the good vampire stories (if there ever were any) are written already. Yet, every free zine and almost all of the horror zines have mostly all vampire and zombie stories.

Here is my dilema. I am writing a story with a killer in it. The killer is not the center of the plot, but the main character is very sick wants to die and she thinks that getting this killer to target her is a good way to get the job done.

I have an opportunity here to have the killer be a vampire. Not a real vampire, but an insane person who thinks that they are a vampire. (I can’t bring myself to make him a real vampire) I would do this for one reason. If editors are buying and publishing vampire stories it means that they like vampire stories and the readers want vampire stories. I have the chance to make my story, in a sidewas kind of twist to the plot, a vampire story, even though it isn’t a real vampire and the story would not be about the vampire.

I hate vampires.

What do you think? Vampire or just a boring strangler or throat slasher?

The story, by the way, is based on a vingette from Durrel’s The Alexandrian Quartet. In the book there is a vampire living in Italy that kills one night a year. The police know the night and are ready for him, but he always manages to kill his victim and escape. The vingette has hardly anything to do with the rest of the novels. I think Durrell was bored one day and just wrote the chapter for fun and left it in the book.