vampires

Story of the Week #21: Trial By Sewer (Sangrilicious III)

This is Part Three of Sangrilicious, my epic tale of Delilah the Vampire. Part One is “Sangrilicious“, and Part Two is “The Prince’s Challenge“. The response to Delilah’s stories have been pretty positive, which surprises me. I don’t like most vampire fiction, after all, and I can’t imagine that any vampire fiction I’d ever write would be any good. On the other hand, Christopher Moore, one of my favorite writers, did write Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck, two very funny novels which also happen to be vampire novels, so maybe I can make a couple of exceptions. I think I can detect some of Moore’s influence in Delilah’s story.

I’ve ended up having to do a bit of retconning here, by the way. In Part One, I stated that Delilah had killed her sire prior to setting out on the road to Roosterville. I’ve changed that, so now her sire is actually still alive. It gives Delilah something to focus on.

Enjoy!

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Story of the Week #5: Sangrilicious

Here it is, folks, Story of the Week #5.

I hate vampire stories. I mean, really hate them. I know, it’s a weakness of mine, but I can’t seem to find any vampire stories that do anything original with the trope. I mean, there are a few vampire stories that are good, as long as the story is about the characters surrounding the vampires, rather than the vampires themselves. I really enjoyed Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, after all, because the vampires were really just sort of peripheral to the whole show. Angel was okay, but Angel’s brooding got more and more annoying. Quite frankly, I preferred Angelus to Angel. Evil vampires out for some serious blood and mind fuckery I can take. Brooding and depressed vampires are just dull. “I’m immortal,” they say morosely. “Allow me to whine about it as I seduce you.”

So, anyway, given my hatred of vampire stories, I figured it was high time I wrote one of my own. I’m sure there are some elements of vampire mythology I’ve gotten wrong here, and some purists may dislike it. Whatever. The vampire mythology is really wide open. If Brian Lumley can make vampires the victims of some sort of space parasite, then I can do whatever I want to.

I will say that this story is extremely rough. Most of my stories of the week get at least half a revision, just to clean up some major continuity bugs, but I don’t have time to do that with this one. So you get to see it as is. I’m not all that thrilled with this one, but I suppose it could be worse.

The two of you who are my regular readers will recognize a couple of elements from my earlier stories. You might recognize a name from “In the Living Room, a Painting”. And, of course, the story takes place in Roosterville. Here I tried to pull a Suzuki, and recast that first story in a way that lets it stand alone as its own story, yet still expand on it, just as Koji Suzuki did with his three Ring novels.

One final note: I know that my Latin is completely off base. Sue me.

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