Immortality is a bitch: Guest post by Nerine Dorman
I’ve always had a soft spot for functionally immortal characters in a novel. This love affair started early for me when I watched Highlander at the tender age of twelve, and developed a fixation on Connor McLeod that lasted until my mid-teens when I discovered vampires after reading Poppy Z Brite’s Lost Souls. I must admit, until Brite made vampires sexy for me, I’d never liked them much. Frankly, up until then, I associated them with the Hammer horror Count Dracula, who’d for some reason scared me half to death as a child, to the point where I’d have vivid nightmares.
By the time I was seventeen, I’d devoured all the Anne Rice books and had started role-playing Vampire: The Masquerade. To say that I was a bit of a fang-grrrl would be the understatement of the century. What I loved about the vampire was his innate tragedy, of remaining unchanging in a remorselessly changing world. Yes, when I was a teen and a young adult, this did allow me to vent much of my wangst during RPG sessions. My friends would always play these hardcore mages or warrior types. I’d have characters who’d been rock musicians… Guess the writing was on the wall, hey?
Round about then I also watched The Crow starring Brandon Lee, and immediately scrounged up the pennies to buy the graphic novel by James O’Barr, which had sparked off the film. These two works were, and still are, highly influential in my writing, even if I now look back at my past self with a raised brow and a slight shake of my head. Poor old Eric can’t be killed because he hasn’t accepted death. It’s a lovely idée fixe.
But of late, the vampire genre has almost literally bored me to tears. Although Stephanie Meyer’s success is admirable, her vampires just aren’t… Well, they didn’t have fangs and in my mind were too concerned with their moral status. I like my vampires and creatures of the night with a little more bite. Don’t even get me started on film offerings such as Underworld. Something just felt off there. Like some giant roleplaying game gone wrong.
Between novel-length projects, I started writing vampires out of the pure frustration of not getting my fix. The Namaqualand Book of the Dead was my first, written as a reaction to Twilight. What Sweet Music They Make, which released in January, was my second offering. I like showing vampires as flawed, often rather bloodthirsty creatures, who’re well aware that they no longer fit within the natural order. They deal with this in different ways but they do not deny their true natures.
Of special mention, are two of the collaborative projects Carrie Clevenger and I wrote. The first, Just My Blood Type, is available as a free read on Smashwords. We fictionalized my romance author nom de plume, and sent Therése von Willegen to Pinecliffe, Colorado, to meet Carrie’s bass-playing, smart-mouthed vampire, Xan Marcelles. The result: verbal sparring with a simmering undertone of eroticism. Granted, neither of us had really aimed at tapping the paranormal romance vein with this one, but our readers loved the story. Xan, as a character, is just this bloke, who lives in a tavern out in the sticks, who loves his whiskey, women and music. He comes across as an authentic person. Being a vampire is just an unfortunate part of his day-to-day existence.
Carrie and I both have two large novel releases this year. She debuts with her full-length Crooked Fang, which features Xan, and I have Inkarna, which brings in a totally new breed of immortal.
My Inkarna are an ancient Egyptian reincarnation cult of body-thieving beings. They may once have been human, but when they die, their souls do not go to wherever humans go, but rather to their conception of the afterlife. They are periodically able to reincarnate into the bodies of youngsters who’ve had near-death experiences, displacing the soul of their chosen victims.
Of course Carrie and me are always hatching fresh mischief. When we saw what a rave reception Just My Blood Type had, we decided to write Blood and Fire as a teaser for our two releases this year. Xan faces off with my Inkarna, Ash, and the two unlikely allies are thrust in the midst of a paranormal thriller I like to describe as an Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark type mash-up with The X-Files. It was immensely fun to write and we’ve already had some rave reviews. The only complaint so far has been that it’s too short…
So, without further ado, here’s the link to Just My Blood Type, which is a free read.
Blood and Fire is available on Amazon. Remember, you can still download the Kindle app for your PC, so the lack of Kindle isn’t an excuse:
