The Monsters the Guidelines Forgot: Vampires

Continuing my series of post about how to sell stories featuring monsters who frequent publisher do-not-send list, we’re gonna talk about the only monster that might give zombies a run for their money as most maligned. Yep, it’s time sharpen our fangs and talk about everyone favorite undead parasites: vampires. As with zombies, I’ve had a bit of success selling vampire stories, and to date, I’ve managed to convince seven editors to give my vampire tales a shot. Let’s discuss some of the way I did that.

---

As with my first entry into this series, I’ve come up with four ways you can add variety to your vampire stories that might give you the edge you need to sell one. Of course, these changes are not sure-fire or bulletproof by any means, but I do believe they’ve helped me snatch a few acceptances from the jaws of rejection.

1) Real Monsters (or Real Funny). In my experience, much of the antipathy toward vampires is essentially a kind of literary fatigue around a specific type of vampire, a type that dominated films, TV, and fiction in the early to mid-aughts. I’m of course talking about the beautiful, sexy vampire first popularized by Anne Rice that later took the market by storm with shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries and, of course, massive bestsellers like the Twilight series. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of vampire or telling stories like those in the IPs I listed (I’ve done it and even sold a few), but there seems to be a lingering distaste toward that kind of vampire. So, what are you to do? Easy, return to the vampire’s roots, when it was a horrific, blood-drinking abomination fit only for destruction. The vampire as monstrous antagonist has been making a real comeback in film and other media, and editors seem to be more open to this representation of the vampire than the more benign type.

Of course, we’ve also seen the vampire jump back into the spotlight by going completely in the other direction and embracing humor rather than horror. The best example of this is the show What We Do in the Shadows, which takes tons of traditional vampire tropes and plays them for laughs instead of, you know, choking death gurgles. I personally love injecting a bit of humor into my horror, and I’ve used that to successfully sell vampire stories a number of times.

2) Creative Creation. Vampires are usually created when a vampire drains a human of blood and then reanimates them with a bit of their own. There’s nothing wrong this creation method, of course, but changing it wholesale can add an interesting new twist to the traditional vampire story. There’s so many other ways you can go here, but I think my favorite is removing the need for another vampire entirely and having vampirism gained from an outside source. Often this a dak ritual or even some kind of cursed artifact. I went with the latter in my story “Second Bite” where I combined two horrors–dentistry and vampirism. In the story, a character becomes one of the undead after being fitted with dentures crafted from the teeth of a particularly powerful vampire. A little silly, sure, but I played it straight and ended up selling the piece.

3) What Are You Doing Here? I talked about this in my zombie article, but it applies here, too, and really to any classic monster. Just putting your vampire in a new environment can add a lot of depth and interest to your story, even if you go with a 100% traditional vampire. Unlike zombies, vampires are intelligent, free-willed monsters, and letting them deal with the problems that arise in unusual situations can make for an engaging story. For example, in my story “Night Games,” I had a vampire playing baseball in the minor leagues. The questions I had to answer to make that plausible helped me structure the narrative. For example, how did the vampire avoid sunlight? He only plays night games. How does a vampire baseball player get the blood he needs without drawing attention? Minor league teams travel a lot, so he can spread his kills around. When a player finds out there’s a vampire on the other team, how does he deal with the monster? Wooden bats and inside fastballs. 🙂

4) Myth Management. One of the great things about vampires is just about every culture features some version of them in their myths and legends. The general idea is the same–a creature that rises from the dead to prey on the living–but other details can be wildly different. For example, in Chinese and certain Eastern European myths about vampires, the monsters can be distracted by throwing a handful of rice, seeds, grains, etc. in front of them. The vampire is compelled to stop and count the tiny objects, allowing its victim to get away, or, if there’s enough rice or seeds or whatever, keep them counting until the sun comes up. You can treat these details form various myths as kind of an ala carte menu of vampiric traits or simply choose one of the more obscure and horrifying examples of vampires and run with that. Take the penanggalan, a vampire-like creature from Malaysian mythology created by a dark ritual (see point 2) that allows the practitioner to detach their head and all their internal organs, which dangle beneath the disembodied noggin, float away and prey upon and drink the blood of the living. You don’t have to tinker with that concept much (or at all) to make it unique and terrifying.

---

As I mentioned, I’ve sold seven vampire stories to date, and most of them features some of the methods I discussed above. Here are some examples.

• Real Monsters: “Bites” published in Footsteps in the Dark by Flame Tree Press
• Creative Creation: “Second Bite” published at MetaStellar
• What Are You Doing Here? “Night Games” published at PseudoPod

For whatever reason, I’ve never used the myth management change-up in my vampire stories, though I’ve always admired authors that do that. Sounds like I need to write another vampire story. 🙂

---

So there you have it, four ways to give your vampire stories more, uh, bite and maybe convince an editor there’s still some (un)life left in vampire fiction.

Thoughts on writing and selling vampire stories? Tell me about it in the comments.