Vamp It Baby

So I've always been a bit of a vampire obsessee, ever since I was a tween... Other girls wanted to be the prima ballerina, I wanted to be a vampire.
Growing up on a steady diet of Anne Rice and Dracula I suppose it's not really suprising. I remember the first time I read Bram Stoker - ah love at first word! And then I discovered Anne Rice, I loved them all but Interview with the vampire was my absolute, 100% fav.

The first ever book I wrote was called 'Crimson Wars' and it was a vamp-human war type novel. It was truly appalling - I was fifteen years old and honestly looking back not only do I cringe, I shudder. It's like a little window to my mindset at that point in my life. I splurged out all my racing teenage hormones onto those pages, laid down all my supressed longings and fell in love with my male lead.

Cringe once more...

So where is this leading you might ask? Well two things really. One, there seems to be a bit of a ressurection of vamp lit at the mo - ably led by Twilight (which yes I love, yes real men sparkle, yes Steven Strait should have been Jacob... sigh, swoon... I digress). Kresley Cole is also one of my fav vamp story tellers. Her stuff is a wee bit racy but it's good. So rise of the vamp yada yada - and that brings me to number two.
I've had a vamp novel bubbling away in me for some years now - it's shaped itself in my mind and is likely to be another horror/love fest. But is it the right time to write it? In terms of my target audience (the tween) I could never beat Twilight, it would be impossible. So what to do... jump on the bandwagon or let it bubble away a bit more...

I'm torn I must admit. There's no desperate hurry I know, I still need to get Immune published ASAP and I've started a new WIP, Fallen Angel and then there are the hundred other projects racing away in my mind... but the pull of the vampiric is strong... so should I wait or should I bite...

Thoughts appreciated...

Falling For The Fiction

When I first started writing Immune I created a character called Grey. He was the third character I created and I had this set idea in my head of what he would be like. He was going to be a stern authority figure who was holding my lead character back, he was going to be a bit mean, a bit angry and a bit difficult to handle. In short I didn't imagine that he was going to be very likeable.
But something strange happened to Grey as I tried to write him. The words changed and morphed until he began to turn into something else. As hard as I tried I couldn't pull him back - he resisted me until he became a hero figure who saved my lead again and again. I could almost feel him grinning as the words came out - laughing softly and telling me, yep that's who I am, suck it up and write it out.
Now all these months later he has become one of my favourite ever characters, I know who he is, how he thinks, what his favourtie books are etc... and if truth be told I have become a wee bit smitten by him...
Now I know what your thinking it is the height of absolute sadness to fall for a character - nevermind one you've created yourself. He doesn't exist! He's not real yada ya. You're not telling me anything I don't know! Smitten - subject closed.

So my sad smittenishness got me wondering... (my own desperate need to get a life aside) how much of our own wants and desires do we project into the characters we create. Does a shy author create rebellious heroines because she longs to be a bit of a rule breaker herself? Does a retiring author create dashing male leads because he sees himself like that? Do we create our male leads to be the sort of men we actually want in our life? How much of ourself do we put into our characters?
So here's the challenge - I want all you writers out there to read over your latest creation and ask yourself these questions. Why is your character like that? What does it say about you? Why have you made him/her that way?

Ask and wonder... and try not to fall for the fictitous along the way!

Anything But Ordinary

I'd rather be anything but ordinary please...

The words of a rather catching Avril Lavinge song, I was listening to it the other day and it got me thinking. If I had to choose a song which reflected me it would surely be this one. Some of the lines jumped right out at me and struck a rather loud chord.

'Sometimes I get so weird I even freak myself out'
Yes, that would be me where the book is concerened. I'm totally weird and obsessive about it - not in a bad way (disclaimer in case an agent is reading and thinking nuh uh not working with that freak) in a good OMG this will be published kind of way.
In real life? Yes that is kind of true again actually...

'I wanna scream it makes me feel alive'
Writing does that for me, when the characters flow from my brain to the paper - when I'm creating a whole new world I feel like I'm following in the footsteps of the old story tellers who have come before me, sat around a camp fire, scratching art on cave walls - just enjoying the process of getting it out there, the feeling can hardly be described.
In the context of real life - what good is doing something if it doesn't make you feel alive?

'Is it enough to love'
In the context of the book no, loving it is not enough, it has to be totally believed in, continually obsessed over and adored. It has to fill you completely until you fall in love with your characters, until you know them as well as you know yourself - until you talk to them and dream about them.
In the context of real life bit off topic here but I'm feeling introspective tonight, I would have to say yes - true, real, actual love - the sort we write about, the sort we compose poems in awe of, the sort we all search for but so very rarely find - that should always be enough.

'Somebody rip my heart out and leave me here to bleed'
I felt that way the other day when I had my first rejection of the full manuscript. Agonising, gut churning, heartbreaking... but what is pain for if not to make us stronger? When we're bleeding and low we learn the lessons we would never have ordinarily got a chance to and as that is true for publishing so is it for real life.

'To walk within the lines would make my life so boring, I want to know that I have been to the extreme - so knock me off my feet... anything to make me feel alive'
Always, always in every single aspect of my life. When fate decides my time is up I want to know that I have done everything in this life I ever intended to, I want to know that I have pushed myself and worked myself and loved every single moment I was given. I never want to walk within the lines... and you know so far I don't think I ever have.

'I'd rather be anything than ordinary please...'
Of course this just sums everything up in my writing, my thinking, in all that I do, in the very way I live my life - what good I ask you is ordinary???