Sometimes a genre gets in my mind and I can't let it go. It is like a virus. The anti-virus is to consume lots of the genre. Just like a virus it isn't content to not replicate so it attempts to reproduce itself via memes...
The genre in my head at the moment is vampires. It might have something to do with me remembering a conversation I had many years ago in Korea with my friend Nathan. He had a theory that Anne Rice had met a vampire and "Interview With a Vampire" was based on that meeting. This would imply that vampires really existed. This is the kind of conversation that happens when you have too much whiskey and time on your hands.
I don't know what made me think of that conversation again. Maybe it has something to do with Douglas Adams' theory (that I read in "The Salmon of Doubt") that you remember things when you get to the same level of drunkenness. There has been some
Seven and Seven drinking going on. Regardless it has me thinking about the vampire genre.
When it comes to vampire fiction there are two masters of the genre: Bram Stoker and Anne Rice. Looking though
Amazon I notice two recurring trends in vampire fiction: the vampire hunter and the love triangle.
As far as vampire hunter stuff goes it is pretty self-explanatory. Some of the more popular vampire hunter stiff is "Blade (1, 2, and 3)" and "Van Helsing".
The love triangle stuff is probably something I won't even bother with. I understand that vampire stories have to have a certain romance feel to them. Hell, it would be upsetting if there wasn't romance in the stories. However it doesn't have to be girl loves boy, girl meets vampire, girl falls in love with vampire, boy gets jealous destroys vampire. Just look around. See what I mean.
Some vampire I am going to consume:
- Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles"
- Bram Stoker's "Dracula"
- L.A. Banks' "The Vampire Huntress" series
- "Bite Club"
- "Kindred: The Embraced"
- "Countess Dracula: The Life and Times of Elisabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess