I have had a passion for vampires since I first watched “The Twins of Evil” when I was six years old and by the time I was nine years of age I wanted to write about them. From the age of eleven I became what I thought was “A Goth”, though not entirely serious, I allowed my mother to dictate to me a lot on how I should portray myself to the world, but in my eye at the time, black slacks and a black polo-neck would suffice for the tag, with black shoes. I wanted to wear black gypsy skirts but my mother insisted that with my size (as I was very overweight when I lived with her) I looked like I was wearing a tent and so, I didn’t have the confidence to wear them.
The passion I have for vampires is so deep, that it is a strong part of who I am. When I haven’t read a book about vampires, researched them or watched a movie with them in it for a while, I start to feel a deep hole inside of me. This hole swallows me up, makes me moody, makes me depressed and ultimately makes me feel alone. Because I am alone, in regards to this passion for vampires, I know nobody who is in regular physical contact with me, who has the same passion. A lot of people I know merely tolerate that this obsession is a part of me.
The people I have who are my friends and are Gothic, weirdly enough do not share the same concept about vampires as I do and nor do they view being Gothic in the same light as me either. Whenever I talk about vampires to another fan of vampires or Gothic culture online, I come up against a brick wall. A wall of which I find sleazy and corny, yet despite saying this, I am not the old school romanticist that I’ve often been accused of being!
In my opinion the last decade of vampire movies has either become too soft that it’s another version of “My Little Pony” or too vicious that it makes me think that the so-called vampires in the movie are just another type of vicious intelligent zombies.
Since I was nine years old, I have been writing an extensive series based on vampires, complete with an encyclopaedia about the mythos. I say series, yet I really mean saga.
There are over 70 stories in this series and I have never once approached a publisher about them and nor do I feel ready. Not with my vampires, I am very protective of my vampires. Yet when I have discussed my stories with close vampire loving online friends and gothic culture dudes and dudettes, I have been told that my ideas are too old fashioned and romantic. That the days of the aristocratic vampires are numbered and this pains me. I have been told that despite the fact I know the market of vampires really well, I have failed to understand how they have evolved within the media and how the new style of vampires are what publishers and producers want more of. So therefore, I feel I would waste mine and the publisher’s time in even approaching them.
I spend two thirds of my serious writing time on my vampires. The rest of my fiction, poetry and songs are left on hold. This is why I sometimes think that I will never get published, because I won’t put my vampires to sleep.
Because I won’t put my vampires to sleep, I neglect my other stories, I neglect this blog, which is why I have made a difficult decision to try and talk about my vampires in new posts in the future, or vampires in general.
If you would like to discuss with me what you like about vampires, or tell me what you expect from vampires, I would like to hear your thoughts.
tardycreative.com 
Writing style and narratives
Many new writers write in a first person narrative; this is very limiting and produces problems if they want to include other characters opinions and viewpoints. The main character of a story isn’t psychic, so wouldn’t know the real reasons behind their nemesis or co-inhabitants reactions to various events.
When I first started writing my vampire dark fantasy series, I was also to blame for writing in a first person narrative; this made it very complicated for me to introduce new characters with their personalities effectively. My aim was to write the series as a series of biographies of individual characters from the same story, but this wouldn’t work well as it had already more or less been done by Anne Rice and I wanted to be different. I found it much easier moving onto the third person narrative, which is what’s happening in my rewrites.
Writing in a third person narrative gives me more flexibility for my story’s direction. I can skip viewpoints and characters at will, I can write about how everyone feels simultaneously and without too much effort. Since writing in this style I have been able to write more words to my story daily, much more than before, alongside another technique I will tell you about shortly.
As a writer you must see yourself as a god, you are creating a world and these are your people; you’ve made them, you control them, you control events; you should be as dedicated to your creations as you are to your own god, you should be motivated by the sheer fact that your characters are waiting in limbo for how you are going to progress their lives. But gods have two sides to them, good and bad, cruel and kind and so you should not feel too emotional about wrecking their lives, otherwise you’ll have a happy, clappy, crappy story.
Thinking about how I structure my novels, I am not the usual can of beans; I’ll share with you why; It seems to me that most writers write a book from beginning to end, I’ve noticed I can’t dedicated myself to surprises.
I write down my ideas in my ideas book, then I put up bullet point of events on my computer that I’d like to see happen in my story; then as scenes come to mind I write them, whilst trying to write from beginning to end, then I sew it altogether and sometimes I revise but mostly I don’t – in fact, everything that’s posted on this blog is never revised, I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I don’t have faith that what I write up here is my best work?
I do have massive flaws grammatically, punctuation wise and possibly prattle on too much needlessly, this is mainly down to the fact that I’ve had limited formal education. My mother home educated me mostly and had a problem with me studying in college and university so I was put under pressure to become a drop out on seven occasions.
I must remind you too, that my main tutor at home was my mother who is dyslexic; yet I still managed to do a distance learning course when I was nineteen and got my only qualification in the world of a B grade GCSE for English Literature.
So, if I am not fine-tuned or polished, those are my excuses and I learn through tenderness. This is why I beg for criticism and comments; I need help fine tuning my art of writing.
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