A Minor Compendium of Vampires
AUTHOR: Janet Miller

Vampires. Movies, books, and TV, I don?t think there is any mythology more explored than that of the vampire, the creature that lives at night and thrives on human blood. Why a hero with a restricted diet and the inability to tan would intrigue readers, particularly female readers, I can?t say other than the obvious. Vampires can be sexy.

As a teenager I read Bram Stoker?s DRACULA and was knocked out by one scene where the heroine is in bed with her sleeping husband when the Count comes to visit. He takes her blood then opens a vein in his chest and forces her to drink... I was pretty innocent at the time but even I could see that blood-exchange was a stand-in for something else.

So let?s talk about vampires as described by some modern day authors. I?m sure I?m missing a few, but here are some of my favorite vampire authors:

? Anne Rice (INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, etc.)
? Laurell K. Hamilton (the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series)
? Christine Feehan (the Carpathian books)
? Susan Squires (SACRAMENT)
? Rosemary Laurey (WALK IN MOONLIGHT, etc.)
? Linda Bleser (?brakos@twilight.com?)
? Mary Janice Davidson (UNDEAD AND UNWED)

First let?s address what vampires are. Everyone seems to agree that vampires are creatures that need blood to survive, so that?s the most basic definition. In addition, vampires are either immortal or very long-lived. At least part of their appeal is that they are searching for someone to spend eternity with. Immortality seems to be either because they are already dead or because they self-heal and don?t age or a combination of the two. You can usually kill a vampire by removing its head or staking it through the heart, something hard to heal.

Some are dead bodies resurrected through some mystical means as in Rice, Hamilton, Davidson, and Laurey?s books. Given that they have dead bodies, there is a question as to how well those bodies function. In short, can a male vampire have sex? We can assume female vamps may or may not care about sex but could still be on the receiving end and so will ignore them for the moment.

Vampire sex wasn?t a high priority in Anne Rice?s INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, but being dead doesn?t seem to affect the libido of vampires in any of the other authors? books. Of course this could be because most of these books are romances -- sex is pretty much a given.

Now you?d think being dead means they can?t have children, but in Hamilton?s books a vampire can sire a child although it is rare. She even invented a birth defect called ?Vlad syndrome? that half-vampire babies could be subject to.

Vampires of the dead body variety are created through three blood bites in Hamilton?s world, a blood-exchange before dying in Rice?s world, and a blood-exchange after death in Laurey?s world. Davidson?s Betsy Taylor became a vampire when she was killed by a mini-SUV after surviving an attack of vampire-like creatures, but she was always a strange vampire anyway, impervious to the sun, able to control her blood-lust, etc. The Bram Stoker concept of a vampire?s victim becoming a vampire is generally rejected. After all, with normal vampire blood-lust that would mean a lot of vampires out there.

In other books, vampirism is an inherent property of the creatures -- it isn?t that they are dead, just different. So how did they become different? In Feehan?s books, they are born that way. She?s created a race of ancient people, the Carpathians, named after the Carpathian Mountains in Central Europe. A moral people, they drink the blood of normal humans but try not to hurt their dinners. When a Carpathian turns evil and begins killing during dinner, then they are called vampires and the other Carpathians go after them. Feehan?s Carpathians don?t have enough women to go around, so when a male finds a psychically powerful human women who is his soulmate, he converts her through three blood exchanges. After that, they can go on to have baby Carpathians.

Since a vampire?s normal goal, at least in a romance book, is to have a loving partner for the rest of his or her life, either the vampire must become human or the human must be converted to vampire. Rarely is the book written as an immortal/mortal love affair.

In Linda Bleser?s novella, ?brakos@twilight.com?, the hero, Roger, is a half-vampire. His mother was a normal woman who grew old and died during her marriage to Roger?s father. Again vampires seem to be born that way, and as a mixed-blood Roger isn?t as powerful as his full-blooded relatives. His goal is to find a vampire wife so he can have stronger children, but when he falls in love that goal becomes secondary to having a loving partner, even if for only a short time. Conversion doesn?t seem to be a possibility in this world.

Susan Squires invented an ancient race of people and a viral-like explanation for vampirism for her book, SACRAMENT. Conversion of a normal human is possible by sharing the ?Companion? through drinking the blood of a vampire, but its frowned upon by the hero?s people. With few new recruits and no children born, Squires describes a dead-ended society of vampires without growth and an endless bleak future. Thank heavens her heroine and hero decide to shake things up.

All authors seem to agree that vampires have fangs, although only Hamilton?s vampires have them visible at all times. The rest seem to have fangs that grow as needed. I've often wondered about the "exploding fang" phenomenon, as in "his fangs exploded into his mouth", a line I see frequently. Doesn't that sound painful? I can understand them lowering from sockets in the upper jaw, but I can hope they don't require TNT or nitro to do so.

Maybe they're on springs.

On the other hand, when the heroine in Davidson?s book, UNDEAD AND UNWED, first developed fangs, apparently in an exploding fashion, she suddenly developed a lisp that was very funny ("Aw, thon of a bith"). And in Hamilton?s books Anita Blake often boasts of her expertise in French-kissing a vampire--the trick seems to be avoiding the razor-sharp fangs.

Many vampires seem to be immune to the effects of religious items, mostly because with rare exceptions they aren?t evil. Some vampires can actually be more law-abiding than their normal neighbors. Hamilton?s vampires are an exception. Anita can fend off the vamps by wearing a cross and burn them with holy water, even if the vamps aren?t really bad guys. In Davidson?s book the normal vampires are sensitive to religious items, but Betsy Taylor is an exception. She goes to chat with a priest and has no trouble entering the church. As vampire queen, she even wears a nice gold cross.

Sunlight, and being out in it, is a problem for most vampires. Laurey, Feehan and Squires?s vampires can all tolerate daytime, if not direct sunlight, which makes it easier for their characters to operate in the normal world. Hamilton?s vampires can be alert during the day, particularly in the late afternoon, but they will burst into flame if exposed to sunlight.

Feehan?s Carpathians need their native soil, or soil much like it, to stay healthy and sleep underground if at all possible. Laurey?s vampires sleep in beds but need to be near the soil of the ground they were born on. This makes it tricky when someone becomes a vampire on vacation in a foreign land. Hamilton?s vampires like coffins, as do Rice?s, but they seem to be the only ones who do. Davidson?s Betsy Taylor prefers a bed.

All vampires drink blood, but few kill for the precious substance. Carpathian males hunt for dinner but prefer to be the sole blood source for their ladies. There is something blatantly sexist in that. They can imitate eating food to look normal but make the food disappear before it hits the stomach to avoid indigestion. Squires? vampires eat normal food but need small amounts of blood to stay healthy. Otherwise, vampires usually avoid the buffet table.

Many vampires, modern day and historical, will use alternative blood sources as necessary, like bags from the local blood bank or animal blood, but no one really likes the stuff. Straight from the vein of an attractive human is the preferred food source for most vampires, even if their ability to take that blood becomes limited to how long their source stays human. Often in the first stages of a vampire/human relationship, the vampire will rhapsodize eloquently about how tasty their new lover?s blood is.

Special powers are common with vampires, usually starting with telepathy and mind-control -- all the better to eat one with. By controlling the mind of a victim, the vampire can feast and not deal with a struggling body, plus leave a memory that the vampire wasn?t even there. Some vampires, like Carpathians, can change form, become birds or wolves. Many can take a mist-like form, hide in plain sight, have supernatural speed, and most can fly whether they can change form or not.

There are probably many more things to say about vampires, but we?ve pretty much covered the basics. Whether or not you love them, they are still amazingly popular creatures.

And why -- because the authors who write about them make them so darn sexy!

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Janet?s fascination with modern literary vampires began during the creation of her own unpublished vampire book. Her other books, LADY OF THE KNIFE, a fantasy romance and A CHRISTMAS WITH SARAH, a Silicon Valley holiday tale, are available from Zumaya Publications. Visit her website at www.janetlynnmiller.com